Life is too short to drink bad wine.

Today is the start of the annual Drachenwald Kingdom University. We only have the opening ceremony, guild meetings and bardic but of course, Vodafone picked tonight for my internet to completely fall over for three hours during which I had volunteered to host both the Herbalist Guild and Bardic. Fingers crossed that tomorrow the internet gods will not fail, Hermes willing.

I have to admit to being in awe of the organization of this event it's spread over Zoom, YouTube, and Discord and is a masterful work of many many balls in the air. Vivant to the events Team they literally deserve awards. #drachenwaldkingdomuniversity

So I finally finished the cloak & hood that I have been working on and off on for the last six months or so. I'm quite happy with it, the whole project was done by hand and I learned a great deal about various period construction techniques. I was using 100% wool so I finished the seams on the cloak part simply by pressing the selvage to one side and taking it down with a running stitch, the seams that carry weight are done with backstich and those that don't (such as the one attaching the facing to the neckline) are done in running stitch. On the hood I did flat felled seams. The buttons and buttonholes were also done by hand, I got a great tip from one of the SCA garb lists (don't remember which one) on how to do the buttons and I'm very happy with them. All in all I am satisfied with the final project though it obeys the 10 foot rule rather than being a truly period construction. This garment is going to be used for events other than the SCA and I just love the swish of a full circle cloak so there is an obscene amount of fabric in this thing. Other points of fudging are the fact that the hood is cut more generously than I have seen in period illustrations and the cape part is also a full circle rather than the more fitted silhouette that would be what was common in days of yore. If you are interested you can see pictures of the final product and the construction process on my flickr account, The photos don't appear in the correct order though they are named cloak 1, 2, etc so you can follow along in order of construction if you wish.

The process of hand sewing this garment has been surprisingly pleasant, I learned a lot and had fun doing it.

I was a bad bad girl, after the SCA Folk Moot our household went to Applepbees and I had a yummy Long Island Iced Tea. I did this knowing that I'm a cheap drunk and that it was even odds whether I would be able to walk a straight line out to krkhst's car (I wasn't driving of course). But it was so good and I slept really well last night, right after my lovely husband paradigmslost poured me into the bed :-)

On another note we met a very nice young lady from the Principality of Nordmark (that's Sweden for the non-SCA among you), she was in town on business and decided to drop in on our weekly meeting. For some reason the Swedes and other Scandinavians really took to the idea of medieval re-enactment and the SCA is thriving mightily up there, I wouldn't be surprised if they turned Kingdom one of these days. I'm exited about going back to Drachenwald and getting to play "where the history comes from", it adds so much to the ambiance when you have a real castle, not to mention the general lack of killing high temperatures (not so good when you're wearing elizabethan or even pretty much anything other than middle eastern garb) and insane humidity. Of course Ireland is not the hotbed of SCA activity that Sweden or even Germany is, I'm not certain why that is but they only have two or three small shires in the south and most of the events happen in Northern Ireland.

I'm so impressed by the people in my household, they really rock, they do things like blacksmithing and tablet weaving, and equestrian sports, they spend hours of time helping out at events to improve everyone elses experience. One of them has a Byzantine persona and spends hours embroidering the most gorgeous elaborate outfits, you really have to see them to believe them. They are the coolest people and I'm lucky to be in the same household with them. So here's to you, purpleyarrow, baggins911, cudubh, krkhst, lapiswitch, treesong, and hypatia42.