kareina

One of the challenges I participated in during the First SCA Bardic War was the Original Poetry category. This was a live-performance challenge, with competitors meeting in zoom, and then being live-streamed to youtube. Since it was live the people running the event choose to do some editing to the recording before releasing it for general consumption, and it has now been released. So if you want to see my entry, and those of people scattered across the known world, you can find it here. From there you can click through to the event's youtube channel and see recordings for other event war point categories if you like.

The First Bardic War event was fun to participate in. They did a great job of mixing things up so that there were things happening live, and things that were pre-recorded. Things happened at a variety of different times, so that no matter what time zone you might be living in, or what sleep schedule you are on this week, it would be possible to participate in something.

Our alliance, the Great Western Alliance, was comprised of nine different Kingdoms (five of which I have lived in). I don't know how the other alliances decided who would do what, but for ours we did a pre-registration survey of everyone who wanted to participate, wherein we each specified which two categories we most would like to enter, and also listing all of the other categories in which we felt qualified to enter. Then the various generals of the alliance sat down with a spreadsheet and divided us up among all of the various categories, taking care that we all wound up somewhere we were qualified to enter, and, if possible, one of our first two choices, yet we had a good mix of people from different Kingdoms in every category. I don't recall what I put down for my first two choices, but I had fun with the two categories I was assigned.

When last I posted I had just completed a Thursday that was nice, but so full I hadn't managed to get to any of my uni work. That Friday wasn't much better, with only 44 minutes uni work accomplished, but I did spend a half an hour playing on the sledding hill, which is both fun and counts as exercise.

That Saturday (30 Jan) was the Around The Known Bardic, which ran for 24 hours, starting at ~01:00 my time. I was wise enough NOT to try joining then. Instead I went to sleep just before midnight, slept till 07:30, and managed to join the bardic by 07:40. I then spent the rest of the day in the zoom meeting, and enjoyed every minute of it. Well, I did switch my hearing aids over to the telephone for one 40 minute call with E., but I didn't disconnect from the bardic to do that--I just didn't hear whatever was sung then. It was really a lot of fun. Sure, I would prefer an in-person bardic and the possibility to sing together. However, living where I do I wouldn't be able to sing with the people who attended this one anyway, since Sweden is rather far from the US, Canada, Australia, and even the UK. I made some great progress on my sexy viking cloak during the bardic.

Sunday I decided to spend the day doing useful stuff, including lots of loads of laundry, and some cooking and didn't touch the computer again after the bardic ended. My acroyoga partner came over for some sledding on my hill--the first time we had seen one another since the second wave of the pandemic started, but they say outdoor activities are safer, so we decided it would be fun. It was! We even tried a little outdoor acroyoga. Yes, it does work to balance upon winter boots instead of bare feet. It isn't quite as comfortable, but the thick winter coat provides enough padding that it is much more comfortable than I had expected. Eventually he decided it was time to head home, and eyed the snowy field, saying that it looked fun to cross. I pointed out that if he did cross the deep snow across the field he could pick up the snowmachine tracks on the ice and take that all the way to his place, thereby cutting about half a km from the trip (comparing with going around by the road).

He thought that sounded like fun, and I decided to go part way with him. At first he lead, and I just followed along in his footprints. Eventually he got tired of breaking the path, and I switched to leading. At that point I decided that walking through that deep of snow was too much work, and I switched to crawling. J. reports that my crawling broke the path enough that he had no difficulties walking behind me. Once we reached the snow-machine super-highway that is the wetlands between my house and the nature reserve the walking was easy, and I followed him about half way home before deciding that I was tired and should return home.

Before J. departed we agreed that since we aren't meeting for acroyoga, and we still need to do something in the way of exercise, we would meet every weekday morning over zoom, at 06:00, and do both a DownDog HIT and a DownDog Yoga app workout.

The next week (also known as last week, I only had to go to the archives Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. Wednesday and thursday I attended a conference for work (from home, of course, there being a pandemic on).
Some of those evenings I spent doing stuff for Coronation and never got to Uni work, but others I made good progress on my data reduction. I did, however, need a nap after getting home from the archives most days, to make up for getting up on time for that workout.

On Saturday E. got out of the hospital, so I picked her up, and we went to Gammalstad for a picnic. I had baked a really yummy treat for the occasion:

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68 g butter
2 c oats
0.5 c almonds
1 T rosehip powder
2 T Norlandsbär powder
1 t sugar
Dash each of cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon
0.25 c yoghurt
2 c grated carrot
1 c grated apple
1 c frozen raspberries
1 egg

Mix butter and oats and powders, spices and sugar till everything is completely blended.

Grate the apple and carrot

Mix everything together, bake in a buttered pan at 160 C
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After our picnic we strolled around Hängnan a bit, looking at the old houses, and then went past the paddock with sheep and ponies. The biggest pony came over to say hello, and was really friendly. So friendly that it started licking my hand. When it started gently nibbling I said no and took my hand away. Silly pony--the sign says we aren't supposed to feed you, that includes not feeding you the body parts we want to use later.

That evening my friend M. came over with my birthday present--a stack of beautiful hard-bound Folk Stories collection (in Swedish), we fed him dinner, and then he took E. back to his place, where she can enjoy the healing attentions of his two dogs and one cat.

This week we are still managing to meet for that morning workout each day, and both Monday and Tuesday I needed naps after getting home from the archives, but, both days I managed to do uni work in the evenings. Today after work, on the other hand, I had the energy to run errands. Back in December my former boss at LTU let me know that even though my job had ended, the university was still giving me a Christmas gift, and how should she give it to me. I suggested that N. could pick it up when he was next in the building, and he could pass it to D, who he sees regularly, and D could bring it here when next he was as the house. This form of delivery worked well, though some time elapsed, and I finally got the card on Monday.

The gift turned out to be a present card, good at a large variety of shops in the area. I am not much of a shopper, but I logged in to see which shops are participating, and one of them was the Shop in Lapland--the high end gift shop in Gammelstad from which my mother bought me a really pretty snowflake necklace when she was last here on a visit, and which, sadly, vanished entirely too soon thereafter. Their web page said that they are closed due to the pandemic, but anyone who has ordered something to be picked up can drop by in the afternoons of Monday, Wednesday, or Friday and knock loudly on the door. So I sent them a quick email asking if I could come by and use that present card to get the snowflake necklace, and they said yes.

Therefore, after work today, instead of going straight home for a nap, I did the 7 km detour and got the necklace (for which I needed to pay 180 SEK over and above the amount on the card). Since it was a beautiful day I took a short walk, and stopped by the paddock with the sheep and ponies, but they had recently been given fresh food, and showed zero interest in saying hello. Since it was a little on the cold side I just returned to the car and came home.

Now I need to decide if I have enough energy to do some uni work, or if I need a nap...

I have been enjoying the various on-line Bardic "Circles" (or "Sprawls" as at least one of them is called), so when I heard about the Around the Known World Bardic that was planned for the 24 hours which has just ended, I put it onto my calendar.

I might have joined from the beginning, since it was scheduled to start at 01:00 Saturday in my timezone, and normally that isn't too late for me on a weekend. However, on Thursday evening I was inspired and fell so deeply into doing data processing for my PhD project in progress that I wound up working till 05:00 on Friday morning (which meant that by the time I finished yoga and got to bed it was nearly 06:00). Friday morning I got up after three hours of sleep, and as soon as I had breakfast I hopped onto my trike and pedalled over to B's house (about 3.5 km away). She led me off on a half an hour walk, well into the woods near her home, and then we spent an hour picking blueberries, after which she felt she had enough, and wandered home. I had not yet picked enough to fill a yoghurt bucket (which will take 1.5 liters if full), and wanted more, so I stayed another hour and a half (including a break to eat the lunch I had brought with me), and then set off for the walk back to her house.

However, I had never been in this particular forest before, and took the wrong fork where the path split, and wound up with the one that ends at the field next to her house. Given that the field was full of cows, and there was a wide ditch between the forest and the field, full of quite a bit of running water, I decided to walk along the (much smaller) forest path that parallels the edge of the field, so that I could join up with the road we came in on, that runs between that field and the next. Soon I discovered the flaw in that plan--the trial ended at when the ditch to my right met another ditch in front of me, both of which were full of running water, deeper than the depth of the rubber boots I was wearing (since it had rained for several days before, I suspected that they would be a good idea, and I was correct), and wider than I could jump. So I turned back and looked for another option, and didn't find any thing that looked promising (but I did find some arctic raspberries, which are, by far, my favourite berry, and rare and hard to find). Eventually I decided that while I could try to backtrack and try to find the path we came in on, it would be much faster to just take off my rubber boots, wade across the creek in the ditch, and then put the boots back on and then just walk across the field.

This path worked well, and I reached B's home just as they were getting ready to head out, so we had a brief chat, and then I hopped on my trike home, where I spent one more hour berry picking--this time picking red currants and strawberries for the bucket, and eating all of the raspberries which were ripe. Then I had enough time to have dinner and read for a bit before my friend E called, and we talked till after 23:00. By the time I finished my yoga and got to bed it was just after midnight, but I was too tired to stay up till the Around the World Bardic was to start at 01:30.

So I got a good night's sleep (nine hours!), had breakfast, and then joined the bardic in progress at about 10:15. I had thought to just listen whilst working (since I hadn't done any work on Friday), but during my morning there were only about six bards taking turns, so I wound up joining in the queue. I did manage to accomplish some data processing in between my turns, till around 15:00, at which point I gave up all pretence of working, and got out my nålbindning project in progress to keep my hands busy as I just enjoyed the bardic.

We had a spreadsheet to keep track of whose turn it was, and who performed what, which also has a column for a link to the song (if there is one). Looking back at that list now, we did a total of 350 performances, over the 24 hours the bardic ran, of which I contributed 24, 11 of which are my own composition, 7 of which were written by bards I love in the West, and the others were other SCA songs or instrumental (hammer dulcimer) pieces. The bardic host changed every few hours, with a new host in a time-zone that was appropriate for the moment, and they did a wonderful job of keeping things going, with not more than a short bit of chatter after a song now and then (especially giving one or two people the chance to say something nice about the last performance) before calling on the next person on the list.

I really, really enjoyed the whole day, but the absolute highlight for me was when my SCA Identical Twin Sister, Amanda de Spenser, came in briefly and performed, along with her family Turning of the Seasons by Lisa Theriot. They did such an amazing job--beautiful voices, lovely harmonies, and they each took turns being the primary voice. I was very much in tears of joy for it--my favourite part of SCA bardics has always been the part where people sing together, but, of course, we can't do that over video calls due to the slight lag, which is different for every connection. Sure, I was able to sing along with most of the songs today, microphone muted, but that isn't the same as actually getting to hear everyone. While Amanda and her children aren't "everyone", they made enough beautiful music together with that song to count for rather a lot. Soon after they performed they had to step out to attend another event, and didn't return till late in the bardic, about an hour before it ended. She put her name on the list when she arrived, but I wanted to be certain we would have time to get to her, so when my turn next came up I asked her if she would take it, and she did, and shared one she has written herself, as an answer to the song "The Veil". Her's is called The Promise, and is written from the perspective of the the lady who gave her fighter the veil in the first song, and it is amazing. I was not the only person I could see who was crying as she sung it.

It was generally agreed that the experiment was a success, and that it would be very much worth doing such a 24-hour bardic again, and I can heartily recommend joining in when they do.

When the autocrats for the Jungfru Maria Bebådelsedagsgille SCA event, which was scheduled for 20-22 March in the Shire of Reengarda (about an hour or two south of where I live, in Frostheim (depending on which part of the shire you measure to) made the painful decision to cancel the event on account of pandemic, I promptly sent an email to the King and Queen suggesting that perhaps we could do something in the way of an on-line event, pointing out that I would be happy to put on my costume, sit by the computer (or phone) working on a sewing project and still be able to see everyone, and perhaps they could even do court and give out the awards they had planned. They replied that they were looking into this, that I was not the only one with this crazy idea. A couple of days later I was in the right place online at the right time to hear the Kingdom Seneschal say that she wanted a deputy for facilitating official on-line meetings and courts, so I promptly volunteered, as it seemed like the best way to be certain that I would get my SCA fix and get to see my friends.

This meant for a busy couple of weeks, setting up guidelines as to how it will all work, participating in the test-run court so that the Royals and their herald and the court technician would all know how it would work. Getting things set up took long enough that the court was actually held the Saturday after the event was supposed to happen. However, it wasn't like any of us had anywhere else to be, so there were still quite a lot of participants in the meeting. Before the meeting their Majesties decided that for this first try at an on-line court they wanted to keep it small, so invitations were sent only to those 70 people who had registered for the event.

The zoom meeting started out informally, with people able to arrive from 15:45, and it was possible for anyone to speak during that pre-court session. Most people had put on costumes for the occasion, and had a video connection. Some people choose not to put on costumes, and thus left their cameras off, and others simply didn't have a working camera on their end. I was, of course, one of the people in costume, so I connected from my phone, and used my handy phone holder, attached to the arm of the recliner (that I had made to make it easy to sit comfortably, relax and sew during meetings). However, Kjartan and Caroline had chosen not to put on costumes, but they wanted to watch the court on the big screen in the living room, which is wear the recliner is. As soon as he connected his computer to the meeting we got an audible feedback loop from my phone and his computer, so I promptly disconnected my phone audio, but kept my video connection.

When everyone had gathered the Court Technician muted everyone save for the Herald (at his home in Reengarda) and their Majesties (at their home in Gyllengran), and the herald called for all to pay heed to their Majesties, who processed in, and sat down upon their thrones. They then conducted business the same as they would for a normal Drachenwald Court. However, when they called forward someone to receive their award the Court Technician would un-mute that person, so that they could, if they choose to, speak and be heard by the royals and the assembled people.

One of the people to receive an award wasn't present in the meeting when they were called forth, so the herald read the scroll anyway and Their Majesties asked everyone to keep it a secret until they got a chance to tell the recipient themselves. But, presumably, one of their friends contacted the recipient via a personal message, because a short time later they joined the meeting, and were able to receive the award.

Perhaps this means that if it should happen again that someone isn't present at an on-line court that the herald can ask if anyone is able to get in touch with the person and ask them to please join, and go on to the next award? Then, if they still haven't joined by the time the rest of the court business has been conducted the scroll can still be read to make it an official award at the end of court, but if they make it then the herald need only read it one time.

Part way through the court the Court Technician sent me a private message asking about my lack of sound connection. I explained about the feedback loop, and said that if she needed me to say something I could go downstairs. Court had felt like it was drawing to a close, and I was thinking that they might want me to say something during the planned after-court feedback session, in my role as Kingdom Deputy Seneschal responsible for facilitating on-line meetings and courts. She replied with "gärna" (the Swedish phrase used instead of "yes please"), so I picked up my phone and went downstairs. As I was still in the process of sitting down on the floor, and before I could figure out where to set the phone (since downstairs doesn't have a handy phone holder already set up) the Herald called me forward to receive an award. I was so surprised.

If any of you wish to see the court for yourself, it is available here. I just looked at it, and my award falls between 21 and 25 minutes. The first glimpse of me is while I am still sitting down, so the image is moving around a fair bit, and I can see that, not only was I crying tears of joy, I must also have bumped my circlet and veil as I went through the curtains to go downstairs, because they are rather rotated to one side. Oops.

Possibly not my prettiest moment in court, but a happy one. One doesn't expect to be getting arts awards at the Kingdom level when one already has a Laurel. Never mind that, in my case, I got the Laurel without having ever gotten a Kingdom level arts award from any of the (at that point) three Kingdoms I had lived in. I have gotten Kingdom level service awards, for making dance happen, in three of the five Kingdoms in which I have lived, but I moved often enough that I hadn't gotten arts awards above the Baronial level, and wound up jumping straight to the Laurel, about 18 years after I first joined the SCA.

Getting this particular arts award was even more special to me, because they specify that it was my musical contribution to the Kingdom which prompted it. My laurel, which I got in January of 2000, was for hand-sewing and embroidery, or, as I like to say, "for fidgeting". But the place I have always loved best to do that fidgeting is at a bardic circle at events. There is something magical for me to gather in costume with friends as we all raise our voices in song, while some of us work on sewing, or nålbindning, or whatever. I love to sing, but, having grown up with a hearing problem, I was never very good at it, not realising that human voices could (and do) hit specific notes. I just thought that singing was words and timing, and that musical instruments were what did notes.

It wasn't until I was in high school that I found out that I "couldn't sing". My beloved best friend was the one who explained to me that I sang in a monotone, and who started me on the path of learning to move my voice up and down to hit various notes. It was a long and difficult path, and I only really started to make good progress on it years after obtaining hearing aids, which I got for the first time when I was 25 years old (and should have had from childhood). While I have always been good at memorising lyrics and the timing/rhythm for songs, these days, sometimes, and if someone helps me start on the correct note, I can actually sing a song correctly, all the way through. Since moving to Frostheim in 2011 I have also obtained a hammer dulcimer, and have learned to play a few tunes, and I love to bring it to an event to share the beautiful sounds of this instrument.

Perhaps this long explication explains why I was moved to tears by being admitted to the Order of the Panache, for trying to share with my friends something that means so much for me.

I couldn't make it to 12th Night this weekend, but my song, Warriors of Drachenwald (to the tune of Turdion), went to the event without me, and participated the Drachenvision War Song competition that Isebetta, the incoming Queen, had called for the event. The song was beautifully performed by Alays de Lunel and Aibhilin inghean Daibhidh. I don't think the song would have won without their beautiful performance, which, much to my delight has been filmed and uploaded by Aodhan dha Cheist (husband to Alays).

When I first got the news I was in a bit of shock, I really didn't expect to win, and I guessed that their performance must have really helped. Then I saw the video, and now I know that their performance made all the difference. I had a lot of fun writing that song, and I am really grateful to both of them for the performance, and also truly grateful to the members of the Mists Bardic College, who worked the song over and gave me amazingly helpful comments that improved the song, even though I did not, as planned, skype in to the meeting (I was busy flying to Seattle just then).

I have been in a great mood all day, till I posted links to the video on FB, and suddenly realised how proud my mother would have been to hear about my winning the contest, and how much she would have enjoyed seeing the video, and then I started crying. I guess this means that I am up past my bedtime and I should do my yoga and get some rest. (It also means I miss my mommy, but that is rather to be expected, all things considered.)

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.

Even though I didn't put anything into the rules about needing *written* documentation for the entries for the Norrskensbard competition (coming up on 14 November), I have still prepared a pdf to accompany my entries. Having taken the time to type it up, I though I would ( share it here, too. )

My 12th Night adventure ( getting there )
( Friday (including Bardic!) )

After the Bardic spent another hour or so visiting with people before heading up to my room, where I did yoga quietly enough as to not wake up my sleeping roommates.

( Saturday Court & Dance Ball )

Today I got up around 08:30 and spent some time visiting with my roommates while doing my morning sit ups and push ups and re-packing my luggage into flying mode. I then hung out in the lobby visiting with folks on their way out until learnteach and his lady were ready to go. We had a lovely drive back to his place, through Niles Canyon. I'd never gone that way hitherto, and found it a rather pretty area. He will take me to the airport much too early in the morning, and I'll arrive in Italy on Tuesday morning, having lost a number of hours to time-zone changes.