Alternately, the projects of doom, the haters, the unwilling commissions, the UFOs, the other pithy acronyms, in short.. all the projects you’d rather clean the basement than work on.

My basement is starting to look pretty good, thanks for asking.

I distinguish these ones from the ones that you sort of putter on. The quilt that you add another strip to every so often. The weaving that gets another repeat periodically. The cross stitch that you’ve been working on long enough that it can legally drink. Wait, that one probably is in the shame pile.

I like to think that everyone has these projects. The ones that you start, and they go horribly wrong and you don’t know how to, or if you want to fix them. The ones that are just bloody tedious. The ones that you look at, and sigh, and somehow just find all the reasons in the world not to work on. Sometimes because you know they aren’t going to live up to expectations, or what you can see in your mind’s eye, and don’t want that fear to become reality. Often because unfinished somehow seems better than imperfect.

I wish this was a post of uplifting wisdom, where I shared with you the One True Way of getting past that, but I haven’t found it yet. I have no idea how to just kick it until it happens. I’ve no clue how to summon up the motivation to work on a project that has lost its sparkle, that’s lost its shine and love. Suggestions welcome.

If you’ve made it to the end of my morose Monday meanderings, here’s a celebratory HG Kitty picture.

 

An off handed comment by someone in FB land got me to thinking about informal teaching. What do I mean by informal teaching? Thank you for asking, random internet that really is just me talking to myself before coffee.

Informal teaching, to me, is what we do in the SCA, it’s the peer (not Peer, just peer) to peer teaching in relaxed environments. It also happens in every handwork guild and stitch and bitch where people are sharing their skills with others. Sometimes it’s more on the formal end, with actual class sign ups, and actual classes and set times and tables and chairs, and sometimes it’s someone turning up where you’re sitting and going ‘Um. So. My knitting is a mess, can you help me sort it out?’

Anyhow, this lovely person in FB land echoed the sentiment that I’ve heard in many places ‘When I know enough, then I’ll be able to teach’.

Woah. I mean, I know just enough to know I don’t know diddly much of anything, and I teach. Am I arrogant for having the audacity to teach things? (please don’t answer that random internet that is really just me talking to myself)

So I got to thinking a bit more, and realized that there’s two different flavours, if you will, of teaching. There’s the one we see modelled all the time, especially if one has been to post secondary education. That’s the teaching model of ‘I am a Subject Matter Expect (SME). I will graciously impart upon you some of my decades of acquired wisdom and can answer all your questions without blinking hard.’

But that isn’t the only flavour of teaching, especially not in an informal setting around practical things. There is also the teaching model of ‘I would love to share with you this thing I just learned myself. I might not have all the answers, but I will happily bring you to how far I’ve gotten on this path, and if we need to go further, we can do it together.’

Guess which one I often fall into? Guess which one MANY handwork classes fall into?

Now of course, teaching like life is rarely as cut and dried and black and white as all this. I do teach things where I’m a lot further along my exploring path and can call myself a subject matter expert. (Although I wince when I do, cause that’s just begging someone to try and find your blind spots, and we all have them, and learning is never ever done, that’s part of the awesome about it.) I also teach things that I’m just excited to be doing, and don’t have all the answers, and haven’t spent 20 yrs delving into the theories and details and so on and so forth.

This is not to say that you should be teaching that thing that you just picked up last week and still can’t figure out up from down on. There’s a point before which you’re just too much a beginner yourself to be much help to others, but there’s also a looooong stretch after fumbling and before SME where your thoughts and skills and abilities are valuable to others. Heck, so are your screw ups, those are often even MORE valuable to others starting out. You /remember/ how awkward that tool was to hold until you got the knack. An SME hasn’t felt that awkward in a very long time, more than likely, and its easy to forget those early frustrations.

So all of that long windedness to say ‘go forth, confident beginners, and share your skills!’ You know so very much more than you think!

 

As a warning, this post is going to be long, light on pictures, and heavy on process geekery. I won’t be offended if you skip reading it. (Heck,  I won’t even know!)

It has been edited slightly to correct myself. The pent at Ice Dragon is in the Barony of Rhydderich Hael, not kingdom level in Aethelmaerc. Sorry for any confusion that caused, that’s all on me.

In a moment of brilliance (or stupidity), I determined that I could take my 5 entries from Ealdormere’s Pentathlon and turn around and enter them into the pentathlon at Ice Dragon two weeks later. I wanted to compare as directly as possible, so no change in documentation, no change in project state (other than the bread. I did bake new bread.)

The two experiences were very very different.

Ealdormere groups the five items together, to be displayed together. Items are pre-registered and documentation is submitted in advance to be forwarded to the judges. I think you have to have five actual items, but I can’t find that in the rules anywhere. There are no category requirements and items are not differentiated by the artisan’s award level. The artisan is with their work, meets with the judges for each piece and gives a quick overview to previous pent winners who decide as a collective who wins pentathlon. The artisan receives both comments and numerical scores on their judging forms.

Ice Dragon puts each entry into its category (cooking with cooking, embroidery with embroidery) and requires at least three categories be represented. Each category is further separated by the entrant’s award level (Orion and lower: Novice. Crucible: Intermediate: Laurels get their own category.) There is no pre-registration of items (only that you’ll be arriving at all, but that’s not required). Items may be entered in more than one category. (ie an embroidered dress could be entered both as clothing and needlework.) It is a blind judging, so no names or identification on any piece or on your documentation only an entrant number. There was four hours between setting up items on their respective tables and returning to pick them up again, judging happened in that time. Artisans only receive comment forms left with their entries, no numerical scores. Overall pent winner for each award level is determined by score total.

I’m vaguely remembering numbers here, but I believe Ealdormere had about 50 entries (individuals as well as 3 adult pentathlon and 1 child pent entry), and Ice Dragon had about 115 entries (I have no idea if all of those were pent entires or not). Considering our respective sizes of kingdom, Ealdormere might have a few A&S types. Go us. 🙂

In the interest of full disclosure, I won pentathlon in Ealdormere (along with four sponsored prizes). My knitted bag took second in novice fibre arts, and my counted sampler took first in novice needlework at Ice Dragon.

I hate blind judging. I’d never experienced it before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, and it was as frustrating as I feared. Basic questions that came back on the judging forms at ID could have been answered in the first 5 seconds of face to face judging (or often by opening my documentation.) The judge format at ID gave those poor judges not a whit of time to actually READ documentation, especially in the giant categories. My dye entry got an afterthought one liner comment at the bottom of my knitting comment form as the only sign it got judged at all. (Fibre arts took over two full tables. Most other categories didn’t fill a single table.)

In terms of comments and feedback, once I allowed for ID’s nightmare for their poor judges, it was about on par. E’s judges got to focus their comments far more, because I was right there, to answer the basic questions that I might have missed in the docs, or they wanted clarification on. I got useful comments from both kingdoms, I got unhelpful comments from both kingdoms. I got comments I disagree with (which is fine), I got unreasonably picky comments, and I got ‘nice work!’ sort of comments, which feeds the ego but isn’t helpful for growth. (Do not underestimate the value of a wee bit of ego feeding. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just like icing. Great to have, not a well balanced meal.)

Not receiving the numerical scores at ID made putting comments into context very challenging. Is this a minor note for improvement later, or was it a make or break issue for you? Not having met the judges also made it the same sort of hard to read as email critiques. Was that written tone supposed to be informational or hard line? Is this a ‘your basis for this work is wrong!’ or a ‘you are 99% there, here’s how to get that last 1% to get to amazing’.

Probably what I missed most was the camaraderie, however. Between artisans as we hung out by our work and got to geek out together. Between artisan and judge as they got to provide advice and direction and geek out together. I missed being able to put faces to work, to be able to start to recognize other artisans (especially when out of kingdom. I still can’t tell you who the Aethlemaerc A&S types are. I can now recognize some of their work, but not the awesome people behind it.) I really feel for the judges at ID, especially the ones for the big categories (fibre arts and needlework especially). That’s a lot of entries in a very short period of time. It has got to be gruelling and it makes the comments they left all the more impressive, for how little time they had to write them.

I suppose it’s more competitive, to have the blind judging, more fair in the scoring, but missing out on the people interactions was far more disappointing than not winning. I’m glad I did it, I got good things out of both, but I really did miss the personal touch.

If I’ve gotten details wrong, please do let me know.