My projects for the month of March were:

• Complete Gracie and John’s Coronation clothing for Coronation on April 1.

• Finish my Cultura Atlantia display of spices and their origin stories.

• Start the design work for the next gonete.

• Begin the design research for the saya verdugado.

Immediately after KASF, I turned my focus to Gracie and John’s Coronation clothing. Their muslins were cut and tested, and the first step next was to cut the fashion fabrics. Sof’ia handled all the shopping for this task, and we got ready fairly quickly to have the painting process begin. The big challenge of this project was one I didn’t account for- the fact that neither Gracie, John, nor I ever hold still long enough at events to regularly do fittings.

The stamping of these garments was a project unto itself. It took Sof’ia and I eight hours working together to stamp both garments. And even then, both the PeliLaurel for Gracie and John’s Kraken had to be repainted by hand. When I say that these are much less hand stamped garments than they are hand painted. True to form, these were finished on the way to the event, where I was attaching the cord I used to make button holes for John. To say that I’m happy with how these turned out is a huge understatement. My primary goal was to make sure that no matter what, Gracie and John were comfortable and able to do everything they needed to in these garments and I think they absolutely accomplished that. There are things I’d change, and will after some actual fittings with them, but both of them looked and felt fantastic. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Gracie’s dress is loosely based on a 10-gore. This name is a misnomer- the garment does not actually have 10 gores, but instead has 4. The side gores are then taken in to add additional creases and imitate extra gore fullness in the skirt. She really wanted the swoosh-factor and I think we absolutely nailed that. To account for not having fittings, I extended the wider side gores up into her armscye and added lacing holes. This allowed us to easily get her into the dress, lace it up, and still have some ease. Now, we could have done with less overall ease, but I decided I would rather she have the room to move and extra swoosh and guarantee it would fit her that day.

John’s garment is loosely based on a G-63. This coat like garment would have been worn over a shirt (he has a t-shirt on under in this picture) and buttons down the front. I’m really thrilled with the length on this piece and how it hit him. Placement of the armscyes on John was absolutely critical. John’s a big dude, from years of physical exertion and if placed incorrectly, shoulder seams and armscyes can be incredibly limiting to his mobility and painful to wear. I used Evan, who power lifts, as a model for the placement and I think that went swimmingly. Sof’ia found these fantastic buttons with Drekkars on them as well and we used those for his closures.

Gracie was sneaky though. She takes a lot of pride in thanking people for their service and this was apparently no exception. With Sof’ia’s help she schemed to get me to a tiny field court, with them, Bea, and our friend Baroness Sinn of Highland Foorde to give me Storvik’s Baronial Award of excellent. I was incredibly touched, because they’re my friends and my friends get my service almost unquestioningly. To be seen and appreciated for it is one of the reasons that they’re on that list of people that do. In addition, Coronation was also big day for me in that in addition to Gracie and John’s clothing, Bea and I were in charge of A&S and I also had a set of secret projects to do. A&S itself is a fun process. We had Cultura Atlantia hosted by Master Hagar (that I participated in, more on that below), and hosted a series of solars and workshops that day. I ran a Newcomer’s A&S Workshop and we had 6 other A&S activities and classes throughout the day.

My secret project is my new favorite secret projects once again: as stepping down gifts for Their (now) Excellencies Abran and Anya, we have a return of the golems. For Abran’s I added a coronet (for being a Count/royal Peer) and a sword (for his Knighthood). The word I chose for him is גְבוּרָה/gevurah, which means “valor, heroism, prowess, or courage.” I particularly like this one, because it does form a word when the first gimmel is erased, and it forms the word בּוּרה/boor (intentionally misspelled here, there is no hay at the end of the word) which means ignorant. Incidentally, it is NOT the etymological origin of the modern word “boor,” which comes from the Low German word for peasant. For Anya’s, she got a coronet (for being a royal Peer) and a small rose (for the Order of the Rose, for former Queens). Her word is חֶסֶד/chesed, which means “grace” but also means “justice, kindness, and fairness.” It’s a slightly different form of the word justice, and its counterpart צֶדֶק/tzedek means “justice” in the sense of the letter of the law. And once both of them were done, I had just enough Sculpey left to make one for their son, whose golem says שִׂמְחָה/simchah, meaning “joy".”

In the midst of all of this, I was working on my Cultura Atlantia project. I did the research in spurts but I did not have time to write my documentation until the night before. I wasn’t too fussed, as this was only going to be a display, so I worked on it but didn’t overly stress myself. It got done and I packed up all my spice samples, a map with pins of spice origins on it and my lovely granite mortar and pestle for the day. When I arrived and we finally got to setting up A&S after morning court, Master Hagar asked me if I would enter it as an actual competition entry instead of as a display as intended to help fill up the competition a bit. I figured, sure, why not, I’m not expecting much of a result anyway, as this is not my finest piece of documentation. Boy. Was I wrong. Sitting in evening court, the A&S events were discussed by the autocrat and the Cultura Atlantia winner was announced. Then Her Majesty, Yasamin, stood up and talked a bit about her choice of theme and what it meant to her and announced that she had chosen her new A&S champion. In all of this excitement, I’m thinking the winner of Cultura was the choice, and lo and behold she says my name! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I accidentally became the new Queen’s A&S Champion! More on that to come when I know what that role is meant to look like!

Other projects for myself basically went by the way side this month. I got no design work done for either the gonete or the saya verdugado at all except for dreaming of what I can do with them eventually. So those are now April focuses, as I take a solid month off of service related pursuits. I think of the two, I’m most excited for the saya but pragmatically would like to pursue the gonete first for a sense of completion on that project so that will likely be what I start on. The next iteration of the gonete is going to be made from a cornflower blue cotton sateen I have, with an interlining of cotton duck canvas, and an inner lining of some sort of linen (TBD based on my stash). I really do want to nail the sleeves this time and I think the drape of this will allow for some really lovely bell sleeves.

And so, for April, which I hope will be much less eventful than March:

• Make the next version of the gonete.

• Start design decisions and shopping for the saya verdugado.

• Figure out how the heck to be a Royal Champion and what that means!