Out of Avalon

August 12th, 2009 by Ascelyn

I’m home from Pennsic.  Obviously.  Now I’m at the stage where people keep asking me how it was and what I did.  The answer is simple.

It was great.  I took lots of naps and ate large quantities of wonderful food that I didn’t have to cook for myself.  I spent a week with a large percentage of my favoritest people in the world.  Also, there were warm apple dumplings with ice cream.  Mmm.

And then people ask, “But what did you do?”  I dislike repeating myself because other people aren’t listening.  I mean, sure, I repeat myself all the time because I forget that I’ve said something already.  But that’s because I’m mentally deficient, not because people aren’t listening.  And so I have to give them the whole spiel all over again.

Naps.  Food.  Friends.  Not necessarily in that order.

Because really, that’s what I did this year.  I took no classes.  I watched no battles.  I went to no parties (big surprise there, right?).  I didn’t wander around Pennsic looking at all the pretties and taking pictures.  I never even made it farther south than the Historic Enterprises booth.  Mostly, I would slowly wander from my tent to the Vortex of Evil booth, talk or maybe attempt to sew, slowly wander back to camp for lunch, take a nap, and repeat until dinner.  I don’t think I stayed up past midnight a single night, and that was a special exception for Midnight Madness.

It wasn’t my usual Pennsic plan, but it was what I needed.  Time away from work and the soul-sucking drama thereof, time to sleep and eat and recover my energy before the third trimester hit me full blast.  Which it now has.  I really, really miss those naps and relatively balanced meals.

Sadly, the boots I ordered from Armlann last year didn’t end up fitting.  It wasn’t even a pregnancy issue in the end; I have an absurdly high instep, which causes issues when buying modern shoes as well.  It took several minutes and a shoehorn to get one of the boots on, and after all that it still hurt where the seam came across the annoying bone in the top of my foot.  He was very kind, though, and put them out for regular sale instead of making me take them.  I hope someone bought them.  They were really very lovely and looked like they would’ve been marvelously comfortable.  I’ll try again someday and make sure he leaves lots of extra room.

Instead, I spent the money on an awl from Spanish Peacock, a silver ring set with a small piece of coral from By My Hand that ought to vet for La Belle, a belt knife that will hopefully also vet, a pair of tapestry needles for lacing my gown and a felted hedgehog pin cushion, several books (Textiles and Clothing, Dress Accessories, and The Medieval Garden), and birthday gifts for my father.

Also, ice cream.  Did I mention ice cream?

By the end of the week, though, I was missing Jason and strongly considering coming home on Friday even if the camp didn’t end up packing up a day early like it did.  I got home around 10:00 Friday evening, which gave me the next day to hang around at home and do nothing more taxing than eventually drive the fifteen minutes to my parents’ house to order some major pieces of baby equipment (car seat, pack & play, breast pump, diaper bag).  On Sunday, we spent some time with J’s mom and sister, then drove to Hagerstown to buy me a dress for his sister’s wedding next month and meet that same sister and her fiance for dinner, where she complained that it was too cold and I complained that I was too hot and we both decided that the other was crazy.  Also, I blew some cash at Toys R Us waiting for them to make it into town for dinner, so the kid now has a few more sets of basic clothing.  But really, that has nothing to do with Pennsic.

One final note.  My tent rocks.  I need to set it up this weekend and clean the dust off, then let it dry again before repacking.  First, though, I need to make a new pole for one of the sides, since several of my original ones broke during a storm the first week.  The canvas held up well, though, and only sustained a minor tear along a seam on the door flap that I’ll be able to sew while it’s up.  It should never have an issue with leakage there, so I’m content.  It was a good size for two people with the partition up, and I think it will work marvelously if J and the baby come to an event, as well.

And that’s all there is to say about that.

July 31st, 2009 by Ascelyn

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllabal of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have….

Wait.  Wrong story.  Because tomorrow I leave for PENNSIC (yay!), and yesterday I finished all my sewing.  Well, except hemming one shift, but I’m just going to count it all as complete and move on with life.

Tonight:  pack and hopefully bake.  Tomorrow around noon-ish:  run by the bookstore and the bank on my way out of town.  Late tomorrow afternoon:  arrive on site and do as good of a happy dance as my thoroughly round self can manage.  I’m so excited!

(Tomorrow morning:  sleep late and rue the fact that I have to leave my husband behind for a whole week.  But that’s a given, right?)

July 29th, 2009 by Ascelyn

Midnight leg cramps suck.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

Okay, you know better.  I can’t just stop there.  I was so happy that any calf cramping I’ve had up until now required nothing more than stretching and relaxing the muscle.  I didn’t even have to wake up fully.  This morning, though, was new and different.  Stretching helped relieve the pain, but didn’t make it stop entirely once I relaxed, so I decided to stand up and walk it off.  Easier said than done when one’s other foot is tangled up in the sheet, and one’s dominant hand is for some reason completely numb and unable to assist in the matter.  Sure, I eventually managed to get out of bed, and the worst of the pain stopped as soon as I took a few steps, but by then I was fully awake and very, very unhappy about it.  My leg’s been a bit sore all day now because of it.

Enough whining.  I will now write about good and happy things, or at least things that can be spun to show a good and happy side.  Puppies and rainbows, here I come!

My 30 week appointment on Friday was uneventful.  Dr. W has said two things consistently over the last couple of months:  the heartbeat makes him guess the baby’s a girl (though even he says he’s just making a 50/50 guess and to go with the ultrasound, of course), and that he couldn’t have thought of a way for me to have a more perfect pregnancy.  This was only emphasized by my latest batch of lab results.  Glucose screening:  perfect.  Absolutely no reason to be worried or go for the 3-hour test, even given that I ate horribly for a week prior to the test.  Iron:  Great.  No anemia here, even though it’s apparently pretty common at this point.  Drugs:  not present.  Duh.  Same goes for the various STDs they retested me for.

And really, I feel great.  When I check the “this week your baby is…” sites, I keep reading that by now I should feel like crap.  Especially after having a lazy weekend of hanging out around the house with Jason and accomplishing exactly nothing, I’m really doing well.  Sure, I’m hungry all the time and yet getting to the point where I can’t gorge myself anymore, but that’s to be expected.  Heartburn?  Sure, but Rolaids/Tums are one of the few things that I can really feel perfectly safe taking if I need them.  Need more sleep than usual?  Maybe, but that’s not all that surprising given how poorly I function without sleep anymore anyway.  But when I do get eight or nine hours of sleep, and when I do keep granola bars and applesauce around in case of a snack attack, and when I manage to avoid stress as much as possible (farewell, church)…well, life is pretty peachy.  I’m totally ready for a week at Pennsic.  I’m going to take even more steps than usual to take care of myself and the parasite, but I think a week chilling out around friends will be a really good thing.

Speaking of Pennsic–only three days until I’m there!  I only started sewing my new shifts yesterday, though they’re going together quickly, and I still want to make chocolate cherry cookies to take with me.  That will probably happen tomorrow so I can bring some to work as well (because I’m awesome like that).  Then Friday will be packing, and Saturday morning will be sleeping late and saying farewell, and Saturday afternoon…PENNSIC!  Yay!  I even wrote up my packing list and double-checked my list of interested classes this morning.  (Srsly, there is nothing to do around here.  Until now.  Which is why I’m not writing anymore.)

(No, I mean it this time.)

June 10th, 2009 by Ascelyn

With some help from Charlotte, I think I have a plan for Pennsic garb prep.

• Sew a short-sleeved laced gown from my remaining chocolate brown linen
• Either buy the pretty pink linen I like and sew another laced gown
• OR remove the buttons from my existing blue gown and convert it to being laced
• Sew at least four shifts from lightweight linen, with at least one of them hopefully LBC-vettable.  The remainder will be machine sewn out of a dire need for speed.

I’m hoping it’s neither too unbearably hot and humid, potentially requiring a change of clothes as evening falls, nor a mudfest, which could mandate my buying more stockings.  I think I might buy the pink linen regardless, since I’ll have to order more 3.5 oz white to supplement the 5 yards I already have.  It might be pretty to line the brown with the pink, as well.

If I hadn’t already used up my remaining linen/cotton blend fabric scraps for undertunics last year, I’d probably just give in and make tunics.  As it is, I like cotehardies better, and they seem more adjustable.  I think I can do everything on my own but the sleeves now that I’ve seen it done and have a completed gown to look at while cutting.

I’m busy tonight, but Jason will be at the church with the youth tomorrow evening, and I have Friday off.  Hopefully that will give me time to get started.  Realistically, I might just end up crashing on the couch instead.  That seems to be my main problem in getting anything done these days.

51 days ’til Pennsic!

May 27th, 2009 by Ascelyn

It’s official.  I’ll be at Pennsic for war week.  The boss has agreed, the money has been sent in, and unless I’m under doctor’s orders to stay at home in bed, I’ll be living in a canvas house at Cooper’s Lake for the first week of August.  (I can’t really call that camping.  I’ll have an actual bed and won’t be eating hot dogs and s’mores every day.)

Obviously, I need to get around to making tent poles for the Duplex Wall Tent of Doom.  And if I intend to physically be able to get out of bed in the morning, I need to build a bed that will be up off the ground rather than just relying on my trusty little camp cot.  But beyond that, one would think that I wouldn’t have much prep work to do.  After all, I’ve been there two years now, so I obviously have everything together.  Right?

Wrong.  I was there for two years that I was either not pregnant or not knowingly so.  I had a cotehardie, a sideless surcoat, and an armload of tunics last year, and I was quite happy with that.  Unfortunately, the cote no longer buttons, and I need to try on the tunics and see which ones currently fit.  Some won’t now, and others won’t as of Pennsic.  We’ll see.

As of this weekend, thanks to Eadric’s mom (thank you!), I have one front-lacing gown with long sleeves.  I think the sleeves are tight enough that my cotton/linen blend tunics won’t fit underneath comfortably, so I need to actually get off my rear and make a proper lightweight linen shift.  As of this moment, I’m somewhat uncertain how to go about doing that, but emails have been sent and I’m hoping that I’m right in my suspicions and it’s not too difficult.  I want to make another front-laced dress of this linen, which will be short-sleeved.  If I make 4 shifts to go under them, depending on how many of my tunics still fit, and do laundry once during the week, I might be okay.  I’ll also have two sidelesses (the linen one with Eadric’s household colors and a wool one that needs to be hemmed) and possibly my blue Norman tunic.  There’s no way my brown and red tunic or ren fair-ish garb will fit at all.

In other words, I have a lot of sewing and woodworking to do.  Much of which I’ll need help with.  Ugh.

Just over eight weeks ’til Pennsic!

August 12th, 2008 by Ascelyn

If nothing else, I was successful at shopping!  I’ve included links to the various merchants and the prices paid where possible.  I truly love what I bought and think every single item was a great use of my hard-earned spending money.  The links are as much for me to easily find them again as they are in hopes that others will patronize them as well.

But before any of that, there are the things I now own thanks to Pennsic but not actually acquired at Pennsic.  Among them are two linen/cotten blend sleeveless shifts and three linen/cotten blend fitted-ish tunics for under my cotehardie.  Also finished are two large green six-board boxes that can easily hold everything I need for an event the size of Pennsic other than food and things that are too long, like my bow.  Finally, there is the lovely indoor/outdoor rug for in my tent, which while disconcertingly itchy when rolled up at the store is really quite lovely when you’re living out of a propped-up piece of canvas on the dirt.

Acquired at Pennsic but not at a merchant’s booth, one very spifftacular archer’s bracer.  Eadric’s dad is the bestest bracer maker ever.  It’s far more than I ever would have dreamed when I still thought I would be making it myself.

And the list of Things Bought at Pennsic:

• Two pair of linen stockings from Vitha (Tailor Made Garments), pale blue and madder red, $20 each
• Blue tie garters, Historic Enterpises, $3.95
• Gorgeous leather garters with pewter buckles and ends, Fettered Cock Pewters, ~$12
• Passable period utensil set with a knife, 2-prong fork, and spoon plus carrying case, Fettered Cock Pewters, $25
• Medium dark brown leather for my belt, Real Leather People, $6
• Small leather journal with handmade paper and fingerlooped cord, Limner’s Guild, $8
• Silk floss, Reconstructing History, $3.50/pack
• St. Catherine woodblock print, Historic Enterprises, $5.95
• Towel/apron/table runner/woven object of many uses, Historic Enterprises, $15
• Reproduction brooch, Drachenstein Treasures, $30
• Buckle for pouch, Gaukler Medieval Wares, $8
• Teribus CD, $15
• Bronze-ish buttons for new cotehardie, T.L. Barnes, $2.50/dozen

Gifts, prizes, and things otherwise free:

• Instructions to make a folding chair, won at FC Pewters during Midnight Madness
• Ceramic candleholder/lantern from Eadric the Potter
• Seven linen “babies” (cloth dolls) for me to dress and sell at Holiday Faire
• Linen thread

I also picked up the belt fittings and mounts from FC Pewters that I’d ordered before Pennsic.  The buckle and end are on the belt currently, but the mounts are awaiting…well, mounting.

Since Armlann was there, I ordered my boots and had him fit me for them.  As he doesn’t anticipate getting to them until around Christmas, he didn’t take any money yet.

I plan to use my previous leather-bound journal, which I bough at the art store at CMU, as a song book.  The awesome new journal is the perfect size to stay in my basket without taking up space, and I won’t feel so horrible jotting down contact info or taking small notes in it since I can replace the paper.

The utensils are dishwasher safe.  Huzzah!

Mentally acquired are two new songs, Minstrel Boy and Wild Rover.  Neither are quite period, to my knowledge, but they seem to be accepted SCA campfire songs.  They’ve also both been stuck in my head for the last two days.  Help!

Can I go home now, please?  I miss it….

August 12th, 2008 by Ascelyn

Pennsic was relaxing.

Okay, I know I’m supposed to gush about how exciting it all was.  The classes!  The parties!  The battles!  Except really, I spent all of ten minutes in a class, and the closest I came to a party was spending an evening in a camp other than my own or Eadric’s.  I did see the first field battle on Friday, but mostly just to take pictures.  After the cannon signified the end of the first battle (part of a battle? I don’t know) and I hadn’t been able to find any familiar shields, I just left.  I never had the capacity to watch sports when I didn’t know anyone playing, and apparently SCA fighting counts in that regard.

But relaxing…ah, that it was.  I relaxed around camp, relaxed my way through merchants, relaxed my way on a few meandering walks around site.  Remarkably, I was untroubled by headaches or joint pain.  Even more remarkable is the fact that I slept on average four to five hours a night and wore turnshoes with little to no support.  I guess there really is something to be said for having something to look forward to every morning and not just sitting at a desk all day.  Things have certainly shot right back to normal since I got back, and I don’t like it.  Really, I think I’ve been spoiled.

In all honesty, I do feel a nagging disappointment about the way this War went, but it was still fun.  Any unhappiness is entirely the fault of my on paranoid, anxious little self.  I wish I were involved in more activities.  (So get involved.)  I wish I had more friends in the SCA.  (Go out and meet people.)  While I’m quite content sitting in camp holding a book and watching the clouds sweep overhead, I want something more at times.  I think I was just too relaxed–or too scared–to go out and find it.

In some ways, it was a lonely week.  There were always people who would have welcomed me, but for some reason I felt uncomfortable imposing on them.  Not that it stopped me, at least all of the time, but it made me hesitant to go plop myself down next to them and insert myself into their conversations, their books, their own little worlds.  I like them, and they seem to like me–or at least not actively dislike me.  It’s all very reminiscent of high school, and that’s a time in my life I’m very glad to be done with.  I don’t want it to come back, but here it is.

I want people who are like me.  Not that I’m xenophobic; I truly enjoy diversity and all that I can learn from those with dissimilar lives, but I also want people who can understand me.  I found those people at CMU for the first time in my life, and I’ve found them again, though not to the all-encompassing extent, in the SCA.

Maybe I’m just getting too picky now.  The vast, vast majority of the people I know in the SCA are older than I am.  They’re wiser, more mature, more set in their lives.  The few I’ve met who are my own age seem like very nice kids, but there’s a crazy dichotomy that leaves me outside the realms of their carefree existence in strange ways.  I feel too young for them in that I don’t drink, smoke, hang off of various members of the opposite sex, or care to participate in many of the activities that are attractive to them.  At the same time, I’m the staid old married woman who’s finished college and has to deal with a 8-6 taxpaying job and security clearances.  I’m thinking about kids while they’re thinking about kicking their tentmate out for a one-night stand with some girl they met down in the bog.

Then there’s poor Gwylym, who was stuck with me for relatively large portions of the week.  He reminds me, in some ways, of my best friend through middle and high school–too nice for his own good.  I don’t want people to hang out with me if they don’t want to, or to be agreeable when they don’t feel like it.  For fear of annoying him, I tried to leave him alone, but it was doubly hard because a) he was in the same tiny camp, and b) I honestly enjoy his company.  My socially inept little brain has a hard time dealing with such situations.

Speaking of being socially inept, that one evening in another camp?  Scary.  Even though I had previously met a few of the people and everyone was more than kind.  There were just too many of them, and my place amongst them was unknown.  I froze.  It was bad.

Don’t take this as meaning I didn’t have a good time.  The weather was perfect, I’ve fallen in love with canvas tentage, and it was a great vacation.  This is not the place for me to lie and say I have no regrets, though.  I do enough of that elsewhere.

Now I just need to convince J to move toward Frederick so I can be surrounded by people whose company I enjoy during the rest of the year.

More Pennsic wrap-up later, including a list of objects acquired and amusing anecdotes for the sole purpose of me looking back on them later and laughing.

August 11th, 2008 by Ascelyn

Pennsic 37 is now nothing but memories and that omnipresent orange dust.

I can go back now, please?

August 1st, 2008 by Ascelyn

In half an hour, I leave work.  My only remaining tasks are to clean up my cube, fill out my timesheets for this week and next, and leave an auto-reply on my email.  From here, I’ll proceed to my mum’s house so she can pin the hems of my three new tunics.  On to the fabric store for two yards of something thin and white for headwraps, then Martin’s to stop up on foodstuffs.  Drop by the bank for the second time today, this time sans old people.

Home.  Sew my last shift and hem the tunics.  Reattach the hinges and handles to my newly painted boxes.  Pack and load everything into the Jeep that I won’t need for tomorrow morning.

Worry incessantly that I’m forgetting something.  Triple-check my list, but forget something anyway.

Wake up at a reasonable hour, drive to Pennsylvania, troll in, unload everything, park the Jeep, change into garb, and dance about happily because I’M AT PENNSIC, yo!  Try not to forget to buy new stockings and a fan.

Written proudly on my (green) whiteboard:  0 days ’til Pennsic.

June 20th, 2008 by Ascelyn

Well, here I am, a day older and a day wiser.  I have a new plan.  Most likely, I’ll be ordering from Midwest Tents, who I can cautiously say I like so far simply for their incredibly quick, helpful email response this morning.  (A response which, might I add, actually contained capital letters.  Score one for people who treat their business-related emails like a piece of…well, business correspondence!)

They don’t have any square tents in stock at the moment.  Hopefully their shipment will come in sometime after July 4th, possibly mid-July.  However, the owner seems concerned that they might not be there until around the time of Pennsic.  I’m waiting to hear back from him whether or not they might be able to deliver at Pennsic itself and how much a 12′x12′ tent would be.  Apparently right now a 12′ square tent is the same price as a 14′ square tent, so a 14′ would be the better deal.  However, it’s also way more than I need, and it probably wouldn’t fit in my allotted space at Pennsic.  He also mentioned, though, that they’ll likely be retiring the 12′ tents and replacing them with 10.5′ tents, which would be ideal.

But like I said, I’m just that much smarter after dealing with the hideousness that was my experience with Tentsmiths.  I need to lay out a circle on ground tonight and try arranging things inside of it, but I’m pretty sure a 10.5′ round tent would work, as well.  It’s a major waste of the corners, and my cot will sit at a pretty odd angle to accomodate the center pole, but it would be functional.  Not ideal, but functional.

We’ll see what happens.