SCAdolatry

It's been a SCAdian sort of week/month. For some reason, probably guilt over not having completed Christmas presents YET, and not even having STARTED the birth sampler for my nephew born in OCTOBER OMG, etc., whenever I'm in the Sewing Lair lately, my thoughts are of Pennsic. I am touching fabrics and thinking of garb for this year and imagining what I should do and what would work and so on. To compound it, a Pennsic household mate updated her status on Facebook with something about Pennsic prep, and a neighbor from there sent me a message about it. January/February is the time for Pennsic planning; it's the only way to get it done for July.
Then the household Yahoo! group sprang to life with chatter about construction projects and funding of major household expenses. (Our bar and bridge got termite-infested last year, so we dragged both over to Kindred to be burned, instead of risking a spread of the infestation in our storage locker this year. Yes, the household rents a storage locker year-round in Slippery Rock, PA. We're far, far, far from the only ones who do so.)
So I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, of course.
I decided that this (past) week, I'd finally drag my ass to a fighting/fencing practice. I encountered members of the local Barony quite by accident (in fact, the Baron himself; he was wearing a Pennsic XXIV t-shirt, I believe, and I promptly spilled a Cherry Coke on it) and joined their Yahoo! group, and have been repeatedly urged to attend the fight practices. They're on Wednesday nights. That's my one night off per week, unless I have a supplemental practice or a meeting or, you know, have to work.
But I want to meet the local folks, at least.
Tuesday, one of the local people stopped by the camera store. I had just been in the back room pondering the logistics of getting there on Wednesday. I think he thought I was lying. I wasn't.

So I went to fight practice. I brought Z. And I also brought a borrowed, fairly awesome lens from work.
Here are the results.


I didn't fight, no, but I had a great time. Here's the thing, though. Men in armor are super hot. The fencers, eh, they were cool and all, but my time as an Olympic-style fencer means that they look slow and sloppy to me, and their posture looks lazy. I know it's actually just a different aesthetic, but I am used to Mike Marx's epée girls, and the whole aesthetic just doesn't strike me at all. But heavy fighting-- I have never seen anything like that, because it doesn't exist outside the SCA.
So men (and some women!) in armor, thwacking one another impressively with rattan sticks-- wow! It was spectacle, it was sport, it was sexy. All different kinds of armor, fancy helmets, brute force, etc. Wow. Cool. Neat.
Then they took of their helmets. Sweaty mans, eh, whatever.
Then they took the armor off and I was like oh my goodness you are really uninteresting-looking people and I cannot believe I was checking you out a minute ago. LOL. Nothing against them, I just was way way way way less aesthetically smitten once they were out of armor. You may remember my unseemly drooling last Pennsic-- similar phenomenon. In armor, my brain short-circuits. Out of armor, I'm more or less interested depending on the moment. It's just funny, I think, because I'm usually very much not appearance-based like that.

Anyway. Fun pictures. Fun time.

So today I decided that this beautiful dark red/purple wool I bought at my first Pennsic was going to get made into something. No more "saving" it. It's not *that* nice. It was only eight or nine bucks a yard. It's not irreplaceable. And it does me absolutely no good in a square in the drawer. So I made myself just do it. I cut up an old twin bedsheet that mice had chewed, made a mockup of a sideless surcote, threw it away because it was cut too small, made another, and then used that second mockup as the lining, and bickety-bam, I cut that wool up and used every last scrap. Sewed it together, and I have a sideless surcote now. (Gates-of-Hell-type, because I am wicked and sinful.)
I am then going to cut into the beautiful rabbit skins Liesl bought me at Pennsic, and use them. Because I am saving them as well, and if I keep saving them, I will never use them and they will get eaten by a mouse or peed on by a cat or lost somewhere and ruined, and I will never have a nice thing made from them. They need to be made into something. If I screw it up, they were rabbit skins; I can replace them at next Pennsic for $5 each-- maybe $10 each, since I know Liesl probably went to a lot of trouble to get nice ones that matched. And they are gorgeous and I will have a terrible time cutting into them because I don't want to ruin them. But I have to use them, or they will be wasted.

If I do this relatively promptly, then I will finish it by Feb 27th and wear it to the College of Three Ravens, in Thescorre, where I will see Liesl. If I do not, I will finish it by March 27th, and wear it to the Ice Dragon in Rhydderich Hael. Either way, I will purchase a membership to the SCA, and use it. And I will be better-clothed than many, and worse-clothed than some, and nobody will judge me for not doing justice to those beautiful rabbit-skins and that lovely wool.

As it turns out there was barely enough wool-- I may go back and add narrow gores of black fabric toward the back of the sides, to make the skirt a little fuller. It's on the skimpy side. I don't have to feel bad that I didn't make a kirtle from it, because I couldn't have. I could have made a chirka or a caftan, but I will probably wear the surcote more. Especially since it's only going to be pretend-lined in fur, and will actually be lined in cotton; it will serve at Pennsic in the evenings. I will have to give it a short hem for outdoor events, but I am going to initially finish it with a long hem since C3R and the Ice Dragon are both indoors.

So that was today. (The cote is assembled, but not finished-- all long seams sewn, shoulder seams shaped by hand, but neckline raw and sleeve openings totally unfinished, and skirt not hemmed. I am going to try the machine blind hem.)