Hoffman Estates Celtic Fest 2013

Scottish Thistle Pendant for me.

Back from another full day! Seems our days have been and will continue to be fairly busy for the duration of the summer, with the OYAN Summer Workshop in June, the filming of Blades of Honor, and the picking season soon starting on the VanLaar Fruit Farm soon, as well. On top of that all the writing I need to do..... Yeah.

Anyway. Today was the Celtic Fest. It was most enjoyable, actually; held in a Sears Centre about an hour away from where we live. The centre itself was large, but the event, while not neglected, certainly, wasn't super packed, either. We listened to some great Celtic music, got to see a whole bunch of kilts, and listen to random bagpipe music, as well. Rosie and I both got something from the pewter merchant I mentioned in my previous post. I'd been eyeing that Scottish Thistle pendant last time, and the Celtic Knot one caught Rosie's eye. She's always liked rubies. We both had a difficult time deciding what to get.... She found three different pendants she liked, and I had to choose which Scottish Thistle design -- out of three designs there -- I liked the best. We observed, deliberated, conferred, left, and came back again, deliberated a little more, and finally made our choice. Needless to say, the vendors were amused.



Celtic Knot Pendant for Rosie.

One of my other little brothers has been waiting all week since last week to meet this merchant. See, he's somewhat of a strategist and history buff, so when we told him that this merchant had little pewter Revolutionary War figures, he became rather excited. Though he interrogated myself and my Mother thoroughly as to the quality and minute aesthetic detail of these little figurines, neither she nor I had paid much attention to them beyond the fact that they were there and we knew my brother would like them. So he had to wait all week to get to see them himself. A dozen for ten bucks; quite the deal! He has been using the figures since he got them, and is very pleased. He had found a set of ten figures for $25 in another historical merchandise magazine, but Sheldon Pewter obviously gave a much better deal.

All in all, we had a wonderful time. Listening to Celtic music, purchasing some great trinkets, and hanging out with the family, which is always fun. I'll conclude with this video I took of a band playing a really fun reel. I only took a few videos because Pippin and I spent the rest of the time dancing together in the hall. Celtic music simply must be danced to, there's no two ways about it.

If anyone of you who enjoys Celtic things lives in IL around Chicago, do consider going to next year's Celtic Fest. Admission is completely free, there are games for the kids, you can listen to great music, bagpipes, and learn how to play cricket. Now how many of you out there, honestly, have wondered how on Earth cricket is played? I've been watching British telly shows and movies all my life, and I still don't know exactly how it works. My brothers went down to the arena to play about a bit, and they say they've got some of the rules down, so I'm going to have them explain it to me as best they can. It's all baseball over here at my house.

Well, I'm off to bed now. Have to be up early tomorrow to be at church for choir on time. Everyone have a blessed weekend, you hear?

Dia duit,
~Penny

P.S.
At least some of you will be glad to hear that, since I've completed the script for Blades of Honor (did I forget to mention that....?), I will now have time to do a couple more segments of For the Greatest Good. Keep an eye out for them!

Saturday Legend Post -- The Scottish Thistle

Today the family and I visited a living history event called The Gathering, at a place called Macktown. Apart from being immensely enjoyable and fascinating, we also came across a pewter trader who sold all sorts of items, including various Scottish thistle themed necklaces, earrings, and pins. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. I didn't purchase anything right then, but I certainly plan to when we go to a Celtic Fest next week, where the same vendor will be setting up shop again.

Now to my point. Before we left, the pewter trader, noticing my interest in the thistles, handed me a slip of paper about the Legend of the Scottish Thistle. This is how it goes....

When Alexander III (1241-1285) was King of Scotland, King Haakon of Norway landed an army on the shores of that Kingdom and attempted to conquer it. According to tradition, during a sneak attack at night on the Scottish camp at Largs, a barefooted Norseman trod on a thistle and cried out in pain. The Scots were alerted, and the attack failed. King Haakon withdrew his army and the lowly thistle became the Scottish national symbol.

Whether or not things happened just as the legend says is obviously a point for debate, but since the thistle has become such a prominent Scottish symbol, something must have happened. That explanation is good enough for me. Besides, whether the facts are straight or not, it's the sentiment that's been preserved, and that's what really counts.

Dia duit,
~Penny

Charmed, I'm sure....

You already know we're making a movie with some folks called the Vincents. Well, recently..... Actually, I'm not sure how recent it was, come to think of it....

Anyway, this is a movie they made. It's entirely original, including the music, and the Vincents entered it in the Beloit Film Festival. I've been told they won it.

"Many princesses dream of being whisked away by Prince Charming, but maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be."

Enjoy!

Dia duit,
~Penny

Don't Get Your Hopes Up

This is still one of those intermediate posts where I don't actually say anything, but I post anyways because I don't like leaving my blog untouched for too long.

I very much want to work on FtGG again. Unfortunately-ish, I signed on to write a script for a movie some friends are making. That's awesome, but the unfortunate part is that FtGG will have to wait a short bit, unless I can figure out how to multi task. Which probably won't happen, since I haven't been able to do that in the past very well. We shall see.

For news, Wynni stayed over for the weekend again. Loads of fun, as usual. A walk through Sherwood soon led to an impromptu IG, in which we ran about ten miles, all in all, and made it around the entire perimeter of Sherwood, all the way back to the house in time to drive to church for choir practice. Yes, I was sore the next morning. But it was worth it.

Right now it's midnight, and my mind hasn't been functioning on its highest level since at least three this afternoon, so I'll leave this short. Otherwise it won't get posted at all.

So happy spring to y'all! I didn't mention that the weather has been getting nice. Well, it is, and that makes me a very happy Penny, believe me. I'm definitely not a winter person.

Dia duit,
~Penny

My Room -- The Closet

• Paint cherry blossom tree in left corner
• Purchase curtains for windows
• Paint closet
• Turn closet into office space
• Buy mirrors for over and beside dresser
• Bounce on bed

Two things done before the weekend last week! Painted my closet blue (all on my own. Thanks to my friends who video skyped me so I didn't die of boredom), and Percy and my Dad put in the desk and bookshelf. It's not fully finished, but it's pretty close. Percy and Seph still need to hang up my whiteboard, but they need special screws, or something like that.

But here is a picture, anyway.

I don't know if you'll notice or not, but there are actually two different shades of blue in there. The blue on the bottom was the color we were originally going to use for the entire closet. As I painted, however, I quickly discovered there wouldn't be nearly enough paint for the entire closet. Momma suggested that I paint the top fourth (third?) the same lighter blue I used for the rest of the room. The end result is quite fetching, in my opinion. It keeps the darker blue from being too glaring. I'm quite pleased with it.

So the things that still need to be done are fairly obvious. I need that bookshelf painted white, I need the whiteboard hung on the wall, and I need a more comfortable chair. Dad is also going to make a couple small corner shelves in the left hand corner so I can put some knickknacks on there.

And for those of you who might notice, that is my fedora on the upper shelf there. Anyone who was at the OYAN SW will remember the day when all the PenKnights wore their fedoras. It's the official PenKnights hat.

At the moment, my room needs a good clean up. I unpacked my doll collection -- which ended up being much larger than I remembered -- so I also need to figure out where to put those. I don't think they'll all fit on my headboard shelves; I might need to put some of the bigger ones on the top shelf in my closet, and whatever leftover ones I have will have to be re-packed and put in the basement.

So that was my week.

Happy Easter!
~Penny

More Excuses

For the past week or so, my Dad has been leading the charge in getting our house here (finally) fixed up. As in, all the painting, shelf adding, and furniture arranging (not to mention box emptying) have been the main activities for each day besides school, for the ones that still do school. Needless to say, my writing has suffered, including writing on my blog.

But I decided to post a few pictures here of my room! I'm so excited about my room. Since I've been a military brat my entire life, I've moved every two years with my family. This left little time to do anything permanent to the bedrooms I've had, and on top of that, we usually lived in rentals offbase rather than base housing on base. Even still, the on base housing department didn't like having a million things done to their houses, either.

Now that we own a house, I have the chance to make over my room just the way I want it. It's quite a project, but it's fun, and the results are proving quite satisfactory.

First, we painted. That involved me dragging everything out of my room and piling into the hallway so we could get at the walls. Even though my favorite color is pink, I'm not really the pink room type. So I chose on of my second favorite colors: blue.

Me Doing the edging with Mum.

The paint color: Hawaiian Sky.

Percy doing the roller.

It took us two days to do the painting. One day to do three of the walls, then we ran out of paint, so the next day Dad ran out and got more so we could finish the last wall.

After it dried, Dad put up the special headboard for my bed. Mom and Dad actually purchased this bed from Ikea while we were still in Florida. They bought it for my room, but used it until we moved back up here, since they left their big Amish wood bed here for the two years.

Now I have it back and Dad has put it all together. They got this bed because of the headboard, actually; it is large and slatted so that little shelves can be fitted into it, and I can load it with all my bajillion knickknacks and collectable dolls.

There's a semi-good picture of it, just to give you the idea. I have some of my knickknacks on it right now, and I staggered the shelving more evenly, now.

So far the list for finishing my room looks like this:

• Paint cherry blossom tree in left corner
• Purchase curtains for windows
• Paint closet
• Turn closet into office space
• Buy mirrors for over and beside dresser
• Bounce on bed

Since I'll probably still be busy as we continue to whip not just my room, but the whole house, into a shape we like, I will try and take pictures to post here at intervals. Just so y'all don't think I've died or anything.

Dia duit,
~Penny

Overdue

So I've been sick. That's my excuse, yeah. This weekend was spent lying in bed doing little more than watching instant movies on Netflix and reading over old Skype histories. Nothing interesting or blog worthy. I was informed the other  by my cousin, and again today by one of Dana's younger brothers, that I haven't posted anything in a while.

So I'm posting this. I have no idea what I'm going to put here. Maybe I'll find a song.

It's not Christmas, but come on, the song is Scottish, and it has the tune to Loch Lomond in it. She's a good violinist, too.

Avengers. Quite the family classic in our house. I believe my father -- who read all the comics when he was growing up -- has seen it at least one hundred times. At least.

And now I will find a picture.

 

If you check my Pinterest boards with any regularity, you'll have already seen these pictures. If you don't, then I'll explain. I made those two pairs of earrings and the necklace last month using leftover beads in my beading basket. I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out. Which is good, because the purple pair of earrings were an absolute pain to try and connive together. I'm one of those people who wings her way through two thirds of any project, beading included. Did I look up how to make what I wanted to make? Of course not. I came up with my own, ridiculously tedious method, and used that for both earrings because I'm too stubborn to find a better way.

They look cute, though. I wore the purple set today with a green sweater. My silly nail polish is chipping, but the rest of me looked nice, at least.

Now something written...

The first thing that registered when my thoughts awoke was the dull ache in my muscles from having lain in the same position for so long. I winced, pushing myself up and opening my eyes. The lucid awareness of my mind surprised me.

  How long have I slept?

  It had to have been some time in order for me to feel so rested. And Dana had not woken me. He must have fallen asleep somewhere, as well. Crawling between the deftly twisted branches that hid me in my little den, I hoped he’d found somewhere out of sight in case someone showed up and—

  I lifted my gaze, and froze.

  Someone had showed up. A lot of someones.

That's your sneak peak for the next part of FtGG. Hopefully it'll get done at some point, though lately I've been focusing on the final edit for a short story of mine that I plan to publish. So y'all will just have to bear with me while I unskillfully juggle life and writing.

Well, hopefully this blog post will suffice for the time being. I have a few others in mind that I'll try to get out soon, too. Until then, if you get bored, go read a book. Rosie has a booklist on here somewhere, so search it, and get to it. I'll have her come up with another one soon. She's been doing a lot of reading lately.

Anyway.

Dia duit,
~Penny