Ryan's Cursed Scroll

Lada, Vettorio, and I received the scroll assignment for Ryan's Mark on May 11th. We didn't have much time to figure out how we would split it up, but we knew we could do it. Vettorio would do a cadel and the order badge, Lada would do some gloriously clashing illumination, and I would do the calligraphy. It was requested that the words be done in charter style. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part and I passed the making of words off to the more experienced of them. Lada sent me the words and their inspiration documents. I took a look and since they came from 1100, 1412, and 1297, I thought either Carolingian miniscule or early gothic hand would do best. The calligraphy books I have for the early gothic also have an example where they used Rustic Capitals, so I technically was learning 2 new hands for this. I'm not thrilled with the early gothic hand, and I really hated doing the rustic capitals.

I got a photo of the layout from Vettorio, so I measured roughly how much space I'd get and did a practice sheet from that.

Lada was supposed to come out to our area on Memorial day weekend, but first part of the curse, her husband got very ill and she had to stay home in Brooklyn with him. So I got the scroll and did the calligraphy. I wasn't happy with it, but it wasn't horrible, so I accepted what it was and shipped it UPS off to Lada on Wednesday May 28th. By May 20th (curse part 2) the tracking said it was still in a distribution hub in NJ. So I got another piece of the same size bristol paper and restarted the scroll. I got the spaces penciled out and got the calligraphy finished Sunday June 1st. I actually was more satisfied with the calligraphy on the second go round. Giving it a day to dry, I passed it off to Vettorio on Monday. He stayed up late redoing the cadel and badge and Tuesday evening Lada drove out to Long Island (about 1.5-2 hours each way) to pick up the scroll. She then developed a cold (curse part 3!) but finished the illumination of an archer based on a 16th century German statue and the heraldry late Friday in time for the event. Oh, and UPS delivered the scroll to her work place where I'd originally shipped it to Friday afternoon when she was of course working from home. She also said the paint on the heraldic banner on the last part of it was giving her problems (Curse part 4!), but it worked out for our purposes.

So, does this count as 4 dings? Learning 2 new hands and doing the scroll twice. but it's done, and Ryan seemed to like it, so yay. Oy.