What lovely weather we had this time around! The plantation house and stately grounds were filled with hundreds of visitors and Friday was very cold and windy, but only Connie was out there anyway, with 2000 exuberant school kids rocketing around from weaving to quilting to the horse picket line to the ‘gaming parlor’ to the cannon demonstration to the deportment classes.
On Saturday Jane and Julia came out to spin and were swamped with fascinated visitors all day long. Still, they found time to shop at the sutlers tents and to walk out to the battlefield, cannon thundering.
On Sunday it was mild and breezy. Janie and Fern were there, and Peggy and Penny, as well as long distance (Fayetteville) member Lisa with son Noah. How amazingly pleasant to sit under the big trees, spinning and talking and watching all the costume and panoply of the period stroll by–horses, hoops, uniforms, weaponry. Later, just at closing, it started to rain. Will Detering, the owner of the plantation, swept off his long black planter’s coat and draped it protectively over my loom, a la Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth, and bore it off to the porch to keep dry. How can you help but enjoy this time to add our piece to the picture of the Civil War period?
More photos are available on the CHH Web site.