January 2025: Camel Car Parka And Other Class Related Thoughts
January Goals:
Garb:
Finish one motif each day until the Juana camisa facing is finished. I have 11 left to do.
Finish assembling the camisa.
Classes and Research:
Continue work on the survey for the Juana outfit.
Work on the recipes for the Food That Built Spain class
Finalize handout and slides for The Foods That Built Spain
January as a rule starts out with new year’s cleaning. There’s something incredibly refreshing about a clean slate in a new year. This year, SCA related cleaning focused around getting some much overdue art on the walls, cleaning out my sewing storage, and the annual fabric purge. I was able to get rid of a solid amount of scrap fabric in the process, and Kiki and Baby Bud had a fabulous time rolling around in it for a day. We’re also moving this year at some point, so throughout the year, I’ll be taking a critical look at the things I have and whether or not those are things that need to find different homes as part of the moving process.
I remembered early in the month that I had a little bit left on my Silk Baron gift certificate, so I splurged on some fun fabric samples for some projects I’m noodling on. My favorites of the ones I got is a dark red patterned silk called Ratafia, a red and gold called Old Fashioned, and a gorgeous rich blue called Seance. Not sure yet what I’m gonna pick, but it’s going to be fun either way!
Title slide for my newest class.
Prep for The Foods That Built Spain was the lion’s share of my month. I really enjoyed building out this class, mainly because it allowed me to explore some sources that I’ve really been wanting to dive into that I haven’t yet gotten around to, largely because of my work with Nola. I’m getting to pull some recipes out of The Anonymous Andalusian and the Liber de Sent Sovi, along with some recipes done by other food historians. This class is such an interesting subject study of long term economic and political structures of food culture, not just SCA period, and getting to see my mundane work and interests intersect in the SCA is such a lovely thing.
And when I say the lion’s share, I do really mean the lion’s share. What started out as a cool concept has quickly evolved to a class I care a whole lot about. My class handouts usually average about 15 pages and slide show is about 21 slides (yes, I checked), with the longest being my Nola class. This class, on completion, is clocking in at 43 pages and 43 slides. It is by far my heaviest academic class and I can already tell it’s going to end up being a personal darling that I rarely get to bring out. I am planning to present an abridged version of the class at LEAFS in April with snacks included but the trick is going to be how to abridge it. The class only took about 1.5 hours, not the full two I had planned, which is nice and I had a great turn out, much more than I anticipated for a heavy academic class.
This is the biggest video editing project I’ve ever done, and even with the hiccups in transcription and captions (that’s where the title came from), it’s exciting to be working on something this big. Overall, I’m pleased with how that turned out, but it was quite an undertaking for someone who does as minimal as necessary to make videos viable. I’m hoping to have it up mid February or so.
I did manage to get all but three and a half of the facing motif’s done though, and with no more class to work on, this camisa gets my undivided attention in February. I think February is just going to be a full on garb month, since I spent so much time doing book research in December and January. I’ve neglected my various projects and needs, so I’m going to try to rectify that.
February Goals:
Garb:
Finish the Juana camisa facing.
Finish assembling the camisa.
Remove lacing rings and add eyelets to the green saya.
Start on the new red saya project.
