April 2022 Recap: Sometimes, New Things Aren’t Too Bad
April goals:
Do another set of points on the Green Saya.
Continue my body garments project with the calzas I did not make in March.
Make a square fronted cofia and separate, simple tubular tranzado to contain my actual hair. I might be able to knock these out at a practice one nigh.
Continue my Persona Challenge work and get the handwriting project ready to display at Crown Tourney.
Practice fabric stamping with my new stamp, in preparation for my blue linen brial that I want to stamp and sew in May. I might make some napkins or hand towels or placemats out of spare fabric.
Summer University class proposal. It’s already time for that and I have no clue what I might teach but I would like to continue my trend of at least one class each University.
I decided to start April off with the calzas. I’ve been playing around with ideas for a new set up for them for a little while and it felt time to put it to the test. This rendition features a shorter leg, points for attaching some medias calzas I have yet to make, and an applied waistband with a drawstring. They are a hair tighter than intended around the legs, but that’s an easy fix and they’re not unusable. I think a little more ease factored in next time will be a boon. These got put into time out when I got very frustrated with the waistband. However, as soon as their time out is done, I think these should finish up pretty quickly.
After that, I started in on my Green Saya points. These went much more smoothly than the first set! I set the widest ribbon first, then did the side two and it got done in about a weekend. As ever, I cannot wait to see this dress together. I will likely need to order more ribbon, so June might be a stretch for completion.
I chose not to put in a class for University. I could not seem to get any inspiration for classes, which is unfortunate, but not surprising. I will just get to enjoy Juniversity in person and that will be that.
The Persona Challenge entry took up a lot of my bandwidth this month, as expected. Being an A&S form I am unfamiliar with, I wanted to give the handwriting the space it deserved for evaluation and reflection. It also prompted a project for showing it off to the best of it’s ability that, until this weekend, has been a closely held secret. To show off my handwriting project, I decided to translate and transcribe my apprenticeship contract. This was a ton of fun and an exciting application of my Spanish language skills in SCA contexts. I displayed and presented it to Bea as a surprise at Crown Tourney, with Esa and Hakon on hand as well. This post is a few days late to keep this a surprise. Documentation can be found here.
My apprenticeship contract in all its handwritten, Spanish glory.
I did get to do a couple of things unintended, but very rewarding nonetheless.
For Bloodbath, I needed snacks, and it hit me that I had turkey livers in my freezer. I decided that a batch of mousse would be an awesome application of the Duke’s Powder and I was right. I make my mousse with caramelized onions and garlic, port, and an excessive amount of browned butter. All of this makes for a perfect pair with the Duke’s Powder I’m happy to say. It helps balance out the irony-ness of the liver without totally getting rid of it, which I happen to like.
The second happy accident was working on my long overdue chair heraldry. I started this project just before getting incredibly ill last year and it has languished ever since. This month I fully attached the bordure to the field, and began work on my ermine spots. I’m not giving this project a deadline, but it would be nice to see it completed before the summer is out.
Lastly, during a spring cleaning weekend, I knocked out two pillows to bring to events and a tablecloth made of a beautiful but very plastic fabric Holly found in the “free stuff” area of her apartment complex. The big pro to this is that being made of plastic, I did not have to hem it, I could just melt the edges and that was done.
Bloodbath was a lovely if windy day again. As always, Thomas Beebe took some amazing pictures, including my new favorite family photo. There’s a link to his whole event album here and I cannot recommend his work enough. Two things I’m noticing through the last few events:
I’m getting a little bored of the same 2 dresses over and over. It’s time for another regular wear dress to get added to my collection. I’ve got the stamped saya on tap, and I thin prioritizing that for next month is a great idea.
I want to make the saya a little longer than either of the sayas I have. Those hit above the ankle and I’d like a little more length on this one.
Bea and I both had Good Friday off and took the opportunity to go to the National Gallery of Art’s Library for both my paternoster project and to explore their collection, which includes some great Spanish clothing books like the works of Carmen Bernis and El Codice de los trajes which is a book of illustrations of people in the Iberian peninsula done in our period. Some key take aways was a total misunderstanding of the differences between a saya and a brial. I’m still going to make the fabric stamped blue linen dress next month, but I want to sit and take some time to reassess some of those terms. Suffice it to say, a brial is on the horizon at some point, but it’s going to be a very different garment to the one I’ll be making next month, which is in fact still going to be a saya.
My May goals are:
One set of Green Saya points.
Make the Fabric Stamped Saya. Because this is a larger project, I want to devote as much of my energy to it as possible.
If I have the spoons, finish the calzas and the square-fronted cofia I did not do last month.
