Tuesday 1 October 2013

SCA summer

While Himself was slaving away on his MSc dissertation this summer, I spent rather a lot of time going to SCA events. Admittedly he came along to some of them, but I did spend a rather delightful fortnight camping in the ruins of a castle in Wales alone. Well, alone apart from a hundred or so of my dearest friends.

One of the things I like best about the SCA is that there is a great deal of research that goes on. There's also a lot of teaching, and that teaching is frequently hands-on. I've started doing a bit of teaching myself this summer. I'm no expert, of course, but there isn't really much spinning instruction going on in this area, and people seem interested. Of course, most of what I've been teaching is about fiber preparation, not actual spinning. I did a class at our big Midsummer event on breeds of sheep that were around in the Middle Ages, and then I did an introduction to carding and combing at the event in Wales.

It's not all teaching, though. It wouldn't be a real event if one weren't struggling to finish a project in the last few days before. I'd thought I'd escaped it at Midsummer, but then my mother informed me that she desperately needed a snood, and could I make her one pleeeeeeeease? So I did.

Raw fleeces 021

I also spent the last week before the Welsh event frantically finishing, although in this case it was embroidery and plain-sewing. My mother had made me a lovely warm woollen dress, but had left the neck placket unfinished so that I could put embroidery around it. I'd been planning something fancier, but after looking at how much time I DIDN'T have available, I decided to go with something simple. It's two strands of crewel wool, worked freehand, in a sort of looping swirly pattern. I'd show you a photo, but I finished it so close to the event that I didn't have time to take a photo of it. I'll be wearing it later this month - hopefully I can pretend to be my mother and wheedle a photo out of some nice person.

No comments: