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kareinaThis last week was the local Medeltidsdagar på Hängnan (medieval days at the open-air folk museum called Hängnan), which was lots of fun.
For those of us involved in running the event it started with setup on Tuesday morning. We were on site with the first car load of stuff (pavilions, large wooden chests, rope bed) at 09:00 and chose a nice spot for my pavilion between the toy train and the arts and sciences alley (or if you are looking at the other path that intersects there, right between the enclosure with the huge boulders and some goats (who love to stand on the boulders) and the pen with the ponies.
Once we got the pavilion set up and the rope bed assembled we both went back to the house for the next car load of stuff (costumes, projects, the ice chest full of food (which we packed at the last minute). Once that was all unloaded I left![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lord_kjar on site to help with setting up all of the many sun shades for the arts and crafts alley and other stuff for the event itself and I drove one of the uni students back to our neighbourhood to fetch his armour bag and the last partial car load of our stuff (huge speaker and stereo equipment for the PA system, and a few odds and ends that didn't make it into the car for the first two trips.
The rest of Tuesday was spent with set up and getting ready to open our gates to the visiting public on Wednesday morning, and we went to sleep quite early, since we had stayed up way too late the night before packing, organizing and sewing a medieval looking carrying bag for me that holds the water bag from my camleback pack and has pockets for my phone, hearing aids, spare batteries, and other things that I need with me when I spend the day away from the tent.
While I had already packed a variety of projects in progress to work on at the event (including that dress that I started before I left Italy a year and a half ago!), once we finished making the bag I decided that I needed to embellish it, so I turned on the computer, printed out a round version of my coat of arms (a not-round version appears in my user pic here), traced it onto some totally non-period "wonder-under" (mirror image), ironed that to some blue wool fabric, cut out the cat and the vetu (the white part on the outside of the blue part), then ironed the rest of the blue down onto some white wool and basted it into place. That done I finally got to bed around 01:30 on Monday, so with Tuesday's 07:00 wake up it isn't surprising that Tuesday night was early to bed. (edited to add: there is a photo of the applique/embroidery on the bag in progress over on facebook. Needless to say, while I made good progress on this project, I never worked on any of the others I brought with me...)
Wednesday was the first day the event was open to the public, and it was a lovely day. In the morning we got the Arts and Sciences contest/display set up, with lots of beautiful entries. I am glad that I thought to bring the coat rack, as it turned out to be useful to hang one of the clothing entries from (the other came with its own dress dummy for display). I spent most of Wednesday daytime hanging out at the A&S booth, along with two other ladies. We three covered the booth all week, taking turns to go on breaks to run errands, be social, fetch food, etc. I heard them describe the contest and request the visitors to vote in "tre olika kategorier" (three different categories) that I was soon able to give the same talk to visitors in Swedish myself (not that I bothered to when the others were on duty, mind you). One time I was alone in the booth I did the "come on in and look and vote" talk in Swedish, and the lady did, then asked me were I was from, since my accent gives me away, and we switched to English for the conversation from there. She has an American husband and has lived for a few years in the States. She was quite interested in the SCA and what we do, so we exchanged email addresses so that I can let her know when we get something on the shire calender.
After the public went home for the day there was a short session of dance, run by one of the ladies down in Umeå and then we all fled the mosquitoes by going into the old farm building that served as our feast hall, where we sang songs and enjoyed conversation late into the night.
Thursday was also nice weather, and I opted to wear my pretty dress (Wednesday I was lazy and wore a tunic over jeans with boots) and even a veil and circlet. Perfect clothes for helping to carve a runestone. Thursday evening it was my turn to run dance. We started with music from my phone (plugged into a large speaker) and we warmed up with a bunch of bransles. Then the live musicians arrived, and we danced our way through all of the dance tunes they know. After they left we considered using the phone again, but thenlord_kjar pulled out his fiddle and started playing Swedish Folk music, so I danced Swedish Folk Dances with one of the jugglers/jesters/firebreathers instead (after giving the disclaimer to the dancers that these dances and tunes are NOT period in any way). As evening fell (by the clock, it never gets dark this time of the year!) the mosquitoes drove us back into the hall, where we sang and told stories for a few hours, before the fiddle came back out, and the fire-breathing juggler and I danced until 02:30 (note: if you click on only one of the two links to the boy you might want to know that he isn't wearing his shirt in the second one...). Much fun. He apologized for being drunk. If that is him dancing while drunk, I so want to dance with him sober one day--the boy is good! He suggests that we might want to head to south of Sweden for a big folk dance gathering this autumn. I must remember to look up details for that!
The weather service had predicted heavy rains for Friday, so I was not surprised when the thunderstorm hit on Friday morning, with a good solid downpour around 07:00 that lasted a while. The weather did cut down on the number of visitors for the day, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been--for most of the day it was either only cloudy or just gentle rain. Indeed the juggling show was perfectly timed--light rain as they started and the crowd gathered, which stopped for most of the show, came back lightly as they were ending, and about 20 minutes later we had another short actual downpour. I was please to note that my Swedish has gotten good enough that I was able to understand most of the prater that went with the mid day juggling show, and I could also follow most of the dialogue and narration for the little play that lent plot to their evening fire and dance show.
However, my Swedish was NOT up to following the more complex dialogue in the "adults only" play that was put on after the fire show. (Not surprising, really, since I am mostly getting my vocabulary from reading children's books!) So instead I fled the mosquitoes at the play and went and joined the disgruntled 12 year olds who wanted to stay for the play but had been dismissed in a blatant act of age-ism. Hanging out with them (all three have quite good English, lucky for me) and listening to their conversation made me realize just how clear my own memories from that time in my life are; it seems so recent, yet the calender says that many, many years have passes. How the time does fly.
Not much dancing broke out on Friday, but we sang songs until quite late. I didn't even start my yoga till after 02:00. Saturday the weather was better, though still a little rainy. During the early afternoon I gathered together a panel of judges for the A&S contest (me, the Princess, and an archaeologist who was on site both Friday and Saturday to give a talk to the public about the Medieval finds in the region). We only had to look at the 10 entries in the "open" competition (and could ignore the entries for the "previous winners" and "works in progress"), but that was quite difficult enough. Such a huge range of entries we had!. It was so difficult to compare them in an attempt to select a winner. How does one compare embroidery with metal smithing with glass beads with carved ivory with nålbinding? At the end of the discussion, when we were no nearer to reaching a decision we took out some paper and started giving each item stars for three categories: documentation, materials, and craftsmanship. When we were done we counted up the stars, and thus found a winner. Not the one with the most "bling", but a very well done useful object (the wood-framed wool back-pack--see the photo linked above). We didn't bother considering the category of "bling" or "pretty" for this, since we were quite confidant that the voting public would have mostly gone for that aspect when they cast their votes, so we knew there would be prizes for the pretty stuff, and, indeed, there were!
We were all quite happy with how the display went. By asking the public to vote for the items in the contest it ensured that they all slowed down and actually looked at the stuff, which probably helped them enjoy their day a bit more, since everything in the display was so nice. After doing the formal judging and counting the popular votes it was time to go shopping for prizes. The committee gave me a budge of 100 SEK (about €9 or $14USD at today's exchange rate) for each of the four prizes, so we went to the merchants on site and selected prizes that were targeted for their recipients. The woman who did the embroidered pouch received some natural dyed silk embroidery floss. The one who did the pack got some natural dyed wool for nålbinding (which she also does). The man who did the Mastermyr chest replica got a nice nålbinded pouch, and the doctor who did the helmet (and the runestone mentioned above) got some candy cough drops in a nice bottle, which he really appreciated.
I presented the prizes during court, but did so in English. If I hadn't needed that nap before court I could have gotten help preparing a short speech in Swedish to call up the winners, but I chose sleep instead. Hopefully next time I do something like this I can do it in Swedish. The court was nice and short, and was promptly followed by feast, which started early enough I actually got to eat a bit of it (though my food log for the day points out that, perhaps, I shouldn't have), and the feast lead to another nice evening hanging out with friends in the hall.
Sunday morning was tear down and hauling it all home again. I took home the first load of stuff and brought back the pieces for the roof rack, thinking that we could do it all in only two trips. Sadly, it turned out that the rubber feet for the roof rack had fallen off of two of the ends, so we couldn't put it on the car after all. So instead we both took home the (by then pretty much dry) pavilion and most of what was left of our stuff on site, but left the poles and frame for the rope bed, along with the still wet floor and one of the rugs to dry in the afternoon sunshine. Then he left me home to unpack the ice chest while he returned to site, helped with final clean up, and brought home our last few things as well as that uni student who lives nearby and all of his armour and stuff.
I confess that I didn't put much more away that evening, but instead enjoyed some dinner, followed by some popcorn and catching up on reading livejournal (my there were lots of things posted in the 6 days I didn't get on line) and posting the results of the Arts and Sciences contest to the Frostheim Forum
Monday we both returned to work, and in the evening I managed to type up the feed back for all of the entrants, and sent it off to those who had requested it (if they don't ask I am assuming they don't want it, and all were told this when they picked up their entries). I have just spent a bit more of my lunch hour typing this up than I should have done, so now it is time to get back to work...
For those of us involved in running the event it started with setup on Tuesday morning. We were on site with the first car load of stuff (pavilions, large wooden chests, rope bed) at 09:00 and chose a nice spot for my pavilion between the toy train and the arts and sciences alley (or if you are looking at the other path that intersects there, right between the enclosure with the huge boulders and some goats (who love to stand on the boulders) and the pen with the ponies.
Once we got the pavilion set up and the rope bed assembled we both went back to the house for the next car load of stuff (costumes, projects, the ice chest full of food (which we packed at the last minute). Once that was all unloaded I left
lord_kjar on site to help with setting up all of the many sun shades for the arts and crafts alley and other stuff for the event itself and I drove one of the uni students back to our neighbourhood to fetch his armour bag and the last partial car load of our stuff (huge speaker and stereo equipment for the PA system, and a few odds and ends that didn't make it into the car for the first two trips.The rest of Tuesday was spent with set up and getting ready to open our gates to the visiting public on Wednesday morning, and we went to sleep quite early, since we had stayed up way too late the night before packing, organizing and sewing a medieval looking carrying bag for me that holds the water bag from my camleback pack and has pockets for my phone, hearing aids, spare batteries, and other things that I need with me when I spend the day away from the tent.
While I had already packed a variety of projects in progress to work on at the event (including that dress that I started before I left Italy a year and a half ago!), once we finished making the bag I decided that I needed to embellish it, so I turned on the computer, printed out a round version of my coat of arms (a not-round version appears in my user pic here), traced it onto some totally non-period "wonder-under" (mirror image), ironed that to some blue wool fabric, cut out the cat and the vetu (the white part on the outside of the blue part), then ironed the rest of the blue down onto some white wool and basted it into place. That done I finally got to bed around 01:30 on Monday, so with Tuesday's 07:00 wake up it isn't surprising that Tuesday night was early to bed. (edited to add: there is a photo of the applique/embroidery on the bag in progress over on facebook. Needless to say, while I made good progress on this project, I never worked on any of the others I brought with me...)
Wednesday was the first day the event was open to the public, and it was a lovely day. In the morning we got the Arts and Sciences contest/display set up, with lots of beautiful entries. I am glad that I thought to bring the coat rack, as it turned out to be useful to hang one of the clothing entries from (the other came with its own dress dummy for display). I spent most of Wednesday daytime hanging out at the A&S booth, along with two other ladies. We three covered the booth all week, taking turns to go on breaks to run errands, be social, fetch food, etc. I heard them describe the contest and request the visitors to vote in "tre olika kategorier" (three different categories) that I was soon able to give the same talk to visitors in Swedish myself (not that I bothered to when the others were on duty, mind you). One time I was alone in the booth I did the "come on in and look and vote" talk in Swedish, and the lady did, then asked me were I was from, since my accent gives me away, and we switched to English for the conversation from there. She has an American husband and has lived for a few years in the States. She was quite interested in the SCA and what we do, so we exchanged email addresses so that I can let her know when we get something on the shire calender.
After the public went home for the day there was a short session of dance, run by one of the ladies down in Umeå and then we all fled the mosquitoes by going into the old farm building that served as our feast hall, where we sang songs and enjoyed conversation late into the night.
Thursday was also nice weather, and I opted to wear my pretty dress (Wednesday I was lazy and wore a tunic over jeans with boots) and even a veil and circlet. Perfect clothes for helping to carve a runestone. Thursday evening it was my turn to run dance. We started with music from my phone (plugged into a large speaker) and we warmed up with a bunch of bransles. Then the live musicians arrived, and we danced our way through all of the dance tunes they know. After they left we considered using the phone again, but then
lord_kjar pulled out his fiddle and started playing Swedish Folk music, so I danced Swedish Folk Dances with one of the jugglers/jesters/firebreathers instead (after giving the disclaimer to the dancers that these dances and tunes are NOT period in any way). As evening fell (by the clock, it never gets dark this time of the year!) the mosquitoes drove us back into the hall, where we sang and told stories for a few hours, before the fiddle came back out, and the fire-breathing juggler and I danced until 02:30 (note: if you click on only one of the two links to the boy you might want to know that he isn't wearing his shirt in the second one...). Much fun. He apologized for being drunk. If that is him dancing while drunk, I so want to dance with him sober one day--the boy is good! He suggests that we might want to head to south of Sweden for a big folk dance gathering this autumn. I must remember to look up details for that!The weather service had predicted heavy rains for Friday, so I was not surprised when the thunderstorm hit on Friday morning, with a good solid downpour around 07:00 that lasted a while. The weather did cut down on the number of visitors for the day, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been--for most of the day it was either only cloudy or just gentle rain. Indeed the juggling show was perfectly timed--light rain as they started and the crowd gathered, which stopped for most of the show, came back lightly as they were ending, and about 20 minutes later we had another short actual downpour. I was please to note that my Swedish has gotten good enough that I was able to understand most of the prater that went with the mid day juggling show, and I could also follow most of the dialogue and narration for the little play that lent plot to their evening fire and dance show.
However, my Swedish was NOT up to following the more complex dialogue in the "adults only" play that was put on after the fire show. (Not surprising, really, since I am mostly getting my vocabulary from reading children's books!) So instead I fled the mosquitoes at the play and went and joined the disgruntled 12 year olds who wanted to stay for the play but had been dismissed in a blatant act of age-ism. Hanging out with them (all three have quite good English, lucky for me) and listening to their conversation made me realize just how clear my own memories from that time in my life are; it seems so recent, yet the calender says that many, many years have passes. How the time does fly.
Not much dancing broke out on Friday, but we sang songs until quite late. I didn't even start my yoga till after 02:00. Saturday the weather was better, though still a little rainy. During the early afternoon I gathered together a panel of judges for the A&S contest (me, the Princess, and an archaeologist who was on site both Friday and Saturday to give a talk to the public about the Medieval finds in the region). We only had to look at the 10 entries in the "open" competition (and could ignore the entries for the "previous winners" and "works in progress"), but that was quite difficult enough. Such a huge range of entries we had!. It was so difficult to compare them in an attempt to select a winner. How does one compare embroidery with metal smithing with glass beads with carved ivory with nålbinding? At the end of the discussion, when we were no nearer to reaching a decision we took out some paper and started giving each item stars for three categories: documentation, materials, and craftsmanship. When we were done we counted up the stars, and thus found a winner. Not the one with the most "bling", but a very well done useful object (the wood-framed wool back-pack--see the photo linked above). We didn't bother considering the category of "bling" or "pretty" for this, since we were quite confidant that the voting public would have mostly gone for that aspect when they cast their votes, so we knew there would be prizes for the pretty stuff, and, indeed, there were!
We were all quite happy with how the display went. By asking the public to vote for the items in the contest it ensured that they all slowed down and actually looked at the stuff, which probably helped them enjoy their day a bit more, since everything in the display was so nice. After doing the formal judging and counting the popular votes it was time to go shopping for prizes. The committee gave me a budge of 100 SEK (about €9 or $14USD at today's exchange rate) for each of the four prizes, so we went to the merchants on site and selected prizes that were targeted for their recipients. The woman who did the embroidered pouch received some natural dyed silk embroidery floss. The one who did the pack got some natural dyed wool for nålbinding (which she also does). The man who did the Mastermyr chest replica got a nice nålbinded pouch, and the doctor who did the helmet (and the runestone mentioned above) got some candy cough drops in a nice bottle, which he really appreciated.
I presented the prizes during court, but did so in English. If I hadn't needed that nap before court I could have gotten help preparing a short speech in Swedish to call up the winners, but I chose sleep instead. Hopefully next time I do something like this I can do it in Swedish. The court was nice and short, and was promptly followed by feast, which started early enough I actually got to eat a bit of it (though my food log for the day points out that, perhaps, I shouldn't have), and the feast lead to another nice evening hanging out with friends in the hall.
Sunday morning was tear down and hauling it all home again. I took home the first load of stuff and brought back the pieces for the roof rack, thinking that we could do it all in only two trips. Sadly, it turned out that the rubber feet for the roof rack had fallen off of two of the ends, so we couldn't put it on the car after all. So instead we both took home the (by then pretty much dry) pavilion and most of what was left of our stuff on site, but left the poles and frame for the rope bed, along with the still wet floor and one of the rugs to dry in the afternoon sunshine. Then he left me home to unpack the ice chest while he returned to site, helped with final clean up, and brought home our last few things as well as that uni student who lives nearby and all of his armour and stuff.
I confess that I didn't put much more away that evening, but instead enjoyed some dinner, followed by some popcorn and catching up on reading livejournal (my there were lots of things posted in the 6 days I didn't get on line) and posting the results of the Arts and Sciences contest to the Frostheim Forum
Monday we both returned to work, and in the evening I managed to type up the feed back for all of the entrants, and sent it off to those who had requested it (if they don't ask I am assuming they don't want it, and all were told this when they picked up their entries). I have just spent a bit more of my lunch hour typing this up than I should have done, so now it is time to get back to work...
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Date: 2012-07-18 02:30 am (UTC)