The past holidays or What I have been up to.

Highlights: free fruit - banana passionfruit, cherries, plums... Yay to Nasal spray and far less hayfever than this time last year. Only had to double up once or twice.
Lowlights: Sore shoulder/neck. Don't remember doing anything to it but... ouch.

( It was over a week long... )

Lighting at CF

(Brought this up elsewhere, but other may be interested/have cool ideas.)

Sounds like the fire ban will be at the same stringent levels as last year for Canterbury Faire 2009, so I suspect opaque windowed (oiled cloth/parchment/horn/rawhide) or pierced hole lanterns may be a good idea, with LED or other nonflamable light sources inside. Saw a very nicely done leather frame and rawhide paned one at the MLHNZ camp in Nov - I may try and ask Boyd re what his documentation was, since he did mention it at the time (Tudor Era???). He was using a candle in his for the camp, but other light sources should work. Like the idea of these because you can use period flame in when the site allows, and other sources when the site doesn't.

Speaking of interior light source, noticed that the Warehouse has been stocking the pillar candles with an LED on flicker mode inside - were ~$9 for the smaller ones and ~$13 for the larger ones I saw (Porirua and Linwood branches, so good odds they will be carried elsewhere, in the candle section - at least the Linwood ones were). Light seems pretty good and you could get away with those in clear glass paned lanterns easily - possibly too faint for opaque paned ones. The one we picked up has a plastic base cast into a wax pillar, so may be able to carve the inside/outside to adjust the opacity. Not certain what the battery life is though - took 2 AAs (I think).

Will try and dig out the books we have on lighting, if anyone locally is interested.
(The Medieval Household, Compleate Anachronist on Domestic lighting (think we have that), possibly Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn...)

Any other suggestions?