My children and I do Renaissance Faires, and we are about to do another Dickens Faire as well. At those two I pretty much play myself, 400 or 150 years ago--since I've got my kids with me, I have to play a mother. We also did a Gold Rush Fair a few years ago--I loved that! I had a great story worked out about following my wandering husband to the gold fields and going into business with his other wife, whom he had also deserted. It was designed to explain why my business partner (who was actually my real husband's first cousin) had the same last name, but she was Mexican and I wasn't. Unfortunately, the Fair bombed and I never got to use the story.

I became "Mistress Sam" at RenFaires after the Tolkien character, because of my habit of carrying tons of stuff with me everywhere I go. When I started doing 1901 sailor with chanteyranger, I decided to make all my living history names Sam for simplicity. The women in the topsail crew are supposed to be disguised as men, though we certainly don't seem to be fooling anyone. When asked, our captain said emphatically that there were no women on board--but "we've got some funny-looking men." So we have become the Sisterhood of Funny-Looking Men.