Why document?

There's been a lot of discussion of late about documentation for A&S projects and it's got me a bit upset.  The debate has been running for awhile but it seems to have come to a head recently as the kingdom I live in has recently reworked it's A&S judging forms and given a greater weight to documentation in the scoring, so that it now accounts for 30% of the total score rather than 20% under the old system.

I stepped up as MOAS (minister of art and sciences for the non-SCA folks out there, basically the arts and education coordinator) for my local group a year ago. In that role, I have to run and help judge competitions as well as teach classes and help coordinate some kind of educational program for the barony.  For the previous two years I was heavily involved in competitions and displays, first as Baronial A&S Champion and then just because it was fun and I had built up a lot of momentum the year before.  There is no way to do any of these things without some form of documentation for your work.  There just isn't.  I cannot asses the work of another artisan as a judge* if I do not know what that work is supposed to be, where they got the inspiration for it, and at least something about how they made it.  I cannot teach a class about a subject that pertains to the middle ages without doing some kind of research and documenting that subject matter, that's sort of the point of teaching the class in the first place.  As a competitor, I do myself a disservice if I don't provide at least some basic documentation as I am not providing the judges with information about my work, my skill level, and the processes I used.  I have seen artisans judged on aspects of their display rather on the piece they had actually created because they failed to provide documentation and judged more harshly than they would otherwise have been because the judges did not know they were new to the art.

Good documentation does not and should not have to be a 75 page dissertation.  With very few exceptions, three written pages and a handful of pictures should be enough to explain what you made, why you made it, and how you did it, and give a little bit of the historical context of the thing in question.  Show me, the judge or curious passer-by, that you know where this thing fits into the wider world and give me the information I need to evaluate your work.  If it's a perfect replica of a thing in a museum, give me a enough information so that I can see that.  Otherwise how will I know?  That is all that is needed for this 30% boost in your score.

Novice competitions that require no documentation do no one any good.  They only serve to reinforce the idea that documentation is hard and scary and bad, and that A&S competitions are run and judged by mean, scary people who value academic attachments over the craft itself.  That's not the case at all.  The documentation is what allows us to asses all the other criteria we use for evaluating a thing and an artisans development; craftsmanship,  historical accuracy,  complexity and even aesthetic value.  Documentation is about showing your work, not about writing a thesis, and showing what you have learned in the process of making the thing you are sharing.  I have seen more new artisans come away from such competitions frustrated and hurt because their entries were improperly judged, not out of malice or cruelty but because of misunderstanding resulting from lack of documentation in the last year than I care to count.  I for one will not do that to any artisan, particularly a novice artisan, and would rather sit them down with a notepad and have them write out at least some basic information about the entry when they drop it off than have them leave something without any supporting documentation at all.  It isn't difficult, it won't get them full marks, but it will get them past the idea that documentation is a dirty word and a beyond their capabilities.




*I should note that I personally don't judge very often, save at local events when absolutely necessary, as I am not a member of one of the A&S orders or have any other particular qualifications to do so.  I do however talk a lot of my local members down after bad judging experiences and talk to a lot of judges at local event, universities, and any other event where I can or where I have members of my group competing or displaying. I have also been judged both kindly and less so, and solicited feedback from many of my own judges, which is always a good thing to do.

Soignies Relic Bag for Queen's Largess

For some reason I have not posted about this project as it was in progress.  It was one of those small things that I picked up to use up some thread in the stash of cotton, an odd bit of even weave, and keep me motivated while I work on Book Cushion of Doom.  I can't be the only person who does this - keeps a small project going in the midst of a huge, interminable project just so they can see some evidence of progress and get that thrill of completion to keep them going on the bigger thing?

Anyway, since I need yet another brick stitched thing like I need a hole in my head, I decided that whatever this little bit of embroidery turned out to be would go towards the largess basket for Pennsic this year.  I had been looking at the Soignies bag, so beautifully redacted by Isis at Medieval Silkwork.  It's a nice, small bag in a simple lozenge pattern which as it turns out was very easy to work and went along comparatively quickly.  I think the trick with "easy" brick stitch, or counted work in general, is the size and complexity of the pattern.  The larger the repeat, or the more obfuscated the pattern, the harder the pattern will be.  In hindsight this seems to be perfectly obvious but somehow it didn't occur to me that this would be the case when I picked a strangely repeating keyhole design for my first project and a massively huge lozenge with keyholes for the cushion.  Don't even get me started on the eyelettes.  That wasn't difficult so much as time consuming.

I ended up working the bag on 24 count linen with 3 strands of cotton, as this is what I had handy.  Also, I suspect that if someone receives this as a gift they might be more inclined to use it if it's made from cotton rather than silk, which for some reason people who don't embroider perceive as more delicate.  I found that I liked the proportion of the bag better with an attached band for the draw cords, so I added that, even though it's not found on the original, using the same linen used for the lining.  As finished, it should be the perfect size for carrying around a bit of cash, ID, a couple of credit cards and a blue card at an event.  Perfect for shopping!

This weekend was Spring Coronation and the A&S competition was centered around largess so, since this was finished and ready to go, I entered it.  I won!  But better than that, when I went to pick up my comment book and documentation, the new queen made a point of pulling me aside and telling me how much she liked it and how grateful she was for it.  That was better than any prize.  I'll never really know if whoever she gives it to likes it, but I know she does and that's just as good.

Weekend report

This weekend I went to Sapphire Joust, a notoriously hot and humid event near Richmond.  Overall, it was fun, though my hip and leg gave me a lot of trouble and I ended up packing out earlier on Sunday than I had planned too.  Oh well, could have been worse.  I did some good shopping, talked with friends, and won the Arts and Sciences competition I had knit the Monmouth cap and mittens for!  yay!  The prize was a really gorgeous spindle, which was perfect for a "Best use of Raw Wool" competition.  This was the last competition I had as Baronial Champion, and it was nice to go out with a successful one.  I've posted a link to the documentation to the right, and will be writing up the pattern for the mitten in the next week or so.  The hat pattern, as I mentioned in my last post, needs some work, so that will be coming as soon as I get it worked out to my satisfaction.

I wore the green hose all day on Saturday, with mundane clogs, and they worked pretty well.  I need to re-cut the feet and take them in a little bit through the leg and ankle to meet with my own particular standards (which are a little OCD, I will admit), but they are comfortable and look pretty good as is.  Bias cutting the foot was definitely a mistake.  this might have worked in wool, but it make for way too much stretching in the linen, and lots of strange bunching around the ball of my foot.  Luckily it all sort of bunched up in a way that was not a problem in my shoe, but I can do better than that.

The blue houppeland was a big hit and looked great, even after a car trip and less than ideal storage in my tent.  And it was comfortable.  I wore it for late-afternoon court on Saturday, sitting in the sun and was quite comfortable.  The hood made for a very nice sun-shade when I flipped the brim forward, though I apparently looked a little bit like a Sith apprentice or something.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures, but I will be trotting my new Roman out next weekend for our local birthday event and will hopefully get some pictures of that then.  If I am feeling ambitions I may change into the houppland for feast and for court, but we shall see.

Now I must buckle down and finish the brick stitch bag for Pennsic, and get some more undies made so that if I am able to go (more on that later, I'm going in for hip surgery so that may get in the way of camping plans) I will have enough clothes.  And get my stuff for 30 Year done (definitely not going to that as my surgery is slated for the week before, but my entries will be there without me)

Monmouth Cap and MOL Mittens

Here they are in their glory!  I will post the documentation as soon as it gets a once over from a fresh set of eyes.  This is my entry for this weekend's raw wool challenge.  I spun the wool quite awhile ago, and just did the dying (my latest experiments with madder which I posted about recently).

I like that the hat and mittens are more functional and less fashionable, things an ordinary working person might have had.  Or a kid out for a romp in the snow.  In this case, an over-sized kid, but certainly not the little lordling I'm usually trying to dress.  The mittens are ambidextrous too, which just goes to show that Elizabeth Zimmerman's suggestion to knit mittens in sets of 3's might have been around for a good long while.  We have this one because a kid dropped it in a field after all.

Now I should just have time to get to activities night tonight and get myself packed up for the weekend in the morning without a huge rush!  Or at least not any more than the usual amount of rush.  Thankfully the doctors appointment that was scheduled for tomorrow late in the afternoon got moved to yesterday, so I am free to leave whenever I am ready and will be able to beat some of the traffic.  As long as I get there in time to set the tent up in daylight I will be doing ok.

Knitting frustration

A quick post to say that my project for this weekend's event (hah, nothing like the last minute you say?) is, in typical form, not going well.  The mitten portion is done and looks wonderful, the hat is giving me grief.  I was going to do a flat cap and got halfway done with the crown (those buggers take For.Ev.Er. to knit BTW) when I realized I wasn't going to have enough yarn to finish no matter what I did.  Gah.  So, I frogged the whole thing yesterday and started on a Monmouth cap.  Still a hat, still a different gauge than the patterns out there so it's not a too-easy knitting part of the project, and I should be able to get it done pretty fast and not run out of yarn this time.

It's also still boring as hell to knit, like most period European knit (except the Sion bags), and means I have to start over on my hat portion of the documentation.  Sigh.  I can do this, right?  It's not a huge A&S event, I don't need a 20 page opus or anything and there's the spinning and dying and wool processing part to talk about and that none of that has changed.  Just the knitting.

Did I mention it was boring to knit?  Just round after round of boring old stockinette.  Sure, there's some vaguely interesting construction with the brim but I've done that sort of thing before so it's rather lost it's glamor and besides which, that's hardly enough to make a vast expanse of stockinette interesting.  It would probably be soothing and mindless if I didn't have to worry about writing up the documentation as well.

New projects

Labor day weekend will be a pretty major event for the SCA kingdom I'm currently living in - the 30 year celebration - so of course there will be an A&S competition.  We finally got the official word as what the competition format would be yesterday, and as I've been sitting here watching TV and hemming I've been mulling over what I might do for my Triathlon entry.  This one is particularly ugly in that I will actually have to do something from three different categories, not just two, so I can't really double up on anything and play to my strengths.  But then again, no one else can either so that sort of works out.

My current plan, given the time constraints and with some consideration to my A&S 50 goals, is as follows:
1. The eyelet brick stitch bag of doom
2. Perugia towel with hand-dyed indigo bits
3. lampwork glass rosary, of the seraphic variety (if I can manage to make that many beads that match)

All of these things date to the early part of the 15th century, which is just about perfect for my actual persona.

The only real issue here is the lampwork rosary.  Lampwork isn't exactly period, though you can apparently produce a period glass bead that way.  I know nothing about period glass work, or bead making in period or out, so this will be a new set of skills, but should be fun and interesting.  I do know they made rosaries out of glass, so that at least is not a problem.

Competition Report

It went well, really well!  As in, somehow, I won!  Hurray!  I'm sort of stunned by the whole thing.  I think I might have squeaked a little when I realized they were announcing I had won, and I know there were a lot of Kermit-arms from several directions.  Everyone worked really hard on their entry, so actually winning feels like a huge accomplishment.  And humbling.

Plus the prize was awesome.  The lady running the whole thing had hand-bound a book and done all kind of beautiful and amazing painting on the covers and along the edges of the pages.  It's really beautiful.  I need to make a bag and a book rest for it, a perfect a excuse to try another one of the brick stitch patterns I've been looking at actually.  I can't bring myself to make another bag, but a book rest would be perfect and worthy of the book.

Now I've got to finalize plans for the raw wool competition at Sapphire in May, which will be last at Baronial Champion, and get started on some woven napkins for a feast gear basket we'll be raffling off as a fundraiser for the barony at our upcoming birthday event.  Plus some tablet weaving (I need a couple of belts and filet for my veils along with a good Viking demo project) and some garb.  But mostly it should all be fun/display stuff for a little while.  I just need to finish the eyelet-bag-of-doom and I will have a nice display for Pennsic.  After that, I have no set plans for anything and that's a fine place to be.

Hood is done!

And I mean really and truly done!  The documentation is linked to the right for those so inclined to weaving geekery.  Here is the final product:

I'm very happy with this how this came out.  The results of the Z/S experiment were not nearly as impressive to look at, but I think I have some ideas about the whole thing.  The short version is (and more on this later as I will do a separate write-up for my A&S 50 list) that there is really no difference in the visual appearance of the fabric when you have Z warp and S weft vs. Z warp and Z weft, BUT the Z/S combo seems to produce a loftier, fuller cloth that would presumably be warmer.  It *might* also be softer, but that particular result wasn't reproducible with the supplies I had on hand so I will have to do some more experimenting.  Oh darn.

Now I must get myself packed up for the weekend!  I'm feeling marginally less nervous about this thing now that it's all done and I've gotten a look at the whole project laid out on a table. 

Greenland cloth is done!

Not quite sure how this happened but I managed to finish the weaving for my Greenland project yesterday!  Hurray!  There are some mistakes, which I am hoping will be less obvious once I get the hood cut out, but overall it looks pretty good and had a wonderful drape to it.  As compared to the less-packed weft sample, the difference in hand is really quite remarkable.  I sort of think that might be part of the reason for the packed weft - the cloth is both warm and light weight.

I did have some problems with selvage threads breaking on me.  I think this is because of friction on the outermost warp thread coming through the reed and a little too munch tension on the outside warp bundles, as I had only a couple of other problems and those were mostly when I was threading and got a little goofy with the snips, and one warp that got tangled on something and broke under tension.  My tensioning issues all worked themselves out when I washed the cloth, so yay for wool!

Some pictures of the finished product, it's still a little rumpled from the wash but you can get the idea.  You can see where I forgot to weave in a broken warp in the top shot, and the contract between the two different wefts I used in the bottom shot:

Supply issues

I'm waiting on yarn for what I sincerely hope will be my last competition entry as Baronial Champion (Spring Coronation)*.  It should have been here and warped a week ago, but the warp yarn was backordered, and rather than sending a coherent backorder notice, the supplier sent a very cryptic email with the missing item highlighted in red (nothing else, just red font), and then didn't respond to my emails asking for a different color for 4 days until they sent a shipment notification.  Really, you run a WEB BUSINESS, must I pick up the phone to check order status or get a question answered in a timely manner?  I don't think I'm being unreasonable to expect that an email would get a response in 24 hours.  So something is on it's way, but I don't actually know what color warp yarn I'm getting for this project.  Nice.  Cuz I'm not under a time crunch or nervous about this entry at all or anything.  sigh.

At least this gives me time to work on my documentation and do the spinning samples I had wanted to do.  The current plan to weave the cloth for the actual project out of commercial yarn, but spin yarn to weave samples to show something closer to what the actual artifact was made from.  We'll see how that goes over.  I just don't have time to handspin for the whole project and I've never spun for warp (never mind spun singles for warp), so trying to sort that out in the amount of time I have is just not realistic.

*though now that I think about there will probably be at least one more...I should probably look into that.

EDIT - the wool has arrived!  It's the right color, though darker than I thought it would be.  It'll be fine.  And upon further investigation there is one more competition but as it's "best use of raw wool" it should be fairly easy to come up with something.

Pentathlon and Triathlon thoughts

Since winning the Baronial Championship last May, I've competed in one A&S Pentathlon and one Triathlon.  For those of you not familiar with this competition format, it's pretty masochistic.  You have to enter five (or three) items that one persona (not necessarily your own) might have owned or used that fall into three of five broad categories for the pentathlon or two categories for the triathlon.  The goal, I think, is to make you stretch your skills, since really most people are comfortable with at most two of the categories, so to get all three usually requires you branch out of your comfort zone.

Aside from being a great opportunity to learn more about a particular time and place, these two competitions have been educational in and of themselves for a couple of different reasons.  As I am teaching a class on documentation and competition next month, here are my thoughts on the format.

1.  You are entering 5 distinct projects, not one entry with 5 parts.  What I mean by this is that each part of your entry needs to stand on it's own in terms of presentation and documentation.  This is where I fell short on my first try, I assumed the documentation would be judged as a whole, not as individual parts.  Yes, its longer, but if you are doing the research anyway it's not really any more work.

2. Hot food at a camping event is a bad plan!  I tried to present a hot drink for the first competition at a 4-day camping event, and this cause a great deal of needless stress.  Plus the coleman stove on the display table was ugly.

3.  Test your display idea and then be prepared for a totally different setup.  I like to do this at home then pack everything I need for the display in it's own box or basket, at least in so far as I can get into one container.  It's fewer things to forget when I'm packing the car.

3 (a). Ask for set-up help!  You will probably have a lot of stuff to carry and be a little stressed (maybe that's just me, I'm always vertain I've forgotten part of my entry).  Having someone to help you schelp and offer a second opinion about your display can do wonders to sooth the nerves. 

4.  Bring a table cloth.  Bring more than one table cloth, especially if you are serving food as something is guaranteed to spill.

5.  Look at the entry categories and judging sheets BEFORE you start you project.  Trying to fit something you already made and wrote up into a category after the fact is going to suck.  Know what the criteria are so you can address them in your writing.  This happened with my spindle and probably cost me points.

6. Get a comment book and leave it with your display so people other than the judges can leave you feedback (the judges might not leave you anything other than your scores so this can be very helpful).  Feedback is the real goal here, so do whatever you can to get as much of it as you can.

7.  Take lots of pictures!  Take picutres of your display, take pictures of you with your display, and take pictures of the other displays.  It's nice to have a record of what you and others did, and you might get some ideas for next time.

Weekend Report

I survived Ymir and another A&S competition! This time I entered a persona triathlon, with a Viking theme. Viking is out of my own personal period but as I also do Viking reenactment this isn't much of a stretch. I made a soapstone spindle and spindle shaft (part of my A&S 50 challenge), a Dublin style hood out of handspun and hand-dyed wool, and a pair of mustard's based on archeological evidence of Anglo-Scandinavian cooking. All of these things could be placed in Viking northern England in the 10th century. I came in a very close second, which is a respectable showing, but more importantly lots of people I respect had nice things to say.

I was also apprenticed to one of our local Laurels who knows a great deal about weaving. It was a very nice little ceremony, I got meet my new apprentice sister who gave me an "I don't Suck Box" to keep my display tokens in. Margret, my Laurel, gave me a really neat cup and some linen in accordance with my indenture agreement, and I presented her with a towel I had woven. It's got some mistakes, but better ones are on the way!

Overall it was a very nice event. The weather was lovely, I got to see lots of friends, and make some new ones. I think the hubs even had fun, and he's not usually that excited by these things.

Quick update

KASF is done (and there was much rejoicing!), though alas my bag was not.  I will post pictures and my documentation shortly, as soon as I get it converted to PDF and uploaded.  The whole competition part of the event was a little bizarre and once again I fell victim to math errors (addition is hard it seems), but I made a very good impression where it really counts and made some new friends and connections and that's what really matters.   Now I've got a little less than two weeks to get things wrapped up for Ymir, and I will have a tiny bit of a break from competing, at least until Spring Coronation.  I still am not 100% sure what I want to do for that one but I have to submit an application to compete with a short summary of my entry on the 15th though so I need to get it sorted out.  I might revisit my woven hood project from WOW, now that I know more about weaving and have a loom better suited to the task, I think I can come pretty close to reproducing one of the Greenland hoods.  If I had more time I could spin the wool as well, but that's going to take a bit more experimentation for the warp than I have time for.  I should at least be able to do some sampling with handspun to include in my presentation.

I've also been asked to weave a towel for an elevation at the end of the month, which is exciting.  Hopefully all will go well.  This will be my first actual project on the big loom and my first time weaving with cottolin (more forgiving than 100% linen but not as kind as wool), and handing the results over to a new Laurel in the company of a whole bunch of other Laurels is a little scary, but it should be ok.  That it's The First One should make it all the more special.  Or so I keep telling myself.