In late 2020 I volunteered to make a scroll for an AOA-level award, I didn't know the recipient but learned they had a Persian persona. I was enamored of the many later period Persian examples that showed a blue field with pastoral images in gold. Here's the one I used as my main inspiration. I found a Persian-esque script I liked and practiced several times to make sure I got it just right. The background of my scroll is several layers of diluted gouache paint, with an acrylic gold paint for the animals and plants. The gouache was hard to get even, and I had someone tell me after the fact that perhaps a blue ink would have been a better choice, and a fine-nibbed pen with gold ink rather than gold paint. I wonder if that would have made the paper warp less, or if I should have used something besides a heavy drawing paper for the scroll. You can see I replicated several of the animals, but changed the leaves of the trees to maple leaves, as this award is the Order of the Golden Maple Leaf, an AOA-level Arts award. This is the first scroll I illuminated myself and only the third I've made. I enjoyed it, though it doesn't come naturally to me.
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Here's a rundown so I can stop stressing about it.
DONE - classes taught - need to add a summary beltain event (First online one) Kingdom Collegium - knitting techniques (virtual class) and virtual display of my wool kirtle DONE - Persian scroll - in which I learned when to use ink vs paint Raptor War - virtual with tavern Toys for Tots - virtual co-steward/class coordinator, in which I got my GOA level service award Dec Moose Call article - tips for online events and classes Virtual masked ball - taught an online dance class Green bliaut - it's done rapier - I've been doing some to do list - it's long. Uprising 2022 Investiture garb Raptor War 2022 Coronation Sept 2022 Crown Tourney Oct 2022 The November event that wasn't Masked Ball Jan 2023 Agincourt May 2023 Raptor War July 2023 As always, I have more projects and events to talk about, but today I'll just make a short update to say that my friend Killian and I were selected last month to be the next Baron and Baroness of our Barony. I've got garb in the works and our investiture is in late August, so stay tuned!
For a long time, as long as I've been in the SCA, I had committed to writing about every event I attended, every class I taught, every project I completed, and documenting my journey. But life has a way of evolving that we cannot predict or control. When I had my daughter both of us were very ill indeed. I was severely traumatized by the experience, and spent the next several years in a fog of work, childcare, and emotional numbness. My husband and I developed a lot of unhealthy patterns, and though I kept participating in the SCA it stopped being a pleasure and started feeling like a chore. My blog here stopped in mid 2019, when the chaos was beginning to become too much, and my last in person event was our local masked ball in January 2020. What followed was a flurry of online events as well as the collapse of my life. My husband was laid off, I was stuck working from home with a toddler, then 2.5 years old, trying to get by on one income in the throes of a global upheaval I never saw coming. By late summer of 2020, my marriage was on the point of collapse, and my husband and I made the decision to separate, but for all sorts of reasons, mostly financial, we continued living together. I started/re-started a relationship with a sweetheart from my college years that looks very different. It is a polyamorous relationship, long distance, both of us with kids and lives and lots to juggle. I started taking medication, started going to therapy, started taking new interest in my own happiness. In the past I've kept my mundane life away from this space, but I learned in 2020 that trying to appear perfect, trying to be in control, trying to hide all the shadows, is enough to eventually break everything.
I sat down today to do what I could to resurrect this blog, to go back to my list of events and projects and service and awards and begin to fill in the gaps, but in my present state, where I feel more calm and more accepting of imperfection and failure, where I have more ability to spend my energy on the things that truly bring me joy, I am choosing not to meticulously catalog the past two years of my SCA life, because it feels like a chore rather than a pleasant reminiscence. I will have a post soon with whatever details I feel are important to my own records and memory, and with some pictures of the things I've done that bring me joy, and what I'm planning to tackle next, but if there are any readers out there reading this, you can expect a different tone here going forward. I am rekindling my love of the SCA and I'm not going anywhere, but I've found a newer, truer way to follow my own pleasure and happiness, and I hope that makes this a more interesting place for folks to visit. Well. I finally had one of those events that was really *too* eventful and is best enjoyed in hindsight and in those "no shit there I was" campfire stories. What a week. Let me see if I can sum up. My father in law from Scotland visited to attend the event with us. Between the four of us, two tents, various gear, etc. it took two vehicles to transport everything. While I had a screaming 1.5 year old demanding Baby Beluga on loop for the entire 4 hour drive, my other half had an oil slick skid into the back of someone else's vehicle. He continued driving for another hour before limping into site with an overheating engine because the initial impact had cracked his radiator and eventually his engine block cracked too. I was trying my best to enjoy the five day long event filled with archery, A&S displays, socializing, thrown weapons, etc. but in the back of my mind I knew dealing with the vehicle would have to happen. My daughter was high maintenance and I spent much of the event dealing with her, but did get to shoot some arrows and participate in a ladies' thrown weapons tourney. I also did the calligraphy on a scroll for my father in law, the premier of a new order the Alces Amici (friend of the moose, our baronial animal). Aonghus did the illumination. His dad was so pleased. Somewhere in there Aonghus managed to slice his thumb open on a knife he was sharpening and then dropped, and had to head to town to get stitches. The Sunday we had to pack out by was father's day, and the best we could do was pack our gear into Aonghus's car and get it towed to a garage in town while we all drove back to town to go to work in my car with the necessities. It turned out his vehicle was toast, so a new engine later and another trip out to retrieve it... it wound up being a rather expensive event. Below are a photo of the scroll and a rather odd action shot of me walking Andy out of court after receiving it.
Phew! I'm trying to go through and update this with all the things that have happened in my SCA life, and I can say that not posting for a year is not a great strategy. I have lots of catching up. I'm backdating these entries to the time that things actually happened just for the sake of my memory, so bear with me.
In preparation for a summer of events and adventures, I decided it was time to learn to make my own arrows. Good wooden ones are expensive, and you can never get exactly what you're after. A friend gifted me with a set of shafts for my birthday a while back, and I finally got them made up. These are made using a fair number of modern tools, techniques, and materials, because what I really want is something that will last and work for competition shooting, not for war or hunting as a single use item. I chose to make the arrows in my husband's colors as a nod to him, and because my green, white, and brown would be impossible to find buried in long grass somewhere. The shafts are cedar and are stained with leather dye and sealed with a polyurethane seal, which was fairly straightforward. A friend of mine runs our local fletching guild and has all the tools and materials, most acquired from a local store that closed its doors. He buys supplies in bulk and then when people use his tools, etc. it's easy to pay for the materials used at cost. The nocks are modern plastic ones, which means shaving down the ends with a pencil sharpener sort of tool, which gave me blisters and could have been sharper. Next time I'd love to try self-nocked arrows. The fletchings are dyed goose feathers, cut with a very handy little die cutter and the aid of a rubber mallet. The gluing on of the feathers and twirling the jig to the next shaft each time was probably my favorite part of the process. The tips are attached with a heat-activated glue (sorry, I should have taken better notes) with the aid of a blow torch and some pliers. In all, the supplies cost me about $25, so with the estimated cost of the dozen shafts, these come in around $5 an arrow, which is a great deal, especially if you're not a great shot (like me) trying to remember not to get attached to your ammunition. I think I spent about four hours on this batch. I've since lost two of them (rather, they were lent to someone who lost two) shooting at a fun outdoor range in our area where you hike a one mile trail and shoot at 3D animal targets along the way. The hills are steep, which helps your arrows not go too far, but they're also in scrubby high desert with lots of things for the arrows to disappear in, and lots of scrambling up and down is required to retrieve them. Below are two photos, one of a finished arrow (gently used already), and one of a shot from that range where I seemingly managed to put an arrow right up this poor turkey's nose. Here's to lots more shooting! For our spring event this year, our Barony focused on classes and education. There was a wide array of offerings, including one by yours truly! It was also the polling event for our next Baronial head, and I want to offer a hearty congratulations to Baroness Varia for taking on the task. I attended Lady Thora's class on stage fright and how to combat it, which was really useful. I taught a class I called Garb Rehab that mainly focused on mending and darning techniques for repairing garb, but also touched on other ways to spruce up older garb, such as overdying, adding new trim/embellishment, and re-cutting garb. I posted the handout here so that those who didn't get a copy could grab one. I had a dozen people attend some or all of the class, which I consider a roaring success. I had encouraged people to bring their own damaged garb for repair, but most people didn't bring anything, so this turned out to be a great class for me, since I brought a whole big bag full of garb that needed mending. I got a pair of socks darned and several dresses repaired by folks who wanted to try out new skills. Win/win! I'll be teaching this one again at an event this fall, which is so fun. I love turning my passions into something useful for others. The Cooks' Guild provided lunch in the form of all things hand pie, and my contribution was two batches of blackberry apple ginger galettes (one gluten-free, one regular) using a new to me pastry recipe that uses oil rather than butter or lard. As always, I hate making gluten-free pastry, but they must have tasted good because they were gone before I even tasted one. Here's a pic. I didn't take any other photos during the event. It was a little busy and a little crazy, as usual. Poor Freya fell on the playground and got a massive bloody nose, so poor Aonghus walked around in bloody garb all day. My non-SCA sister picked her up at lunch time to play for a few hours (yay local events) since Freya doesn't nap well in busy environments and is still young enough to really need one. That was such a help.
Finally, congratulations to my sister Lady Thora, the new Arn Hold Arts & Sciences champion. She did a wonderful job with her art and it was well-earned. Greetings! Below is the handout from my garb rehab class taught at the Barony of Arn Hold's Arts, Arms, and Academia event. It focuses on mending, refreshing, and generally squeezing more life out of old or damaged garb. Enjoy!
In March, our Barony hosted the coronation of Their Majesties Floki and Gwenevere and the stepping down of Their Excellencies Yuri and Sumayya. Gwen and Floki have Norse personas and have a strong dedication to research and accuracy, so I wore some of my Norse garb, including a newly made Skjoldehamn Hood. The hood is a lightweight gray wool tabby (the original is in a 2/2 twill with slightly different color warp and weft) with a green linen lining (the original was unlined, but I wanted a bit of extra warmth and something to help it lie more smoothly), and the edges are finished with blanket stitch in a gold silk thread. The original hood had whip-stitched edging around the face, but I like the look of the blanket stitch more, and since it's also a period stitch I subbed it in. I found the medieval-baltic article about the hood especially useful, and used the dimensions of the original listed on that page for my hood. If it was any smaller, I wouldn't be able to get it on over my (rather large) head and thick hair, but it does work and the hood is roomy enough to stay on and keep me cozy. This has become one of my favorite bits of garb, to be honest. In the future I'd love to try to make one more "from scratch," as I've always been fascinated with the fact that the cloth was woven from a double-coated sheep, with the stronger coarser guard hairs (tog in Icelandic sheep) used as warp thread and the softer finer under-coat (thel in Icelandic sheep) used as weft, which makes perfect sense. I've been working through an Icelandic fleece that I think would be a great candidate for this.
In any case, the event was a lot of fun, though we mostly spent our time chasing the toddler, who had fun for a while but eventually melted down due to overstimulation and no nap. The coronation itself was truly wonderful. With King Yuri expiring on the throne and queen Sumayya stating (rightly) that as a Mongol queen she had a right to continue to rule, but she chose to pass the crown on to her heir, queen Gwen. Gwen also stated that she could choose to rule alone, but she opted to call her deceased husband back from Hel with the help of a truly impressive cadre of otherworldly-looking shieldmaidens. Floki obligingly returned, stating when the harvest came, he would be forced to return to Hel. I'm getting goose bumps just thinking about it. The location, the Gem County Fairgrounds in Emmett, ID, worked really well for our group. I'd love to see them used again. For now, here's a quick pic, courtesy of my husband HL Aonghus, of our daughter and I in our red dresses enjoying the spring sun. You can see my hood a bit here, but I'll come back later and add some more pictures. I did my first calligraphy for the SCA for the event last month, and the story of how it happened is very weird.
My younger sister, Lady Thora, has always been an artist. My hubby and I have encouraged her to do some illumination since she first started in the SCA. Finally, Aonghus said he'd like to commission a scroll illumination from her. He bought the paper and supplies and she obliged with a lovely 14th century-ish anthropomorphic moose (our Barony's main charge on its device). As any normal artist would, Thora expected to be paid for her commission work,, and Aonghus paid her. The Baron and Baroness told us they wanted a scroll for the Guardian of Sincerity and Honor for the ball, so I dutifully learned a (still rather wonky) blackface/textura script and cranked it out. At the event, Their Excellencies told me (the sneaky buggers) that the scroll was for Aonghus! I added in his name and they signed it. However, they managed to surprise me too, because when they called Aonghus up to receive his scroll, they awarded me with one too! They both said they had briefly thought about asking Aonghus to do the one for me, but decided that was *too* far, so mine was made by His Excellency Gomez. I need to snap a picture of it, but for now here's the one I did for Aonghus, the only person I know of who has ever paid for his own scroll for a non-peerage award. ;) |
UrsulaI like to: play with fleece, spin, knit, weave, sew, garden, cook, eat, bake bread, dance, read, sing, and learn new things. Archives
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