This Was The Fest That Was

Also known as "Please don't notice that I have no exciting progress for WIP Wednesday". So, yes. This past weekend was the annual event we call EdFest. For those of you unfamiliar, this is a gathering of a group of hubby's college friends held the third weekend in July (usually - there was a minor rescheduling this year). It has gone on since the summer after their freshman year at Penn State, which makes this year #16. This year's fest was held locally (in past years, we've all rented a beach house or a ski house for the weekend), with the main goings-on at our friend John's place outside of Annapolis. However, since we are getting old and generation 2 of the Festers is growing rapidly, the sleeping arrangements were far less "Sleep where you land" and far more "Guest room or hotel". J and Betsy arrived here from Florida last Tuesday night and stayed with us until Monday. Until the major festivities started on Friday, we spent some time with Hyon and Drew, and Betsy even came to my Thursday Barnes & Noble knitting group. Friday, Betsy and I were in charge of picking up the food for the weekend, and we may have accidentally fallen into a shoe store on the way to BJ's. :) I picked up 2 cute pair of wedge sandals, just to have something other than my Crocs and Birks to wear once in a while. While we were out, Big Steve (yes, there is a Little Steve, too, but he and his quite pregnant wife didn't make it up this year) arrived at the house. We got back and packed up the van and headed over to JMac's. I spent most of the afternoon frantically finishing the assembly of the third dragon, because I knew Ed and Karin (parents of Sam, the recipient of said dragons) would be there Friday evening at some point. And yes, I was thoroughly mocked for knitting at EdFest. Everyone DID agree that the dragons were cute, though. Naturally, Ed and Karin arrived before I was done. I shoved everything hastily into my bag (I think I was down to attaching legs and wings at that point) to say hello, especially because I hadn't yet met baby Sam, who is just adorable. I did finally finish the dragon and give the set (the dragons and the coordinating log cabin blanket) to Ed and Karin that evening. They were cracking up, because they had no idea that I was working on something for Sam while they were there. They both seemed to really love the dragons, and Karin handed the green one to Sam, who immediately started drooling on it and jabbering away at it. Yay! Baby seal of approval. But yeah... the upshot of this is that I don't have a finished picture of them. Ed and Karin promised to send some, though. I'll post them here when I get them. There was a lot of hugging and greeting Friday evening as everyone arrived (including Kris, who had to work until mid-afternoon and came over afterward). We had a couple of people there who haven't been for the last couple of years, so it was great to see them, in addition to seeing the people we pretty much only see at EdFest. There was the usual significant quantities of beer, some pool-playing, a little poker, and some Guitar Hero. In one overenthusiastic moment, there was a bit of breakage done to JMac's ceiling fan with the guitar, but SOMETHING always breaks, and it was cleaned up with no major issues. Eventually (like, at about 1:30am) Kris, J, and Betsy decided it was time to bail, so I grabbed Big Steve and the five of us headed back to the house. The funny thing? Steve and I had both been drinking, the others really hadn't been. Take a stab at who was up first in the morning, by a margin of a good 2 hours... :) So, since Steve and I were up and about way before the others (I even had the time and inclination to make pancakes), we headed over to JMac's earlier than they did. In retrospect, this was a good thing, because when we got to one turn, there was a police car sitting there, blocking the way we needed to go. I pulled up and rolled down my window, and the officer asked where we were headed. I told him, and he said that there was a power line down, so we were going to have to take a detour. He gave me directions, and we headed back the way we came. Luckily, we had the GPS with us, because in his "Take road A back to road B, turn onto road C, which will get you back to road D" haste, the officer forgot to mention road E, which was a key connection from road B to road C. Once we arrived at JMac's, we discovered that the power line that was down? Was one that included his neighborhood. So, we were without power for a significant part of the afternoon. Luckily, JMac picked up a generator during the nasty ice storm last February, and could at least run the 2 refrigerators to keep the food and beer safe. Also, since we were among the first to arrive (other than those who had stayed there Friday night), and I now had the directions to get around the roadblock, I spent some time on the phone giving those directions to everyone else. Saturday afternoon, Amanda and her hubby came by for a while, and J even participated in the Testicle Toss tournament, coming in as half of the second-place team. (I think there are TT pics in last year's EdFest post. Basically, there are two ladders at each end, and you throw a bolo-like thing of 2 golf balls on a string, scoring points depending on which rung it lands on. Don't ask about the name. I didn't come up with it.) And yes, Amanda and I were knitting while we watched the tourney this year, as we drank our strawberry daiquiris. :D Later in the evening, Carrie and Alex stopped by, and we played a little Karaoke Revolution. They also bonded with Drew and Scott over a mutual love for Metallica, and have made plans to go see a Metallica cover band (Battery) together in September. Drew swears that they are amazing, and they are all trying to convince Kris and I to go with them. I doubt Kris will crack (crowds kind of annoy him), but I may yet cave. It's not really my music (nothing against Metallica, I don't mind them at all. It's just not my personal favorite - I listen to stuff I can sing to, not shout with. ;) ), but it does sound like they will all have fun. We'll see. J and Betsy had headed back to the house earlier in the evening (J wasn't feeling well), and Kris started developing a migraine not long after Carrie and Alex arrived, so he headed home. Steve and I decided to stick it out, and Kris said he'd just come back for us in the morning. I ended up crashing on a papasan chair cushion (I've slept in an actual chair before, and it's a recipe for a very stiff neck, so I just dragged the cushion onto the floor.), and Steve sacked out in a slightly less than steady recliner. Of course, the next morning, we discovered that there were in fact a couple of unclaimed air mattresses upstairs, and we could probably have both spent a significantly more comfortable night. *sigh* We got a lot of cleaning up done Sunday morning, and the house was just about back to normal by the time Kris arrived with a change of clothes for me so that I could grab a shower. Everyone gradually headed out, and by noon-ish, the only folks left were either locals or had a short drive, so we all piled into cars and went to a diner for breakfast. We (Kris, Steve, and I) got back to the house, where Steve got showered and changed, and we hung out until it was time to get J and Betsy to the airport. Since Steve goes right past it to get home to Mechanicsburg, he offered to drop them off and save Kris and I the trip. Their flight was at 5-ish, and at 4:30 or so, the phone rang. It was J, asking Kris to check online to see if there was any information on the flight, because all they were hearing was that it was delayed. It turned out that yes, it did end up getting cancelled, and they got seats on another flight out Monday morning. So, we hopped in the car, zipped over to BWI and brought them back home. We had a mellow evening at the house, me working on my Mystery Stole, Betsy alternating between her MS and the green dragon she decided to make for herself after falling in love with the ones I made for Sam. Happily, I had lots of yarn left, so I could hook her up. (Kris is also hinting that he'd like a red one, so I'm guessing there will be more dragons in my future as well...) So, that was EdFest in a (rather large) nutshell. I have in fact made progress on both my Chevron Scarf and my Mystery Stole since last week, but as the scarf looks exactly the same, just longer, and the Mystery Stole is still in the neverending stretch of cat's paw lace/flowers/snowflakes/whatever they are, neither of them makes for particularly interesting photos. I'm hoping to get the stole finished between today and tomorrow, and then I'll pin it out again and take an official "end of Clue 4" picture before Clue 5 comes out on Friday. And now, I'm off to see what my idiotic dogs are barking at in the backyard.