OMG SCA SQUEE!
Ah, Hrim-Schola. How I have missed you!!!
The Squees, in no particular order except the first:
Squee #1: due to a totally unexpected but extremely welcome turn of luck, I am the proud new owner of
hugh_mannity 's shrunken Viking Mark II socks! Apparently, all of the folk who were in line before me had feet that are too large, but like Goldilocks, my feet were just right! :-D I spent the entire ride home fondling them on my lap. Now, my feet are fondling them while the heat comes up at The Palace. They are soft and fuzzy and warm and wooly and I am veryvery happy. :-D
Squee #2: hlinspjalda gave me researchy textile stuff! Phiala gave me even more researchy textile stuff! I won't have to worry about any bedtime reading for quite a while now. :-)
Squee #3: Ironically, for this event comprised entirely of classes, I took only half of one class this time. All of the classes I wanted either started before we arrived (which was ~11:15) or were at the same time as my class (2:45). So, I took the turnshoe-making class (the class at the very top of my list), but unfortunately, I had to miss the second half since I needed to leave for my class. I spent the remainder of the day helping in the kitchen for a bit and then doing some very enjoyable and relaxing schmoozing. At the end of the day, I kicked back and enjoyed the company of my fellow Narrow Workers at our guild meeting. I felt simultaneously relaxed and productive, which is exactly what I needed this year.
Squee #4: My class went marvelously well! Hooray! Isabelle (one of Brid's apprentices) and hugh_mannity came. Since it was just the three of us, we played not only with twist-patterning, tubular tabletweaving and tabletwoven edging, but I also spent some time doing an on-the-fly intro to brocading for them using the twist-patterned band. That last hadn't been on my planned agenda, but it worked out wonderfully well and was very well-received.
Squee #5: I'm going to buy the books in the Medieval Finds from Excavations in London series--Textiles & Clothing, Dress Accessories and Shoes and Pattens. (I don't need the knife book now, but maybe someday.) I've reached the stage where I need my own copies, but fortunately, I am also in a position for the first time to be able to afford them. While at Thora's, I located them on abebooks.com for ~$20 apiece, which is entirely reasonable. :-D Hooray--new books soon!
Squee #6: We stayed at hlinspjalda 's! I love to stay with hlinspjalda! :-D
Squee #7: TEAM CAROLINGIA ROCKS!!! Road tripping with hugh_mannity , rosinavs and Andreiko (I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong) was marvelous, entertaining and even sometimes downright silly. I would TOTALLY do it again! :-D There's nothing like dropping a bunch of fiber geeks into a vehicle together--crazy fun, I tell you, crazy fun.
Squee #8: I appear to have infected hugh_mannity with an insane desire to learn more tabletweaving, which is good since I have an insane desire to learn how to knit socks (preferably two at a time). Ergo, bring on the bartering of skills! We shall be meeting soon to begin the cross-pollination process. Squee, squee, squee!
Squee #8.5 There's some possibility that I may have also infected rosinavs with a tabletweaving bug! If so, more squees will ensue!
Squee #9: I got to fondle (in a purely platonic way) hugh_mannity's Royal Belt of Silky Silver Doom (whose name I might be misremembering since I'm totally wiped right now). Hugh is well on his way to developing Mad Weaving Skillz(TM). :-D
Squee #10: I got to schmooze with peregrinning and J (albeit for not as long as I might have liked, but they do live almost literally right around the corner, so I didn't feel too guilty about that). My favorite line from peregrinning over the weekend (when someone commented that he seemed to be importing Freeholders to Carolingia) was, "No. TOWERS." :-D
Squee #11: I have too many project ideas! But this is a good thing, because it means I'm getting my creative mojo back at very long last.
Previously on the agenda:
- Heraldic white belt for a knight of my close acquaintance
- 14th c. heraldic cotehardie w/tippets and tabletwoven edging
- A pair of 14th century shoes (that will hold my orthotics)
Now also on the agenda:
- A pair of 14th century pattens
- 14th c. everyday cotehardie with an underdress made out of a tablecloth (It's documentable in the Devonshire tapestries, squee!)
- Appropriately knitted socks that match the period (did they wear knitted socks? I imagine they must have. Anyhow, research project.) :-)
- And last, but not least, the dope-smoking belt Mark II for hlinspjalda (which, BTW, needs a better name). It will be of silk finer than I've ever previously used, which will be naturally dyed by hlinspjalda in red, blue, yellow and green. It will be 3/1 broken twill, of COURSE, and it will probably wind up being between 150-200 cards wide (assuming I can get GTT to design patterns that wide--I'll need to explore that). Her subsequently very important job will be to show it off to the world, since it will probably be the only one of its kind ever.
- A Perugia linen towel with wyverns (yes, I found a pattern! Yes, I made a photocopy!) This is more of a long term "I might like to try that one of these days" projects, but it's definitely out there worming its way into my brain.
The one down side of the weekend is that I didn't sleep all that well last night. I think some of it was excitement over getting to romp through the library this morning, but I also think the level of air in my air mattress wasn't exactly right, because I woke up with really sore hips. The soreness is gone now, but I'm sure it interfered with me getting any really sound sleep. Even despite that, I still woke up before *everyone* else, and with no alarm. I was amused. :-)
So, although it was a busy weekend, I feel thoroughly rejuvenated, albeit utterly exhausted at the moment. My plan is a. dinner (oatmeal w/berries, which I'm really in the mood for), b. a nice, brainless chick flick with Catherine Zeta-Jones (assuming I can stay awake that long), and c. SLEEP. :-)
And there was much rejoicing! (Yay!)