Death and Rebirth of a Pavilion.

The Reconstruction of a Ruined Tent

In the summer of 2003, I made my first medieval-style pavilion. Although it turned out structurally sound, I was never very happy with the proportions or the paint job, and I was dreaming of the day it would wear out and I could redo it.

(First time the tent was set up)

My opportunity came sooner than I wanted it to. I had planned on revising it as an over-wintering project. Apparently, somewhere between our packing it away after Great Western War in October 2004 and our pulling it out during a break in the Great Rains of January 2005, it became mightily infested with mildew and rust stains.

(roof mildew)

I removed the walls, preparatory to cleaning the mildew from it.

Almost three gallons of ultra bleach later, the walls were mostly clean of mildew, but the paint was also considerably faded, and where the mildew had been worst, the combination of bleach and mildew had weakened the fabric to the point that holes tore through.

(holes)

I came to the realization that I would have to remake the pavilion. I determined that the advantages of Sunforger treatment of the canvas were probably worth the extra cost. A few hours’ worth of searching the Internet found me a sale of Sunforger at less than my original cost for untreated canvas and several pictures of historical pavilions for more ideas on decoration. I am hoping that the sale is still going on when my canvas is purchased! In addition, I applied some of the ideas of other people who had made this style of pavilion to conclude that a wider diameter at the shoulder and maintaining the same base diameter was the best way to go. I want to reuse the original centerpole, hub, finial pole, ball, and groundcloth if at all possible.

The finial pole, of course, was also badly attacked by the dampness in the storage bucket.

(Rusty Finial Pole)

The calculator at http://www.greydragon.org/pavilions/pavmath.html was a great help in figuring out the exact dimensions of the new pieces. I cut them out at a 1/12 scale, and serged them together. Of course, I made an error in the first effort, but I’m glad I erred in the scale model rather than in the full-size tent! I used a block of Styrofoam for the hub and a dozen chopsticks, cut to size, for the spokes.

(Spokesmodel)

Hanging the muslin mini-tent from the frame, I was able to catch the cutting error.

(scale model before corrections)

A couple days later, I took the scale model apart, recut the angle of the walls, and put the model back together. By then, the Styrofoam was beginning to degrade from the strain the chopsticks were making on it, so the spokes did not want to stay in the hub. However, I was able to catch a photograph of the re-cut and sewn mini-tent before everything fell apart.

(re-done scale model)

I determined that I would need 55-60 yards of 58” wide canvas. Inasmuch as I’m currently unemployed, that might as well have been 55-60 miles of canvas. So I posted a proposal on my LiveJournal for barter—I’d sew in exchange for canvas. I was happily surprised that, within very short order, I got a positive response.

I’m now in the final design phase, awaiting a piece of drafting software that I am expecting to have soon. I have reviewed the research several people have posted on the internet of period pavilions of this shape, and have decided that I will keep the motto on the valance. I will either make a rayonny star-shape at the point of the roof, or, instead of a semé of golden gouttes, I may be making large, elongated gouttes, one per roof panel, similar to this:

Because the late, lamented pavilion had a problem with stretching, I intend to tape the seams with a nylon tarlatan ribbon I obtained at the Scholarship Store of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising some time ago. This is a very tough grosgrain type ribbon that will stabilize the seams. I bought it in three colors: royal, navy and dark green. I am still in negotiation with my husband (whose favorite color is green, whereas mine is blue) as to which color to use. Each spool had 72 yards of ribbon on it, of which a very small amount has been used as yet, so I have plenty.

During my agonizing over the canvas, Æduin has cleaned the rust off the finial pole, and painted it a lovely shiny gold with Rustoleum paint. He also has used the same paint on our finial ball, which covers the tip of the roof. My first finial ball was made of a lightweight cheap Styrofoam, painted with fabric paint, which smashed when the wind caught the tent before it was completely set up last August. I replaced that with a firmer Styrofoam pumpkin for Great Western War, which takes place in October. Once the joke was over, the pumpkin became a fluted golden ball, whose bottom is carved out to echo the shape of the funnel supporting the tip of the roof.

I’m now waiting for the canvas. I look forward to actually cutting into the fabric and starting assembly. In the meanwhile, I plan on making some accoutrements for the inside of the tent, and making banners for my husband and myself.

March 14, 2005.

{Editors Note: This entry is a conversation between Mary and another person on LiveJournal here.}

jtdiii: If you have access to an industrial sewing machine or a very sturdy non-industrial machine you can make your own tent with a bit of effort. A 15x15 tent takes around 120 yards of fabric which in bulk such as that only costs around $3.00-$3.25 a yard. If you use the pavalino style center pole and hub arrangement then there will be plenty of room for your rope bed. Lumber is around $100 for one of these as it would be for a yurt.

Mary: This sounds like an awfully large amount of fabric--are you using 36", 44/45" or 58/60" canvas? My 19' diameter pavalino (see icon) took around 60 yds of 58", and my daughter's 10x20 rectangular pavilion took approximately 50 yards, also of 58", plus about 5 yds of trigger for the decorative valances. I'm remaking the pavalino, which was the victim of the dreaded mildew, and the fabric calculator at http://www.greydragon.org/pavilions/pavmath.html confirms that I will need less than 60 yards.

I also spent considerably less on the lumber for my pavalino. I used 2x2s at $1.87 apiece for the spokes and a quarter-sheet of plywood for the hub (don't remember the cost, but it was around $10 or less. I use a black pipe for my centerpole, which ran me, with couplings, for the three pieces (below hub, above hub and finial pole), around $20. Pricing the pieces today, it would be about half again that for the centerpole. Yes, I know the centerpoles would be wood in period examples, but the black pipe is strong and takes up less space in packing. Weighs about the same.

The 120 yard value is for 36" fabric. Wider fabric would use far less. The major advantage is the stuff is marine grade and has stood up well to mud and mildew.

What width metal pipe are you using?

I normally use a 4x4 as my centerpole, it is more than I need, but it will not come down. The metal sleeve for that drives up the cost of the wood a bit though.

Mary:I'm using a 1" ID pole, which steps down to a 1/2" ID finial pole, thanks to the coupling. Although the coupling is enough to fill the hole at the top, I also use an inexpensive metal funnel (under $1) with the tube part removed to help spread the weight of the roof over a slightly larger area. I also use (not in the picture) a (blush at the non-period material) styrofoam pumpkin I bought at Michaels, hollowed out at the base, painted gold, as the ball found so often in period illustrations. Got it for about $3, on sale. From its perch 13' in the air, it looks like a fluted ball, I kid you not.

My poles are 7' below the hub, coupled to 6' above, coupled to 2' of finial pole. When I got them at Home Depot, the nice man threaded them when he cut them. Thus, the standard plumbing coupling just screws them together. I exhort you to give them a shot of WD-40 every so often to make sure they screw together AND APART easily. I also got a "foot" plate, about 4" in diameter, to screw at the bottom so it doesn't drive itself into the turf. The hub sits on the coupling between the sections of centerpole, and I have no question that it will stay securely. I leave the coupling and the foot on the lower pole section so as not to lose them, and to save time assembling the whole thing, and the top coupling to the upper pole for the same reason.

My method of raising the tent is thus: Spread out groundcloth. Set stakes in half-way in loops on groundcloth. Slide hub onto upper pole. Screw upper pole to lower pole. Screw finial pole to upper pole. Slide funnel onto finial pole. Poke finial pole through hole in top of fabric. Slide ball onto finial pole. Slide pennon onto finial pole. Cap finial pole with the little plastic cap that came on the end of said pole. Send husband inside tent to lift the entire thing. Go running around base of pavilion, slipping loops on base of tent over stakes. Go inside tent and set spokes into hub and also into spoke pockets. Go back outside, reset stakes as necessary for terrain and pound stakes the rest of the way in. From having a box of canvas and a pile of poles to the cool drink prior to taking in the furniture, it takes no more than 20-30 minutes (at the outside, depending on things like wind) to set up. With more people setting stakes and spokes, you can shave maybe 5-7 minutes off that time.

If you have windy conditions, having a 50' coil of rope helps in lifting the centerpole and controlling the "sail" until the spokes are set. We have a piece of strong leather thong that we've tied into a circle (about 4" diameter). Drop the thong over the finial pole prior to putting on the ball and pennon (on the outside). It won't be noticeable from the ground! Loop the rope through the thong. Have a helper hold the two ends of the rope and pull in the right direction (the wind will tell you what the right direction is!) while aeddie is hoisting the centerpole. Once the spokes are set, there is no issue with wind.

February 15, 2006

After nearly a year of delay on this project, I’m ready to go again. I put in an online order of 65 yards (rounded up from my calculated requirement of 60.5 yards) of flame-resistant Sunforger from Hamilton Dry Goods in Tennessee (www.periodfabric.com) and asked for an email when it was ready to ship. He called me instead. It turned out that a woman in Canada had pretty much cleared him out of the 58” width with a 5,000 yard order, but that he had plenty of the narrower widths. He told me that the folks who make Sunforger only treat fabric twice a year, and until they made up more, there just simply wasn’t more to be had. He said that he had a few shorter cuts, maybe 10-15 yards each. I told him that I’d call him back later once I had recalculated what I would need if I took it in smaller widths. Meanwhile, he would be checking the warehouse to see exactly what they had left of what.

Playing with graph paper and a calculator, I determined that I could squeak it out of some 45” and some 58”, but the narrower stuff couldn’t be 44” or 42” or any other configuration without replanning my design. Now, I could have easily redone the design, but I didn’t want to. After telling him that I needed 39 yards of the 58” stuff, in multiples of 3 yards, and another 42 yards of the 45”, in multiples of 3.5 yards, he found that if I could take the Sunforger without the CPAI-85 treatment, he actually did have enough to make up 62 yards in two pieces. Further, the stuff he had wasn’t stamped with the CPAI-85 certification, but it looked to him much more like the flame resistant stuff than the non-treated Sunforger.

Now, I’m making this pavilion for our own personal use, not for sale. I would prefer if it were flame-treated, but I wasn’t willing to wait. He knocked the price down a bit, to $5 a yard, and I ended up actually getting a small refund after he calculated the new price, new quantity and the shipping cost (note to the wise: if you order online, don’t believe the $15 shipping cost that Paypal adds. My 62 yards cost $70 in shipping.)

All of this fretting over the exact price is because both my husband and I are seriously underemployed right now, and I worked a 60 hour week followed by a 50.5 hour week in order to pay for it. The extra hours made all the difference!

After all the back and forth over exactly what I would be getting, it was Wednesday before it finally got shipped. I didn’t expect delivery before a full week, based on the time that it takes for UPS Ground to get packages to our daughter in Virginia. How exciting it was to have the bolts arrive a day early! Rather than packaging in paper or plastic, the way most of the places I’ve gotten big bolts from do, the Hamiltons wrap their Sunforger bolts in a good tough gray suedecloth, which I’m going to wash and sew into bags to store encampment bits. It’s too good to throw away!

Once opened, I was astonished at the difference in quality between the canvas I have used heretofore for tents, which is much like unprimed artist’s canvas. This is a much finer, tighter weave. Here are pictures of the two canvasses as comparison.

	10oz Duck canvas, purchased from various places.
	The new Sunforger.

I am very pleased with my purchase.

My next step is to unroll the smaller bolt and determine which bolt becomes the wall segments and which becomes the roof segments, or which combination.

We have decided that at the point of the roof, we will have a smooth cone-cap overlay, painted royal blue with a gold sunburst pattern. I intend to mix some granite sparkles in with the gold paint, so that it has a glitter effect to it. I found this stuff at the paint store, and I hope it is a successful effort. Below the cone cap, we will have a motto band. All the vertical seams will be overlaid with ½” royal blue nylon grosgrain ribbon, partly to stabilize the seams and partly as a decorative motif. I have not yet determined whether I will alternate the royal blue ribbon with navy blue and/or forest green ribbons.

Partway down the stripes will be architectural detailing, to add a bit of interest. The valance band will be an additional variation. I found some really nice fringe at www.cheeptrims.com which I may invest in to put at the bottom of the valance band.

I expect to start assembly tomorrow.

February 16, 2006

Tonight was final plotting of the design and cutting of the roof panels. That meant trying to find enough of the floor to spread out 5 foot by 10 foot lengths of canvas. Because we are doing the smooth cone at the top, we cut the roof panels in trapezoidal shape. This allowed us to save a good deal of canvas, and of our first 21 yard 5” piece of canvas, we have a piece about 4 1/3 yards long. If I’ve calculated this correctly, we will have enough left in this piece for the cone at the top of the roof and the valance. The offcuts from the roof panels are plenty large enough to make the spoke cups. This is really coming together well.

I am no longer young enough to go crawling around on the floor to cut fabric. My knees are already telling me about it. Nonetheless, there is no other way to do this with the large pieces of canvas involved.

Tomorrow I will cut the wall panels.

February 17, 2006

Tonight was the cutting of the walls. We have decided that we don’t need sodflaps, for a number of reasons.

1. We don’t camp anywhere that we are allowed to dig into the turf to lay sod onto the flaps.

2. If we tuck them under the groundcloth instead, we risk rotting the flaps.

3. If we fold them inside on top of the groundcloth, we encourage any water that would sheet down the walls in a downpour to come into the tent, rather than heading out away from the tent, as sodflaps are supposed to do.

4. If the tent is properly staked down, we won’t have problems with wind blowing under the walls, and we intend to stake it appropriately.

5. It would take up extra canvas that, based on the above concepts, would be completely wasted.

6. Sodflaps can be added later from much cheaper and more disposable fabric later, if we change our mind.

My extremely inventive husband came up with a means of managing the huge roll of Sunforger from which I’m making the walls. By sticking a couple of dowels in the ends of the tube it’s rolled around and propping them on my wooden tourney chair and an inverted occasional table, I can just pull the canvas across the room to lay it out on the floor, rather than wrestling with the bolt for each cut.

	Tent on a roll.
	Table support end.
	And this would obviously be the chair end.

At evening’s end (actually at 1:45 in the morning), all I have left to cut is the valance and the cone tip. I’m going cut the cone tip as a circle, but wait until I’ve seamed the roof to cut the cone tip into its final shape so that I’m sure of the angles in question. It will look a bit like a PacMan before it’s seamed up.

I am quite surprised at how much canvas I have left over. Either the calculations were off, or I cut more frugally than I thought. I have 7 ¼ yards left from the large bolt, and over 4 1/3 yards left from the small bolt. The small bolt leftovers will, as mentioned before, become the valance and cone tip, and still have remaining fabric. Hmmm. What can I make out of that quantity of Sunforger? Waste not, want not.

February 18, 2006

Today, being Saturday, one would imagine I would have sewn up a storm on the pavilion. No. I went to work in the morning. However, I did find tubular nylon for a great price on E-Bay, so at least that element of the project is accomplished. I also met my husband at Home Depot after he finished work to select the paint for the cone, bands and detailing, and to get the painting equipment for the pavilion and the hardware for the bed curtain project.

I feel strongly that an application of gesso on the painted areas of the tent will make it easier to paint, so Æddie went along home while I headed to Michael’s for artist supplies. A trip to Michael’s with me is guaranteed to make him go nuts—everywhere I turn, there’s something to ooh and aah at and to pick up and look at. I restrained myself, though. I got a nice largish paintbrush (3/4”; not the same thing as a hardware store largish paintbrush at all), the gesso, some Sharpies that were on clearance and that will be used for the finish detailing, and a set of a dozen tiny containers that I talked them down to half-price for, since one container had a crack in it. I do like bargains.

After a bit more pondering of the exact design of the valance and the upper band, I set to cutting. I now have to determine whether to hem the valance or to use foldover tape or bias tape to enclose the bottom edge thereof. I am really leaning to the use of simple white bias tape. I have a good deal of it in stash, and it would not stand out. Since we’re contemplating putting a border of trim on the valance, too, it would be a nice, neat finish.

I thought perhaps my readers would like to see what the tent looks like before I start sewing, so I stacked up the cut pieces and took a picture.

Too bad it won't be that compact when it's done.

I plan to paint the gesso coat on the cone piece tomorrow so that I can paint the blue background and the gold sunburst on Monday. I will also be sewing the roof seams, the valance seams and the valance edging. Who needs an Estrella Pity Party when a pavilion can be built?

February 21-22, 2006

After two days of futzing with the lettering for the valance, I have got it so it exactly fits on a single panel. The next issue to determine is how many times I should repeat the motto. There are twelve panels, which means I could do it twice, three times, four times or six times. No, I am not going to do it on every panel. That would be just crazy. I settled on six.

	Motto laid out prior to tracing.
	Letters traced onto canvas.

The background of the valance will be red, and the lettering gold. I’d like to have a gold bit of trimming at the bottom edge, but I haven’t yet determined what it should be. It’s not a crucial decision until it’s time to sew the valance, roof and walls together.

I have gessoed the valance and sewn it together.

I am proceeding apace sewing together the roof and taping the seams. The seam and seam treatment look really nice—smooth, neat and clean.

Stripes on the roof. Yes, they are two colors.

I found to my frustration that stationery stores, even big ones like Staples, Office Depot and Office Max, no longer stock carbon paper in their stores. The transfer paper used for sewing is much more expensive. I hope it lasts through the project.

While I was merrily listening to re-runs on television and tracing Latin onto my valance pieces, Æddie suddenly announced that we had to change into going-out-of-the-house clothes. His accident at work was causing him enough trouble that he thought a trip to the emergency room was warranted (Note from Æddie: When the back is spasming so bad I can barely stand). I spent the next 3 ½ hours working on the blackwork for his shirt cuffs. I’m not very experienced with blackwork, having only done two collars before these cuffs, and my eyesight is getting progressively worse, so it’s slow going, but I got about 3” of cuff done.

We got home around 2:30 a.m. The alarm clock was not my friend this morning.

February 23, 2006 (early)

Last night’s tent adventures were not very adventurous. I finished tracing the lettering and crosses onto the valance, and found the gold edging I want to use (well, what I really want to use isn’t likely to fly with Æddie, even if we are using his crosses as a major motif). I think he thinks it’s too fussy and ostentatious. Heavens! Isn’t this pavilion supposed to be ostentatious? And how better to announce that this is the home of a Stealth Laurel?

Knowing full well that the link will disappear when they sell out of it, I present to you the edging I have in mind: Click here y'all.. It’s a fringe made of beads and leaves, and I lust after it.

If I don’t convince him before I assemble the valance onto the pavilion, we can conceivably add them later.

The gold edging I found was in the form of 3-yard spools of Christmas ribbon with “Happy Holidays” printed in Spanish on one side. Flipping it to the back side and cutting it in half lengthwise meant that I could get plenty of ribbon for edging the valance for just over a dollar, as each spool was on clearance for 39¢ each. Æddie has agreed to serge the cut edge for me while I’m at work. After the valance is painted, I will simply fold the ribbon over the edge of the valance and stitch it down, giving me a nice even ½” satin edge to the valance. But I still want my leafy bits.

I also sewed two more roof panels onto the growing roof piece taking over my dining room. I have taped one of them, and will tape the other one as my next bit of sewing. If I recall correctly, that will leave three more roof panels to attach and tape.

February 26, 2006

At 1:45 last night (Æddie would say 1:45 this morning, but that’s a foolishness we bat back and forth {Of course I would, 1:45am for Ante Meridian means 1:45 before noon, threfore morning}), I was able to say that I have finished assembling all the roof pieces except for attaching the cone, applying the trim band that will cover the seam and doing the final seam closing it into a complete cone. I also need to attach the reinforcing tubular nylon for the very tip of the cone, but that's after the closing seam is finished. I have painted the sunburst onto the cone, but I still have to put the blue field around the gold sun.

I am being very, very happy with how this is turning out. It took quite a few hours of Law and Order reruns, but it's really coming along well.

Since then, I have painted the blue background and touched up the gold sunburst.

The valance painting is proceeding apace.

(1:00 p.m.)
The spoke pockets are assembled, and ready to attach to the roof. Gone with the Wind, my favorite movie of all time, is just starting. I think I will paint some more. I paint in front of the TV with no problem!

(9:30 p.m.)
I have painted about ¾ of the valance, many splots on my legs and feet, and several times part of my hands. Much of Braveheart has been viewed, but it’s time to soak the creakies out of my back, so I will continue the painting tomorrow.

February 28, 2006

I finished the last of the painting earlier tonight, and at about 10:15, completed putting a coat of sealant on the valance and cone. It dried to the touch quite quickly, with a gloss finish. I would have preferred a matte finish, but it's rather pretty, and it’ll protect the paint job from the elements at least to some degree. I now have 15 yards of magnificently crimson and gold foot-wide ribbon of canvas snaked around my living room and halfway down the hall to the computer room, and a glorious blue and gold pacman shape draped over a quarter sheet of plywood sitting on top of a medium-sized Rubbermaid project bucket in the center of the display.

Tomorrow night, I will start applying the gold satin ribbon edging to the valance, and the valance will be done (even though I do still have a hankering for those beads I showed you earlier in the diary). The ribbon has a little bit of glitz to it, I discovered as I worked with it the other night.

*fans self* Oh, I do love it when things come out even prettier than I originally thought they would!

I am also painting lozenge shapes about 2 feet up from the bottoms of the wall seams, in the colors that match the ribbons. We’re talking about ½” wide ribbons, but they are 96” long. After a little experimentation, I have decided that a 3 ½” square tipped on its corner is just about right. The squares have been taped and gessoed. Once they dry, they’ll be painted and sealed, and the painting will be done.

March 8, 2006

I’ve just realized that although I have been putting mini-updates on this project in my Live Journal, I haven’t updated the diary in over a week. Thus, here is a recap.

I painted the diamond shapes over the ribbon stripes in like colors. It is a nicely simple ornamentation. With as much fancy stuff as is going on with this project, a simple element is nice.

Binding the edge of the valance with the gold satin ribbon made a very nice finish to that element. It ended up being narrower than I originally anticipated, but it’s exactly right. Æddie is firm on the point of not wanting fringe on the valance. He says it reminds him of bad 1960’s home décor. He doesn’t want the beads, either, because he thinks that the folding and storing will be too hard on them. He wins. No fringe or beads.

With the pieces of the roof assembled in units, I was able to sew the cone to the lower roof quickly. The seam was to be covered with a decorative gold and red band. A clearance-table buy of Christmas ribbon with an underlayer of red polyester charmeuse was just what I had in my mind’s eye, and it went on neatly and quickly.

When I came to sew up the final roof seam, I discovered that I had not quite lined up the two halves of the final diamond correctly, so I had to repaint that. Fortunately, it’s only a little skewed.

Next came attaching the spoke pockets to the inside of the roof near each seam.

I then attached the valance to the bottom of the roof.

The next bit to accomplish was the reinforcing ring at the top of the cone. I had gotten some tubular nylon to accomplish this, and decided that sandwiching the tip of the cone between two rings of tubular nylon was the right choice. It will be completely hidden by the pumpkin, but it’s a nice, neat finish and will be very strong. With this final step, the roof assembly is complete.

The walls have been going more slowly. I bound the edges of the door panels with bias tape. 75% off the 50-cent clearance price for each of two 3-yard packets of binding made it well worth saving the time I would have spent either making my own binding or rolling the hem, which would have been bulkier and less neatly finished. I next attached one door panel to a wall panel, taped it, and came to a screeching halt. Exhaustion had gotten the better of me and I didn’t work on the project for several days.

During the sewing break, I worked on a flag for the finial pole. Many of the flags in 16th century examples are quite stiff in appearance. I elected to follow this guideline, and my flag is made of the same canvas as the tent, primed with gesso and painted with my arms on the recto side and Æduin’s arms on the verso side. I will be wiring it to maintain the stiffness.

	Mary Taran's Arms
	Æduin's Arms

However, during that hiatus, I noodled around on the internet and found some great pictures of 15th and 16th century pavilions with decorations at the ground edge. I have never seen this decorative element in the SCA, either on pavilions I’ve seen personally or in photographs. I was very excited by the look and determined to do it myself.

I started with a line of acanthus leaves in blue, but they looked very flat, so I added some drybrushed details in white. That far improved the look, to my eye, so I continued. Since the circumference of the tent at the foot including the doors is 65 feet, it is taking some time to complete the hem detailing.

	Before white added.
	After white added.

Sept. 5 2006

Well, a lot has happened since the last update. We took the pavilion to Caid Spring Crown 2006 and tried to set it up but high winds and forgetting some parts at home kept that from happening. In fact the wind, some rough edges on the pole, and some cuts made in the cone caused the cone to fail and have the whole thing come ripping and crashing down. To our great good fortune the rip stopped at the seam where the cone joined the rest of the roof. Mary did some repairs and modifications to the cone and the stake loops and then we waited for a chance to test fly it before its next use.

We were planning to use it two more times this year-Fall Crown and Great Western War. Since GWW was cancelled we're only going to be able to fly it at Crown. It will be the best looking pavilion there. :)

This past Labor Day weekend we went down to Lakewood to have a picnic and set "La Bella" up for the first time since her rebuilding. Mary may have something to add to the text later but here are the pictures.

	Laid out and ready to be raised.
	Staking down the walls.
	She's up.
	The motto on the valence.
	The hem detail
	The cone and ball. The flag will go up next time.
	Hub and spokes
	Looking up into the cone.
	Cone detail. Note the funnel in the top to help distribute the weight.

Hopefully this weekend we will be able to go to a friends house and run the spokes on a router table to octagons. We also need to find a way to narrow down the ends so that they fit better in the sockets.

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