Alas, sometimes you get reinforcement that a certain amount of clutter is good. Today we put together an interesting booth for the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival at the Seacoast Local Festival in Portsmouth, NH out of stuff we've got lying around the house.

I found a blue tablecloth that I had forgotten I owned. Covered the top of the table and table cloth with place mats of maritime charts. Used a fountain base (rectangular metal "box") to hold the flyers (next time I'll cover the bottom of the box with shells, just for interest) and displayed a repro harpoon (made by Tom's former students), a deck light prism, repro scrimshawed whale's tooth and belaying pin. Guest BB brought a cardboard concertina suitable (safe!) for children to handle, some books and a festival scrapbook. We also contributed nautical flags (signalling "Splice the Main Brace") that we acquired about 20 years ago. We had two banners from previous years that we duct taped no longer current info out of sight on and hung them and the signal flags from the tent and on the front of the table.

We were winging it (once again) but, damn, it looked good! Effective, too -- picked up some contributions for the festival as well as more local interest.

Oh! And at one point when I was duct taping the nautical flags to the top of the tent I realized I had my arm extended straight up and I hadn't even thought about it!!! (Means all m my hard work and the physical therapy is working!)

AND, before I left for the Seacoast Local Festival, I Freecycled some clutter that I DON'T want to have around any longer.

Accomplished day. (Plus I came home to a phone call from a friend about a possible job opportunity. Yeehah!)

Linn