Collegium recap
Well, I am home from Collegium Caidis, and a nice weekend in Torrence, CA (near Long Beach).
Roger and I arrived very late (10 or so) on Friday night at our hotel, and while he passed out, I stayed up to 11:45pm hand sewing the last of my hem. I never did work on my eyelets for the sleeves, but that was ok, since I didn't have laces for them, either.
The classes were mostly enjoyable, and even if I didn't enjoy everything, I did learn something from each of them.
My first class on 15th c. hats was cancelled, so I took basic scribal 101, which even tho I already had read much of what they suggested, I still learned new stuff. I later found my way back to their scriptorium on Sunday to learn more from Aliskye and Maev, and now have the basics of a project for me to work on, which I am going to spend some time on tonight. I deliberately chose a book of theirs that I already had, so I would have the examplar at home.
The next class was on Heraldic Persona, and it was not the most organized approach to teaching, as I walked into a class already in session from earlier basic Heraldry. The teacher had her stuff down, and she had lots of handouts to the earlier students, but she wasn't on time about things, so I really only got about 25 minutes of info, and that was while she ran into the next class by 20 minutes. She also tended to ramble a lot on her persona story (like I care why she married her husband's persona), and a few of the students would monopolize her time for their personal questions on why their device wasn't passed (which should have been handled after the class at the Open Heraldry table in the cafeteria). But I did get some ideas to incorporate into a device someday. I think it would have been better if it was just one long 3 hour class, so I could have had the grounding in basic heraldry that the other students had gotten.
The idea I am currently toying with is a silver stripe along the top (something chief argent) with three red roses. The lower portion would be in green or purple, with a scattering of silver or black needles, with a gold open book. Yeah, it's kinda rough, and needs some work. Maybe a lot of work.
After lunch, I enjoyed two hours of early English dancing with the Gresley Manuscript. We learned four dances, one English, one Italian, and two from Mars (as the Master put it). That last one was so funky, with no discernable breaks in the music, that I really got lost and ended up not finishing it. I just couldn't. I didn't know where to pick things up again, and that really bothered me. Ah well. Oh, and my toe wasn't happy when I was done, so I did a bit of icing it that night.
The last class was on learning the Uncial hand, which I rather liked. I need a different pen nib (Brause) because my current nibs don't work for my lighter hand. And an ink that has a dropper on it (like Pelican), since my W&N ink is for dipping (and is messy), not dropping small amounts of ink. I need to check my set that I got from eBay, with the cartridges I bought as replacements, and see if that works for my hand ok, or not.
Saturday night we went to Denney's, because it was free of most SCA folk who went elsewhere in droves, and Roger and I had a simple dinner with marymont and her husband aeddie, and we chatted about a lot of things, from health, to sca, to whatever. Then we both headed back to the same hotel and after a call to my family, I crashed hard.
Sunday's classes were only three. The first was on Pearl and Bead Stringing, which was darned easy to do... ONCE you got the hang of things. We were given a bracelet of strung pearls to work with, and it took me most of that string to figure out the tension issue and how to hold the pearls together (the key of it). I look forward to being able to restring my mother's pearls, and to properly string the set I was given by my husband a few years ago. But first, I must practice on that bracelet strand again once I've clipped the threads apart.
Second was ciorstan and marymont's class on the history of French hoods. I did learn a bit more than I had known, as I didn't know much about French history before Mary Tudor (Henry's sister). I think her theory really does hold well together about how the FH evolved, and I need to find time soon to update my website.
After lunch, it was two hours of Exchequer info download! Arrgggghhhh!!!! Ok, it wasn't as bad as most of my business classes, like auditing or worse, the haze of one semester class that I can't even begin to tell you what that teacher taught (really, that is a foggy haze). This was actually enjoyable and very informative. And part of me wonders what I signed on for when I said I would be willing to be a Deputy. I have to read how many books? Five?? FIVE??? I am supposed to download and print out these five manuals??? Oh, I hope my current Exchequer has that printed out already, so I won't have to. I don't mind reading the pdfs online, or on my hard drive, but I don't want to print them all out unless I have to. But other than that, yeah, it was good to take it, as there are differences in what I learned in college classes for non-profits, and what they are doing on their spread sheets. Remember, 0 is your friend, and what is N in front of 0? N0!! And at least their Excel sheet should work on a Mac running Open Office, since it does so on a LInux machine running Open Office. Yeah, for small favors.
After all those classes, we went to the book store, found a few mags, a dvd (Merchant of Venice) and gifts for family (except my husband as B&N didn't have 2600), then hit "The Pier" to enjoy a view of the Ocean, since we were so close. Had an odd Italian styled Shepherd's Pie at the Irish Pub, then after a long search to pay for the parking ticket so we could leave, headed back home to arrive a little after midnight. It was good to be home again.
Roger and I arrived very late (10 or so) on Friday night at our hotel, and while he passed out, I stayed up to 11:45pm hand sewing the last of my hem. I never did work on my eyelets for the sleeves, but that was ok, since I didn't have laces for them, either.
The classes were mostly enjoyable, and even if I didn't enjoy everything, I did learn something from each of them.
My first class on 15th c. hats was cancelled, so I took basic scribal 101, which even tho I already had read much of what they suggested, I still learned new stuff. I later found my way back to their scriptorium on Sunday to learn more from Aliskye and Maev, and now have the basics of a project for me to work on, which I am going to spend some time on tonight. I deliberately chose a book of theirs that I already had, so I would have the examplar at home.
The next class was on Heraldic Persona, and it was not the most organized approach to teaching, as I walked into a class already in session from earlier basic Heraldry. The teacher had her stuff down, and she had lots of handouts to the earlier students, but she wasn't on time about things, so I really only got about 25 minutes of info, and that was while she ran into the next class by 20 minutes. She also tended to ramble a lot on her persona story (like I care why she married her husband's persona), and a few of the students would monopolize her time for their personal questions on why their device wasn't passed (which should have been handled after the class at the Open Heraldry table in the cafeteria). But I did get some ideas to incorporate into a device someday. I think it would have been better if it was just one long 3 hour class, so I could have had the grounding in basic heraldry that the other students had gotten.
The idea I am currently toying with is a silver stripe along the top (something chief argent) with three red roses. The lower portion would be in green or purple, with a scattering of silver or black needles, with a gold open book. Yeah, it's kinda rough, and needs some work. Maybe a lot of work.
After lunch, I enjoyed two hours of early English dancing with the Gresley Manuscript. We learned four dances, one English, one Italian, and two from Mars (as the Master put it). That last one was so funky, with no discernable breaks in the music, that I really got lost and ended up not finishing it. I just couldn't. I didn't know where to pick things up again, and that really bothered me. Ah well. Oh, and my toe wasn't happy when I was done, so I did a bit of icing it that night.
The last class was on learning the Uncial hand, which I rather liked. I need a different pen nib (Brause) because my current nibs don't work for my lighter hand. And an ink that has a dropper on it (like Pelican), since my W&N ink is for dipping (and is messy), not dropping small amounts of ink. I need to check my set that I got from eBay, with the cartridges I bought as replacements, and see if that works for my hand ok, or not.
Saturday night we went to Denney's, because it was free of most SCA folk who went elsewhere in droves, and Roger and I had a simple dinner with marymont and her husband aeddie, and we chatted about a lot of things, from health, to sca, to whatever. Then we both headed back to the same hotel and after a call to my family, I crashed hard.
Sunday's classes were only three. The first was on Pearl and Bead Stringing, which was darned easy to do... ONCE you got the hang of things. We were given a bracelet of strung pearls to work with, and it took me most of that string to figure out the tension issue and how to hold the pearls together (the key of it). I look forward to being able to restring my mother's pearls, and to properly string the set I was given by my husband a few years ago. But first, I must practice on that bracelet strand again once I've clipped the threads apart.
Second was ciorstan and marymont's class on the history of French hoods. I did learn a bit more than I had known, as I didn't know much about French history before Mary Tudor (Henry's sister). I think her theory really does hold well together about how the FH evolved, and I need to find time soon to update my website.
After lunch, it was two hours of Exchequer info download! Arrgggghhhh!!!! Ok, it wasn't as bad as most of my business classes, like auditing or worse, the haze of one semester class that I can't even begin to tell you what that teacher taught (really, that is a foggy haze). This was actually enjoyable and very informative. And part of me wonders what I signed on for when I said I would be willing to be a Deputy. I have to read how many books? Five?? FIVE??? I am supposed to download and print out these five manuals??? Oh, I hope my current Exchequer has that printed out already, so I won't have to. I don't mind reading the pdfs online, or on my hard drive, but I don't want to print them all out unless I have to. But other than that, yeah, it was good to take it, as there are differences in what I learned in college classes for non-profits, and what they are doing on their spread sheets. Remember, 0 is your friend, and what is N in front of 0? N0!! And at least their Excel sheet should work on a Mac running Open Office, since it does so on a LInux machine running Open Office. Yeah, for small favors.
After all those classes, we went to the book store, found a few mags, a dvd (Merchant of Venice) and gifts for family (except my husband as B&N didn't have 2600), then hit "The Pier" to enjoy a view of the Ocean, since we were so close. Had an odd Italian styled Shepherd's Pie at the Irish Pub, then after a long search to pay for the parking ticket so we could leave, headed back home to arrive a little after midnight. It was good to be home again.