Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen!

We've entered the silly season for us folks who like to dress up and pretend we are someone else. The Colorado Renaissance Festival is in full swing in Larkspur and the shire is looking especially pretty this year. After spending a few days with Mike in Orange County, CA ( We went to Disneyland!), I rushed home and spent 2 days of non-stop sewing. The waistcoat came off like a dream, but the first pair of breeches were too small. I was up till 2am finishing the second pair along with 23 buttons and buttonholes! Saturday dawned cool and crisp, perfect fair weather, and we had a great time.


I'm not sure if it's the fact that Sarah is dating Jack Sparrow, or that we long so for the sea that we just can't get the smell of salt water out of our noses, but we have set aside more regal courtly attire for pirate garb and we may never go back. No plaids for Highlands Weekend, no breath restricting corsets, we've traded them for tricorns and cutlasses. Why fight with skirts when you can have drop front breeches? Besides, pirates live to accessorize!


With belts and baldrics, boots and sash, flintlocks and cutlass, their is just no end to the ways in which a pirate can make her kit her own. And one can never have to much leather and buckles or feathers... But tis too true, we are naught but humble pirates!


Unfortunately, it looks as though our faire may well be about to embark on a voyage that may bring changes that don't suit us pirates. For more information on the bilge sucking scum, you can read this article. In protest, our scurvy crew may just set sail for other ports next season like New Orleans for Pyrate Con. It's going to prove a bit difficult to haul the ship overland till we hit open seas, but maybe we can enlist the help of Calypso...


I think this is all just great practice for our future. With global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps (the North Pole is predicted to completely melt this summer for the very first time) and the subsequent rise in ocean levels, we figure it won't be long before life could look a lot like Water World. Why not plan ahead and take up piracy? Imagine if you will, a vessel under full sail pulling up alongside a Carnival Cruise ship, and its swarthy crew of buccaneers climbing aboard. The passengers would think it was all part of the entertainment and gladly hand over their money, rings and watches. But the bilge rats (that's us) would take off with their plunder, leaving the shocked and now empty handed party goers alive but broke. High seas adventure with grog and open buffets. Sounds grand doesn't it lad?


Here's Beth's version of Elizabeth Swann, brandishing her Chinese sword and looking very sexy for a scallywag. Blimey! And who knows, with the world in such bad shape it could be we'd become privateers, letters of marque in hand, working for the government as it were. Aargh!



Sarah debuted a new look this year. Her pirate cast away, dressed in tattered clothes, complete with crab on a stick. She had a bag of sea creatures for the kids and had crabs and fish bones tucked in all kinds of unexpected places. She walked around sunburned and dazed, shouting I've got crabs to the crowd.

Hoist the Jolly Roger and weigh the anchor. It's time we left this port. Better were the days when mastery of seas came not from bargains struck with eldritch creatures... but from the sweat of a man's brow and the strength of his back alone. You all know this to be true!

-Tigerlilly

P.S.
(Sarah made this Jack Sparrow flag, complete with raveling edges, and it's double-sided.)