It’s an odd thing to consider, all the times that you are settled somewhere and there’s conversation going on around you. It happens all of the time at events, especially when someone is obsessively embroidering in advance of Kingdom A&S (hypothetically speaking). It is sometimes conversation you’re a part of. It is sometimes conversation that is happening that you know nothing about. It is always fascinating.

I feel as if I should clarify here, that I’m thinking specifically of geeking out A&S conversations. This is not a musing on sitting around listening to gossip, especially overhearing gossip. Look up at the blog title. Adventures in A&S. Right, focus here.

Progress!

I spent yesterday at a most delightfully excellent Twelfth Night event, full of silly and chatter and conversation (and not even all that corrupt mayoral elections! Well only a leeetle corrupt, ish. Nothing to see here.) I got to spend a lovely chunk of time sitting and embroidering listening to conversations go on around me. A couple of bards geeking out about medieval poetry forms, a topic that might as well have been in greek for all that I understood not a word of it, but their enthusiasm (and lamentations) had a familiar cadence. A conversation about the care and feeding and tips and tricks from someone new-ish to sewing from a very skilled seamstress. That last conversation came to mind today when I sat and fought with my sewing machine.

My feud with sewing machines (and sergers) is well documented. There’s a whole lot of hate/hate going on, and I routinely curse and lament that all machines do is let me screw up faster! Still, conversation just yesterday let me quickly work out what the machine was kvetching about today. (Which then required taking it apart to fix a broken part of solve, but that’s a whole different point. I may also have argued that I never have trouble with bobbin tension when I’m handsewing!)

A longwinded way of musing upon casual knowledge acquisition. Someone else’s question that I happened to be present for the answer for yesterday, saved me a whole lot of grief today. It’s amazing, truly, the little tidbits of information that we pick up when we’re not really noticing. Totally worth not walking away from conversations that aren’t in your field, you never know when they’ll come in handy!