kareina

Over the past few weeks I've gradually pushed myself onto night shift with my uni work, and the rate of progress has increased markedly. This is hardly surprising, I did the same thing when I did my Master's. Today I took a little bit of time for myself--woke up, had breakfast, read my e-mail/livejourna/facebook/etc. and got into costume to go attend the CD launch for Harlequin. They were, as always wonderful. While most of the hall was set up with tables for people watching the performance, they thoughtfully left some room at the front of the hall, so those of us who want to dance could do so. Of course, I did so! It was much fun. Now I'm full of energy and ready to spend the night working...

In opening their page for putting in the above link, I see that they have finally done a good photo of the band and all of the instruments, which shows off the costumes I helped them make. I'm very pleased with how the costumes came out:

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I had been torn between two fun activities for Saturday evening. On one hand I could go to the Contra Dance and spend several hours dancing, on the other I could go to the performance of Harlequin and see their first performance in the new costumes that I helped them to create. Alas, as the two venues are a good 30 minute drive apart from one another the only way to do both would involve missing a good chunk of both, so I opted not to be greedy and finally decided to just go listen to Harlequin.

Now normally when Harlequin plays there is a group of us who dance whilst they play--improvising dances we know from the SCA for from folk dancing to fit the music on a spur of the moment basis. Alas, most of those dancers were going to be at the Contra Dance (go figure), so I rather expected that I wouldn't get to dance, so I settled in to the couch in the front row and worked on Nålbinding instead. However, at intermission I discovered that madryn_1960 had arrived when I wasn't looking, so for the second set she, baronsnorri and I did a simple bransle before he sat down and left she and I to do a variety of other dances for the rest of the evening. Although we tried encouraging the other audience members to join us, the others all seemed to be content to simply sit and listen to the music.

One of the reasons I'd wanted especially to attend was so that I could get pictures of the band in their new costumes. So, did I remember to bring my camera? No, of course not! However, thanks to Rob & Alisa of Pendragon Hall I have a few photos to share.

( one of the band, )

( one of me dancing, )

( and one of Harry playing the moraharpa, because it is a cool instrument! )

Alas, I don't yet have a good photo of them with their costumes really showing well, but they also had a camera in use all evening, and promised me copies...

Today I went out to Pelverata to help the Band Harlequin with their new costumes. There are five band members--three lords and two ladies. The plan is to make a tunic each for the lords, and the ladies each get a white linen under-dress, and coloured over-dress. I had ever so much fun being the person directing the project. I've only ever cut things out one at a time before; single projects for me, or for one other person at a time. Today I enjoyed the non-stop adventure of making certain that each person present had a task to work on, and that no one was ever left sitting bored waiting for something to do. Fortunately, when there are that many projects to be done, it is easy to keep everyone busy!

Since medieval sewing consists of rectangles, squares and triangles assembled to fit a body, it is necessary to cut lots of straight lines. The easiest method I know of to get a straight line on linen is to remove a thread from the fabric, and then cut along the gap. So we started the day with my holding the fabric up to person #1 to decide how wide the main body-rectangle needed to be, then assign them the task of removing a single thread from the fabric at that distance from the edge. Repeat for the other two band members present (the singer is out of the country visiting family, and the drummer arrived later in the day), then set a band-member's mum to work drawing the thread for her daughter's under-dress. By this time, the first person had completed his task, so I set him to work on the next step, and even managed to pick up a task for me to work on. I was able to accomplish quite a number of tasks myself, in between getting the others set up and going on their next task.

I found it a delight to work with them because , in addition to being delightful company, once I showed them how to do a step, if the next step was similar, they often just did it, without needing to be shown what to do. Between the hours of 10:00 and 17:00 we managed to cut out all three men's tunics, one of the lady's under-dresses, and part of one of lady's over-dresses. One of the men's tunics is completely assembled and needs only the seams to be finished and the bottom hem (the neck and sleeves are already done), the second man's tunic is mostly assembled, and the third is well begun. The under-dress is mostly assembled, and the neck line for the over-dress is pretty much done.

Tomorrow we will finish up the sewing of the things well along, and cut out the over dress. (the other lady's clothes will have to wait till she is back in the country). Someday, in the not too distant future, they will have costumes as nice as their musical instruments, and I will have a hammer dulcimer. I am very much looking forward to that part!

Last weekend, as I've already mentioned, I enjoyed dancing to the music of Harlequin, a local band who makes their own Medieval Instruments and plays period music. Apparently someone in the audience had a camera!

In this video you get glimpses of myself and five friends dancing now and again as the dance carries us in front of the stage and then away again: Harlequin at Brookfield http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EthU-Zq6zwM

And in this one it is just the band, with their singer doing some dancing in front of the stage: Harlequin at Brookfield II http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDHmCiSyWQM

It has been a fun, but very full weekend! Friday night was a special session of Danceoholics Unanimous (a sub set of the Tasmanian Folk Federation who don't think that the once a month large dance is enough dancing). They normally meet on the First Friday of the month (and did this month, but I was at an SCA social night that week), but the organizer, David (the same friend we went on a serendipitous hike with recently) decided that he'd organize an extra one this month to entertain some people coming down to Tassie to do some IT work for the Wilderness Society. What a fun evening! We had about 20 people, which meant enough for either one good set for contra dances or two full squares. There were enough experienced dancers there that we were able to keep dancing pretty much non stop, with only short breaks for teaching the next dance.

Saturday I did do a bit of uni work during the day, and then we went out to enjoy a night of Medieval Music with Harlequin <http://harlequintas.googlepages.com/home>. Much more fun, and more dancing for the half a dozen of us who were confidant enough with Medieval and folk dancing to just get up and dance (we'd listen to a couple of bars, and say "I think that ____ dance fits to this one, and off we went!). I will never understand how the rest of the audience could just sit there and listen--the music makes me want to move!

Sunday some of us drove up to Launceston to the Baroness's Birthday event at the Standing Stones at the Punchbowl Reserve. I'd not been to the Standing Stones before, they are cute. No where near on the scale of Stonehenge, but they are between my height and 6.5 feet tall--a circle of eight of them, made of dolerite, a common Tasmanian fine-grained igneous rock, also called "blue stone" for its lovely bluish-grey sheen on its fresh surface, though it weathers to a dull orangish colour from the iron within it. I couldn't resist getting a boost onto one (my SCA shoes do *not* make good climbing shoes--these boots are too loose!) when the shade moved around to it, and sitting up on my perch to stitch. Only a couple of children and one other lady followed my example (and none of us were able to gain the top of a stone without assistance!).