Chain chain chain... chain of campion.

The medallion of the An Dub A&S champion is a big pewter medallion on a (in my opinion) unwieldy chain. I noticed the chain was big and clunky, and if memory serves right, made of galvanized wire. It didn't look comfortable in the least to wear. So I decided to do something about that. I think it was in 2014. My husband has been doing chainmaille for well over 14 or more years. He's brilliant at it. He has taught me some weaves and I've picked up a lot of tips just by being around him as he does it and listening to him and his other chainmaille friends, and now as he's streaming on Twitch.

Byzantine is an easy chain to make. I asked Steve what size/gauge rings to use. I asked Eanraig, who was the A&S champion at the time, what the length of the chain was. I made a thinner and more comfortable chain in that length. At the next baronial meeting I handed it off to the Baroness and Eanraig and told them what it was for. I had brought pliers and switched the medallion over and honestly I can't remember what happened to the old chain.

This is a poorly written entry, I apologize for that, but it's a thing I did that I consider helping out the barony, so I wanted to include it in my blog.

Keep up OP.

When I became herald pursuivant, my Baroness emailed me a spreadsheet of the baronial Order of Precedence. It was just a spreadsheet with name, mundane name, and what award they have. It also had a separate tab that chronologically listed who got what baronial level award. And it hadn't been updated in 2 years or so.

I tend to over-organize when given the opportunity. But this also makes things like the OP easier to update in the future. Hooray for planning for laziness! So now it is a multi-tabbed spreadsheet hosted on my google cloud. There's separate tabs for:
Society awards
Orders of high merit
Armigerous awards
Order of honors
Other EK awards

There's also a tab that is the "condensed version" that like the original list I got had only the person's name and abbreviations for all the awards they have listed after.

I don't have enough knowledge to see if there's a place I could upload the spreadsheet that would keep it easily updateable and also restrict editing to only specific designated people like the herald and coronet. So it stays on my google cloud and I wield my power over it! Muahahaha!! *ahem* 

I compared names from our OP to the kingdom OP, and email/facebook blasted a few times asking populace to check it over and tell me if there's anything missing. I was appreciative of the Vox Regises (Regisi?) when they would publish unofficial royal court reports, so I would skim them and add anybody to my OP that I knew was from my barony.

I also enjoyed reading the unofficial court reports, so I started doing them for my barony as well. But I think that's another post...

The Trouble With Tabards

Much before I was ever interested in heraldry, somebody else had made a tabard for our barony. I was told it was cotton, but it was textured and felt like polyester. It retained heat like polyester. It was scratchy like bad polyester. And it had little duck footprints all over it, big old crossed horns of herald on the chest, and shoulder caps that were as big as dining room curtains.

I hated wearing it, and Suzanne didn't blame me. She didn't make me wear it if I didn't feel like it. The previous herald had a bad habit of constantly forgetting it at home, so she said she wanted to keep it in her Baroness Box with all the other things that were brought out for court. Somewhere along the way the tabard was lost. I swear, it wasn't me. I don't have it, I handed it back to her at the end of every event.

During midnight madness of Pennsic 2016 I bought some blue linen intending to make a new tabard. But since I had no idea what I was doing, I also got some blue cotton fabric at Joanns to make a trial run tabard that I wouldn't be afraid of screwing up.

I then went to the internet! I asked in the court heralds facebook group if people would show me what their baronial tabard looked like. I also got some comments/advice saying the baronial device should be on the front, not the herald symbol. If I wanted those, it wasn't necessary, but I could put them on the sleeve caps.

So I measured myself and made the tabard base a little bigger so it would fit the average person, but not fall off me. Great. Then I borrowed Slaine's light box and traced the duck and wreath onto the white and yellow fabric. Fantastic! I got out my iron and used fusible webbing to iron on the device. (#$&@^^#$&*%($))!!!! Gah! That stuff doesn't like me. Oh well, I did my best. It held on well enough.

I finished it in time for Pennsic. Luckily the webbing held on long enough to last through that. I got some feedback that the wreath should be more circular and it and the duck should be bigger. So after Pennsic I figured out how to undo it. Basically iron it again and peel it up while it's hot. I made a new duck and wreath and battled the fusible webbing again. Not perfect, but it did look much better.

The leaves were peeling off and the webbing was winning the battle. But I had learned basic embroidery and applique, so I blanket stitched the whole thing down.

I think at this point I would be able to make the linen tabard, but of course I put the fabric in a safe spot and I have no idea where that is! So I've handed this tabard off to the next baronial herald and she says it fits her perfectly, so I guess that's the official one for now.

Fish hat fish hat, roly poly fish hat!

This post is a request by my sister.

During the winter Sir Tanaka was posting photos of the many hats he has, some of them extremely silly, while he was doing his pell drills. I remember seeing a dead fish hat on knitty.com, so I decided he needed one. I mwahahaha'ed at him and started knitting it. I saw him at K&Q Bardic/A&S. I had just started knitting the first 10 or so rows, so I snagged him as he walked past, just to make sure it was going to fit on his head. His kid was in tow, and when I showed them the photos from the pattern, ze turned to their father and said "I'm so going to steal that from you.". I said "... I can knit another one for you as well." I finished them by Mudthaw and SCA expressed them (I didn't go to the event this year). Tanaka posted a photo of him wearing it on facebook and I commented that after knitting those two, my son also asked for one, so I had knitted one for him as well. "I can do it in my sleep now!" Ryan commented something along the lines of "Oh, reallllllly?" 

Master Ernst commented with a photo of him wearing a red and yellow version with "live" eyes, instead of the "dead" eyes. dots vs. Xs is the only difference. He called it a carp of maintenance. I decided that I had to make a proper Pelican one for Ryan, I knew he would appreciate the humor of it. I had red yarn already, and I found in A.C. Moore they had a white yarn that had flecks of dark and light brown and orange/red in it. So I used that as the lips and fins and pulled the orange/red and lighter brown bits out and it looked perfectly like ermine. Once I finished it I found I had Ryan's mailing address already so I secretly mailed it off to him. When it was delivered Ryan fb messaged me a bunch of purple hearts. I must admit I squealed a little bit that he liked it. I think it was just before coronation that he got it. He posted the photo of it to facebook and I think he said he did wear it in court when the Order of the Pelican was called up. There's also a EK Photo booth photo of him wearing it.

I also realized this is the second hat I've made for Ryan. A handful of years ago I made him a Jayne hat in East Kingdom Purples. So I guess I need to continue knitting hats for him!

Dead fish hat pattern: http://knitty.com/ISSUEwinter08/PATTfishy.php

I'm speechless!

The latest project I've pretty much completed is a handout for silent heraldry. It's a thing that's getting going in the society/kingdom again.

So here's why I love silent heralding. One, I've heard people complaining that the people of the society are getting older. And with age comes hearing loss. Two: people tend to have side conversations when they're sitting in the back. Or the side. Or wherever. And they don't realize their voices are getting louder until people nearby them can't hear what's going on and have to shush them. Three: Some places where court is held just sucks acoustically. So if you know some basic signs you can always tell what's going on.

Oda Lally is fluent in ASL. She's done the SH at Balfar's (Where she was also called in to receive her AoA. Very funny to watch her face!) and also at the An Dub/Ostgardr challenge. There's a number of websites that describe the signs, and at least one youtube channel that I know of that shows the signs. But there wasn't anything really that I knew of that could be a cheat sheet people could look at in court. So the two of us decided on what signs were most useful to know in baronial court. I took photos of her doing the signs and photoshopped in arrows. I edited them all down to two pages. I tried them in alphabetical order and grouped by topic. We decided the alphabetical order looked better.

I'll print out a few to test out for baronial court during Pennsic, and then after that our next event is in September for Arrows Axes and Ales. Hopefully I'll get some good feedback on them and see if they need any tweaking and/or are worth continuing. If they are well received I'll find out who to talk to and see if we should do a kingdom court version.

Obligatory introduction post

In the Society of Creative Anachronism my name is Lady Violet Hughes (Also Purple of An Dubhaigeainn). I live in the East Kingdom, the Barony of An Dubhaigeainn. I'm a member of House Three Skulls and more recently of House Mac Whyte. That more recent one is because I have been proteged to Master Ryan Mac Whyte.

If you have found my blog and are not part of the SCA, feel free to ask questions about what I put here. If you've found my blog and are part of the SCA, still feel free to ask questions about what I put here! 

For the most part I am currently a herald. I just ended my term as baronial herald, so I'm comfortable in my local court. I've read scrolls in Kingdom court twice so far and didn't mess things up so I'd like to continue to help there as I get to events. People are still asking my help for names and devices. While I'm still very unsure of my competence in those I'm doing my best. I also knit, fight heavy list, embroider, make chainmaille, and I'm attempting to learn silent heraldry.

Apprentices have blogs about the art they're doing. Squires have blogs about the fighting they're doing. Proteges I guess should have blogs about stuff they do. Why not? I don't travel outside of the southern region often, so hooray for the internet! Other Pelicans can get to see what shenanigans I'm up to.

Oh, almost forgot: I haven't blogged on any platform besides LiveJournal, so bear with me as I tweak settings.