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.

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.

Waiting for things to happen now.

Since my last post, I still haven't done too much. Things with Blue Tyger office slowed down until the role changed over from Muirenn to Alys. Mosaic herald office had been vacant, so I volunteered to take that over as well as Mural herald until they find somebody new for that. But even those have both been slow. So I've been helping friends here and there with heraldry submissions. Not too many though. 

I read another time or two for scrolls in ethereal court, but that has stopped now that events are back to in person. I skipped going to coronation because I wasn't ready to jump into the deep end of peopleing. But next month is the first event back in An Dubhaigeainn, and then TRM are coming to our event in November, so those should be good.

I haven't been asked to help with any kingdom scrolls, but I did help Ostgardr with one of their baronial scrolls. Soon I'll ask around and see if anybody has already planned out scrolls for our event in October. But there's time for that.

And that's about all I've been doing SCA-wise.

Not terribly busy

So 4 months since my last update. I haven't been doing anything really of note. Sending out monthly LoAR emails. Helping with East Kingdom's OSCAR stuff. Not much else. A few months I wasn't needed for court scroll readings. This past court I was asked to read a Roman scroll with a whole bunch of tough terms in it. I think I recorded 8 versions before I got one that wasn't full of flubs. And then hearing it spoken during court I was reading SO FAST. Half I just speak fast, half I think I was tired of trying to record it and just wanted to get it done. I have to practice reading slower.

Yeah, so that's all folks. Not much of an update, sorry.

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.

New Job, New Scrolls.

Just after Pennsic I was offered the job of Mosaic Herald. This is the person who sends out notifications after a submission has finished kingdom (first) level commentary. As opposed to Mural herald who sends it out after Laurel (final) level acceptance/return.

I jumped at this chance, as I've often heard grumblings from people that once they submitted something they never heard anything back. Sometimes OSCAR gets cranky and refuses to send out the emails. Sometimes they wind up in people's spam folders and don't get seen. So, since we have kingdom personal and office gmails set up now, why not use it to send them out? Ok, maybe it takes a bit longer to send them out one by one instead of in a batch, but if it helps the notifications get seen then I'll do it. Also the Oscar system seems a bit complicated. But I'm sure it worked for many years. Mostly.

Anyway! I officially started last month, with the submissions done right before Pennsic. That was 27 emails, 33 items to send out. Some emails were both name and device. I did the spreadsheet and sent the emails in one evening. This month's batch was the first round from Pennsic. 34 emails with 49 items. The spreadsheet alone took me one evening. Since I was cramming to do a scroll for an event I had to spread out the emails over 3 days. I had messaged Brigantia and thanked him for starting me in this job the month before having to do the Pennsic ones!

I went back to the instructions I was originally given, as the results sit in Oscar waiting to be processed and emailed. But since I'm not doing it that way I went back in there to delete them. It wasn't difficult to figure out, just tedious going through all the ones that are sitting on the server and finding each separate one and deleting it, then going back to the list and finding the next one. It looks like there's a bunch of old notifications sitting on there that nothing was done with them, but I don't know if it was Mosaic level stuff to do, or Mural. So I'll leave any one I'm not currently working on alone for now.

I posted a note of what happened to the Kingdom (unofficial) facebook page and sent an email to the EK Gazette with the same wording. Since I know not everybody is on facebook. Just the majority of us, heh.

I also went back through notes on facebook and updated my baronial OP. Fixed a few entries and added a bunch of people.

As for scrolls, I've still been working on the last 2 backlogs I signed up for. I have the illuminated pages from Fiona and the words from Aislinn, I just have to get the calligraphy done. The one I'm currently working on is being a problem child, as the spacing is either too cramped or too much extra space. But I think I finally got a good balance and got the pencilled words on there, now I just need to ink it. I also did the calligraphy for a friend's AoA, the baronial heavy weapons champion, and the baronial brewing champion. Beyond the scrolls I did way too much at St. Andrews, and did very little at Arrows Axes and Ales.

Next weekend is Crown Tournament. Which I volunteered to either herald the lists or be a list runner, wherever I was needed more. I will also offer to help read scrolls in court. I think I've got the projection down, but in order to be heard and try to remember to enunciate and slow down so my An Dub accent doesn't muddle the words I don't have a good flow when I read. I want to work on that. I'm sure it'll get better with practice.

Pennsic Shenanigans.

I was very busy at Pennsic this year. I did so much that I can't remember all of it. First off I was acting herald, since our pursuivant wasn't able to go to War this year. So I lead the barony for opening ceremonies and heralded baronial court during the week.

I was determined to do more at Herald's point this year, so I signed up for 2 shifts at the Herald Admin Shack scanning and sorting completed paperwork. I was in a groove, it was my happy spot. Sadly the third shift I volunteered for, I was supposed to go right after the bridge battle ended on Thursday. But the battle ran long. I asked my sister to stop in there and let them know, once battle ended and I got back to camp to shower she told me they were just about finished with the paperwork anyway. So I got myself unstinky and headed over there. The few heralds left said they didn't know why there was a shift scheduled for that day/time, as herald's point was closed by then anyway. But I felt better stopping in there so it didn't seem like I was blowing them off.
I also stopped off another time midweek, but they didn't have a spare computer for me to use to do consults, so I went off to the art tent to color in paperwork for 2 hours.
I did stop off there Thursday morning as I had a spare hour, but the first computer wouldn't start up, and the second computer finally let me in, but I suddenly realized I had no idea what the procedure was for doing consults at Pennsic, so I was probably more a hindrance than a help. I'll try again next year at the beginning of the week to learn how to do them.

I also went to two ASL classes so I could learn more for doing sign heraldry. I learned a bunch of stuff, but I'm not sure if it was useful for a beginner silent herald yet. I'll have to let it roll around in the back of my head and in my hands to see how much use it will be.  I also happened to sit very near the silent herald during EK court, so I was watching her. I saw her the next day by Cooper's store and stopped her to ask about a specific sign she was using. I have tentative plans unless I chicken out to do silent herald for Arrows Axes and Ales in November.

I think the rest of the things I was running around doing were not particularly service, so I won't include them here. But lots of little gifts given, witnessed bigger awards given to family and friends. Not nearly enough time spent by the campfire. But I really enjoyed my Pennsic, I think it's one of the best I've ever had.

Herald has leveled up!

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to up my herald game. So I sent an email to Blue Tyger and Brigantia with my qualifications and asked if they had any position openings in the next year.

I got an email back from Blue Tyger offering for me to join in on their slack sessions. So I've been doing that the past 2 weeks, and getting more confident on my contributions to the discussion. It's confidential submission stuff, so I can't document here what's going on, but my help seems to be warmly appreciated! They like me! They really really like me!

I signed up for some shifts for Pennsic at Heralds point, doing admin entry stuff if needed. I am committing myself to helping for those two shifts and am determined to pop in other times to help out where I can. While I'm not even 90% confident on my consulting sans the ability to say "Let me check and I'll get back to you" I know there's plenty of backup to look over my shoulder, so I'm jumping in with both feet and offering to help with submitters.

As I told my sister, I know it takes like 30 years to become a Pelican, so if I don't start now, then it's just that much further out that I can hope for it. Heralding is what I am most confident at and enjoy the most, so that is where I'm going to concentrate my efforts in growth. Also heralding is very enjoyable and heralds are such fun people! So: learn, grow, help, and have fun while doing it. Yes, thank you!



I'm still working on scroll backlogs. I started pencilling out the words for one while I was on vacation with the extended family last week. The other night I started inking the calligraphy, and after about 3 or 4 lines I noticed that some words were spread out and others were squished together. It was seriously not acceptable for me. And besides, it was just a practice/layout page, so I'm not upset, I'll just start over. But that will be the last time I try working on scrolls while at the beach house. Too many mundane people around, especially kids age 11 and under. I meant to do another pencil layout tonight, but got caught up in helping Blue Tyger office hours again. And my cat settled down and was purring in my lap, so I obviously couldn't move. It'll get done tomorrow.

So many awards!

Yesterday was the Coronation of Ozurr and Fortune. The event was jointly hosted by both An Dubhaigeainn and Ostgardr.

I had signed up to be a "trollnik", meaning go along the check in lines and make sure people had their blue cards out and ready, give them the stamp so they didn't have to attempt to write out "An Dubhaigeainn" on their check, etc. My shift was 11:30-2:30. I got on site at 11, trolled in myself (the area was mostly empty), went in to watch Wilhelm and Vienna's last court. Around 11:30 I went over to the still empty troll tent and said "I'm here for my shift to help keep the line in line. Orrrrr, if you don't need me I could go back to watching court?" Oswyn laughed at me and said to go back. Yay!

At 2:30 my friend Vetra was getting protegeed to Misstress Suzanne. There was a contract written up by Vetra's husband Maestro Vettorio. He was handed the cut sheet and asked to read it out. He passed the paper over to me. Ok, sight unseen, here we go. Sneaky me, I had asked Vettorio a few days prior on how exactly Vetra's name is supposed to be pronounced for another thing later in the day. Nailed it.

Around 3:30 I went looking for Sir Zhigmun to sort out scroll reading. I told him about the style of reading Ervald's scroll that would make him most happy, he wrote me in as the reader. I had also contacted him a month ago asking to read Vetra and Ellen's scrolls, as well as my son's AoA scroll as soon as I found out he was getting it at this event. He said "There's a problem with Ellen's scroll" and I got worried it hadn't arrived in time. No, he had it, but it was a musical scroll meant to be sung. I said nobody wants to hear me sing, let the bard do it.

During the awarding of count/ess to Wilhelm and Vienna, I suddenly realized I wasn't give the cut sheets to look over while I was talking to Sir Zhigmun . Oh well, I'm a decent sight reader, it will be fine. And then Hi! I got called in for a Silver Tyger award! (The scroll!!! The scribe read my EK wiki page and actually used their cat to make real paw prints across the scroll! I freaking LOVE this scroll!!!)

But after that I stayed close by the stage so I could pop forward when it was a scroll I had offered to read. I forgot/didn't know that a few other friends were also getting awards and was disappointed that I didn't get to read for them. But the way my throat was by the end of the night I'm glad I limited myself to what I did.
When Severus got called up, Sir Zhigmun said "I have a stunt herald for this one." Ozurr says "Oh, really? Hey, do you recognize this herald?" I grinned at Severus. He rolled his eyes and said "My mom." But I saw that he was secretly pleased.

I had so much fun reading Ervald's scroll. It was described by one person as "wrestlemania style", and another as "Full Chaucer". So much fun, and the laughter and applause I got says the audience really appreciated it. More importantly Ervald really appreciated it. "Just how I would have done it!" he said.

After feast I was on schedule to run the shuttle from the church to parking. I packed up my things and put them in the car knowing I'd be driving during cleanup, let Vetra know my tablecloth was still being used by the table so she could claim it for me. She decided that two cars would be good for the mass exodus, so Jordan and I were doing the circuit. A little after 9:30 she and I were both waiting at the church for passengers for ten minutes, so I said I was going to park and head back inside to help finish cleaning.

At 10:15 we were declared done and went home.

It was a really good day. Lots of friends got great recognition, everything from an attendee's point of view went very well, and now we collapse and have an Irish Wake for this event.

Little service here, little service there.

Before the An Dub schola event, which is also our A&S and bardic champions event, I was asked to do the calligraphy on 2 scrolls. Fiona did the illumination on one, Lily on the other. They just did borders and let me choose which one was for which. Since I'm terrible at and honestly find no joy in word smithing I went to Slaine for those. I was quite happy with how they turned out. And I've been saving up empty copy paper boxes at work, so I cut out the tops/bottoms to make some quick and dirty (not nice and fabric finished) scroll sleeves. I even remembered to print out cut sheets.

I got to the event, which was held on a Suffolk County Community College campus. There's no site fee, no dayboard. In previous years a few people have brought food to share, so I made up a big batch of honey butter and bought a loaf of sliced crusty bread. Because no SCA event is complete if it doesn't have honey butter and bread! I asked permission to use and printed out 2 copies of a charge group lesson that Yehuda had made up years before while he was Elmut. Because I knew I had at least 2 (and probably only 2) people that were interested in learning more than my usual "absolute basic heraldry for the beginner". I also brought along my laptop in case anybody wanted help with their EK Wiki pages, but nobody asked about that.

The honeybutter turned out to be widely liked, I taught Slaine and Lily how to determine charge groups. I took a class on how to write award recommendations. Then the bardic performances happened, and the 2 A&S entries were discussed. I was told who each winner was so I could put their names on the scrolls, and I suddenly realized that Fiona won the A&S champion spot. And I had done the A&S wording on the scroll she illuminated. Everybody was so very amused at this.

Put away my things, helped straighten up, then home.

Barony, Kingdom, Household

I've been working on stuff!

For the Barony:
I am still working on getting the herald title changed from Seastar to drake. Tiny nibbles getting closer to being done.

For the Kingdom:
Touching base with Mathghamhain on a regular basis so the two of us can prod Ozurr into getting a name and device registered. Ozurr said he'd think about his options and let me know by this weekend. I'll poke him again tomorrow, I think he's at an event today.

For my household:
I bought 4 tablecloths and plan on cutting them up and reassembling them into our household badge. It should work well as long as I can get the skulls bonded on correctly. I have been having trouble with the fusible webbing on the past 2 projects, but I got it to work on one. So, fingers crossed! But it should look nice, like a table runner. If I do it right I should be able to get 3 tablecloths out of the batch.

Oh! I almost forgot. Also for the barony:

I finally managed to coordinate getting leaf springs from Titus to Torfi, so now he can start working on making a ballista. Once that's done in the spring, I would imagine, I can kidnap bribe discuss with a siege weapon marshal to come out to Long Island to authorize whoever wants.

A little bit of everything.

For event promotion, I do pretty much all of it on facebook, since that's where the majority of people are. I used to also cross-post to G+, but I wasn't getting any impression that it helped. Plus G+ will be going away around August, so there's that. A week before St. Andrews something on facebook changed and I wasn't able to share specific posts from within the event page to other groups. That made it a little more difficult, but I tried in the last few days to post something to the East Kingdom, Ostgardr and An Dubhaigeainn pages.

A month or so ago I had asked Vetra if she wanted me to organize feast servers. She asked what I wanted. I said when doing that I don't actually get to eat the feast, and I really would like to. So we defaulted to the usual "one person from each table comes and gets a course".

However, then a few days before the event the Heavy List Champion went and made himself Prince, so Vicrene Lada was organizing retainers. She was having slight difficulty getting people to sign up and asked for ideas. My barony has 2 large households. My own (House Three Skulls) and another, Surtr's Brood. I know the spreadsheet had already been shared to my own household's facebook group, so I also shared it to the other one. A bunch of people immediately signed up and got at least one person, often two, covering the whole day. I had already signed up as well, thinking it was perfect. My first time retaining and it was for a friend. His first event getting retained for and it was all friends and people he knew. Lada had told me Ozurr's snack of choice was Cheeze-its, so I picked up a box of 12 snack bags, and made a quick pouch out of some scrap fabric I had that was the right size to hold one of the bags. So he could have his snack and not have it look obtrusively modern. He was delighted about that, I saw he hung the pouch on his belt for the remainder of the day. And he said he polished off the box before feast.

For the actual retaining, I signed up for 2 hours, while the martial competitions were going on. Caterine had the "retaining bag" and a bottle of gin, and I was given the "Drinking boot" (Go ahead and ask his Highness about it) to carry. We stopped at his car and he was getting some weapons and gauntlets for people to use if they wanted. He said he was given a bottle of elderberry mead and it was ok, but not to his taste. He offered me a taste and I said I loved it, so he said "It's yours". As he picked up the weapons and started carrying them to the fighting area I said "But I'm not supposed to let you carry things!" he called back "Try and stop me!!" Since my hands were already full I didn't fight too much. But later on when I had put down the bottle of mead, and Caterine put down Ozurr's extra alcohol, anytime he looked like he was about to carry something I snatched it out of his hands and said "Continue..." I've had practice already on that kind of thing from being a mom. While we were out watching the fighting I made sure he was drinking water, and he had already eaten so he was good on that. After the first hour Caterine switched with Raud, and with a half hour to go we went back inside. I had promised to participate in a quick activity at some point, but warned Raud I would have to step away for 5 minutes. As it happened, I was called to the activity while Raud was off getting a drink, so I apologized, and handed the bag and boot to Ozurr and ran outside. I saw Lada on my way and let her know, I think Raud had gotten back to Ozurr by that point and took the stuff from him.
I went back inside after and Ozurr was chatting with people before court. I was asked for help with one quick task that was right there where they were all standing, adding a decoration to court setup. Check back at Ozurr, he's still talking. I was asked to put the names of the winners on the scrolls since I had done the calligraphy. Run over to the table, do that. Check back on Ozurr between scrolls, he's fine. Finish second scroll, the kids are taking their turn at retaining, he's waiting for court to start.

I don't think I did a spectacular job at retaining, but maybe an acceptable level. I can try again at other events, and I can also practice retaining with my own Baron/ess at events in our own barony and out of area.

I also talked with Ozurr about the name he'd like to register for few minutes, I had brought my Old Norse name book along. I offered to let him take the book to look through in his own time, but he said he'd rather not take the chance of losing it. so I said I would continue to research the name and let him know what I could find.

I didn't get to stay to help clean after feast because my husband and son really wanted to get home. But I know there's always plenty of people who chip in and get everything done. My barony is awesome like that.