My Own Grandpa

Pennsic 35 Recap

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:51:22 GMT

Another war has come and gone, and everyone has survived once more.

The trip up went very smoothly. I loaded up my gear, including the car top carrier left empty to bring back the tent I would be staying in, which had already been set up. Since D's school had just started, she and the wife were staying home in the air conditioning. Instead, I had lined up a couple of riders to help spread out the driving and gas. First I picked up Randalin, tucked her things in next to mine, then headed further north. We picked up Francesca, got everything arranged with just enough room for three people to sit, and hit the long road. It was a fairly uneventful trip, with only some fairly light rain in Virginia and West Virginia. The good luck we had on the way up would be balanced out later, but that's another part of the story.

This Pennsic was just as much fun as last year, though it had a different flavor. Where last war was all about making new friends and finding a new place for myself in the scheme of things, this war I got to know those friends better and settled into my new situation. I taught three dance classes, one as a substitute for grinnellian2001, who was coming in a day later than she had originally planned. They all went well, all things considered, and were well attended.

By the later part of the war, I had fallen into a regular schedule:
9:00 - Wake up, put on day clothes, eat granola bars for breakfast.
10:00 - Go down to the dance tent, eat an orange.
10:00-Noonish - Take morning dance classes. Could go as late as 14:00 if there are good classes and the weather is nice.
Noonish - Eat lunch.
Afternoon - Too hot to dance much. Retire to Chateau Desfontaines in the Cynnabar camp to lounge, sew, and/or play games.
Evening - Eat dinner, head back to camp to change into fancy clothes.
Night - Attend party in the dance tent.
Midnight - More dancing in the barn, if energy permits.

As usual, I spent very little time in my actual camp, and they took to calling me "Lorenzo the Invisible". I spent the majority of my time being grinnellian2001's Pennsic boyfriend, which mostly entailed being an entertaining fashion accessory and lifting heavy objects from time to time. I also spent a couple of days draping and sewing a cotehardie for her, cobbled together from an old unfitted T-tunic style dress of hers and a few extra yards of the same fabric. The old dress's body panels became gores, and the sleeves were altered and recycled. The body panels and side gores were cut from the extra yardage, with an unfortunate mishap that resulted in having to piece on a new bottom half to one of the back panels. The hem also had to be pieced in at the sides. The facings and bindings at neck, front opening, and hem were hand finished, and the buttons were made from the dress material. It turned out quite well, though after wearing it for a few hours it had stretched enough require it to be taken in a bit at the sides.

Much fun was had with desfontaines, jodybrai, and magda_vogelsang as well, including learning to play Munchkin and Guillotine. Also met and danced with a lot of new people as well as acquaintances from last year. I saw kyneburh briefly in passing, but we never really got a chance to chat. The dancing was pretty non-stop and always enjoyable. I learned and relearned a raft of dances, though I still had to fake my way through a lot of them during the balls. The new Italian wardrobe worked very well. Everything was comfortable to walk, work, and dance in, and the evening wear got a number of positive comments. The gonella turned out to be warmer than I'd hoped, despite being unlined. I also need to rebuild my brache with a center panel through the crotch. Really, I need to replace all my undergarments with linen anyway, but I can do that a little at a time over the next year. My goal for next year, clothing-wise, is to have a sufficient amount of comfortable 16th century clothing to do half the war in that and half in the current 15th century wardrobe.

Some of us braved the rain on Monday evening to go to Judith of Northumbria's well deserved Laurel vigil. There were also a couple of memorable dance moments outside of the normal ball setting. During one of the intermissions for the I Sebastiani performance at the ICOD camp, there was a masked performance of Rostiboli Gioioso and Petit Vriens. The former was done as a cat chasing a bird, while the second was a pair of dogs chasing the cat. It's rare to see that kind of dance performance in the SCA. Also, after Judith's 15th century Italian party at the dance tent, we went out into the night accompanied by Wolgemut. First, we snuck over to the Calontir encampment and the band played us a piva, which we danced in a line snaking through the camp. I ended up at the head of the line, and managed not to get anyone set on fire or injured by piles of discarded armor. We were there to break someone out of another vigil, but the Crown hadn't been by yet to release her, so we tiptoed back out into the night. We then headed over to the merchants and began dancing an alman procession through the merchant tents, across the road, and through the merchants on the other side to the barn. I don't know how long a march it was, but it was certainly good exercise. It was nice to get out and dance away from the normal venues, even if it was only a very simple step.

I also handed out my last two blank books for my library. One went to antoniseb, who is apparently going to write a treatise on astronomy, and the other went to Judith, who will likely write about clothing, dance, or both. grinnellian2001 started and finished her book at the war: an epistolary account of a ball in the style of Arbeau. I'll have her book ith me at events in the future for anyone who wishes to read it.

In contrast to the uneventful trip north, coming home got very exciting. The excitement happened only in alternate states, as it turned out, but that was more than enough. We got everything packed and got on the road by 11:00 on Saturday. We zipped through Pennsylvania without incident. About the time we hit the middle of nowhere in West Virginia (doesn't narrow it down much, I know), the rear passenger tire blew out. It was still leaking air by the time I got stopped, so no damage to the rim. The outer edge had been worn down to the belts on both rear tires. I reckon I should have put some extra air in them to compensate for the load. Called AAA, waited an hour, then got towed on a flatbed 50 miles through torrential rain to the Wal-Mart in Charleston. A couple of hours later, we were back on the road with two brand new tires. Virginia went by without incident. We dropped Francesca off in Knoxville, then made our way south again. About 2:00, we were doing about 65 down I-75 when some idiot in a little car came up behind us doing about 90 and slammed into us. He came around, thought about pulling over, and then sped off. No one got hurt, but now the back door of the van doesn't open. There will be much calling of the insurance company tomorrow. I finally got home at about 6:30 this morning. Despite the less than stellar ending, it was still an excellent war.

Pictures are up here.

Girdle Book

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 05:03:14 GMT

Now that I'm no longer frantically sewing things I need, I've turned my hand to frivolous accessories. I decided that I wanted something to take notes in while I'm at the war, so I decided to make a girdle book. A quick search turned up a couple of reproductions, both made as slipcovers, as well as some good reference images.

I decided to make mine as a slipcover as well, so I could just swap it out when I filled up the book. I picked up a pack of mini notebooks at the office supply store and used those as the basis for my measurements. I also got some solid graphite pencils to use as relatively unobtrusive writing implements. I made the covers out of 1/8" hardboard, which was cheap, rigid, and easy to work with. The cover is made of suede reclaimed from a discarded jacket I've been canniballizing for a while. I made a couple of envelopes out of heavy paper to serve as pockets inside the covers to hold the covers of the notebook. These were put together with white glue and attached to the covers with spray adhesive. The clasp is made of 22 ga mild steel and some nails. The latch on the clasp is simply a flat strip that is bent on the end. It is held by the pressure of the pages inside. The end of the cover is tied with a simple knot to keep it from sliding out of the belt.

Pictures:
Overview
Clasp (closed)
Clasp (open)
Open book
Without notebook
Notebook and pencil

Update

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 03:31:22 GMT

* Gulf Wars was a whole lot of fun. A sufficiency of dancing and socializing was had.

* Book count: 22 distributed, 2 unassigned

* I danced both pairs of shoes to pieces at the war, so I finally broke down and bought some from Revival. I'll probably have to alter the straps on my pattens to fit them, but that should be easy enough.

* Finished the red silk gamurra for the wife. I'm in the middle of making her a Persian outfit from my new fabric stash. Need to make something similar for the little one as well.

* Working on notes and handouts for a couple of classes I plan to teach at our event in April. The first class I've had in mind for quite a while (men's 15th century Italian clothing), and once I get some more pictures together for the handout I should be good to go on that one. The other class is "How to dress (and undress) a late period lady". It's a useful skill that I think everyone should have. I plan to cover lacing techniques, ideal silhouettes, "fluffing", and chemise edge management. Any other topics that you ladies out there think I should touch on?

More Projects

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 03:20:15 GMT

What have I been up to?

* Made a new giornea from the carcass of an old cioppa I've had for years but don't like the cut of anymore. It was a lovely blue and gold brocade, lined with the black cotton/linen blend I've used for a million other things. There was just enough to piece together a gironea out of it. I trimmed it with some nice brown fake fur, though I may have gone just a tad overboard on that bit.

* Finished the new shoes, though I used two different types of seams. They worked well enough, though my feet tended to slide beack into the heels. I may try padding the heel with something. The leather's a bit stretchy, so I hope they don't go all floppy on me. Aside from that, they were great to walk around in without pattens (which don't fit on them anyway).

* The books are still going out. There are 17 in the hands of authors now, with another 3 ready to go for Gulf Wars.

* Went to Black Griffin up in Tennessee. It was a simply lovely event. I got to meet a lot of great new people, and hang out with others I've never really had the chance to talk with before. There was beautiful snow on Saturday that had the good grace to quit by Sunday morning for the drive home.

* I'm settling in to my Gulf Wars sewing now. The red silk gamurra is finished, and tomorrow I begin my greaqt undergarment crusade. I have a huge pile of white cotton (alas, no linen for me!) that is destined to become a variety of chemises, shirts, and drawers.

* The other project on the horizon is a new sewing box, modeled after this. It's mostly an excuse to make another lock, but I'd also like to have something a little less nasty than my (admittedly useful) tackle box to have out at events.

Edit: I also rebuilt the lock on the library chest in a more period fashion, after the original lock got jammed by some over-enthusiastic key-turning while I had it on display at Midwinter A&S. The rebuild wasn't as hard as I feared it might be, and the new lock is far superior all around.

Project Updates

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:47:28 GMT

I've been working on things, trying to shift gears from one project to the next.

I finished the chest for my library. I finally found a good source on locks, but a little too late for this project. The mechanism in mine is functional, but a complete fantasy. The next one will be better, if I ever get around to doing this again. The current count of books "in the wild" is 11 (unless I've forgotten one), and I plan to make up a few more this weekend so I'll have them ready for Midwinter A&S.

I've got half of a new pair of shoes done, and I may try to whip up a new giornea this weekend as well. I would like to have the shoes done by Gulf Wars, as the ones I have now don't have room for any sort of insoles and would make a hard week of walking. I should probably expand my selection of Italian underwear as well, so I can stretch my wardrobe further. Also need to make another gamurra and underclothes for the wife.

What I've Been Up To

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 01:58:24 GMT

It's been a while since my last update, and I've been busy. Part of me always wants to keep my projects secret and unveil them fully formed, but this is really more of a long term thing, so I don't feel too bad about letting the cat out of the bag.

After I started writing my little tailor's manual, I started thinking that it might be neat to get some other people who make or do cool stuff to write similar books, and collect them all into a library that I could take with me to events for people to read. The goal is not so much for it to be the most informative or comprehensive body of knowledge (the internet is a far more efficient way to transmit information), but rather to recreate the feeling of giving and receiving information in a period fashion. The books would be all hand bound and hand written in a period voice, on a variety of subjects.

Some of you are already aware of the project, and have been kind enough to write books for me. I'm looking forward to seeing what each of you decides to write. I don't expect to get any finished books back for quite a while (I'm only about a third of the way through my own), but I've been told that patience is a virtue. In the meantime, I've been preparing a home for when all my wayward tomes find their way back. I found this 14th century German casket that looked like it would be about the right size and shape for a fair number of books. I'll go into more detail later, but that's what I've been working on for the past several weeks.

Notebook

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 02:59:09 GMT

Since I'm not in the mood to sew right now, I decided to use my new book to document my contruction techniques. It's a frivolous little exercise, and I blame all the da Vinci shows I watched on the History Channel the other night for the idea. Mostly, I just needed something to put in the book so it could have a purpose. I'm trying to keep it in a semi-period style, without references to anything modern. I'm writing with a dip pen, which is a wonderful tactile experience. After looking at the handwriting of da Vinci and Thomas More, I'm not terribly concerned with my penmanship outside of basic legibility. So far I've managed to take up three pages with a description of constructing a doublet. I'll follow that up with hose, giornea, and cioppa, then maybe some hats and other accessories until I run out of room.

Hat and Book

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:46:58 GMT

A couple new entries in the sewing journal, a silly hat and a book. There's just something satisfying about the feel of a leather bound book in your hand. I finished the other doublet as well, but I didn't wear it this weeknd so I don't have any pictures of it. I think I've hit a bit of sewing burnout at this point. We'll see if I get inspired again.