another cosy event
The SCA shire of Reengarda (Skellefteå area in northern Sweden) held its annual spring event this weekend. We went, of course, and once again found it to be a delightful event. The site they use is a small old school building. Downstairs there is a kitchen and small dining area/public place, some showers and a sauna. Up stairs there are a couple of rooms with bunk beds in them, and on another floor half way up from the upstairs floor is a small gym.
This year, as usual, site opened on Friday evening, and they had a simple dinner available from 19:00. We got there about thirty minutes thereafter, and unloaded the car and claimed our bunks before heading to the hall to be sociable with people (and let lord_kjar eat something. I, of course, wasn't hungry that late in the evening). I did my yoga and was considering heading to sleep, when some of us started singing, so I stayed up for a while. But then the singing broke up as some wanted to go to bed and others wanted to head outside to the hot tub, so I opted to get some sleep, crawling into bed before 23:00.
However, after only a bit more than an hour's nap I woke up again, so I wandered downstairs to find a few people sitting around a table alternating between singing songs and conversation, so, of course, I joined them. This broke up a bit after 02:00, so I went back to sleep.
Saturday morning was a leisurely breakfast and conversation, after which several of us went for a walk, enjoying the lovely weather--it was around -13 C--the first decent weather since I got back from Australia, weeks ago. So nice not to have above zero temps and melting. Sadly, the lull was brief, and by the time the weekend was over we were back up to the temps flitting back and forth across 0.
After the walk, since I was dressed warmly in wool tunic, coat, and trousers + fur hood and muff, I opted to stay outside and join the workshop in how to throw basic sword blows. There was quite a large group of interested new people, plus a couple who, like me, have done this before, but haven't been in armour in ages. It was fun to do again--seeing the Nordmark Coronet the other weekend reminded me that I actually enjoy SCA combat, and swinging a stick again reminds me that it is fun. It will be interesting to see if those of us who talked about getting some regular unarmoured SCA fighting practice going in Luleå actually pull it off. If I am doing unarmoured training regularly I will be more interested in also putting on armour...
The class ended when it was time for the tournament to begin, and when they asked for someone to keep the records for the tourney I said yes. They said I needed to find pen and paper, and I started to walk to the hall, and then realized that I didn't need any such thing--I have a phone! The tournament was one of the North of Nordmark 500 series of tournaments. These are done in a bear pit style, with the fighters standing in a line waiting their turn. The first two in line begin the tourney, and as soon as one of them is defeated he or she leaves the field, reports to the person keeping track who it was who killed them, and gets in line at the end. Meanwhile the next person in line has moved onto the field to face the one who survived the last bout. Injuries are kept until death, but go away as soon as the fighter gets back in line. The tournament runs till one of the fighter gets 25 victories.
It was fun being the record keeper. We had seven fighters in the list, and one was clearly having a better day than the others. I saw him only four times, and each time he had fought quite a few fights before being killed and having to get back in line. Twice he managed to hold the field through all six other fighters before one managed to take him out. Needless to say, he was the one to reach 25 first. After him were three fighters who all were doing about the same--one had 9 wins, one 10, and the other 11. The remaining three fighters had 0, 1 and 2 wins. All I had time to record was the name of the victor (simple roman numeral tally marks next to the names), but in hindsight it would have been interesting to keep a record of who was matched for each fight, to see if there were patterns to the wins and losses each fighter tallied. One of them said the simplest way to do that would be to video tape the match and then work it out after wards.
After the tourney there was a yummy lunch, followed by a calligraphy workshop. I watched the first bit, a slide show showing some of the various hands devised over the SCA time period, when and where they came from and what features marked them as unique. But when it came time for the hands-on part of the class I was sleepy, and went to take a nap. I woke up just on time for afternoon fika, so I enjoyed a snack and spent time catching up with my minion, whom I don't see near often enough. My minion had previously mentioned to me that he should learn to sew, and when the embroidery class was called after fika he confessed that he was interested, but didn't think he would be able to do it successfully. I pointed out that wielding a needle wasn't any harder than wielding a sword, and helped him to choose some yarn for his first attempt.
Since he had learned to write his name (Wilhelm) during the calligraphy class, and he said that he had no idea what to embroidery, I decided that his first attempt would be to embroider a W, and we choose a period shape for that letter that had nice full strokes, so that there would be something to colour. I had him draw the outline in chalk, then showed him the outline stitch, which he worked in red on the brown fabric provided. Then he took some light blue yarn and I showed him how to do the laid-and-couched work fill. He had time to do the entire outline and completely fill in and finish the first segment of the W before it was time to clear stuff off of the tables so they could set up for the banquet.
The actual class teacher worked with a handful of students at the other end of the table, while I gave my minion one on one attention, replying with encouraging noises every time he asked something like "and this next stitch should go here?". I think he was rather surprised to see how well the project was coming out. Hopefully he will finish it on his own in the near future. The woman who taught the class lives in the same town as he does, if he should have any questions.
I changed from my Viking boy clothes (which were perfect for keeping warm while watching the tourney, and, after a few layers were shed, had been comfortable for the classes) into my brown bliaut for the feast. My new blue silk bliaut didn't see any progress at the event, as I put it on the display table for the A&S contest, since it is far enough along to look like something--it needed only a bit more finishing of one seam (done on the drive home), the lacing, adding the trim to the bottom hem, and adding the garnet beads before it will be done!
The banquet was fun--I played a bit of dulcimer in the corner for some of it, and was rather surprised when people applauded--I had thought of it as background noise. Some of us did some singing, I visited with a bunch of people, including a group of people who were at their first SCA event--I had fun telling them stories of how the SCA got started, and I did my yoga. The food looked fablous, and the spinach and pine nuts looked so good I put some in my ceramic mug and into the fridge so that I could have it for breakfast. This turned out to have been brilliant on my part, since it was really yummy. During a break in the feast a bunch of us went to the gym, where we taught the new people some medieval dances to live music.
After the banquet I joined some folk in the hot tub for a while, but then went to bed around 23:00, since I was, once again, really tired.
Sunday morning I took a walk before breakfast, then enjoyed waffles (with cream and jam) for breakfast (in addition to the above mentioned spinach) and some left over ice cream from the feast. Ok, I had thirds on the ice cream.
Then we packed up and left site early enough to visit lord_kjar's brother on the way home and still got home early enough to take a nap before putting everything away before going to folk dancing.
I enjoy this sort of low-key event, where there is only one thing at a time scheduled, so that one doesn't miss anything, unless one chooses to take a nap.
This year, as usual, site opened on Friday evening, and they had a simple dinner available from 19:00. We got there about thirty minutes thereafter, and unloaded the car and claimed our bunks before heading to the hall to be sociable with people (and let lord_kjar eat something. I, of course, wasn't hungry that late in the evening). I did my yoga and was considering heading to sleep, when some of us started singing, so I stayed up for a while. But then the singing broke up as some wanted to go to bed and others wanted to head outside to the hot tub, so I opted to get some sleep, crawling into bed before 23:00.
However, after only a bit more than an hour's nap I woke up again, so I wandered downstairs to find a few people sitting around a table alternating between singing songs and conversation, so, of course, I joined them. This broke up a bit after 02:00, so I went back to sleep.
Saturday morning was a leisurely breakfast and conversation, after which several of us went for a walk, enjoying the lovely weather--it was around -13 C--the first decent weather since I got back from Australia, weeks ago. So nice not to have above zero temps and melting. Sadly, the lull was brief, and by the time the weekend was over we were back up to the temps flitting back and forth across 0.
After the walk, since I was dressed warmly in wool tunic, coat, and trousers + fur hood and muff, I opted to stay outside and join the workshop in how to throw basic sword blows. There was quite a large group of interested new people, plus a couple who, like me, have done this before, but haven't been in armour in ages. It was fun to do again--seeing the Nordmark Coronet the other weekend reminded me that I actually enjoy SCA combat, and swinging a stick again reminds me that it is fun. It will be interesting to see if those of us who talked about getting some regular unarmoured SCA fighting practice going in Luleå actually pull it off. If I am doing unarmoured training regularly I will be more interested in also putting on armour...
The class ended when it was time for the tournament to begin, and when they asked for someone to keep the records for the tourney I said yes. They said I needed to find pen and paper, and I started to walk to the hall, and then realized that I didn't need any such thing--I have a phone! The tournament was one of the North of Nordmark 500 series of tournaments. These are done in a bear pit style, with the fighters standing in a line waiting their turn. The first two in line begin the tourney, and as soon as one of them is defeated he or she leaves the field, reports to the person keeping track who it was who killed them, and gets in line at the end. Meanwhile the next person in line has moved onto the field to face the one who survived the last bout. Injuries are kept until death, but go away as soon as the fighter gets back in line. The tournament runs till one of the fighter gets 25 victories.
It was fun being the record keeper. We had seven fighters in the list, and one was clearly having a better day than the others. I saw him only four times, and each time he had fought quite a few fights before being killed and having to get back in line. Twice he managed to hold the field through all six other fighters before one managed to take him out. Needless to say, he was the one to reach 25 first. After him were three fighters who all were doing about the same--one had 9 wins, one 10, and the other 11. The remaining three fighters had 0, 1 and 2 wins. All I had time to record was the name of the victor (simple roman numeral tally marks next to the names), but in hindsight it would have been interesting to keep a record of who was matched for each fight, to see if there were patterns to the wins and losses each fighter tallied. One of them said the simplest way to do that would be to video tape the match and then work it out after wards.
After the tourney there was a yummy lunch, followed by a calligraphy workshop. I watched the first bit, a slide show showing some of the various hands devised over the SCA time period, when and where they came from and what features marked them as unique. But when it came time for the hands-on part of the class I was sleepy, and went to take a nap. I woke up just on time for afternoon fika, so I enjoyed a snack and spent time catching up with my minion, whom I don't see near often enough. My minion had previously mentioned to me that he should learn to sew, and when the embroidery class was called after fika he confessed that he was interested, but didn't think he would be able to do it successfully. I pointed out that wielding a needle wasn't any harder than wielding a sword, and helped him to choose some yarn for his first attempt.
Since he had learned to write his name (Wilhelm) during the calligraphy class, and he said that he had no idea what to embroidery, I decided that his first attempt would be to embroider a W, and we choose a period shape for that letter that had nice full strokes, so that there would be something to colour. I had him draw the outline in chalk, then showed him the outline stitch, which he worked in red on the brown fabric provided. Then he took some light blue yarn and I showed him how to do the laid-and-couched work fill. He had time to do the entire outline and completely fill in and finish the first segment of the W before it was time to clear stuff off of the tables so they could set up for the banquet.
The actual class teacher worked with a handful of students at the other end of the table, while I gave my minion one on one attention, replying with encouraging noises every time he asked something like "and this next stitch should go here?". I think he was rather surprised to see how well the project was coming out. Hopefully he will finish it on his own in the near future. The woman who taught the class lives in the same town as he does, if he should have any questions.
I changed from my Viking boy clothes (which were perfect for keeping warm while watching the tourney, and, after a few layers were shed, had been comfortable for the classes) into my brown bliaut for the feast. My new blue silk bliaut didn't see any progress at the event, as I put it on the display table for the A&S contest, since it is far enough along to look like something--it needed only a bit more finishing of one seam (done on the drive home), the lacing, adding the trim to the bottom hem, and adding the garnet beads before it will be done!
The banquet was fun--I played a bit of dulcimer in the corner for some of it, and was rather surprised when people applauded--I had thought of it as background noise. Some of us did some singing, I visited with a bunch of people, including a group of people who were at their first SCA event--I had fun telling them stories of how the SCA got started, and I did my yoga. The food looked fablous, and the spinach and pine nuts looked so good I put some in my ceramic mug and into the fridge so that I could have it for breakfast. This turned out to have been brilliant on my part, since it was really yummy. During a break in the feast a bunch of us went to the gym, where we taught the new people some medieval dances to live music.
After the banquet I joined some folk in the hot tub for a while, but then went to bed around 23:00, since I was, once again, really tired.
Sunday morning I took a walk before breakfast, then enjoyed waffles (with cream and jam) for breakfast (in addition to the above mentioned spinach) and some left over ice cream from the feast. Ok, I had thirds on the ice cream.
Then we packed up and left site early enough to visit lord_kjar's brother on the way home and still got home early enough to take a nap before putting everything away before going to folk dancing.
I enjoy this sort of low-key event, where there is only one thing at a time scheduled, so that one doesn't miss anything, unless one chooses to take a nap.