Gentle Readers,

Today's Pallas Armata class was looking at chapter 13. The play was to draw an attack, parry and stringer, then when the attacker withdraws and cavers to attack, parry and stringer to the other side and use the gained distance to allow for a fast riposte. We did this through several rotations, looking at new things to focus on from good distance to posture to making sure that you are doing a good recovery.

We also looked at gaining the blade with a stringer when your partner is refusing contact by using a finda to make them commit with a parry and then cavering to stringer. Next week we will do this as a decision drill where if they do not take the bait, you finish your attack.

Gentle Readers,

I've been waiting for September to finish. Unfortunately for me, it's proceeded much like August with far too much going wrong for stupid reasons. Mostly, this was people who just did not give enough thought to the things they were doing and had to redo them. I should probably count myself in that category. This is not to say that there were no wonderful moments. However, these moment tended to just work to highlight the bad stuff and make it seem more frustrating.

While I am not going to dwell on the negative, I am going to say that far too much of it involves my basement.

The best part of the month happened at Coronation when I was brought into the order of the Cruicible. It's an award that recognizes effort and excellence in skill and knowledge about some aspect of the SCA time period. In my case it was for recognition of my study of the historical European martial arts. I was even told by the people involved that there was a bit of a scuffle over who would give and how I would get the award. It was really nice to hear that and to be told that I looked like a woodcut. It's always nice to be recognized for something you believe you do well.

I had great hopes that October would be nicer. It started off pretty well with things slowing down a bit at work and with the customer interactions I was doing going very positively. We headed off to an event yesterday and while the weather was poor, the archery range was fantastic and both Lydia and I had a lovely time plunking away. I had some great shots at 30 yards. I'm trying to focus on instinctual shooting and it seems to be working well for me. Lydia got to try 2 new things, one a heavier bow, which amazed her in it's ability to shoot in a straight line, and shooting from an elevated platform (which she loved). She was also shooting arrows that were made for her using feathers from Geese she knows and made by someone who is about to take her on as a student. I think it was a really wonderful experience for her.

Yesterday was looking really good too. I was waffling but the bright sunshine convinced me that I needed to get up and head out to Fight for Life, a fundraiser for an AIDS charity that is run by the other big club here in Ottawa. I fought a bunch of people I hadn't played with before and had a great time (although I really need to do some work on the helmet I was wearing. Then, on the last point of my last fight (I had plans to head out to something else), we closed to grappling. My oppoent had me braced against his leg and started a throw. I tried to breakfall and my foot stuck resulting in the my knee bending in ways knees are not supposed to bend.

This was a very strange feeling and the fact that it didn't hurt continues to amaze me.

Everyone was very nice and helpful and the gentleman who did the throw felt awful. but they took me over to a chair and I had a sit for a bit and let things settle. Nothing seemed to be getting worse and so eventually I tried to see if it would take my weight. It did and nothing bad happened so I made my way over to start getting packed up to head out.

I stepped and did a bit of a turn as I was getting my jeans on over my fighting clothes and my knee gave out and I collapsed. It was the weirdest feeling. When I try and describe it, all I can think of is when you are testing a chicken by turning the drumstick and the bone just comes right out. So, at that point it became obvious that a hospital visit was necessary.

The hospital visit was only 5.5 hours which is not too bad given that the in town ones were closer to 9 hours. I'm now in a knee imoblizer until I see a sports physician to get a better diagnosis. It's possible that I may have access to the video of the event by then to be able to show the Dr what happened (and likely leave me dwelling on what it was that I should have been doing).

Anyway,

Dear October,

Consider this a written reprimand. Your older siblings did not leave you a very high bar and you have so far made no attempt to step over it. Trying to crawl under said bar only makes you look bad. I'm not angry, but I am disappointed. I expect things to improve.

Yours etc.

Gentle Readers,

Some of you may know of the the Red Knight, by Miles Cameron. Miles is a very enthusiastic historical reenactor (in numerous eras) and also an avid practitioner of historical european martial arts. He had a dream that he could bring together both of his passions and show both sides how cool the other is and he did this by hosting a 14th century deed of arms on his cousin's summer estate on the shores of Lake Ontario. Last year was the first one and it was amazing. I had brought Lydia with me and she had a great time.

This year when he announced he was doing it again I was really excited about going and so was Lydia. Even though it was the week before pennsic. Even though it started on the last day of Lydia's time traveller camp.

The best part was that we knew where we were going this time so it didn't take us 4 (my trip last year) or 9 (craig's trip) to find the place. Tent setup went very smoothly and we got a better spot than last year. We were right next to the list field and also had some morning shade.

We settled in well, there was plenty of room for the three of us. We relaxed and socialized and I mentally checked over what we would be needing for Pennsic in a week. Lydia was a little wrecked, partly from being tired and partly because she was decompressing from her first sleepaway camp, but we managed to get her settled.

Things went great until it was time for sleeping at which point we discovered that the tent also had plenty of room for Mosquitoes. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but Lydia has a bit of a phobia thanks to an ill fated camping trip when she was very little. So both of us got very little sleep that first night.

We still managed to get up and dressed and mustered for the morning although thanks to some armour issues I was not in full kit as I had hoped (which reminds me, I really need to make a new pour-point that can hold up my leg armour). Lydia mustered as an archer which was pretty cool, although there don't seem to be any pictures of her having done so.

The first day's fighting went well. Lydia was too wrecked from poor sleep so she chose not to participate, but I did pretty well. The rules were a little hand-wavy. It was more like a gladiatorial combat where the Count and Countess needed to be entertained and pleased by our skill more than our actual success on the list. Thankfully I had both and I was one of the 2 selected for the finals. Many of the others in the deed were primary instructors for their school and the count felt that perhaps they didn't need to prove anything. That being said, both myself and my fellow finalist were secondary instructors.

Aurora and myself fought to best of 3 and it was a wonderful fight. I believe we were quite evenly matched but Craig assures me that I was more dominant in the fight than I thought. In the end, she was the victor with the final point, but I suspect that it could have gone either way, more due to our differences in blow calling (not a criticism, our clubs just have different rules sets). Still, due to our prowess and presentation on the field, the Count chose to award us both the prize, which was pretty cool.

The prizes were medallions crafted by my fellow prizor.

We didn't make it to the youth Archery tournament. But Lydia was able to shoot in the clout and did pretty well given that she was using a 20# bow. I also did pretty well and made it to the second round. Also pretty good given that I was using borrowed arrows. I had no arrows because Craig opened the windows when we were leaving Upper Canada Village to cool off the car and my arrows fell out in their parking lot. I have to head out there at some point soon.

That night was our feast, which while not as epic as I am used to given my SCA experiences was still very competent and delicious. The concert was once again delightful and they sang a number of pieces that I knew. Lydia also enjoyed the music. When the concert was over, we headed to bed, but this time we had mosquito netting thanks to a fellow reenactor making a trip to Canadian Tire.

That made for a much better night.

Due to the previous day's armour failure, I was not able to participate in the full harness fighting, but I was able to sit and watch with Lydia and act as squire for a number of different people who had armour failures that I could help with with the pieces I was not wearing.

With the end of the armoured deed things wound up and we started packing up and made it home in a reasonable time with plenty of memories and excitement for next year.

Gentle Readers,

Hey! Remember me?

I'm waiting for some software to update so I figured I'd use this time productively to post something. The last 2 weekends I did kinda the same thing. I did a presentation about the evolution of German singlehanded swordplay first at Kingdom A&S and then at Forward into the Past. In both cases it went really well.

At A&S I was presenting to judges. I got immediate feedback but it was all "You did great. I have no suggestions for how you could be better." While this was nice, it was also little frustrating for 2 reasons. Firstly I wanted some feedback so I could improve for when I was presenting to the public at FITP. Given that there were people who were very active in presentation and public speaking judging me I was really expecting something a bit more critical. The second thing was that given the lack of criticism I was quite disappointed that I did not win my category. Given that they saw nothing wrong its hard to know what to do better. A tiny part of me wishes I had judged one of my peers more harshly since he was the one who beat me (conflict of interest? HA!).

The following weekend did the same presentation at FITP and there I had an actual classroom with a projector for the slides as well as a target to poke with the swords. Overall things went really well there. I had no technical issues. The biggest problem was the audience. It was all young men, some in trench coats, some with neck beards (ok, plus my one awesome friend). Having been one of them (well, without the neck beard), I understand their reaction but the fact that no one (but my friend) laughed at my jokes really disappointed me. Even the Longsword/d8 joke fell flat. The only thing that got a chuckle out of them was when I said it was ok to laugh at my jokes.

A couple of them seemed incapable of expressing enjoyment of any sort and glared at me through the entire presentation.

Very strange.

Thankfully though the feedback was good with no complaints so, they did like it even if they weren't capable of expressing that.

I'm not sure if I managed to learn anything from this other than perhaps that I need better jokes.

Gentle Readers

The last little while has been pretty good. Last weekend was the Tournoi du Glace where I placed 3rd in the tournament. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't do better, but the 3rd place prize was more useful to me than the second place one, so that wasn't so bad. We ate off board at that event because too much of the feast was Cortejo unfriendly and I have to say our dinner was at least as good as the official feast. The company was also great.

We got to watch the UFC fights that night in good company and then got to spend the next day visiting with various friend on the way home. It was a lovely way to end/start the week.

The week following was good, but a couple of frustrating bugs at work had it going slower and more vexingly than it could have done. This was thankfully balanced by a great week at the sword hall. We usually had at least 4 students in each class and even had 8 in the Thursday evening class. I'm so thrilled that things are going well there.

This weekend was a little more relaxed. The most momentus thing was deciding that we were done with Fringe, about 5 episodes into the second season. I can put up with some plot related stupidness, but constantly forgetting major events from the last season and even from the first episode of the first season? That is just too much. It's not even like they couldn't have done almost the exact same thing without the obvious plot enforced dumbness.

Ah well, I should know better than to trust network television.

Gentle Readers,

Are you there? Are there non-gentle readers? Do you feel like I'm not talking to you too?

What's up? Well, things are a little stressful at the moment. Work has just gone insane. For some reason, this week just went to hell in a handbasket. First thing we got this week was our senior QA person giving his 2 weeks notice. The week went downhill from there with several major hardware failures and a bunch of stupid issues in the code base.

Things at the Swordhall have been good but busy. I've been taking a lot the main classes while Craig is running the Intro Private Lessons for the various deals he's run ($60 for 2 lessons, 3 classes and a t-shirt!) and that's super fun but it can be a bit of a downer when there are no students. Also, with things running until 10, that makes for super long days. I still love the Gross Messer more than many things.

On the baronial front there were some minor stresses but they seem to have worked themselves out without much energy needed on our part. This is a good thing. In fact we're in the middle of 3 weeks off between events which is pretty unusual. There are some events we could have gone to, but thankfully, we've managed to convince ourselves to take a break.

Lydia, who was like a feral beast at bead time over the last full moon seems to have come to some kind of epiphany and has been quite wonderful, working hard to get her stuff done and basically be a great person to share the house with. I don't know what caused the change, but I'm really happy about it. I hope it lasts for a little while.

She's been really into weaving lately. We got one of the weaving kits from the dollarstore and she's making a bunch and been stitching them together with the goal of eventually making a quilt. I'm hoping to get her to try something like inkle or tablet weaving and see how she does at that.

I've been trying to get my A&S on too. We have a new queen in ealdormere who is quite lovely and who really likes late period. There are a number of the locals who have been trying hard to match her look with Late Period garb of their own. They have convinced me to try and as I have passed on most of my stuff from then, I am thus trying to get something new done for our big local event the first weekend of November.

It took me a while to figure out what it was that I wanted to make. Moroni's Tailor was tempting but not quite what I was looking for. I wasn't feeling the Peascod look so that took out pretty much everything from Alsega. The Henrican stuff in the Tudor Tailor didn't really grab me. So, what do I cleverly decide to make? The Nils Stuer outfit.

I do actually have reasons for the madness. Firstly it's german(ish) and is contemporous with Meyer who I've been studying. Secondly the outfit is black leather and velvet and was worn when Nils was stabbed to death in a cathedral by a Mad King. It's goth as fuck. I don't have any experience with sewing leather clothing.

Maybe this plan was not well thought through.

That may explain yesterdays exhaustion followed by last nights horrible insomnia which lead to even worse exhaustion and my choosing to call in sick to try and get more sleep. I went in and got my work computer at 7am to bring home to maybe do some work from home (traffic still sucked at 7am. wtf?). Unfortunatly, my back to bed plans were foiled thanks to today being the day we scheduled the early morning duct cleaning.

So yeah. Right now I have my hands pretty full. I think if someone were to suggest that I was burning the candle at both ends, I would respond with surprise that I didn't have to also be burning it in the middle too.

One interesting thing about the exhaustion is that my brain seems to be burning extra creative fuel. I'm writing here for one thing. I'm constantly visualizing construction methodology and I've got flash fiction zipping through my brain. This is pretty cool, but I think I might rather not be tired. At least for a little bit.

Gentle Readers,

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I will be participating in the Fight for Life fundraiser for the AIDS Walk For Life. If anyone would like to pledge anything, let me know. I'm sure there will be some video and photos posted and everyone is welcome to come and cheer people on.

It's taking place at Hintonburg park this sunday, all day.

http://www.armizare.com/?p=1516

I'll be wearing armour and getting hit with swords. Come check it out.

Gentle Readers,

We were off in Barrie this weekend for Spring crown. There was a lot of potential for a quite a bit of turmoil but in the end Eris lost the dice roll and the two finalists were the ones expected to be there. On one hand, this is good because they are both decent kings and they and their consorts would take care of a couple of issues that need to be delt with. On the other hand, they do not enjoy fighting each other and I think that emotional investment pulled some of the joy from the fight.

Outside of the fighting there was pleanty to comment on from the weekend. We won a Bow and arrows for Lydia in the silent auction which also contained a selection of beautiful knapped obisidian knives. I should find out who made them as that is something I'd love to learn. We did not win anything in the final Senex Creppitus raffle which was disappointing given that we had about 10% of the tickets.

The feast was, as always with these cooks amazing and excessive. We were very full by the end of the first remove (with 2 more to come). We brought in pitch eaters and even they were slowing down by the end. While I appreciate these epic feasts, I did agree with my dining companions that the length and monotony of feasts (in terms of things to do not in terms of dishes) is problematic in encouraging people to both stay for feast and also to do things after. There were a number of ideas bandied about as ways to deal with this and I hope to see some of them attempted (hopefully frequently).

Last, and unfortunately, least was the fencing. Only one other person brought kit and while I had a lovely time fencing with her, it was, perhaps, not as fun as it could have been.

Outside of the event, the weekend was lovely with a fantatic visit with our host bookending our weekend. Four stars, would stay again.

Gentle Readers,

So, yesterday happened. Wow.

I got up about 6:30. I don't even remember why I got up so early, but I did. I remember I had stuff to do before we left but I don't remember what any of it was. We made it to site at our desired time (10:30) I was ready and on the list by 11. At 11:30, I fought the first bout against his Majesty (who is an excellent swordsman with steel as well as rattan) and from there continued to work through 48 more bouts in seven different styles of cut and thrust combat: Longsword, Rapier and Dagger, Sword and Buckler, Langse Messer, Rapier and Cloak, Single Rapier and *sigh* Case of Rapier.

Bouts of each style against mostly unknown opponents who all ranged from really good to insanely good. There were slight pauses for water and hippy gatoraidish jujube things (shocbloks) and a couple of instances of waiting on opponents but for the most part I fenced to the very best of my ability for the next 3 hours. .

The 50th bout was against the other prizor.

Then we got a little break and I had another 15 min run for the endurance round.

When the smoke cleared I had won 24 of the 50 beating the 17 I needed and the 20 that was my personal goal and was succesful in my prize.

I probably could have fenced more but I stopped moving and discovered that I was soaking weat from my neck to my knees. Clearly I had good hydration. I decided that dryness was the better part of valor and once I cooled down I went off and got changed.

The rest of the day was a blur with a court filled with well desereved acolades and a feast of the high quality and spleandor we have come to expect in ealdormere in general and harogate heath in particular. In particular their efforts to make sure that the restrictions of us at head table were taken into account were quite frankly, well beyond reasonable and were very appreciated.

I made one minor faux pas, but I think it was mostly ignored and I was allowed to take my foot gently out of my mouth.

I attempted to get the Don's I had invited to join me for beer at a nearby pub but they were mostly unable to attend for some reason. Still, it was an excellent cap on the day.

Today I am a little sore, but mostly from the weight of the chain on my shoulders, I think.

Catalogue of injuries:

two bruised toenails. This is probably the most painful thing.
a nice bruise just under the right shoulder
a nice bruise and cut to the top of the left calf.
a similar impact to the right jaw where the gorget was punched back from a thrust.

The price was worth it. I hope there is some video.