Waterproof Ringcrafts

            Today’s blog will likely be short, as I've just gotten home from my second day at the Oxford Renaissance Festival in Woodstock, Ontario, where Colleen and I were selling our chainmaille. We had a fantastic time, but being on my feet for twelve hours straight while wearing chainmaille two days in a row has really worn me out. My legs are threatening to quit, which would make writing on my laptop a bit more difficult.

            This was our first outdoor show, so it was a wonderful and terrifying new experience. It’s very hard to leave core parts of your livelihood outdoors, even when you know security will be on site. For us, our biggest concern was our tent – we bought it for this event and Colleen made a medievalish cover for it.

I’d like to take a moment to elaborate on that; she sewed an entire tent. Out of canvas. Now, think about how big a project that is while I tell you she did it in just three days. The results? We absolutely love it!

            As great as the tent looks, we had no way of knowing how functional it was in regards to, say, rain. The first day of the festival went fantastically with great weather and no problems, but even as we were packing up at night we knew that rain was expected. All we could do was make sure everything we needed to leave in the tent overnight was under the tarp we’d brought and hope that the predicted wind wouldn't tear it free (or blow away out tent, for that matter). Then we closed up our tent and drove away, not knowing what we’d find the next day...

            As a bit of side information, the tent has full walls on all sides that we can put up when we choose, however they are each made of three panels that tie together – this means that each wall has two gaps. These walls, like the roof cover, are made of canvas – not treated to be waterproof. The only waterproof part was the tent’s original cover (hidden under our cover) which we were worried wouldn't function with once our cover was on top.

You can imagine our surprise when we arrived on a rainy morning, after a rainy night, and found the inside of our tent completely dry! Not a blade of grass was wet. The canvas was soaked through, but Colleen’s home made tent had succeeded in keeping out the elements. We were thrilled, even more so when the sun came out in the afternoon and completely dried our tent for us.

            The rest of the event went well, although we had more wind than on the first day and, as a result, we learned important lessons about which of our displays need to be more secure for future outdoor events. All in all this was a wonderful fair (I could watch the live jousting from the back of our tent!) and we had a great time while learning lots and meeting loads of wonderful people (including many friends who dropped by, even some not expecting to see us).

We even managed to pack up and leave right before the thunderstorm hit. Now, that’s what I call a good weekend.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.