Failure

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(NB: Apparently I’m so good at this, I left it in my drafts folder for a month.)

It’s a word that strikes fear in the heart of so many, myself included. It’s something that makes you stressed, that makes you hide, shamed and worried about what They will think. Perhaps its not even Them (you know.. Them.. the nameless faceless judgey Them), but specific people or guilds or orders that you know and respect and admire and perhaps even want to be like when you grow up. Perhaps you’re worried what they (quite specific they this time) will think when you admit ‘this went horribly horribly wrong’.

I finally waved the white flag of surrender on my fian project this week (aka mid-July), and posted to the group that I was done. /done/. Oh so very done. (Yes, that’s why you haven’t seen it in a while on here.)

I’ve been hemming and hawing and agonizing over calling it quits for a while. Like little ‘I think this might not be working’ comments to friends, and then less little ‘I think this might be dead dead’ comments to friends, and then ‘this is making me crazy and killing all my creative existence’ to friends and my laurel. By the last one, they rightfully looked at me as if I was an idiot (hint, I was being an idiot) and said ‘if this piece is off the rails enough that you aren’t working on anything? Gotta go.’ Even then, I took another 2 and a half weeks of ‘maybe I could…’ thoughts about revamping before I surrendered.

 

All the duck puns.

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Baron’s Brouhaha is this weekend.. it’s a super casual, relaxed baronial camping event on the Baron and Baroness’ farm. (Barony in question: Ramshaven in Ealdormere). We daytripped this year, but that really just meant we crammed a weekend’s worth of stuff into a 14 hr day on site. Wheeee!

I taught my intro to lace class for five students, it went pretty well. Everyone had the basics of cross and twist, whole stitch, half stitch, braids and windmill crossings by the end, which is a damn good start for 90 mins. (class was only supposed to be an hour. Whoops.)2016-07-16 15.11.23

The big thing of the day was the pluck-a-duck competition. You see Laura and Cesare have ducks, and had way too many male ducks, so they offered up freshly butchered ducks for the cooking A&S folks to prepare for feast. Of course we said ‘sure! We’re in! Can we have two?’. (Yes, we are kinda dumb, and sorta crazy). Two teams were in, each of us doing two ducks.

At this point in the story, I should mention that neither of us have ever plucked or gutted a duck before, and I don’t even much like eating duck. Sooo.. crazy? Yes indeed.

We chose two recipes, Duck in Clay, and a sweet roasted duck recipe. Neither are especially period, although both are plausible. The first is very simple. Take your still feathered duck, gut it. Stuff with apples and onions. Cover it in clay, bury in coals. Wait ’til supper. So our clay was really dry. And had some dirt in it, but mostly really dry. And Penn got the duck well coated and then we built a fire basically on top of it, and tossed copious amounts of charcoal on until it was a heap. Did I mention neither of us had ever cooked on coals before? Yeah. That too.

While that duck was going, we got to plucking. Penn did the first rough pluck, and then I took over and snuggled with Daffy to get as much down as I could off. I can’t lean over for very long, so I ended up lounged back with a dead duck on my apron to pluck down off. It was a moment, let me tell you. The farm ended up with a light haze of down (we saved all the bigger feathers). I can utterly see how sitting around plucking birds was a prime giggling, gossip activity for the women.

By the point that we were gutting and stuffing and sticking in a pot to put on the BBQ (coated cast iron and we didn’t have a grate for the fire, so we decided on putting it on the BBQ), it felt like fairly normal cooking.

We left both all afternoon, and honestly both of them were overcooked. The duck in clay had the clay crack and burn the top side of the duck. The duck on the bbq was just flat out in there too long (we erred on the side of overcooked rather than under, as much from being damn tired at this point than anything, but uncooked bird is not the look we want for food.)

The braised duck on the BBQ was not exciting. It tasted kinda like duck, with a sweet stuffing. Enh. The one in clay, however, was interesting.

I dug off the coals and expected to hit clay, but instead hit charred bird. Hrm. We got the charred mess of soot and feathers onto the cutting board and started poking. The top half just peeled right off in a sooty mess, but fortunately the bottom half was where the breast meat was hiding. Just the skin and feathers peeled off that part, which was a feature!

We got no points for presentation (it’s not one of Penn or my strong suits, we really need to work on that) and I think it would have taken a gifted artist to make the duck look good at that point. Apparently it tasted pretty good, I got a nibble of the braised duck, but none of the duck in clay. 2016-07-16 18.05.26

All in all, it was fun. Exhausting, vaguely disgusting and I am in no rush to ever do it again, but I’m glad we did it once!

 

The shame pile

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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.

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HG Kitty axe sitting at Lady Mary Tourney 2016

 

Teaching

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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.’

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HG Kitty at bookbinding class taught by an awesome SME

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!

 

FooL 2016

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You may have guessed that I’m not spectacular at updating on a super regular schedule. I’m sure there’s a fancy way of subscribing, or tossing this in an RSS feed or something brilliant that I haven’t looked into yet if you really want to make sure you keep up on my irregular posts, or you can just hope for a nice surprise when you remember to stop by. 🙂

This past weekend was Fruits of Our Labours (aka FooL), which is the first camping event of the season. It’s also one of my favourite camping events as it’s all A&S, all the time, baybeee! The fact that it was my second event, my husband’s first AND where I got my AoA are all just gravy on top of delicious. It’s full of formal teaching, informal teaching, hanging out with artisans doing their thing and generally a whole lot of abject geekery and awesome. This ranges from pastry classes to music classes to blacksmithing, stained glass, weaving, to anything a teacher can be conjured for. Mix in fencing, heavy fighting, archery and thrown weapons and you need about 4 clones to fully appreciate the whole of the event.

I learned after my first fool (This year was my 3rd) to ease up a bit on the non-stop classes, not because I’m not interested, but I ended up exhausted with brain full waaaay too early and missed out on the casual hanging and conversations and the like. I think this year, I finally found a good mix. Teach one, take 4 classes over 2 days and there was plenty of lounge, chatter and plot time.

I taught Pysanky to 5 delightful ladies (and one adorable baby who was snuggled up with her Mum), and there was a range of skills from never tried before, to woefully out of practice. We had no dropped eggs! I had it scheduled for 2 hrs, and because we ran right up to court, we couldn’t linger, and we needed more time. When I do it again (and I will), I’ll have to work out how to make that work better. Rushing is not a feature in pysanky and you lose out on some of the best part of the zen meditative that makes it so delightful when you’re up against a time crunch. I needed a few more photocopies too, but we managed. 13244170_10154102385660856_147102014642354582_o

Classes that I took were pastry making, period cooking tools, getting to know your dremel and the choral workshop. Which is a whole lot of brain info and awesome and learning, and very few concrete THINGS or new projects coming home with me. Which is a feature, all in all. 2016-05-22 10.13.42

Kitty was hanging out on a period grill (OMG SO COOL!) and being threatened by a Countess during that class.

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Kitty was not allowed to use the dremel during that class, but I did let her pose with my finished plant stake. As we only have one plant that we’ve actually planted on purpose at our house, clearly Quince Tree the Second needed a name tag. I only had room for Quince though, rather than the whole thing. I also learned in that class that my selection of bits for my dremel is basically awful, and that could explain a lot of why I couldn’t seem to do anything I wanted. There will be keeping an eye out for sales on more bits. (And thank you Gwyn for letting me borrow yours!)

Camping was cold overnight (this is the first year we’ve been tent camping at FooL), but delightful generally (must work on the bed situation before Pennsic). New chairs are win, I’ve no clue how the pop up keeps popping up, but it survived another event and the mosquitos eventually just won. There was new class plotting, and more class plotting, and impromptu bobbin lace classes and the people just make this event so much delight and awesome.

Now we get to look forward to camping at Trillies!

Musings and eyelets

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Possibly musings over eyelets as I am pretty confident that the eyelet rounds on my fian flag are going to take forever. Possibly two or three forevers at this rate. At that’s just for the border.

It’s been a while since I posted, because there hasn’t been a lot of A&S going on. A lot of service, a bit of events, some life (good and bad) and the ever present eyelets. But white on white are seriously dull photos.

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See? Seriously dull photos. Not the most exciting embroidery I’ve ever done either. Wheee. How dare the slow and fussy stuff actually look good? The nerve of it!

Anyhow, at the last two events (more details on each forthcoming, I promise!) We’ve spent the mornings in the kitchen, and the afternoons goofing off. It’s been really really good. My feet disagree (note to self, need better shoes that don’t look silly with the garb), but the camaraderie and the work makes the sitting around later feel all the sweeter. I understand now why those who end up in the kitchen often end up in the kitchen often.

Measuring is for suckers.

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So far in doing A&S in the last year, I have learned that I cannot, even with a ruler, cut a straight line. (Thank you bookbinding for teaching me that.) Today, I learned that even with measuring 18 thousand times and remeasuring, and calculating and then measuring again, I still can’t get it right.

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This is the current state of the fan. (Yes, so far behind I’m first in my own race, but we’ll ignore that minor detail for the moment.) The right hand side is a print out of my inspiration fake, I mean fan, that I’m aiming to follow along with. The left hand side is my stitched outer border and the start of the inner border, the ones surrounding the eyelets in the picture. Notice something? Say like the fact that I’m a good half inch off? Say like I’m far closer to those being inner borders than outer borders? What? And I’ve already pulled thread guides so I can’t just /declare/ them to be inner borders?

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Insult to injury, I got it right on the sides, just not top and bottom.

So the question became, as I put the project in a momentary time out of indecision. Am I utterly devoted to making an exact textile replica of a non textile item? Or am I looking at this and going ‘ah ha! I am going to make lace in the style that this was trying to fake.’

I think I’m pretty comfortable aiming for the later. I CAN’T make an exact replica, textiles and non textiles don’t work the same. So mine will be longer and narrower than the original. Alright then. The only real change is that the middle section won’t be quite as wide. That’s fine, I haven’t decided what’s going there yet anyhow.

Madder

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Just getting madder and madder about madder! Oh wait, actually madder was pretty good to me, so that pun doesn’t work.

Anyhow, I figured I would share some of my pentathlon entries (because if you’re going to enter pent, you might as well milk it for all SORTS of blog entries!), and one of them was looking at madder.

I aimed to keep it more modern and scientific so that I (in theory) could have reproducible results. (Spoiler alert: Madder was not on board with that.) It was also an excellent excuse to finally buy the pH meter I’ve always wanted.

Yes seriously, I’ve always wanted one. Apparently you can take the woman out of the chem lab, but they continue to pine for toys.

I looked at pH (obviously, if I was going to justify the pH meter!), water (tap vs distilled), and a brief touch on different mordants. Everything was on the same 2 ply wool, and if I wasn’t specifically looking at mordants, it was all alum mordanted in the same batch.

This first picture has the mordants. I threw them all in the same pot, and I’m pretty sure there was mordant bleeding to make everything a bit sadder. The skein on the left is the alum control, the top right is iron and the bottom right is copper.

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This next picture is the different waters. Each column was the same chunk of dyestuff, simmered in succession to get different dye baths. So 10g of madder, simmered a while and then strained out, dye liquor 1. Take that same 10g of madder that I just strained out, simmer it again, strain it again: dye liquor 2. Take that same well simmered madder, simmer it AGAIN, strain it AGAIN: dye liquor 3. Far right is my tap water (standard city water), the left two are both distilled water. In theory they are /exactly the same/. Thank you madder for keeping things surprising.

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This last picture are the different acidities. I took one dye bath, and split it out into four jars. The top right is the control. Bottom right is citric acid (pH of 2.6). Top left used washing soda to bring the pH to basic (pH of 10.2) and the bottom left added ammonia to the dye bath. (pH 10.0)

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Basically every time I put photos on the blog, I am reminded that photography is not my strong suit. Apparently neither is clearing off the table before I take photos.

If you’re curious about my documentation, I’ve linked it here: Madder

Lucet

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Unsurprisingly, I follow a lot of mundane handwork groups and blogs and shops and stores as well as SCA ones. I did, afterall, arrive fully A&S’d to the SCA, even if my horizons broadened dramatically.

I was pleasantly surprised to find an utterly modern fibre site offering a free 7 day lucet course / challenge. Over at Stitch Diva Studios, they have a 7 day lucet challenge, for anyone interested.

I’ve read all of them, even if I’ve gotten paused on day 2. (Basic cord). What can I say? I like the basic cord! They do make it darn pretty by the end!

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Pent 1 vs Pent 2

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After I posted my cross-border thoughts on pent, I had someone comment that based on the title, they figured I was going to post my thoughts on Pent 2015 vs Pent 2016. Which sounded like a darn fine idea, and I’m all for not letting good blog fodder go to waste. Good ideas are rare in my world! I gotta steal them where I can.

Some history, just to catch you up. KA&S 2014 was my first event in this go round of the SCA. (I attended a couple of events in the early 90s, it didn’t stick, I called mulligan and started again 20 yrs later.) My first entry in any form of A&S anything was QPT 2014 (novice tourney, sponsored by Crucibles and Laurels to provide mentorship.)

My second entry into A&S anything was KA&S 2014 and I entered Pentathlon. I had very little idea what I was doing, although I’d read everything I could find on the internet. Stressed over documentation (why is that so much more stressful than any 3 projects combined?) and was oh so very grateful it wasn’t all /that/ far from home when we arrived and a bag with 3 of my projects was still at home. (My spouse is a saint. Just saying.) As Pent 2016 was a 6 hr drive away, you can be certain I double and triple checked I had all five projects before we left.

I am going to say here, that I am new enough to Ealdormere that the style of pent entry that I discussed in the last blog post (face to face with judges, pent entires grouped as a whole etc etc) is the only way I’ve experienced A&S in Ealdormere. I know it’s not always been that way, but that’s all I’ve got.

Pent 2015 (Pent 1 for me. P1 for ease of typing) was nerve rattling, exhilarating, a bit of a blur and amazing. I took five items that I felt gave a fairly good overview of me as an artisan and presented them and then held my breath as I spent all day talking about them mostly with people I didn’t know. (Yet.) There was no theme. No connection between them beyond ‘things Lucia has done’. How to display them, and their documentation occurred to me as I was laying them out on the table and they looked lonely and flat. The day was a blur, especially after the adrenaline rush of forgotten things, and not /quite/ knowing what was going on. (Present an overview to the judges? Uhhh. Okay!) I didn’t expect to win, I wasn’t sad when I didn’t.

P2 was so much easier, and a bit harder all at once. I knew mostly what to expect, but I also felt I had the expectation (perhaps only in my own mind) that I needed to up my game from P1. I spent more time researching, more time finding connections between my items, pulling the group into a more cohesive entity. I’m not sure my work was all that much better, but I know I was a lot more confident in my research and my choices made.  I was also a lot more comfortable with the process, and I wasn’t meeting most of my judges for the very first time. It felt more like a conversation about my work, about choices and decisions and next steps. (And a bit of historical trivia quiz show, just to keep me humble.) Both of them felt like a step in the journey, P1 was an earlier pit stop, and P2 was a smidge further down that road.

I’ve enjoyed the hell out of entering pent both times. It’s not for everyone, and I am looking forward to not doing the pent freak out all through March of 2017. P3 is planned for 2018. I can’t let a pair of baronesses go unchallenged, now can I?