Poor Francis got to sit through last night's episode of Project Runway with me hurumphing and snorting with derision the entire episode. Being the polite person she is, she put up with it well. Alan knows better and usually flees to the basement or goes to bed instead of watching Project Runway with me.

( spoiler ranting... )

I'll watch the finale, never fail, because I'm a sucker, but I'm certainly not excited for it like I was for Leanne and Korto's last season so long ago. So now I look forward to Season 7 of PR (said to already be in the can) with a bit of trepidation. It can't be worse than this season, could it? But if I start watching, I know I won't be able to stop... Sigh. I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it.

Saturday of Land Grab brought some trying weather.

In one of the big gusts, as everyone was tending elsewhere in camp, the roof of our Common Tent suffered some serious damage in the form of large rips in the canvas. We had one large long rip from the dagges up to the ridge. There were two more additional tears on either sides of the ridge seams, and some smaller rips on the opposite end near one of the perimeter poles, and another smaller rip up by the ridge further down from the main damage. The poles, ropes, and other gear that were under the tent are fine, and no one was harmed at all, but we did have to drop the tent in a hurry in the middle of a downpour. It sat in a wet ball overnight as we pondered our options. We managed to set-up the barracks as a temporary common tent for breakfast, and pulled the roof out on Sunday to dry in the sun. I spent some time harassing and haunting Reynard for repair materials and instructions, which he gave willingly despite his own camp distractions. We sat down in Theo's front room to sew the rips as Reynard directed Sunday afternoon, and apparently the patching was complete that evening. The word I heard last night from camp is that our faithful common tent is up, doing fine, and Reynard approved of our repairs.

I cannot thank Thjora, Theodora, and Elspet enough for taking on the massive repair job of stitching the tent roof back together yesterday. Thank you also Reynard for your time, instruction, waxed linen thread, and checking up on us as we stitched.
More pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenthies/sets/72157621735905697/

I was in shock when I saw the initial rips, almost in tears when we brought it down and really assessed the damage, and am still feeling over-protective of our dear tent. Anyone who has seen me fold canvas, must have some idea of my OCDness with regards to canvas, and how I must have felt at seeing our tent in a sad wet ripped up pile on Saturday. We purchased this tent in Feb 2004 second hand from Arielle. She had owned and used the tent for 6 years prior to our taking over ownership, which is why the dagges are edged in red, though fittingly faded to pink by now on the outside. We've now used it at 5 Pennsics, several Sapphire Jousts, and countless other events when a big group will gather under the Vair and Ermine shade. So I guess the tent is 11-12 years old. It has sheltered us during many parties, vigils, tears and giggles.

I'll never forget after we brought it home, we scheduled a weekend to scrub and rinse the tiki torch smoke off the roof, paint the perimeter poles to seal them and make them kinder to handle, and devise a new ridge pole/main upright system of support. Alan remade the ridge pole, and octagonalized the 4x4" uprights to take a little weight off of them. We settled on gold for the pole paint since it worked well with red and wasn't a color already employed in our camp. (Color coordinated poles in camp, really helps with the big trailer unload on Land Grab day.) We also ordered nice stakes from Panther since Gen abhores the rebar stakes. There were also two small tears near the ridge, that we were warned of, that I patched up after the initial cleaning and continue to hold fast. We set it up at the next Night on the Town, and when I saw Arielle there with Valharic, I asked her what she thought of her old tent. She gasped in awe as she didn't recognize it at first, and then jokingly asked to have it back. I can still see her face from that moment.

Dear Common Tent,

We apologize profusely for taking you for granted this Land Grab and not securing you as we should have when we knew that storm was coming. Thank you for being so faithful these past years. Thank you also for not crashing down and staying up through your trauma so as to not harm any of our campers nor the gear we had carelessly piled under you. Please continue in your duties and we'll promise to take better care of you from here on out.

Love,
Me

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Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: You think she'll hold together?
Zoë: She's torn up plenty, but she'll fly true.