IT DIDN'T MATCH, SO...

This weekend is the Portland Pirate Festival, a huge-ish gathering of people who love pirates, saying "Aaaargh!", and dressing in pirate-era costume.

It's great fun, with enormous inflated play structures for the kids, booth after booth of costumes, swords, daggers, and other paraphernalia, wandering troupes of dancers and singers, stage shows, a schooner to sail on, sword fights, puppetry, and acrobats.

Oh, and me! Sitting in wench-wear at my table, happily painting lots o' little kids, and the occasional adult.


A handsome matey

This is my third year doing the Festival, and I enjoy it, and am learning over time. (Dress warmly, but in layers. Charge enough to, and I hate to admit this, deter at least a few potential customers, or I will work myself into a stupor, etc.) The only "complaint" I've had is that my table set-up was not visible enough, not brightly colored enough, and that they'd nearly missed me altogether.

So I went out and bought two tablecloths to change that. Yesterday I got out the table and umbrella, and put the tablecloths on, to make sure everything was copacetic. They were too small!

And I didn't want to spend more money. What to do? I put the floral cloth on the umbrella. This is what I had, and it wasn't doing it for me:


Well, close. But no cigar.

There was a certain similarity of theme, though, even if the colors were wrong. So I got out the acrylics. They aren't fabric paints, but this isn't ever going to be washed, and they're flexible enough not to interfere with opening and closing the umbrella.

Gotta say, I'm happier with this:


Don't you just love paint?

The other cloth is bright red, and will be layered over a jungle print of greens and browns. I do believe I'm set.

Now, for that new corset....