Adelheid in the SCA

To be of use   By Marge Piercy  The people I love the best  jump into work head first  without dallying in the shallows  and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.  They seem to become natives of that element,  the black sleek heads of seals  bouncing like half-submerged balls.  I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,  who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,  who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,  who do what has to be done, again and again.  I want to be with people who submerge  in the task, who go into the fields to harvest  and work in a row and pass the bags along,  who are not parlor generals and field deserters  but move in a common rhythm  when the food must come in or the fire be put out.  The work of the world is common as mud.  Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.  But the thing worth doing well done...

I officially became a student of Mu'allima Halima al-Rakkasa last weekend at an event hosted by the Shire of Hartwood. This marks the end of a long process, and the start of a new journey. In the SCA, a "student" is someone engaged in a structured learning relationship with a teacher, who may or may not be a Laurel, for mentorship. It allows for teaching with expectation of feedback to promote the growth of the student. When I joined the SCA, I wanted to learn the art of språng. I found someone selling pre-warp språng frames at an event, although the person who created the frames wasn't at the booth. It wasn't until a later event that I meant that person, Halima, who took time to walk me through pretty much every item on her table as I asked question after question about the nalbound and språng items she had created. She was the person who challenged me to create anything, didn't matter what it was, but create it and sent her a picture by December ...

Happy New Year! While I am not making any resolutions, I am committed to continuing my study of Sprang, under the tutelage of an official teacher in the SCA.  For Christmas, I asked for one of the "Year Long Sprang-a-Long" programs found at spranglady.com. I previously did a more introductory course that described various stitches, and slowly worked itself into a variety of projects and reading charts. The program I selected for 2025 was the "S and Z" course, which features patterns from the sprang artist Sharon Wichman. You can read a little about Sharon at this link: https://www.sprangart.com/musings/a-passion-for-s-z  Switching from Z leaning stitches to S leaning stitches creates a row of crossed, as opposed to interlinked, threads. It also means that the direction of the stitch leans in the other direction. Creating rows of Z and then S stitches creates, in my mind, an interesting look to the fabric. This is what my failed Maminka scarf was supposed...

I have just returned from the Tournament of the Golden Swan, and I'm happy to announce it was a success!  Golden Swan is a female persona development challenge (a challenger does not need to identify as female to enter). There are several categories: Persona Creation, Everyday Life, Habitat, Food, Textiles, Costume, Correspondence, Games/Pasttimes, Performance, and Survival. Most are mandatory, but the last three on the list you can select two out of three. Full information on the Tournament of the Golden Swan can be found here, including the full evaluation rubric: https://www.goldenswan.org/  I visited the event with an SCA friend of mine in 2022, and we travelled with two other people who soon became friends as well. We rolled into Cawston at something like 3:30 am and walked into a dark, quiet, welcoming building that smelled of apples. It was the first time I experienced "hall camping". The whole weekend was amazing. I was so moved by the entire experienc...

More swan prep... To complete the outfit, Adelheid needs an overgown. I found an inspiration piece in someone else's work for a loose, unfitted over gown where the shaping comes from the apron. I had some red wool (or wool blend) fabric donated to me, but I didn't have very much. The inspiration piece is fabric conservative, lower to middle class German, and is easy to put on. Perfect for a middle aged widow to travel in. Essentially, it's wide rectangular panels gathered into a neck band. I've never made a dress like this so I made a mock-up. See, I do learn. It seemed successful so I moved on to step two. I called a friend, Wulfwyn, to help me figure it all out. First, we burned a piece of the fabric to see what it was. There was some melting but overall it smelled like singed hair. Wool blend! We folded the fabric to get the rectangular panels, maximizing the piece of cloth and minimizing seams. There she is, showing off her cool seam ruler, to cut off a ...

To decorate the collar of the linen hemd, I'm going to do a little counted stitch embroidery from the modelbuch. How cute is that! The design is documented to 1529, and likely in use earlier. I first tried another design but it was too large for the space on the collar which is quite narrow. It was quickly apparent in the test I did, seen below. I cut a piece of linen very similar in size to the lining and then did a blackwork "Holbein" stitch, counting 10 holes as a stitch length. I love blackwork for the way it makes the same design on both sides. So tidy, so satisfying! Here's a picture of me counting my threads. I would run in between the threads of the linen, using the top of my needle to count two threads at a time. I used cotton embroidery thread, 2 strands. I would have preferred to use silk but I was eager to get on with the project as time is ticking by more quickly than I'd like. Cotton is a period fiber... Technicall...