How things stand, mid-April

I enjoyed both Spring Coronation and Night in the Port. The latter was the Barony of Lochmere's annual rapier event as well as its Baronial Investiture. Laydes Fayre performed four vocal selections before the afternoon Great Court, and five of us Laydes performed an instrumental processional for the Last Court of the outgoing Baron and Baroness.

Yesterday I finished up and sent out the April baronial newsletter -- eight days late, unfortunately, but still better than my performance in March. This time last year I fell WAY behind, but my mundane-work-for-pay schedule was different.

Before I get any further, I should probably explain that I have several different "threads" of SCA activities going on, more or less simultaneously (or ebbing and flowing).

First of all: service. I'm serving as baronial chronicler. I'm Sea Tyger Pursuivant, the deputy senior herald in charge of education (though whether or not we'll have a University of Atlantia session in June is still up in the air). Those obligations aren't going away.

Second: Lithuanian studies. Often I shove this topic onto the back burner because so much else is going on in my life. However, I have a few goals in this area: schedule another Slavic Interest Group meetup for Pennsic 53, start working on a display or class about women in the medieval Baltic region, and maybe even start a website for SCA resources about the Baltic region.

Third: dance and music. I participate in the local dance group almost every Monday, even when my feet are hurting. I would really like to get back into instrumental music, because there will come a time when I am just too old and physically messed up to dance. I play soprano recorder and am trying to learn alto recorder (different fingering). I can also contribute percussion if necessary.

Fourth: weaving. I'd put my inkle loom aside for a while, but last Pennsic I took a class in Baltic pick-up weaving, and I love it. I'm slow at it, but I don't care. For once I am doing a craft that feels authentically aligned with my persona! I'm keeping a Flickr album of my work so far. I'm hoping to get as much done on the second band (gold design on a brown background) as possible before Storvik Novice Tournament on the last weekend in April, so that I can enter it into the competition A&S display there.

Fifth: Everything else ... making garb, fixing garb, knitting, making lucet cord and kumihimo braids, wire weaving, writing pysanky (called marguciai in Lithuanian), and doing all the other things I've tried over the past two decades.

Lessons Learned: Defending the Gate and Performer's Revel

(Before I get going on the weekend event wrap-up, let me just state that the missing cat came home. Now all three of my landlord and landlady's cats are sporting collars with Airtags.)

Now ...  on to the wrap-up of the end of the month. I've done a lot of things in the SCA, but never before had I gone to two separate events in one weekend. But now I've done just that: Defending the Gate in the Barony of Stierbach and Performer's Revel in my own Barony of Storvik.

Stierbach's Canton of Sudentorre actually runs Defending the Gate as its annual signature event in early spring. The fighters build some sort of temporary "gate" structure and the heavy fighting scenarios revolve around it. That's about all I know about the fighting. I've never been a fighter. At the evening feast, the servers hail from the Renaissance Club at the nearby University of Mary Washington, and any tips they collect go toward the club's activities. Personally, I think this is a great idea; I think more colleges should have such clubs that collaborate with the local SCA, given that most institutions of higher education these days make it tough for outside organizations to get a foothold on campus.

The thing I want to remember for next year is: Prepare for the WEATHER. The main building where food was served and court was held is UNHEATED. The day was sunny, but the site, so far away from the modern urban heat island, was chillier than I'd expected. I should have brought a warmer hat, fingerless gloves (for playing my recorder), and my wool hood. Really, I need at least one plain wool dress with long sleeves. As much as I fuss about having the right garb for hot-weather events like Pennsic, I really need to keep in mind that sometimes events are cold.

The Performer's Revel* was cozy as always, even though it took place in a community center gym. I danced, played my recorder, and did some drumming. So, yeah, I performed! A few of our regular attendees were away on a cruise, but maybe they will be able to come next year.

Next up on Lady Patricia's progress is Spring Coronation, also in Stierbach. (Impressive that that barony is holding two events one week apart!) Per the request of the incoming Royals, each barony will be given a display table so that people can make a pilgrimage through the Kingdom by visiting the tables. I've stepped up to organize Storvik's table, largely because no one else wanted to do it. I hope to have some photos to show for it in future entries (however, I haven't yet downloaded this weekend's photos off my DSLR, so don't hold your breath).

* I think the event should be called "Performers' Revel," but people keep spelling it "Performer's Revel," so I'm just going along with it. 

Giving thanks

I've been busy with non-SCA things for a couple of months, but of course "my medieval life" is never far from my mind. Let me summarize things here on Thanksgiving Day.

First of all, service. A few months ago, I took over the role of baronial chronicler. The previous chronicler had been doing the job for seven or eight years. Guess I'm stuck with it for a while. 😃 It's really not that difficult for someone who has been writing and editing for a long, long time. The two hardest things are (a) remembering to get going on the next issue and (b) making the notes of the last baronial business meeting sound coherent.

My other piece of general service is my role as Sea Tyger Pursuivant -- the "heraldic education deputy" for the College of Heralds and Scribes of Atlantia. (I don't do the scribal education part, though.) My task over the next couple of weeks is to contact some people and convince them to teach heraldry classes at the next University of Atlantia session, which is completely online. That session also the weekend after a virtual Known World Heralds and Scribes Symposium; I guess we'll be having those every winter now, because not everyone can get to the summer sessions in person.

And now for A&S...

I am still a member of Laydes Fayre and enjoying it. At one of our rehearsals in September, we held a mini-shower for a member who was expecting a baby. She gave birth, right on her due date, to a healthy baby boy named Declan. We'll also have a cookie exchange at our December rehearsal.

Several of us Laydes who also play instruments have formed an ad hoc mini-consort to perform at an upcoming event called Highland Hearthglow. The Barony of Highland Foorde (the whole northwestern region of Maryland) is holding a cozy day-long banquet event at a lodge in Thurmont that is usually affordable to the wedding-industrial complex. It sounds very posh in a 14th-century, High Middle Ages sort of way. Our mini-consort will be performing several pieces that are NOT dance music. I am no expert, but in general these pieces are slower and easier to play than most of the dance music of the era. You just have to watch out for a few weird bits like occasional irregularities in the time signatures. I think we will sound great together. (Incidentally, I'm playing the soprano recorder. No way do I know enough ukulele for this. I've really put the uke on the back burner with all my mundane work lately. I should really get back into it.)

(Also, the whole Laydes Fayre group will perform at both Hearthglow and Lochmere's Midwinter's Revel. One of the pieces we're rehearsing is called "Ave Maris Stella," which I believe means "Hail the Star of the Sea.")

Of course I am still a member of Three Left Feet. We still rehearse on Monday nights during Storvik fighter practice. I went to a couple of dances at Pennsic 51 (since I helped publicize them, after all). Pennsic wasn't even my biggest dance event of the year; that would be the Known World Music and Dance Symposium, held just outside Indianapolis at the fairgrounds where the SCA 50-Year event took place in 2016. It was a long drive, but I'm glad I went.

With all this musical stuff going on, it's not surprising that I haven't done other A&S stuff lately. At least I've finally hit a holiday lull in my mundane work, so I can pick up a needle and thread again. I have some mending projects to do and a linen chemise that I started sewing two years ago. Plus, I would like to make at least one totally new dress. To that end, I picked up a bin full of really nice fabric -- mostly linen and wool -- from the estate of the late Dame Brenna, who was quite the fabric hoarder in her lifetime. My non-SCA partner is annoyed that I acquired a bunch of fabric when I don't have much storage space, so I'll have to figure out some place to put my new stash until it gets sewn. I'm thankful that I received a copy of The Medieval Tailor's Assistant (2nd edition) for my most recent birthday; it will certainly help with all that sewing!

One final thing I am doing: I am knitting myself a pair of socks. Nothing special or SCA-accurate. Just a pair of socks, because I have not knitted socks in several years.

Back again, finally!

Yes, I know it has been a year and a half since I updated this blog.  You probably thought that this humble site had fallen by the wayside like hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of similarly abandoned blogs. But I'm bringing it back from the dead!

First, let me explain what I've been doing over this time gap.

In 2016, I attended only six SCA events. Technically, that was the same number I attended in 2015. At least in 2015, however, I managed to go to War of the Wings X (also known as WoW) down in North Carolina. I'd been to WoW once before just for the weekend, but for the 10th annual event I was able to stay for the whole thing. Those October nights got COLD. I was playing in the dance band for the Saturday night ball in the unheated castle, and as the night dragged on I was making more and more mistakes on my recorder because my fingers were stiffening. The band quit playing at the exact moment we said we would stop -- 10 p.m., if I recall correctly -- and we made it clear that the dancers would have to provide their own Bard in a Box from that time forward. We also suggested that space heaters might be nice for future wars.

Last year, I went to only weekend events ... no Pennsic, no WoW, not even Ruby Joust on Memorial Day weekend (the Joust typically attracts about 850 attendees). Instead, I spent a lot of my energy in late 2015 and the first half of 2016 preparing for something else entirely: Šokių Šventė 2016, the huge international Lithuanian folk-dance festival.

I'd heard of the quadrennial Šokiu Šventė before -- it was in Boston in 2012 -- but circumstances did not allow me to travel all the way up there just to watch an afternoon of dance. Watching the energetic young dancers at the annual Baltimore Lithuanian festival each spring for the last 10 years or so got me interested in the subject of Lithuanian folk dance. When I first heard that Malūnas, the Baltimore-based dance group, was starting a second group for "senior" (i.e., over age 35!) dancers, I was busy (that was in the fall of 2014). But in the fall of 2015, with the prospect of participating in the Baltimore Šventė looming, I took the plunge.

To be continued....

Post-Pennsic Post

Yeah, I like alliteration. :-)

I spent last week at Pennsic 41 (the second half of the event). Of course I had a fabulous time despite the periodic bursts of wind and rain. My "modern" canvas tent, which may be as much as 35 years old, held up like a champ.

The Slavic Interest Group (SIG) meeting is always one of the highlights of Pennsic for me. Some of my SIG friends were missing -- either they didn't get to War or they were off doing something else -- but it was a pleasure to chat with newer folks, and a happy surprise to find out that one or two of them remembered my past classes on Lithuania. We shared snacks and booze (*smile*) and left with tentative plans to have another Slavic University in central Pennsylvania, perhaps sometime next year.

I also took an afternoon class on basic inkle weaving and even bought myself a small inkle loom. I really want to practice good, consistent weaving with constant tension. Also, I suspect that an inkle loom will be the perfect platform for me to practice the kind of pick-up weaving that I see in Lithuanian woven bands. However, I've got to learn the basics thoroughly first.

Finally -- and this has nothing to do with Pennsic -- back in July there was a Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival in Boston. Wow, I would have loved to attend it, at least as a spectator. I want to peruse the website more, but I'm just posting it here as a placeholder now. So many interests, so little time....