Pennsic deeds

 While I did not take any classes this Pennsic, I did teach one twice. "Heralds don't pun, we cant!" The class during peace week was 4 people (4 more than I thought I would get!) and during war week was 5 people. I think it went well, I explained canting, showed a few examples, then asked people if they could guess some. I might offer it again if there's interest.

I did retain once. The shift was supposed to be 2 hours, 11:00 - 1:00 and it was from the end of heavy list castle battle and a little afterwards. I followed their Majesties back to EK camp with their wagon of supplies. Arabella asked if I minded staying a little past my shift while TRM got their rapier gear on and headed back for the second battle where I would meet my shift reliever. No problem, I said. So I sat around with the other retainer and queens guard while Ryou and Indrakshi relaxed a little bit and assembled their armor. I also made sure they ate from the meat and cheese plate Arabella had provided. Eventually we all made our way back to the battle field and it was 2:00. I passed off the cart and saw Vetra and Vettorio, who I had promised to keep hydrated. They had their own cart with water, gatorade, and their daybags.  I hadn't eaten since breakfast, which was a cup of tea and a minibox of cereal. The other retainer had brought a basket of snacks and things for fighters so I begged a cheese stick off her. (So thankful!) The fight lasted about an hour, and my friends did great. 

I went to East Kingdom Court to see a friend get her writ for Pelican. I'm so excited for her! But before court started I was talking with Zippy (Herald for the next set of royals) and Yehuda (Brigantia herald). My Peer, knowing that crown herald is one of my goals, had told Zippy that I should be his deputy. So I briefly talked to them about it. Yay! I'm looking forward to learning more about the job. Especially the things needed in lead-up to an event. I know how it goes with baronial herald, but I don't think it would be that simple for kingdom.

So during court at one point I hear my name called out. Oh geez, what did I do now? Aislinn, who I had been sitting with, said afterwards she tried to get up to escort me in, but I zoomed up there too quick. Nerves. Also I realized afterward I forgot to bow to TRM as I approached. Oops. So yeah, now I got a Silver Brooch! With an *amazingly* gorgeous scroll done by my friends.

So let's see what else did I do this war? I was there peace week, so I helped set up our camp. I'd never gone peace week before, I thought it was going to be a lot more work. But it was more like set one big thing up each day and relax the rest of the time. Severus (my son) and I also went over to EK Royal when they had put the call out for volunteers to help set up their public area. So we spent a few hours helping there as well.

We had had some "interesting times" the day before we were going to leave for Pennsic, and my biggest fears were to get covid within days of arriving on site, or to come back home to a flooded house. Neither happened, so it was a very awesome time. We are likely to try doing both weeks again next year.

Getting busier!

I went to Spring coronation, signed up for 2 retaining shifts, but was told I wasn't actually needed for either one. But I did introduce myself to the new Crown Herald and got to read a scroll in court. (For my sister! Muwahahah!) I also got to chat with Demitrio about what's involved for the baronial herald office and he decided to put his letter of intent in. He was voted in as of last meeting, I told him I'd be his first deputy right away to guide him, but once he got comfortable with his office he should find another deputy to train up to replace him when his term is over. 

After that event I went to Balfar's challenge. I signed up for retaining and did get to do 2 shifts trailing after His Majesty. I also got to read a scroll for Kayleigh, so that was awesome. I remembered what Ryan said after Coronation about projection and presence, so I tried to "talk to" a guy I spotted in the back row and put a little more emotion and variance of inflection into my words. It also helped that the scroll wasn't as long as Jenna's! 

June 18th is Potted Arms. Vetra asked for a volunteer to do PR and advertisement, so I jumped on that. It's likely going to be, as usual, almost entirely local people. There's some big events elsewhere in the kingdom that it's up against. But I've been doing my best to hype it up, and since it's only 2 weeks away I'll be ramping that up. The new information has been coming out steadily, so that's helped. 

Let's get back to business.

Things have been quiet since November, but it is the down season so that's not unexpected. I've still been doing the monthly Mosaic and Mural emails, but even that has been fairly quiet. Although with events starting to take place in person again, hopefully those will start getting back to normal amounts of submissions.

Over the past month I've been learning a new hand for calligraphy, Insular Minscule. It's a fairly generic medieval font so I can use it for more varieties of illumination. In preparation for An Dubhaigeainn schola I got 2 beautiful illuminations from Oda. Using the competition themes I came up with words for both. I'm really pleased with the one for bardic especially, it uses tons of alliteration that make me happy. I feel like I'm decent at coming up with words for generic champion scrolls. But I have no intent to do research and make my words more period. I mean, I've been mostly doing baronial champion scrolls so , I feel it's not as important to have them be more period accurate. We're a pretty laid-back barony. And everybody that I've helped do scrolls for seem to love them as they are, so I'm ok with that.

Schola was virtual again this year. The theme of the event was "Silly Schola" and I immediately wanted to do a class on canting. I stunt heralded morning court, but that's easy. Just intro and outro Their Excellencies. I had 4 people attend my class, one of them being a newbie. My class lasted about 15 minutes, and I discussed with the attendees at the end. I was hoping to do more a "match the device with the name" type class participation, but I hadn't gotten to making up slides. I think if I set aside time to actually think it through and try it out, then I can do this for Pennsic. I received enthusiastic feedback from the attendees, so I probably will!

The baronial herald was there for afternoon court, so all I had to do was hold the scrolls up to the camera as they were read.

The next event I'm going to is coronation. I've signed up to do a retaining shift with their outgoing majesties and one with the incoming majesties. I also emailed the incoming Crown Herald and offered to help read any scrolls. If I'm successful in restraint I will not volunteer to do anything more and will be able to socialize and enjoy myself.

I was talking with my sister and firmed in my head that it might take me another 30 years to be Elevated because I'm not being seen as doing major work. But on the other hand I probably will not burn myself out and disappear right afterwards, as I see happens to a lot of Peers. I'm ok with it taking a long time. Slow and steady wins the race, and I don't wind up being bitter and burnt.

Busy little herald

I feel like I've picked up a bit in the "doing stuff" department. 

Earlier this month on one of the recording sessions my friend Caterina received her AoA. YAY! I then poked Vox Regis and requested doing the scroll reading for her. This past weekend I found out Fiona asked to do the scroll for her, and asked if I wanted to do the calligraphy for it. Yay! I miss doing calligraphy. But I told Fiona I'm still not going into buildings, so I would do it if she was willing to do the mailing it out part.

On Friday I taught a class at KWHSS midyear event! "Being a baronial herald". It was the first time I taught that, so I wasn't sure how it'd go. But it seemed to go well! I think half or more of the people there either were or are local heralds, but they all assured me they were still there to learn. I realized a few days later that I too have taken classes multiple times, or classes on things I already knew because there's always something new to learn. This may adjust how I teach this in the future.

Also prior to the class a SH from An Tir asked if I had handouts for the class, as she had a few shire heralds who would be interested but lacked stable internet connection. I explained I didn't and she asked if I'd be willing to do a zoom at a later date for them. Sure thing! So that will be coming up around March or so.

Saturday was Hugoline's elevation. When we all popped into the zoom and started recording I was waiting for a signal that it was time for me to do the boast, but they skipped right over that. Oops, oh well. This is the good part about "recorded in front of a live studio audience". So I read my part at the end and they'll slot it in where it should go. This is the third household member I've been asked to do a boast for. For a year or more now I've been trying to pay attention to other people's to improve on what I write for my friends. I think each one I'm getting a little better. Yay! I'm still not interested in being a word smith for scrolls, but this is different to me. 

Overdue update.

 Hey all... *wipes away dust* How's everybody doing? *opens curtains* It's been a while.

So yeah, I've been keeping busy enough even with everything virtual. 

• I've been helping friends with heraldry submissions. 
• I've been helping Blue Tyger and learning how to do more stuff like make up the Letter of Decisions (LoD) and getting submissions up and proofread on OSCAR. 
• Of course I've still been sending out LoAR decision emails. 
• I helped with 2 more reading of scrolls for ethereal court. As I said elsewhere, I feel like Goldilocks. The first reading was not projected. The second reading was too fast. The third reading was just right!

Oh! And I signed up to teach "how to be a baronial herald" at KWHSS half year Bonus Plague edition. I'm super unsure of how this is going to be handled, but I'm going to give it my best shot. And Declan kindly offered to help me with that, so between the two of us it should be a good class. If people attend it, heh. It's 11 days away, so hopefully I'll get more information soon.

So yeah, that's what's going on with me. How're you all holding up?

Pandemic time is slow time.

It's interesting how during a time of nothing much happening that many people don't have the energy to do lots of stuff. It's me. I'm many people.

I have done 2 rounds of sending out notification emails on heraldry decisions. I've still helped out with Blue Tyger proofreading and getting stuff up on OSCAR. 

I made 3 quick videos for the Tyger Summer Camp that was put up by the Chancellor Minor and her team. One video on color contrast, one video on what heraldry is used for, and one on how non-fighters can use heraldry too. I only discussed devices, didn't bother with names or badges. It's for kids, I kept it simple.

I wrote up a synopsis / outline / train of thought thingy for a "How to be a baronial herald" class, but I haven't done anything with it yet. I had intended it to be for Pennsic University, but that didn't happen. I'll poke at that some more.

After coronation Vox Regis put out a call for heralds to help by recording themselves reading scrolls. I did 3 for her. After watching court this past weekend I realized that while it wasn't terrible, reading into a phone and reading to a room are completely different things and I need to improve on what I did. I promised if she let me do more I'd do better.

So, this sounds like I've been doing a bunch contrary to my opening line above. But this is the first post I've made in almost 2 months. I think things are going to stay at this slow pace for a while until the world opens up and my supply of spoons replenishes.

Herald has leveled up!

So the SCA is still not happening in-person. But we're still doing things virtually. The Queen has started giving out Amegerious (armergerious? Ack! AOA-level) awards in the ethereal court, and at first I was skeptical, but having seen the first round I'm appreciating how it's done. I know it's a LOT of work for the web ministry team, and nothing ever goes according to plan, but it looks great from my point of view.

Also in ethereal court, they're doing "inspiration" shout outs. And I got one last court! Yay! So awesome! *kermit flail* The first few people that I would think to write in as inspirations were already done in the first round, so I found some more deserving people and wrote them in for next court. 

Also! The Mural Herald stepped down, and I asked to be considered for that position and offered to cover both Mural and Mosaic while they looked for somebody to fill the Mosaic role. I thought that the job I've been doing for I think a little under a year now has proven that I've got the hang of things there. So they found a new person for Mosaic right away, and I jumped into Mural just as the new LOAR came out. I'm really really chuffed at being able to send out the final "Hey, your stuff is official!" notices. The hardest part is remembering all the details of what I've been doing as Mosaic so I can write them down and pass the info on to the new deputy.

I'm still helping out as I was on the Blue Tyger team, proofreading and triple-checking stuff. I'm also trying to comment more on OSCAR, but I'm still extremely unsure of myself with anything more than "No conflict found, links check out." I think the biggest problem is that people comment and say what I would say before I get a chance to look over the letters. But I'm sure I'll get better in time with practice. Even if not, and in the meantime, double checking conflicts and links doesn't hurt.

And then there's the cancelled Pennsic class I was going to do. I got an email that Pennsic University is going to have a youtube channel to upload classes to. I still want to do my "How to baronial herald" class. I'm thinking I'll do it on Meets for the East Kingdom A&S part, then upload that recording to Youtube. I just need to finish typing up notes of what I'm going to say and have a person or two look it over before I decide when to hold it.

And then the Isolation happened.

I'm trying to remember what I've done service-wise since the new year.

• I know I finished calligraphy on another backlog scroll.
• I helped herald in court at Twelfth Night.
• I've finished a thing for a friend's elevation, but as that hasn't happened yet, I'm not disclosing details on that.
• I've held my "Absolute beginner's guide to submitting heraldry" twice online. Once on facebook live, which isn't good for seeing if anybody has questions but more people were watching, and once on Google Meets which worked a lot better but had fewer people. The facebook live I had committed to doing before the webministry started pushing for people to use the Meets. So, experimentation in streaming ways happened. Facebook live is good for broadcasting with minimal interaction with viewers since there's such a delay between what you say and what viewers see. Zoom is good for having multiple people talk at the same time or roundtable discussions. Google Meets is good for a lecture class.
• I recorded a short video of my dancing in armor to the Electric Slide to amuse my fellow SCAdians. And I most recently recorded videos to contribute to group video projects of "Eye of the Tyger" and "Glow Up".
• Plus I've been continuing my monthly duties as Mosaic Herald, and helping out with proofreading things for Blue Tyger.

I think that's all for now! Because I suddenly remembered I have this blog to keep record of the things I do.

Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach...

There are many people in my family who are or were teachers. There's even more of my friends who are teachers. There is good reason why I'm not a teacher. My thought process is "I can take 2 hours to teach a person how to do a thing, or I can do it myself in 30 minutes." It's frustrating for myself when I know that part of the SCA and the Peer track is teaching others.

I've wrangled feast serving for a handful of events. For St. Andrews, Lily volunteered to be in charge of feast servers and asked me to teach her how to do it. There's so many little things that I just *do* and don't think about that it's difficult for me to lay out step by step what to do. And I wanted to bug her about "Have you nailed down volunteers yet? Have you done this yet? Have you done that yet?", but I didn't want to be a micromanager. Luckily she's intelligent and has common sense and is very receptive of my suggestions. So either I'd be on top of her so much that she'd get resentful, or I back off and toss her emails as I think of things and hope for the best. I went with the latter, confident that she'd be on top of things. Of course I had volunteered to be one of the servers so if things did go pear-shaped I could step in and help get it sorted out.

Unfortunately things never go to plan. All the hiccups that happened at feast were not the fault of the servers, and there was nothing we could do to prevent it or fix it. But Lily was watching, trying to keep our end of things going smoothly, I was hovering nearby her see if there was anything I could do to help. The other servers were people from her household and I know the specific ones that were helping were good ones. I told her at the end of the night that usually feast isn't quite so frantic, and it's much more relaxed. But she did a good job and now she knows how to do it. So there's 2 people in the barony that feastocrats can go to for heading up serving.