Slept 8 hours, but part way through the night I needed to move the doona to under me and over the air mattress, so I had only my My viking coat, Viking Cloak, and 2024 Keldor’s laurel caftan for covers, as the cold from the air mattress was too much. Alas, I couldn’t convince Keldor to move, so he stayed under the doona as I slept over it.
So I woke with the resolve that I need to get another ride to town today to buy another duvet.
I started my morning with finishing my notes for yesterday, and typing the above. In the time it took me to do that Keldor also woke, and decided to go over to the barn to get some tea, as we saw a water kettle there yesterday.
So I started making the bed, and he took his new tea mug and wandered off, returning in the depths of despair before I finished the bed, as the water kettle had disappeared. Poor thing.
I paused with bed making, and got him a puffed rice treat, which he took, but was not cheered. So I took his tea cup out into the camp, found folk around the fire, and asked if they had hot water to spare for my fighter. They had a kettle going which would soon be hot, and they, too, were mystified at the disappearance of the watter kettle.
After applicaation of tea, crackers, and cheese, Keldor recovered from his crushing disappointment and was ready to face the day. (He also wondered aloud what was really going on, as his reaction to the missing kettle wasn’t really in proportion to the scale of the catastrophe).
My plan was to start my day with yoga, but when I got Keldor his breakfast, I had some too. Once he was fed and ready to leave the tent, I decided to run to the loo before my yoga.
On the way back Telnor, sitting in the next sunshade, waved hi, so I went over to get aquainted (having been introduced on line by Tania this week), and met Alistair, Telnor’s spouse, and D___, from Lochac, currently living in London.
Eventually I went back to the tent and did my yoga, pleased that I once again have energy for things like side balance with leg lifted. Keldor, who had found his sword (which travelled here in someone else’s sports bag), started armouring up, and I went out to return the power pack to Juliette. It turns out that Juliette has a spare quilt we could borrow to put under the sheet, so I don’t need to go shopping after all.
So I took it back to the tent, re-made the bed, which looked so comfortable that I lay down on top of it, and fell asleep.
Very soon thereafter Keldor returned, shook my foot to wake me, and asked where he would find a needle and thread. “In the sewing bag, right next to your right hip” was my sleepy reply, wondering as I drifted off to sleep, why he hadn’t just looked and gotten it himself, without disturbing me?
I woke an hour and a half after falling asleep, and as I was updating today’s notes about this morning, he returned looking for lunch. I gave him some Hais, a clementine, and reminded him that he had bought beef jerkey, he took these happily away, I finished typing this, and decided it was time for my lunch, too, but first I looked at what remains of the day’s schedule, and see many things I want to attend, a number of which I have already missed. Oops.
Luckily, it turned out that I had only lost track of which row in the spreadsheet was which, and some of those interesting classes started at 14:00, not 10:00 as I had miss-read.
I didn’t know that when I heard the call for Medieval Hot Buns starting at the brick oven in 8 minutes, right after having eaten a few oatcakes, some nuts, and a bit of fruit, and thinking “I am still hungry”. This sounded like a perfect solution to feeling hungry so I hurried over, quite forgetting that Helga’s class was the same time as Hot Buns, and thst I wanted to do both.
Being thus freed from the obligation of making a conscious decision, I followed my grumbling tummy to Gwerful’s Hot Buns class. This started with sampling some almond soda bread that Gwerful had made, and a discussion of how yeast works and why soda bread became so popular in Ireland as soon as baking soda had been invented (Ireland is normally too cold and humid for yeast doughs to rise without a proofing oven, and the chemical reaction from soda is this much more reliable. Having lived in much colder places, where we heat amd insulate our houses, and thus yeast thrives year-round, this was a thing I hadn’t really thought of. Gwerful warned that, as a result, one must always read the package in Ireland, as most bags of flour already contain the baking soda).
Then Gwerful discussed the genetic differences between period bread grains and modern wheats, how they effect bread texture, etc., and which heritage grains are still available today from small farms, providing jars of a variety to look at. However, we used commercial flour for today’s bread for reasons (including budget).
Since Gwerful had been at the oven a couple of hours already feeding the flour, there had been time to prepare a batch of enriched dough and let it rise before class. So for class we mixed and kneaded a new batch of dough, set it aside, and then divided the first batch of dough into 1 ball of dough for each of us to shape.
We baked and ate that batch, yum! and I got permission to use Gwerful’ mixing bowls and baking trays to make my oatcakes that I never baked this week when it was so hot.
So while Gwerful prepared for court, I shaped the second batch of rolls (to empty the mixing bowl), and set them near the oven to rise as I mixed up the oatcakes and rolled them out. I covered them with a cloth as I baked the rolls, and then did the washing up after class as my oatcakes baked, feeding bread rolls to random people passing by.
When I was done I left a a bowl of covered bread rolls by the clean dishes, and hurried to Etienne’s class on 14th Century Fashions in Armour, in the castle, which was full of information and photos of effigies, manuscript illuminations, extant armour, reproductions of armour, and a very knowledgeable discussion as to how/where/when/why trends arose across Europe before, during, and after the 14th Century. Etienne explained that the goal is to become good enough at armour making to produce good examples of these, but in the meantime, here is the research that backs up the practical learning in progress.
Then it was nearly time for Curia, which went quickly and smoothly, as the proposed changes to Kingdom Law are not controversial, followed by evening Court.
Many joyful awards presented, including an AoA for Juliette, my shopping spree friend from yesterday, and an AoA for a guy who has been in the SCA for decades, and never got one.
Their Highnesses “Brute Squad” were presented with some really nice axes:
(photo by Agnes)
Keldor formally took Erin as an apprentice, to much joyful applause/noise, and then the Prince and Princess took her as their armoured combat Champion for their Reign, which met with more joyful noise!
Of course, the highlight of the evening was sending Aodhan to vigil to contemplate joining the order of the Pelican.
We stayed up chatting with folk till nearly 01:00, and Keldor and I may have wound up as a combined Laurel mentor for another friend, who is confident in their abilities to progress in their art, but would love someone to serve as a soundboard, and willingness to give feedback along the lines of “you are being too much”.
When we went in to talk with Aiden we recived cute, and appropriate vigil tokens of a pair of dice.
We gave a quick bit of prepared advice and praise, and aske Aodhan to pose us a question. Since Keldor just ook an apprentice, the question we got was “how do you decide when it is right to take someone as a dependent (apprentice/protégé etc as appropriate)”
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