My Pennsic project motivation, though, took a steep nosedive Monday. Last week I was toying with the idea of buying some type of lawn pavilion thing to transform into living quarters at Pennsic. I went out looking Saturday, and found this one I absolutely fell in love with - it was a beautiful gazebo / pavilion thing with a bell-shaped top.
I almost bought it, just spur of the moment bought it, it was so cool. But then I made myself take a few deep breaths and think it through, and after I did that, I decided it really wasn't a good idea. For one thing, it's all constructed from metal, with screws and bolts and the like - designed to be set up and left up, not easily portable to put up and take down for camping. It would be a mother bear to haul, set up and tear down for Pennsic. Second, it (and all the other lawn pavilions at this store) had warning signs on them that they weren't really designed to withstand extreme weather, wind, etc. Now, that does beg the question, what do they expect people to do with them in their yards when a storm is coming? As I said, these aren't the type of thing you would put up for a weekend, or easily dismantle every time a thunderstorm threatenend. Of course, having it blow down in your yard, or at Pennsic with all your stuff in it, are two different things.
But the third problem made the second problem not worth pursuing an answer to. The thing was not waterproof except for light rain. Well, anyone who has been to Pennsic knows that if we get by with only one deluge, that's a good year. There's no way this thing would have been dry shelter at Pennsic.
Yeah, I might have been able to try spray waterproofing on the fabric, and yeah, I could have heavily staked it down, and yeah, I could probably scare up a crew of people to help me put it together - but that was a lot of maybes, and the thing was $300. That's a lot of money for something that was so iffy.
So I reluctantly had to leave it behind, but it got me started thinking about how I could design and build my own 'pavyurtebo' - a combination pavilion, yurt, and lawn gazebo. I spent some time thinking, doodling, and mapping this out, and was coming up with some really good ideas (I thought).
Then, while searching for an online site to buy perimeter poles, I went to Panther Primitives, a well-known pavilion maker for SCA types (and others, come to that). Now, I have to tell you that since my first year in the SCA one of my dreams has been to get a "real" pavilion. But when I last priced them a few years ago, the type I wanted then would have cost well over $2,000. Not only did I not have the money, but even if I had, I couldn't justify spending that much on a tent I'd probably only use once a year. So I had scrapped that idea, and though I continued to look longingly at all the pavilions at Pennsic each year, I had assumed it was never going to be an option for me.
But while tooling around their site, I found a pavilion that I absolutely loved, that was very much in my affordable range. I don't know whether it's something they didn't have a few years ago, or I just didn't notice it because at the time I was interested in something different (I use to want a round pavilion, and this one's square; but my tastes have changed, and now I'd actually rather have the square one; good thing I didn't drop $2,000+ on the round one, then!). Regardless, I really liked this one, and could afford it, and so got extremely psyched about getting my own pavilion for Pennsic. The difference that would make to my camping experience is beyond description. It would just be a thousand times better.
Here's a picture of it, from their site:
(The stripes on the roof must be a custom thing those particular owners did, they don't automatically come that way).
Anyway - that ramped up my excitement about Pennsic in general enormously, and that's around the time I dived into committing to all these projects.
So Greg called the place for me on Monday, because he kind of knows the owner, but unfortunately it's too late to get one for Pennsic this year. They are backed up on orders as it is (always busy in the months before Pennsic) and I couldn't possibly get the pavilion in time.
I was majorly bummed. It really took the wind out of my sails for Pennsic. I'll still go, I'm just not nearly as psyched about it as I was when I thought I could get a pavilion. I'm back to not even being sure I'm going to spend the entire week there, or just drift in and out.
But there is one piece of good news - now that I know that there is a pavilion I like that's affordable, I'm going to get one. I just didn't see any point in throwing all that money at it right now, if I can't have it for Pennsic - why drop all that money right now on something I will get in mid-to-late August, and have no use for until clear next year? But sometime in the next six or eight months I will order this pavilion, to have it for next Pennsic - so there is that to look forward to.
Ah well ... back to the projects. I will continue to make socks, because that's got nothing to do with Pennsic, and I'll finish the pirate coat, just because that's the one coolest new piece of garb I have and I really want to wear it for whatever time I'm at Pennsic. After that I'll pick and choose what else I'm going to devote my time to, based on importance in the greater scheme of things, and go from there.
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