Kaleidescope at CSULB

Yesterday was Kaleidescope, which is the club day at CSULB, or for the SCA folks Noe College. We've been doing this demo for the last four years, and this year I think was the best so far.

We had a great slate of activities. There were five or six heavy weapons fighters, the Caidan Artillery group, and the dog coursing folks. In addition we had a very large arts display, both in the Noe College pavilion and in the baronial. As is always the case, the passersby only really get engaged when the fighting is going on. Several of us would go out and talk to people, explain what whas going on inside the eric and direct anyone who seemed interested to the Noe College folks. The catapult and the ballista were big draws whenever they would fire, as well as the dog coursing of course. Jon Tomme set up his chain mail work just outside the baronial pavilion, and Eilidh set up her little pop up and showed her Great Wheel and various spinning stuff to people as they passed by.

The only thing that didn't go as well as I would have liked was that the baronial pavilion was at the "back" of the traffic pattern and most people did not come back that far to see the arts displays that we had on tables just inside. In this case I think the half walls worked against us, in that it wasn't as easy to see the tables as I might have liked. When we were talking about where to put things during set up we had this idea of anchoring the eric with the two large pavilions, and it sort of worked the way we thought it would, but not as well as I was hoping. Next year I think I'll suggest we put the two large pavilions side by side and set up a full eric. I don't know if that will work, we're always dealing with space issues at this event, but it's worth thinking about.

I did take several pictures, the best of which is at the top of this post. The full set can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/jpathomas/Kaleidescope.