my first Drachenwald Kingdom University
Nov. 12th, 2018 09:07 pmFriday morning I left ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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.
