Back From Brushwood

Sometimes our pottery sales take us from the unusual venue of Renaissance Faires into the even more unusual venue of what we call "Pagan" events. Gatherings of folks in the earth focused religions usually liberally crossed with old and new hippies, eco-geeks and young party seekers. In either case it translates to a week of fun where a live-and-celebrate-life social order is created and we can all relax and take a deep breath even while selling and working. This particular festival was at The Brushwood Folklore Center and the festival was called Sirius Rising.

The Merchant area looks more like a tent city than a tightly wound fair of any sort, but the people buy and we can relax and enjoy the sunshine..or the rain, or the horrific storms, or whatever comes our way. Sorry for the fuzziness of some of the phone pics, but phone pics are what they are.

As you can see we roughed it...we camped in a 20x10 garage tent, with a queen size bedframe that holds an air mattress. We also brought a nice kitchen and dined well all week. Crepes, Pancakes (chocolate chili-chip with Caramel Sauce and fresh blueberries) , echildadas, Pad Thai, Portobello Gnocchi, Risotto were a few of the fine meals we experienced. Some simply delicious and others a calculated venture into decadence. I am pleased to say we only bought from food vendors once :)


The wildlife theme of the week was snails and slugs..I've never seen so many. When we packed up the garage tent I spend a few minutes finger-flicking them into oblivion..

One of the highlights of this particular festival is the end of the week bonfire.This year they constructed a huge wooden dragon and burned it on top. It was really fun, but the merchants were all busy watching for falling embers onto their tent roofs. We had a few close calls, but between vigilance and a little sprinkling of rain before the fire everyone survived unscathed.

Overall the week was very relaxing, I bartered for a 90 minute massage and the weather for the first two days was lovely if a bit cool. Thursday and Friday and Saturday were overcast most of the time and the temperature was in the 60's during the day and high 40's at night BBRRRRRER. Good thing we had a fair amount of delightful antifreeze, like Magpie Meads. Magpie makes fantastic mead, a honeywine infused with fruit. I highly recommend sampling a bottle if you live within a state he can legally ship to. Rowan and I both love the Black Raspberry with Blueberry as a close second.