I forgot to mention this... the feast!



Dafydd's lovely homemade raviolis.



One of the big time consumers for me this spring was my involvement with Harrowgate Heath’s Border Spat 2012 event.  Dafydd and I agreed to help Emelote execute a highly ambitious (read: slightly nuts) but very tantalizing feast for the day. The theme was Italian Renaissance.  Her plan was to serve 30 dishes (menu PDF) to celebrate the 30 years that Skraeling Althing has been a barony in the SCA.

We spent months preparing, with a huge crunch in April and the beginning of May to firm up the details, do the test cooking and pre-cooking, and get coordinated.  Then, on May 12 the day arrived and we were in Cornwall at the site and rolling.  I spent the whole day in the kitchen on my feet doing the day-of food preparation.  The day went by in a blur.  Then, at dinner time, I moved to the hall to stage the food and get it to the servers.  

The evening was certainly a learning experience for me.  Just coordinating all that food and the timing, the servers, the equipment.  It was overwhelming at first but with support from everyone I think most things came together by the end of the night.  Getting food to the hall from the kitchen, and the dirty dishes back again was agony.  I wouldn’t do that again, I think, without some more dedicated help.  It was a pain we didn’t need.

Now, all this to say, we’ve gotten nothing but praise from those who sat the feast.  From royalty to populace, everybody waddled away stuffed to the brim.  Some said it was the best feast they’ve had in a long career in the SCA.  How flattering.  I’m pleased to hear it.

We survived with most dignity intact.  Excellent!

#occupydungeon



God love the Brits.

 The dustbunnies are occupying my dungeon.

In other news, I was staring at my well picture on the right.  I sort of feel like that right now—that I’m sitting in the bottom of a well in darkness looking up at what feels like a mountain of work I would need to do to scratch the surface of my A-S projects.

If you’ve been reading my LiveJournal, you’ll know from my post today exactly what I’ve been up to that’s keeping me from spending time in my beloved dungeon.  And although I love the sunny weather, it’s also not conducive for me to be productive at the sewing table.

In the meanwhile, I have dusted off my interest in persona research with some renewed energy.  It’s been really slow at work and since it’s mostly online research it lends itself well to filling my days.  Sorry that your taxpayer dollars are being diverted for it.  Forgive me?  J

I want to do a shout out here to the folks behind the scenes at British History Online and the British archives online.  CANADA’S SYSTEM SUCKS COMPARED TO YOURS.  I’m sorry to be so direct, but it’s true.  I am totally in love with the depth of knowledge I can tap that’s totally open source.  Why can’t we get organized like this??!  Come on, Canada!!  And we don’t even have the copious amounts sheer data and centuries of knowledge to catalogue!  *humph*   Anyway, if you’re interested in British history, I urge you to check out their archives.

I’m finding so many interesting little nuggets of info there that I’m starting to get a really good sense of the kind of detailed persona bio I can develop from it.  I think I might do up a paper for fun when I’m finished.  Is that the kind of thing people want to see in an A-S display?

Projects list update:  check out my Works in Progress page.

Getting back into the spring of things...

(My loom looks a lot like this one.)

It's been quite a while since I posted here... but then, it's been quite a while since I've worked on some A&S.

In the last few weeks, when I've been able to sneak in the time, I've started revisiting my fighter pants FINALLY.  Also, I've been working on improving the simple inkle loom that Emelote picked up for me at Pennsic.  It looks a lot like this:

It was roughly made, so I've been sanding it down and smoothing out the lines.  I also picked up some stains to experiment with and I intend on staining the wood and protecting it.  I got some good advice on which products to use so that helps.  I hope it will look great when I'm done, and be infinitely nicer to work with.  Of course, I don't really have an inkle loom project in mind, but I'm still learning so I'll probably just experiment.  I aim to have it finished for the weekend's trek to Late Winter Shoot.

In other news, hooray for spring and shaking off the yoke of winter once again.  I can feel the earth coming alive, and I think it's giving me energy.  (More on that on my LiveJournal).