Random Ramblings

As I mentioned a few days ago, I completely skipped out on our local event this weekend so that I could work on my kitchen and get it ready for the renovations. I was kinda bummed out about it. I'd wanted to go, especially after missing Birka for work, but I was very stressed and overwhelmed by what needed to be done to prepare, and one of the main mottos of my SCAdian household is, "Real life comes first."

After the event, a couple of people mentioned that I really should have been there, and that I should get in touch with Tadea, our baroness. So I emailed her to ask her what was up. "Oh," she said (and I paraphrase), "someone brought up a bodice for you and there was all sorts of schtick about how we were going to give it back to you and make sure it was really yours. Baron Angus has it for the moment; let me know if you'll be at BIA so I can give it back to you."

Ah. No problem. I actually knew about that one already. I was planning on trying on Katrusha's corset and maybe buying it off her, and felt very bad when I couldn't be there to pick it up. So I put the whole matter out of my mind as something to Deal With Later (tm).

Imagine my surprise when I read in the unofficial court report that I was supposed to have gotten my Maunche! I think I spent the entire bus ride to work repeating some variation of, "Wait... what?" Apparently they'd tried to give it to me at Birka, too, where I sadly also had to be absent. I think it was supposed to be a secret, but I just kept not showing up places. :)

I've gotta say, this is highly, highly unexpected.

( Thoughts on getting my Maunche )

Friends, I know you didn't have anything else planned for this weekend, so why not browse through 15,000 words of Pennsic nostalgia? That's right, this year's Pennsic diary is online! In it, you'll discover that I became Mistress Marian of Heatherdale's apprentice, performed for the royalty of the Known World, and went on stage for the intermissions of Lorelei of Skye's Wednesday night show. I also performed a whole bunch of new saint stories, which will be posted online soon, and wrote a bunch of new pieces: 1. a poem for Liam St. Liam's "crown polishing" quest, 2. Hours at Troll, 3. Sixteen Shirts, 4. The Excuse Note, and 5. Marian Doesn't Like Wool.

I wasn't able to put as many links in to friends' pages this year, because it's been crazy-busy in the office and my boyfriend's brother is getting married in two days, but I know you'll forgive me. The important thing is that you can now re-live the Pocket Bard's two weeks at Pennsic as though you were there yourself. Have at!

I've been styling myself as a bard since 2003, give or take. In that time, I've had wonderful fun both writing and performing, camp-hopping and standing on stage, and (very occasionally) competing. And while I seem to have a knack for accumulating prizes that other people have won in competition (I think I'm up to four and counting), I have yet to win a competition myself.

That changed last night. Yes, friends, for the first time in my bardic "career," I actually have a championship to my own name. Last night was the monthly iteration of "StorySlam," which is like a poetry slam except for storytelling. By a very, very near margin, I squeaked into first place and won some mint fudge, which I promptly gave away in the spirit of paying it forward.

This also means that I'll be the featured teller at next month's StorySlam, and should probably start thinking about how I'm going to fill up 20 minutes of stage time. (For the record, last night's winning piece was Rathflaed DuNoir's "Beowulf.")

Today I realized that I've only got 28 1/2 weeks until Pennsic, which means it's prime time to start planning. My boss has assured me that I'll be able to take the two weeks off for Pennsic this year, and I'm going to be sure to get that in writing at some point in the very near future. In any case, this is the first time since 2007 that I'm pretty much assured of going without working a miracle, and I intend to take advantage of that fact by planning some projects early.

I'm putting together a list of major projects I'd like to get done before Pennsic. Twenty-eight and a half weeks is almost two university semesters, which should be plenty of time if I plan properly.

I think my primary goal for this year will be to put together a new class based around The Golden Legend. I've owned a copy (a modern translation by William Granger Ryan) for two and a half years, and I've been slowly sputtering through it. But I think this is the year that I finish it. If I read two pages a day per weekday, I should be done Volume 1 by the end of April. (Volume 2 will be a sequel class next year.)

Right now I'm envisioning a class somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours, in which the first part will be an introduction to hagiography in general and The Golden Legend in particular, and the second (and longer) part will be a retelling of my favorite saint stories from Volume 1. I'm about halfway through and already have 15 stories I want to tell, so I imagine I'll have at least another 10-15 by the time I'm done. As a side-benefit, it means all those stories will be fresh in my mind to use as bardic fodder. (Mwahaha. Mine is a cunning laugh.)

So. Two questions:
1. Do you think people would be interested in a class like this?
2. What the heck should I call it? The best I've come up with so far is "Saints don't have to be boring!", but that still seems pretty lame. I need help!

Okay, so maybe it takes me a month to sew a simple apron-dress that doesn't even fit very well, maybe my attempts at fabric dyeing wind up with candy-colored chemises that I'm halfway embarrassed to wear, maybe I screwed up a friggin' frozen pizza tonight by forgetting to take the cardboard backing off...

...but damn it, I wrote a 216-line poem based on an actual period story, in actual period meter, in less than five hours. That's gotta be worth something, right?

(For the curious, it's a fun story from the Golden Legend featuring St. Basil, written in enjambed rhyming couplets of iambic tetrameter, the same meter I used for my poem about St. Christopher.)

Today's YouTube performance is another piece for Casa Bardicci, entitled A New Home (lyrics here). It commemorates the Casa's 2008 move (Pennsic 37) from it's native Bologna to Venice. In other words, the Casa's campsite was moved from its traditional spot to one a little further around the lake, that happened to have a river running through it. But they pulled it off! In fact, they placed the dance hall directly above the river! This, I thought, was surely deserving of poetry. Enjoy!

Today's Pocket Bard original performance is The Sign of the Duck. (Lyrics here.) It's a fable-like piece describing the creation of Dione Sidhe's kitchen house at Pennsic. The poem was commissioned by Mistress Brid, co-head of Dione Sidhe, and features Lord Geoffrey, the other co-head. For those who are interested, you can see a picture of the kitchen house here. Enjoy!

I'm thinking of doing another round of posting on my YouTube channel. Just not sure which songs or poems I want to record yet. If anyone has any particular requests, could you let me know? A full list of my original works can be found here.

The event yesterday was a lot of fun. And for an event where I walked in with nothing official to do, I wound up actually doing quite a lot. Moreover, I got to see a bunch of friends I've sorely missed, both local and from out-of-town.

( Detailed report behind here )