***Wavey "time travelling into the future" visuals***

Principalities of Lochac; one in the South, one in the North, one in the West and the later ones; the Central Eastern seaboard of The Big Bit and the Principality of the Far Eastern Isles.

All the groups are in a neat administrative hierarchy; the canton officers report to their Barony officers, the Barony and Shire officers report to the Principality officers and the Kingdom officers aggregate the reports of the Principality officers into nice, fat reports.

Coronet tourneys for each Principality sometimes clash, but that's not a problem for the combatants. The investitures are staged the following day -- the idea of delaying them for a stand-alone occasion was found to be inconvenient because it meant that reign changing took up too many weekends *and* that fewer people attended the investiture events. Analysis posited that the reason for this was that people with a special kinship to the one assuming reign numbered less than people with a special kinship to a coronet challenger who *might* win. So despite a solid base of loyal locals, the number of people prepared to travel when the person they had special kinship with had not won coronet... this is just historical conjecture, really, but the system as it stands works in the majority of places.

The Principalities have had another curious effect -- by reducing the sense of obligation for the King and Queen to be insanely generous with their time and personal resources (in that the Princes and Princesses can handle some pressures and provide "emergency cover" in case the King or Queen have a family crisis) more people contend for Crown. The rotation of "the Usual Suspects" in reigning (as happened very late in the piece) was short circuited when more fighters realised they could do justice to the Kingdom travel expectations (as opposed to "requirements") if they won Crown*. A lot of fighters focussed on improving their combat to compete for Coronet, and after a few seasons of training and tourney fighting and getting their head around the logistics involved in reigning in a Principality (whether winning Coronet or not), noticed that they were off a class and in a position to challenge for Crown.

Reflecting on the combat and officers, I realise how I am taking for granted the event organising people and the impact that the Principalities have on A&S endeavours. I remember waaay back when I started playing SCA, I used to pore over online photos of the abundance of amazing things that were displayed for approbation at events on other continents. I would then attend local events with A&S competitions of even Kingdom levels, and wonder at the lack of entries. I'm not sure whether it was the inspiration of local Royalty, the cross pollination of skills and ideas (and meterials) between groups, the formal classes, the competitive nature of A&S points counting in Wars and the like or what, but something changed for the better in the years since the Principalities started to come together.

I like the way things work now -- Rowany Festival has the Great War between the Principalities as a regular thing and it is splendid to behold. The Principalities camp in league with each other and share resources, and each Principality has its own major camping event held on an approximately rotating basis, which is attended by their own and by wayfarers who use the wide area aggregation and reciprocation ideas to cover transport and accommodation issues.

It took a lot of careful planning, trial runs and hard work to get here, but I'm grateful to everyone who had a hand in it, and I think everyone agrees that it was worth it to arrive at something this awesome that Just Works. :)


*All moot now that we have our flying cars, of course, but it was a very real obstacle to contending for Crown at the time.

I adore both of these songs, but in my head, they duel.

One choir sings a section of their song, the pauses to hear the rebuttal from the opposing choir, taking it in turns until the vehemence reaches a level at which they are both singing simultaneously with intensifying stridency, blending, clashing with passionate (dis)harmony in their battle over whether I should weep or be joyful.

( cut for embedded youtube thingoes )

There are so many recordings of choral performances in youtube that I am having a fair bit of success in finding SCA related songs to "learn by singalong". I am more confident that I'm not inadvertently learning the wrong version now that I can more or less tell whether the song as sung complies with the sheet music I've obtained from SCA songbook sources. :)

Bless me LiveJournal friends for I have sinned.

It has been ....nowhere near long enough since my last confession.

I stopped in at an op shop on the way home and though I missed out on the fabulous sideboard I wanted, I did buy:

2.5m of a soft, heavy fawn/cream houndstoothish wool blend.

2.5m woven dark brown, cream and grey with one band of stripes in those colours plus fawn and russet. It rather reminds me of 1970's waiting room furniture, but has potential become something a little more interesting than a plain version of the same fabric. Burns to nothing. Might be all wool.

4m of a light brown/cream wool blend with speckles of chocolate, cream and russet. Again I'm having flashbacks to an old sofa I owned. A little hard in the hand, but I'll see how it washes up before working out what it might be used for.

2m of a green/cream wool blend with speckles of cream, russet and a dark yellow.

3-4m (possibly four yards?) each of a deep green and a burgundy synthetic velvet.

Also, 5m of lightweight and very white cotton canvas - it has the composition written on it on one corner as often happens to samples.

I'm weak. I can't resist the temptation of cheap fabric being all seductive at me. I have a problem. (Not enough room in the house.)


Maybe my pennance should be to, you know, sew something?

I was making a side gore viking apron dress for one of my girls, and had cut it out when Asfridh pointed this interesting front pleated arrangement to me. So the extra fabric at the back is now extra fabric at the front, the gores will stay and I will put the silk border on the upper edge.

I have a deep teal silk scarf that I've not been able to bring myself to donate to charity for about five years, yet never use. It may make its way into use as part of this garment. I know I have some purple silk dupion, but I'll have to see whether it will abide with the purple wool fabric I'm using.

Interesting that the front is higher than the back - the dress is quite long, so I'll just snip a strip off the back to get the appropriate difference, I think.

I'm going for the look rather than a correct redaction, but my objective is to use the pleats to provide an adjustable girth in this garment. I was going to put them in the back, under the sewn-on strap, but the style in the link offers a more authentic way to get the same function. :)

The bleak weather of the last few days has scared away the garage sales. There were not many, and there was nothing particularly exciting. Except a beautiful shell. A few metres of some attractive kind flannel fabric. Some new (new) clothes and shoes for the girls. A tub of horse shoes for a friend.

The girls bought another board game (it's okay, they do play with them and there is room to store them), an orientalesque pink silk painted parasol (which I hope will become bedroom decor where I will not see it) and another tiny plush toy rodent of some species I cannot identify.

I'm sleepy to the point of tingling and dizziness and I'd like to spend the day sewing in front of some catch-up viewing of doccos and TV series I've missed. I have cut out a viking apron dress for Splash. It's in a rather splendid purple wool twill, quite long with a deep hem and a couple of pleats in the back to allow for growth.  I need to run it together, but I can't foresee the next occasion she'd be in garb, so there's no real rush. her class have a slab of school time seta aside to work on an art/craft project later in the year, and she's planning to make garb then. I heartily endorse this idea. :)

Today's plaid flannel has the allure of being new to me and I feel inspired to make it into bogan tunics. It is prediminantly white with blue, olive green, salmon, fawn and black making the plaid pattern. It is a fairly soft look and will be exceedingly comfy for the girls to wear. Medieval jammies, perhaps? Anyway, I'm in a mood to chop-rip-measure-stitch my heart out.

But tomorrow is the official family party for Dune's birthday, so I probably should work on hiding signs of productivity in favour of creating the illusion that I have no need or desire to be productive, and in fact have domestic servants keeping the place in good order. Hmm.

Da Vinci's Mechanical Lion Brought To Life After 500 years

The comment thread cracks me up even more than the Spielberg jibe at the end of the article.

I was hoping to find furniture again, but the garage sale gods just laughed at me today. My girls spent $2.70 and bought a mauve purse (which was actually needed, and a good practical buy), a tiny, elegant soft toy of a Black Cockatoo (which is not needed but of which I approve) and a resin Tasmanian Devil (which I'm less keen on, though it is a good representation).

At the request of my birthday-girl, I bought a silly fake tubular fish tank which lights up and blows bubbles. We have yet to fill it with water and set it up, but ever since we've come home she's been going through her toys, working out which ones will fit into the tube, which are likely to float, which will be damaged by water etcetera. I am giggling as I type because so far the "let's give this a try" heap includes a tiny My Little Pony, R2D2 and CP30, a Kelly doll, a bunch of those little plastic farm animals and a stretchy rubber tarantula. *snarfle* 

Edit: Now she's asking whether we can dye the water bright green and find some small toy brains to keep in it. (I'm just bursting with pride!)

The only other interesting garage sale was one of the kind I wish I'd been at earlier. There were desirable items here and there with "sold" stickers on them, and gaps indicating the departure of unknown treasures. I bought two mystery boxes of fabric (which I am still to explore and sort out properly) some kind of tapestry frame and some leather. I'm not short of fabric and craft supplies, but A quick peek into the boxes showed useful lengths of good wool. Hmm. I'm going to stop typing and start burn-testing. :)

Edited to record what I scored:
Three or four metres of wide wool/cotton in light brown. Yay! New light-weight camping/work dress for Celsa!
Two metres of wide wide natural coloured wool blend of the kind used for baby blankets.
A metre of black pure wool, felted and a couple of smaller pieces of superb soft pure wool. Wah! I want metres and metres of them!
Two and a half yards (as written on the tag) of wide eye-gougingly red fuzzy wool.
Miles and miles of different plain coloured vintage cotton fabric.
A bunch of small quilting type printed cotton.
A small stack of synthetics to donate to after school care crafts.

I have been looking for a specific couple of pieces of furniture at garage sales lately, but today brought no success on that front.

I did get a few nifty things: a couple of vintage hat pins. A silver thimble. A little awl. A tidy little wooden plate for my feasting gear trunk. A groovy old drinking glass with a pounds/shillings/pence to dollars and cents conversion table printed on the side. A couple of pieces of fabric - a couple of metres each of light wool and heavy linen. Three nice mineral samples - two amethyst crystal fields and a slice of agate. All that at one sale for the princely sum of ten dollars. 

I Googled and found that the thimble, judging from the hallmarks, was made in the 1890's. It has a sort of daisy pattern over most of it. It is tarnished nearly black, but will be a very pretty thing once I clean it.

I also picked up a towel drying rack as my much used large clothes drying rack is threatening to break. Um...what else? A very fine chain dog leash for Maggie, who is inclined to chew through a regular leash. And another little fibreglass bow for a dollar.

The littler girls bought a board game and a particularly nice fairy costume. Splash bought a rug for her bedroom floor (which invites hope that she may be planning to find her bedroom floor) and a fantasy novel. I'm so pleased that they have stopped coveting the real junk at garage sales - an effect I gratefully report flows on into retail, too. They are unexcited by most of the shiny plastic crap in the shops now.  My evil plan is working!

I keep having the impulse to cultivate the capacity to set up a kind of Inn. Not a tavern, but... a B&B of the non-pointy-hat variety. I have the idea that while many people in the SCA have grown into a capacity or preference to stay in splendid medieval tents or off-site lodging at camping events, there are likely to be people for whom the issue of accommodation is a barrier to attendance.

If an inn style of accommodation consisting of a) a big tent with lots of ticking/straw mattresses and some privacy screens and / or b) a handful of smaller tents set up in a bunch, also with mattresses were available, would more people come along? If people could book a mattress and specify whether they would require blankets and so forth, they could travel light and in some cases be more autonomous. Would that be appealing to anyone except ...me?

My ideal set up would require there to be a largish camping event of at least two nights duration. I'd have three or five smaller tents and a much larger central tent. Ideally, I would have enough of the smaller tents to accommodate all who want them so that the large tent can be used as a communal living area and place to prepare breakfast. Last minute overflow bookings could be offered the option of sleeping on the floor of the main tent, but that space would be occupied by benches and stools if sitting inside proves comfortable.

The complexity and authenticity of the breakfast would vary wildly depending on everything from dietary restrictions to fire restrictions to the tone of the event. Provision of cooking cleaning and safety gear would be part of the Inn concept. Fruit and nuts go without saying. Cold options could include mundane cereal, bread/spreads (with breakfast beer optional *wink* ). If a cooking fire or alternative is available, then anything goes depending on what people want and who is prepared to cook it:  Bacon, pancakes, eggs however, soups, porridge, waffles, scones, damper, lunch, cheeses, more fruit, afternoon tea and a glass of port before bed.

Yep. The whole of a washed-out event could be spent lounging in the dry (I'd hope) interior of the big tent and a good time still be had by all. *grin*

I don't have the time to get this working at the moment, or in the foreseeable future, but I've been thinking about it for a year or so and given the right circumstances and the right team, it still seems like it could work ... and might be really nifty, convenient and fun. And the think I keep coming back to is that it is modular - the tents and seats are useful of themselves, the cooking gear, too. Bulk mattress covers are about the only thing I can't think of an existing use for. 

I suppose you could say that it is on my "maybe one day" list. *sigh*

The Bal d'Argent was a gorgeous event. I arrived late and left early, but in the intervening couple of hours I admired the decorations, and everyones lovely garb, danced, lounged, chatted, snacked on tarts and marzipan fruits from the sumptuous buffet and drank cordials and mulled wine. 

Ooh - shiny! Segway Jousting!

Supportive garment notes ( cut for minor wardrobe malfunction )

I pulled my foofy blue gown apart in preparation for putting it together using rather less safety pins and of course did not spend nearly as much time as I'd planned on it. Now I'm sewing it back together, hopefully to have it wearable in time for Bal d'Argent. Oh well. I still have the safety pins. :-P

I'm working on a gown for Midwinter. Yes, I know that was weeks ago, and yes, I did wear it but it was very unfinished. I spent half the morning pulling safety pins out of it, as that was what was holding much of it together.

As it is a new style for me and would take a lot of experimentation, adjustment and mucking about, I did not want to use "good" fabric. I did want to be able to wear it to Midwinter and similar "high court" events. So I hacked into the synthetic double velvet I bought a couple of years ago before I developed a preference for natural fibres. It is very, very blue and is plush and soft and ...plastic. But what else was I going to use it for, hey? ;-)

I love that I have an evolving experimental subject that I can wear in different iterations, and if I kill it, I won't have the woe of having compromised "good" fabric. I will just have to confine myself to wearing it where it will not catch on fire.

Anyway, it is blue. And velvet. And I've largely disassembled it so that I can put it together better. And amuse myself by lining the sleeves with some utterly amazingly eye-gougingly shiny fabric. *gigglesnort* Hey, if I'm attempting a plastic-fantastic stash-depletion effort, I might as well go all out!

Really, though, I am thinking of this garment as a wearable sampler.

In the long term, I plan to look at some embroidery options. Adding appliquéd guards might happen. I have lots of beads I could maybe sew on here and there. I'm sure I will think up other things to try.

The sleeve style will change because there seem to be quite a range. Some changes are quite subtle, some are pretty drastic and will require me to use yet more of the velvet, but that's okay. Better than leaving it sit in my stash. :-)

I expect there will be much learning about foofy, white sleeve bits and messing about with underskirtage, camicas and so forth. I've already had to take the bodice in due to weight loss, and I hope this will become a recurring theme. I've snipped and re-sewn the bodice today to change the way it sits on the shoulder - maybe it won't fall off any more? Now I'm looking at devising sturdy but movable closures. Side closures are hidden under enormous sleeves, so rings and ribbon will likely suffice until I decide to try something else.

I can confidently say that people from the Suth region will get pretty used to seeing me in my foofy blue sampler at indoor events. 

Garage sales today were not numerous. It was sunny but there was a fresh wind and so cold that my face would burn each time I got back into the relative warmth of my car. 

I look forward to snow some time in the next month, but I have a conflicting sensation -- one of foreboding and dismay -- telling me that Spring is here. It is waaaay too early for Spring. If it is Spring now, it is just too long until next Winter. Earlier in the season I noticed with unease that my guess for the months ahead was that the rainfall would be so low that it would suck the landscape not only dry, but inside-out. I have been so relieved with every bit of rain we've had -- I guessed wrong! I guessed wrong! But the strong impression that Spring is here has me uneasy again. More so. I hope I am wrong, and that we get miserable weeks of rain, rain, hail, snow, rain and more rain.

I want the farmers of the Western District to have occasion to use the colourful descriptions I recall from my youth: "It'd bog a duck", "Have to send the dog out in a boat to get the cows if it gets any wetter", "Cows need snorkels to graze", "Won't see the tractor 'til Spring, now", "Fed out the hay, but it sank". I know that excessive wet weather is miserable and increases livestock mortality, but it used to be par for the course, ever few years or so there'd be a really wet year, and I beleve that the catchments and soil water profiles could really use one. And the land-use planning people might benefit from a reminder of why certain sections of land were originally marked as "floodplain" when they were surveyed. And for those people who have homes on what was formerly wetland; I'd hope the houses are securely moored.

That aside, today at the garage sales, I would have liked to bring home the box trailer and pony jinker, but all I got was about a bucket full of assorted pretty tea-light candle sets of the kind that people give as gifts, 2.5 metres of blanket wool (natural/off white) a tiny soprano recorder, a basket full of unused flannelette in a variety of baby prints and a big, gorgeous pottery vase; mostly blue with fine gold brushwork. I nearly have enough vases now.

Yesterday I went to the Lincraft sale and bought not one thing.

This morning I went back and bought some very lightweight fake fur. Black. The sheen of the lay of the fur has a pattern to it such that it looks like many small furs sewn together, so... plausibly mink-ish. It is the lightest weight I can find for lining a cote or houppelande. I want to see what it feels like to wear something fur-ish lined that is a little more fitted than my Grendel coat. Kind of squooshy, I imagine.

I looked at the linen, but it was a linen/cotton blend and they had no white. I'm really only in the market for white pure linen, so even though I did drool over the implausibly-brightly-coloured coloured linen/cotton, I left it.

Then I visited my sister for coffee and gossip.

Then I stopped in an op-shop on the way home... and bought eight 1.5m lengths of linen/cotton in eight different colours. I don't quite know what they are good for, but at a dollar a piece, I could not resist. *sigh*

Resistance is... ah I give up.

Does anyone have any suggestions what to make out of 150cm lenghts of brightly coloured linen/cotton?

I've been reading the 12th Century Garb mailing list and in a discussion about bliauts, I've just worked out that the vertical slit at the neckline of early period tunics can serve as a gore-less gore in the top of a garment.

I know that the fabric for a more fitted style is cut to fit the narrowest horizontal dimension of the intended wearer, then gores are added below the waist to make up the necessary increase in width where the hips flare out. Above the waist, there are underarm gussets which serve as gores to allow for the broadening of the ribcage toward the shoulder, and to some extent, to provide the shaping to accommodate the bust.

I have one tunic (ironically made as "guy-garb" for myself) made of a blue wool which has a simple small neck hole with a vertical slit at the front, as is customary. When I wear this garment, however, the slit stretches open to resemble a "v" neck, and (when I am heavier than I am now) my breasts gravitate upward into the region of additional space! I've always thought that this was a construction flaw, albeit a kind of nifty one.

Now, though, I am thinking that this might be a key to making garb that is at least a tad supportive. I don't have the figure to make a supportive bliaut style garment that is really firm enough to both hold my bosom up and be flattering but, for now, I will experiment with making tunics which augment, rather than oppose, the effect of a mundane bra. 



On a completely different subject, does anyone want to come on a pub crawl with me? I want to have pints all over the world! Hee!

I left the house barefoot today when I went to drop my children off at school. I was making my way home via a few errands when I saw a rather nice floor loom and accessories perched seductively in the window of an antique shop, so I stopped to take a closer look. I talked to the proprietor about the loom for a few minutes, then she stopped mid sentence, exclaimed that I was not wearing shoes and told me that I could not be in her shop in bare feet.

I tilted my head enquiringly and raised an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation or justification for her startling declaration, but she just put on what I can only imagine is her "unfortunately those clothes do make your bum look big" face and said "And... it's not a good look." she shook her head slowly at my 'fashion faux pas'.

I pointed out to her that discrimination was not a good look either, and that if she wished to exclude barefoot people she might like to post a sign at the door. She started to argue, repeating her belief that it just does not look good, so I made some restrained if anatomically unlikely suggestions and flounced. 

You hear your six year old crooning a familiar tune as she plays in the bath. You try to make out the words so you can place the song, you hear "...bene psalite el li ... bene psalite el li in vo-cif-er-a-ti-o-o-ne..."

Then you join in and your other children also start singing along... "in vo-cif-er-a-ti-o-o-ne... in vo-cif-er-a-ti-o  -  o  -  o -  o  -  o  -  ne..."


So.

YKYAITSCAW your children learn medieval(ish) Latin songs by osmosis. *sigh*

Damn sinus infection. It's a vigorous one - sore throat, headache, fever, aches and pains blah blah blah *cough splutter*

This is seriously interfering with my functionality.


WARNING: Gratuitous overuse of the word "Crap" in the following sentence:
I feel like crap, and I feel crapper for the fact that my crapness is making things I am trying to get done for midwinter either unlikely to happen, or likely to be crap. 

I have antibiotics. I've been taking them for nearly 24 hours. I hope to wake up tomorrow feeling less bleah.

I just bought more fabric. The op-shop called to me! (I was not putting off studying. No.)

1.3m really spanky dense, even white linen. Wide. Use: More structured style of headgear? Embroidery?

2m pale blue-aqua cotton musilin. Very narrow. Use: Nice veil-ish thing for eldest daughter?

3.5m fine black (After burning, I'm guessing close to 100%) wool felt. Wide. Use: Um... warm somethingorother?

3.5 m off-white dupion silk. Narrow. Use: No idea, but it sure is nifty. I was dubious about getting it as it could as easily have been polyester, but I set a snippet on fire and it ...ain't no synthetic!

2m wide chocolate brown wool blend. Fine and soft, suit weight, I think it'd be called. Use:  Pants! (maybe)

I also got an unmanageably vast expanse of pleasingly tie-dyed cotton to use for entirely boring interior decoration purposes.

Hrm. Oh well. My stash is fed, so I guess I should go and study some more.

Edited to forestall more "do without" comments: 
I'm not interested in "back in my day we didn't have those new fangled things / they should not be at events because they are not period" crap, either, in a society where discreet camera-use is condoned.
Being uncontactable is not an option for some people under some circumstances but this should not exclude them from participation in the SCA any more than having a pacemaker or carrying an epi-pen.

At SCA events, people carry their phones around with them, in a pouch, tucked into their garb... people carry them, and sometimes forget to set them to silent. We have all have or hear anecdotes about mobile phones going off at inopportune moments.

I tend to put my mobile phone in my basket, set to silent. I often only remember to check it as I am packing up to leave.

I've had a pie-in-the-sky thought which is unlikely to be practical under most circumstances, but which might provide a solution to the problem under some circumstances.

In some situations, people might be prepared to check their phones at a 'messenger station' situated where there is good mobile reception. Someone would mind the phones (which would be kept secure and neatly tagged) at all times, and when a phone rang they would send a herald/messenger to the owner of the phone to tell them that a message had come for them. In this day and age, people are accustomed to calling people, not getting an answer but getting called back. The inconvenience to the caller is no greater than if the person they are calling were driving on the freeway and had to find somewhere to pull over to return their call.

Upshot: no untimely ring-tones. Assured mobile coverage for the phone if the event is down the hill in a mobile-signal blind spot. Shifts of heraldic messengers running hither and yon hailing Lord or Lady Such...

Anyway. Just an idea.