Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
It’s official: the Ice Dragon has once again passed. This year’s event was at the Connecticut Street Armory and OH! but we should use that site again. Yes, there’s only on-street parking but… I left the site at 11:30 to go pick M up at work and when we got back we were able to park less than a block from the front entrance. (I confess that my knowledge of the area is better than most people’s, since I’ve worked at D’Youville College, which is right across the street.) Tiercelin and her peeps all did a spectacular job.
None of us had anything entered in the Pent this year and I don’t think Shoshanna even went into the pent room. She was too busy chasing around with Lily, Elizabeth, Philip, Teresa, Kate, and Katrina. (Such a motley crew of kids they are, I love it.) There were SUCH beautiful things this year. Elisabeth, Odrianna, and I put our heads together and chose the four we liked best for the Minister’s Prize(s): Caleb’s fork paper, Katla’s dog collar, Project Carl’s block-printed child’s tunic, and Herr Tannen’s (did I get that name right? I don’t remember it off the top of my head) shortbread subtlety. As the winner, Caleb received 3 pounds of bacon which Elisabeth sent someone to hunt at Wilson’s Farm. H.E. was good enough to share with His Majesty as well as with His Majesty Ealdormere, who was in attendance.
We went out to Aethelmearc 12th Night on Saturday. The big excitement was twofold: First, that Shoshanna was going to her first feast. (Thanks, Fridrikr, for making feast early so that the kid could stay – she loved it!) Second, that Connor and his new lady Margaret were going to be there. Shoshanna adores Connor.
We had a lovely pleasant afternoon chatting with lots and lots of people, Shoshanna playing with the other kids who were there, and having an extremely plentiful dinner that included two fish subtleties (because not everyone likes fish). Shoshanna (and Matatias!) sat happily through an hour and a half of court which included some lovely schtick and well-deserved awards. And afterwards, there was dancing, in which Shoshanna and I both participated. Heralds in Love, though, is not a great dance for five year olds – too complicated!
Edith and I trundled off today to Autumn Collegium in Beau Fleuve, at a site that is about as far as you can get from home and still be in the Barony (travel time: approximately an hour). For me, at least, it was a very relaxing day. I taught my socks class, which now has the official title, “Banish the Tube Socks”, to a captive audience of five. Honnoria had cornered me sometime before the class and asked if I needed a victim model; I said yes and now there’s a mostly-finished hosen pattern for her in a box in my kitchen to be finished up at a later date. So we talked the theory of socks and then I demonstrated how to drape a pattern for them. As we were talking, I realized that there’s really no way to explain men’s hosen without explaining braies. So now I’m thinking about a two-hour class entitled “13th century men from the waist down”. Mistress Alicia asked me if I could do it at Three Ravens.
In addition to teaching my class, I went to Mistress Alicia’s class on documentation which just served to remind me that, as I put it to her, I have an attitude problem about A&S competitions. And I’m not scared of documentation (which we knew). And in my continuing class to spend as much time as possible in places where goldwork embroidery is happening (as if that will magically imbue me with the ability to do it), I audited Mistress Yvianne’s Or Nué class. No, it’s not opus anglicanum, but the technique for the application of the metal threads is very similar so I absorbed more today. I think that after the first of the year I will be brave enough to order some gold and stranded silk and have a go at it for real.
The dayboard was spectacular, there was good company, and it was all in all a relaxing day and I was home cooking dinner for a very affectionate five year old girl by 5 pm.
I keep going back and forth between being glad I’m taking a year off from Pennsic this year (we’re going to help out with our new niece instead) and sad that I’m going to miss it.
Have fun, kill many!
Interrupted? Anyway… Pax was our only chance to camp this summer, since we’re not going to Pennsic. Somehow we had never managed to get to Pax over the last three years despite it being only an hour away.
So we headed out Friday afternoon, got all set up and did some visiting on Friday night before we had to wrestle Shoshanna into bed. Saturday we got up, did more visiting, and M went off to fence. S and I wandered about and played with the various friends she had made and then she crashed for a nap by 11:30 am. After she woke up M was done fencing and we headed up to the field to watch the fighting and hang out with friends up there. While we were doing all that Catlin, aka Tall Child and the poor sad post-surgical Kip made it to the event so they joined in the hanging-out. I think Kip made friends with every person on site.
I also started teaching Shoshanna stem stitch embroidery, which she is really enjoying. I’ll have to scan her first “project” when she finishes it.
For the second year in a row, the Canton of Beau Fleuve has hosted spring Coronation – this year, though, the new Royals are from our own Barony! So we went, of course, because I love Coronations – almost as much as I love Crown Tournaments.
It was a very fun day. I entered the Kingdom Arts and Sciences Championship – the theme was largesse and entries were to be donated to the Crown for distribution during the reign. I entered the two award medallions that I had finished recently and the pelican cushion – rather than it languishing in the closet like it has been for the last six years. At one point during the day it really dawned on me that I would not be taking it home with me. I really am fine with it, but it was such a labor of love that I would be lying if I said it was easy to part with it. In addition to the Crown’s choice (which was John Michael Thorpe, who does beautiful meatalwork), they recognized the Laurels’ choice, populace choice, and outgoing champion’s choice.
As it turns out, the middle weekend of April is a pretty good weekend for me to go to an event. Six years ago, I was apprenticed to Eilis and got my Maunche at Balfar’s Challenge (which was today, too). 
Today, I was the outgoing champion’s choice of the folks entered in the A&S championships (prize: a lovely buff-colored kidney pouch). I received a token as a seamstress to the Crown, and I received my Sycamore. (For the non-Ae folks, that’s the A0A level A&S award.) I had suspected that something was up because I’d been getting a lot of weird questions from various folks. Obviously I didn’t know WHAT they were up to or when anything might be happening, but I was not completely shocked. What I didn’t expect was that Matatias had written the scroll text! I love that – each of my Kingdom A&S awards comes from him, since he made my Maunche medallion as well. Sadly, he had to be at work this afternoon so he couldn’t be there for court, but Irene says that she got good pictures.
Jokes were made that Caleb did a really good job taming the ice dragon this year… though it didn’t last long, as it snowed this morning.
But that’s beside the point. I really don’t get why this even wipes me out so much, but it does. We all had a lot of fun; Mistress Mahin came up – it was the first time we’d seen her since she moved to Aethelmearc; some friends came to check out the SCA too, and had a great time.
Both Shoshanna and I entered the A&S competition – she had made an “alphabet board” patterned after ones used to teach the aleph bet to young kids in the Angevin Jewish community. She wrote and painted all the letters herself (in English rather than Hebrew) – all we did was coach her and I drew the initial lines for her to paint over. I entered the in-progress mauve gown as well as the award medallions in both needlework and heraldic display. Shoshanna’s comments were awesome, and she got a number of tokens from various people. I got really great comments on the heraldic display entries and really supportive comments on the embroidery. It’s hard to say much about the in-progress dress (or the comments on it) because it is so very in progress.
All in all, a good time was had by all, I think.
Saturday morning we piled six of us into Irene’s truck to go to the College of Three Ravens in Thescorre. I was on the reserve list to teach my hosen class, fully expecting to be asked to step in for a cancelled class. As it turned out, I wasn’t. I went to two classes – one on making list-legal rapier armor (I was curious about how another person would approach it) and one on tabletwoven edgings – correcting mis-representations in some of the line drawings in Textiles and Clothing. It was really interesting, and now I really REALLY want a copy of Woven Into the Earth.
I displayed a handful of things in the A&S display – the mauve gown as it currently exists, the award medallions, and Liadain’s gowns. Well, HRH displayed the gowns – I just stuck the docs on a table with a note to go look at the Princess if people wanted to see the actual garments. They looked STUNNING, and were selected as Baron & Baroness’ choice.
I also caught up with someone I met at Pennsic to geek about 13th century iconographic sources – she’s forwarded me a citation for a book with a number of pictures of 13th c. tomb effigies, which is awesome.
I’m on the “reserve list” to teach my hosen class at C3R on the 28th… if you’re interested, even if I don’t end up stepping into a slot, find me and I’ll be happy to let you have a handout!
That was the name of our event today… we had quite a good time. Matatias fenced, I taught my hosen class (which I had forgotten that I very cleverly titled “Socks Don’t Have to Be Knit” – way more fun than “Cut Hosen for Men and Women”), we all went to a beginning dance class which Shoshanna LOVED. She was a bit too tired to really fully participate but she danced the Horse’s Bransle along with all the rest of us (she and I acted as one dancer). And THEN Shoshanna got recruited to be one of the fairy folks for Gabrielle’s elevation procession, complete with wings and a be-ribboned baton. She loved it.
And, as always, she passed out in the car on the way home.
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