kareina

Friday morning I left aryanhwy's place at about twenty minutes after eight in the morning, wearing a backpack full of food and sewing projects and dragging a small suitcase with my clothes for the event. This gave me time to work for six hours before it was time to walk to the train station to meet Ary, Simon, and Gwen for the trip to the event. The 4 hours of train ride wasn't long enough to finish the new self-supporting fitted Eura style tunic in progress, but it was long enough to get it fairly far along. Our first train was running just late enough that we missed our connection at Manchester, which meant that they had time to buy sandwichs (I had eaten before I went to the station, and was no longer hungry, of course) and we were able to meet up with Cornelia, who joined us for the rest of the trip to the event. I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting her before, but I am glad that have now--she is delightful. She is working on a PhD that involves VR reconstructions of castles and stuff, and the conversation ranged all over the place from that fun beginning.

The Taxi driver who took us from the Strafford station to the event site told us that he had been taking folk out there all day long, and did we want the side entrance so as not to walk up the main formal stairs in the main hall wearing our modern clothes? We did.

We went straight to the little side room off the servant's staircase to check in and find out our room numbers. I was in room 3, and was told to go up the servant's stairs to the first landing, pick up a set of sheets from the room on the left, and then go up one more flight of stairs to find my room. Room three turned out to be a huge room in the front of the building which was big enough that the entire curved set of windows (see above link for a photo of the building) fit in just part of the room. We had 11 single beds in that room, and it didn't feel at all cramped. After making my bed and putting on a wool tunic, my old self-supporting fitted Eura style tunic, and some linen trousers I went downstairs, where the vigil party was in full swing. (We had missed evening court, which only had the one order of business: send Constanza to vigil for a Pelican).

The vigil party room was small compared to the main entry hall (which was used for feast and court), though still huge, but it was so full of people that the room was hot enough that as soon as I put my name on the vigil list I went right back up stairs, traded the wool tunic for a loose light weight linen one, and then returned to the party, where I finally finished replacing the toe on one of my nålbinded socks (I had mended the heel on the flight, cut off the worn toe and started replacing it, but ran out of time on the flight, and was too busy during the week to pick it up again). By the time I had finished mending the sock it was quite late, the room had emptied a bit, and it was finally cool enough that I wanted to put them on.

After I was done with the socks I did my yoga, which led to a conversation about yoga and teaching one lady a little acroyoga. She loved the Jedi box, agreeing with me that it is the best way to do sit ups, ever.

Not too long thereafter I found Master Pol and got him to work on my back, which was still a bit unhappy with travel, a strange bed, and lots of carrying of a backpack. He was surprised to feel how much worse it was than when he massaged me at the Uma event a couple of weeks ago. His magic hands helped, and then he got called in for his turn at the vigil. So I went over to ask how much longer till my turn, to discover that the guy on gate had accidentally gotten distracted, skipped my name and hadn’t noticed, and he had just sent in word that the current visitor was the last for the night. He was terribly embarrassed to see the one uncrossed off name on his list, on the middle of the page, and hurried in to say that there would be one more after all. I then had a very enjoyable conversation with the two gate guards (I, of course, wasn’t the least bit bothered to have been missed on the first pass through the list), till one of them realised that they had forgot to time the person ahead of me, and perhaps he should poke them.

I had a very nice chat with Constanza. We had never met before, and I told her that part of the reason I had put my name on the list was to find out if she was someone I had met, since I am so bad with names, which seemed to amuse her.

I went to bed pretty soon after the vigil ended, around 02:45, and woke at 07:25 ready to face the day. I was hungry so went down for breakfast, ate fairly quickly (of course), and then went to wander around to see what there was to see of the site before morning classes began. I got as far as the main hall, where I found a woman (who turned out to be named Gudrun) who needed help setting up her warp weighted loom, so, of course, I stopped to help her set it up. I told her I have always wanted one of those, and she told me that she got it largely to show off at demos, and was only just beginning to learn to weave with it—the project on the loom was only her second. As a result she was happy to let others try weaving, so, instead of attending classes first and second hour I happily played with the loom.

She had had some issues with tension, possibly caused in part by the way the tablet woven starting band for the warp was attached to the loom frame. That top bar has holes for attaching the warp that are not all at the same elevation (so as to not put too much weakness into the wood), and thus the band wobbled a bit (or so I was told, she had woven enough before coming to the event that the cloth had wrapped at least one wrap around that board, so I never saw the way it attached myself, but this is a plausible explanation).

While both Gudrun and I were at the loom another lady, who has done a fair bit of warp weighted loom weaving, came over and was invited to give advice. Among the many useful bits of information she shared was a simple solution to that issue caused by the attachment of the tablet woven starting band: first whip stitch the band to a thin straight board (or a slat from a set of blinds, or something) taking care to wrap the thread between each of the warp threads. Then sew that board to the loom frame and the starting of the project will be much easier to keep the warp threads both horizontal and parallel.

Because I couldn’t resit the challenge I worked on the project, taking care with the beating of the weft to try to gradually make the weft threads come closer and closer to taking a horizontal and parallel path across the fabric, and, eventually, I achieved that goal. By that time I was feeling a bit hungry, so I wandered off to see if I could find something to eat, arriving to the dining room exactly as the Golden Egg class on apple pie was about to begin, so I joined it. She had baked four different pies for us to try, all of which come from period cookbooks from the Netherlands. The oldest of the set was chunks of apple with spices (indeed the same sort of warm spices that we still think of today as “pie spice”) and not much sugar. Then she fed us a much later (but still Medieval) one that used chopped apples, pine nuts, and much more sugar. The third was one that called for both apple and fennel seeds, and the fifth was one that involves mashed apples, cheese, and egg and the texture of which makes the teacher think that perhaps pumpkin pie was invented by immigrants to the New World who were used to this type of pie, but couldn’t get apples, so substitute pumpkin instead.

I really loved the first and fourth, found the sweeter one nice, but not as nice as the less sweet ones, but, since I don’t like fennel, I didn’t take more than a small taste of that pie (and I also picked off the seeds before eating it. However, I ate more than enough of the other options to tide me over till the Golden Egg meet and greet at 15:00, when she fed us the rest of the pie, and others brought out cheese and other nibbles.

Before that meet and greet I went to Þora’s class presenting the results of her Golden Egg research. I really want that hood! The weaving she did was beautiful (helped by the careful spinning she had done), the sewing properly invisible, the colour amazingly lovely, the fur lining wonderfully soft. No wonder the hoods in the inventory from the list of a bride’s dowry from a 1300’s wedding in Lofoten (which she used as her research starting point) were worth up to an entire cow! Did I mention that I want that hood? So do quite a few other people on site.

It was no surprise to anyone that Þora’s challenge was a success and that she is the premier member of Drachenwald’s Society of the Golden Egg. Likewise, when she was admitted into the order of the Panache (Drachenwald A&S award) during evening court the only surprise was that she didn’t already have one. (I felt very guilty for not having looked up the fact that she didn’t have one and thus not having sent an award recommendation for it.)

There were many other awards given at court, all of which triggered enthusiastic response from the crowd. One of them was to Ary’s husband, Simon, who has written the code for the new, improved, GDPR compliant Drachenwald OP. When they admitted him into the order of the Lindquistringes (Kingdom service award) the King made a special point to thank him for the work and the fact that the rush nature and long hours of the job has meant yet another delay to their long awaited move to the new house. He had his hair down when he was called up for court, and his hat fell off when he bowed, which made his lovely dark hair really show, which caused me to comment to Ary that he was the prettiest man who was called into court all evening. She agreed, as did another lady who was present for the conversation.

Fairly late in court one of the Master’s of Defence came up to complain to the Crown that he felt his order was a bit too empty (there were only two on site at all), and that the Crown should do something about it. The Crown thought this was reasonable and Master Pol (he already has a pelican) was called forward and served a writ to appear at Yule Ball to sit vigil there. This, too, appears to be a popular choice. I have never seen him fencing, but if he is half as good at that as he is at massage then he probably deserves to be part of the order.

I enjoyed the Pelican ceremony, since it gave me a chance to hear more about her and what she does. I really enjoyed hearing the words that Mistress Portia (to whom she is apprenticed) sent from Australia, since I could totally hear her saying them, even though they were read by Duncan.

During feast one of the guys got up and announced the first entrant in the Drachenvision filk song contest. I had no idea that the contest existed, so, of course, as soon as there was a pause I went over and asked him “can anyone enter?”. He replied that he was ok with adding late entrants, but that it needed to be a filk written within the last six months. So I pulled out my phone to look at my song writing log to see which one(s) had been written recently enough, and decided that the one we wrote for the Gyllengran XXX event was the one that would best suit the contest, and promptly entered. When it was my turn I told the audience that they were to sing along on the chorus, and they did, giving me the best audience participation up to that point in the contest. However, then a bard who recently moved to Drachenwald from Ansteorra performed her version of “My Favourite Things”, which got a thunder of applause from the crowd. Even so, I thought that either of the two videos sent over from Aarnimetsä should have won. Everyone sang along for “Ripped Seams”, and the other one was beautiful, touching, heartwarming and funny.

There is more, but it is now 01:00, so I had better do my yoga and get to sleep. I only have 3.5 days left before I leave Durham, and I need to make the most of them.

This weekend was the big Frostheim SCA event, Norrskensfest. The King and Queen came up from Germany, the Prince and Princess came up from Stockholm. Our erstwhile housemate, C, came back up from Götteborg, some people came from Sundsvall (six hours drive), more from Umeå (three hours drive) and others from Skellefteå (two hours drive). There were around 70 people total, which is not bad at all for a little shire on the far northern edge of a rather spread out Kingdom.

On the Friday night I ran a class on the History of the SCA, starting with reading out loud the story of the first SCA event by Dorothea of Caer-Myrddin and then sharing a timeline of which Kingdoms and Principalities formed when (and thus how many of each existed during any given year), which Kingdoms and Principalities are descended from which, and even a graph showing the change in the number of paid members over the years. If anyone actually wants to see the handout I prepared for that class let me know and I can convert the pdf to photos and share in a separate post.

We also did some dancing that evening, and there was a silk banner painting workshop. Now, because of the dancing and my class lord_kjar and I didn't actually start work on our banner till around midnight. Even so we managed to finish the banner early in the day on Saturday, so it was hanging on the wall to decorate the hall for the feast. We even made time to soak in the shire hot tub (on a trailer in the parking area) before crawling into bed around 02:00.

Even so we managed to get up around 08:00, so we could be part of the musical procession carrying breakfast to their highnesses, who were sleeping in the upstairs room. My beloved minion (who got his AA later in the event!) was kind enough to carry the dulcimer for me, so that I could walk and play. I am so lucky to have a minion!

Saturday during the day there was a tournament outside, but I had agreed to do a hand sewing class inside at the same time, so instead of going outside myself, I made my fur hood and muff available for HRM and HRH if either of them wanted it, since winter hasn't really arrived yet where either of them live, and we were having good weather on the weekend, with temps ranging from around -5 to -10, the snow we had had the week before holding on nicely, and frost crystals decorating the trees.

My "class" was more along the lines of sharing a printout of my favourite sewing web page (created by hrj), as well as printouts of a few others I found that looked useful on the day I was doing the printing and chatting with the other people sitting around working on their own projects. However, many of us had never seen Eithni's Magic Veil Stitch (the link goes to a .doc file with instructions for the stitch), and C was making a new veil, so she gave the stitch a try, and we were all delighted with how well it works. Thanks eithni!

After the tourney and before the feast there was more dancing, and then it was time to get ready for the first performance of the Solar Wind Orchestra. lord_kjar and I got permission from the people in charge of decorating the hall for feast to set up instruments just to the side of high table, and we had our place nicely claimed before the hall door re-opened to permit people to set their feast gear out. The other band members arrived in good time, and we got them set up with feast gear and we settled in to enjoy court before the first half of the feast.

A good number of the people I had recommended for awards actually got them, so I was feeling quite pleased with court, when suddenly the King's herald called me up. I so did Not expect that! I already have a good coverage of awards and didn't feel I was lacking in any. (I had even said so over on FB--some weeks back I posted to the local shires' group pages asking everyone to please list their full SCA names plus any awards they had in the comments so that people could recommend them for awards--to be fair I had also listed mine, and said that there was no point in recommending me, I already had them covered.) However, I don't think the King was privy to that conversation (what Crown would have time to read all the group pages for the various branches in their realm?), and so they admitted me to the ( order of the Lindquistringes ) The photo (behind that cut) shows the scroll, made by the ever so talented Bridget Greywolf, whose name was said for a great many of the award scrolls given, all of which were stunning. One can see that she has actually met me looking at the scroll--it is so pretty I love it.

After court was the feast, and after the first round of servings were done and they had gotten to the first desert our band got up and performed our seven songs, which was much fun, and seemed to go over well. One of the songs is a dance, and the music speeds up with each repeat. The dancers, of course, got up to dance while we sang and played that one, but took part of the song trying to get all the dancers up to speed as to what the steps were, so when we ended the dancers asked us to do it again. We, of course, obliged them. (Though it was hard to sit and play the dulcimer while there was dancing happening!)

After our performance there was lots more food served (since I never eat in the evenings I have no idea what was served, but the people around me seemed to be happy, so I assume it was all good), and there was more court, too. At one point their Highnesses called to their court one of the guys running the event, but he was outside soaking in the hot tub, so we opened the window and called him in. When we said "you are summoned to court" his reply was to stand up, stark naked in the cold night air, and shout back "you have got to be kidding me!". When he realized we were serious he wrapped a towel around his waist and came in. There was much laughter at the banter between the blushing, flushing Princess and the towel-clad man, as their highnesses thanked him for his part in the event and presented him a token of their appreciation.

During the feast one of my friends asked me "So, how many scrolls do you have now?". His eyes really bugged out when I replied "Two. I doubled my collection tonight." Drachenwald is so good about giving scrolls with the awards that he had assumed that "having an award" = "having a scroll". I had to explain to the others about the concept of a backlog...

However, despite having only two scrolls, I do have, as mentioned, quite a number of awards, and this is the third time I have received a Kingdom service award for dance (ironically, I have never gotten a mid-level Kingdom arts award, but skipped straight to the Laurel).

After the feast we settled into a evening of singing, dancing, and merriment. At one point lord_kjar showed one of the guys in the brewer's guild his experiments involving some of our home grown black currants and alcohol, and suddenly there was an impromptu meeting of the brewer's guild, which lord_kjar is now a member of.

All in all it was a lovely event, full of hugs, cuddles, dance, art projects, music--in short everything I could want in an event. I look forward to our pot luck Yule revel next month. I am also resolved to attend the Known World Dance Symposium in Germany in April. There are just a few details that need working out, like how to get there, and can we really afford it. Therefore I have started a FB group to coordinate the travel to that event for those of us who live in northern Nordmark. With luck that will convince some of our friends to head south with us for that event. With more luck I will succeed in talking those of us who could do so to teach a class at the event.

Sadly, our beautiful weather of the weekend didn't last, and Monday morning it warmed up to rain a bit. Then it cooled back off a tiny bit and we got some very wet, heavy snow. This morning it warmed up again, and the snow started melting like crazy, and it rained again. My poor winter--it has barely started, yet it is already suffering from the same health issues that plagued last winter.