Sorry for no DragonCon posts – I’m still sorting through photos.

However, Red Tower this weekend was an excellent success, and the South Downs has a rockin’ new Baron and Baroness (one of whom is Blogless Lea) and there was a great feast and a hafla and an abundance of awesome out-of-kingdom guests.

Because I can’t possibly post all the awesome photos of the equally awesome event, here’s a good sampling: Red Tower 2010

(From that set by Cynwrig; the pre-investiture pep talk)

robbingpeter made a “sugar” elephant with a little candy-filled howdah on its back. She documented the process. It was really hard not to tell people about this:

The only downsides were the hot weather and a sudden explosion of ticks and scorpions (I dealt mostly with the former). But those were minor, and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, which is where I like to be, except for a brief break during which I was brought into the Order of the Red Raven (and was completely floored by the whole thing, having not expected it). Hajji did the illumination himself! I am so attached to the scrolls created by friends. They’re almost better than the actual awards. I know the friends are.

Anyway, the kitchen was awesome, and during brief periods we looked very authentic:

(Master Lorenzo, robbingpeter, and George Ploppy cooking chickpeas)

I was personally responsibly for wrapping a great quantity of samosas, which the soon-to-be-elevated Temair (to the far right) and my apprentice brother Jareth are frying in this photo:

(All the food was delicious, but these were a big hit.)

I didn’t have any kitchen garb, so I made some.

In this miniature

is a princess (yeah, I know I’m not a princess but the garment is parallel to what I need and the materials I had on hand) in a purple angharka and yellow salwar. I had some yellow salwar already, and a quantity of eggplant fabric, and lo she’s got short sleeves! So I used my magic pattern and came up with this:

(Apologies to Yul; he was working at the Hobart dishwasher all day,  and so his front was perpetually wet.) The plan in the future is to make some blue salwar and a red angharka in a finer fabric, and keep this one for very special occasions. If I can find photos of the front I’ll send them along. I also realize that I need way more jewelry, but jewelry and kitchen aren’t exactly the best combo, so there will be other and better photos in the future. And also I’m nearly to the point of sharing this pattern (I’m going to enter it in an A&S competition in the very near future, so I’d like to wait until after that).

My biggest accomplishments of the weekend were performing a puja in honor of Mistress Jadi’s impending Baroncy, making some really excellent new friends (and being an enabler for a brand new/expanding sari stash) and putting the chickengoddess into this outfit:

My thanks to thetripper for the photos. And also to Meenakshi, whose sari paper gave me the knowledge to pull off such a rockin’ outfit for Her Chickenness.

But you know what? I’m really really thankful for air conditioning.