Crazy few weeks....

When last I wrote I had just crashed my car and was in the final frantic stretches of prepping for our Coronation. I was panicking and then I realized I'd made a cutting error on the caftan sleeves for Mel. I lost 2 days fixing those sleeves. Note to self: handwoven fabric requires AT LEAST a 5/8ths seam....my life would have been so much easier if I'd had that but since I only had scraps of fabric left oh well. So we spent the rest of the week sewing and sewing and me handing things off to people who were awesome. Seriously. Plus I didn't rush, I didn't botch anything else and we looked awesome. Things were not ironed when we arrived to site on Saturday the 5th but I had brought an ironing board and iron and had many Hrafn ladies to help with that. My student Ai'sha knocked it out of the park on my under dress and tunic for ivan on Sunday as well. We looked so sharp.

I will have to sit and write more later on the whole day but here are the highlights:
1) My SIL flew in as a surprise to see us from Atlantia and only pounced on her brother as he walked down the aisle after crowning himself king. And then she surprised me!
2) We had a Master of Arms swear fealty to us and us alone. The cover of the June Southwind is not a flattering photo of us but it shows that moment and its importance. I'm still tearing up on it.
3) Benton is not a ham and is kinda embarassed by being heralded into court by his well meaning uncles. He was cute but kept biting on his wooden spear head like a berserker chess piece. Lol.
4) I had 25 contenders in my Queen's Champion in 106°F weather. Go me. And one of my household won it. Yay! Go Lord Mathurin!

So, the family photo, a bit blurry but cute.

Close up of the clothes during the transition:

Benton intensely watching the archery competition.

Us at Champions:

So, we got home from Coronation tired but fulfilled. Monday we took a "rest" day where we hosted scribble and relaxed with people and then Tuesday we started the car hunt cause in the interim they totaled the car. $5k in damages on a car worth $4300 due to age and high mileage. Tuesday we test drove the new 2018 Fits which we did fit into...they'd changed them since the last time. It was fun and we looked at the new Civic hatchback but Mel didn't want to test drive it...more on that later. Wednesday we test drove a Mazda 3 which Mel liked and I didn't. I stalled it which is the weirdest thing for me and well, it was stiff etc. Fun to drive but I wasn't sure I wanted that. Thursday I went back to Honda and test drove the Civic and fell in love with a car. Wow. Friday we had the day off so we dropped Ben and Mark at school (Ari was gone for the week at her work Summit), had breakfast at Bisbee Breakfast Club on Broadway and then headed to test drive Hyundai, Subaru and have Mel drive the Civic. Hyundai was okay but they had no manual transmissions in the state. :( Subaru was odd since we really liked the look of the Impreza and Crosstrek but Mel didn't fit in the back seat. His head hit. So we test drove a Forrester and really liked it. Talking price etc we realized that its in the same size class as the Xterra we used to own and well, we had to think about it. Went over to Honda and Mel got that shit eating grin of his the minute he shifted into gear. The reason he hadn't wanted to test drive it was that he knew he was going to like it too much. We talked and agreed that the Subaru was too much car for my daily commuter and the 22-24 mpg wasn't going to be good for our pocket books in the long run. So I knew talking to a few Phx dealerships that there was a Red civic in the sport edition we wanted and the Autonation here in Tucson drove up and swapped cars with them to get us the Rallye Red we wanted. Here she is without tint.

Sunday was Mother's Day and I knit and had breakfast out and had a nice day.