Category Archives: Travel

A&S Follow-up

I entered the championship for Calontir on 7/20/19 and I came in second. Here are my thoughts on my entries and the judging:

Italian head-covering: scored 25/30 and I was happy with that. One of the first comments was a question as to what style of footnotes I was using and I have no idea. Since this is not my area of expertise and not my culture of research, and I had difficulty even trying to find out where the portraits I was using for documentation were located. And I was primarily using portraits for documentation so I picked portraits that showed a similar head covering from Italy in the same time frame. They wanted more textile references and more process pictures, and comparisons to other headdresses from other areas and periods. Also to know how it was done in period and I can’t even begin to figure out if there is existing documentation for that. I can look at a thing and puzzle it out – I was vague on the overall puzzling.

Reliquary hood: scored 29/30 as I lost a point for “Post–period looking pin use” They really liked how my documentation was laid out as I broke it down into 15 parts – for such a small item there was really a lot going on with it and I broke it down into all of the major components. I based this piece on approximately eight extant objects which all had an analysis of the object online in Dutch. So the flaws in my project added to the authenticity of it. I liked this project and might do it again.

Treatment of a statue: scored 21.5/30 and I was told that if I had won then this item would have been disqualified. True – one of the three statues had been entered in a competition prior and it had not been fully carved at that point. I did not hide that fact – the judges could just have easily concentrated the judging on the other two statues if that was their objection. I did not talk about carving in my documentation and did not expect them to judge the carving because I was focused on the surface treatment. They liked the dog, they liked the sheep, they knocked points off in every category – including complexity which was baffling to me that I could get a 3/5 in that area. Overall it felt like the judge who took the lead on that team had a goal score she was trying to reach and the other two just let her. I immediately after judging knew I didn’t win. And while the rules state that your documentation and scores can be enhanced by your conversation with the judges, there didn’t seem to be any of that going on. Again – this is not my area of focus and even though I had lots of extant statues from the same region and time period, I’m a little agog about the scoring.

Part of the overall problem with the documentation standards is that they make NO allowances for how in-depth you want to get into a field of study, the ADA federal standards, or how much is actually known already in that art, time, and region. The fact that I know all those basics should be apparent based on the conversation and I shouldn’t have to put basics in the written documentation for an advanced level project. I don’t know how to fix that issue. I also don’t think the style of footnote or bibliography should be as big a factor as the books or sites that you’re citing. Especially when the end result of your labors is supposed to be the work of art – not the research you used to produce it. I expect those standards for a research paper – not for a physical item.

Not sure if I will do it again – would kind of like to do a project when I do the documentation as a photograph of the project work space once a week so you can see the progress, see the references I consult, see the materials I use. And see how long it actually takes to create the project itself! And I think I would like to make more critters for the shrine.

Barcelona

Today was packed full of adventure.

We got up at 6am so we could get ready have breakfast and see the sites.

First off – the Hotel Arts is awesome when it comes to breakfast – there was a room full of assorted foods – I could have eaten for hours. The pastries were heavenly, the fruit was awesome, and I don’t eat eggs or I would rave about those as well. I jammed a stack of prosciutto in a croissant and grabbed a bunch of olives – it was so good!

We headed off to our walking tour of Barcelona which took the whole morning. We got to see the old town and this little regional village (reminded me of Epcot) where all the regions of Spain are represented in the form of little shops. We saw a monastery on the top of a hill and went to the old town where there were many bead stores I couldn’t stop in – probably a good thing. And we got to see the outside of the cathedral.

We took a taxi to the museum – Museu Nacional D’Art De Catalunya. I took pictures of everything I thought someone I know would be useful – like fabric fragments from the 1100s, paintings of hairnets, a foot-high statue of George killing the dragon that is ARMOR in miniature. And of course many period paintings.

After the museum we went to the Flamingo Dance with dinner which was very good.


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Another Adventure Begins

I will add pictures after I return and can get them into the system.

So – bright and early on Sunday morning we drove to the airport and hopped a flight to Miami. I think the weather was rather pleasant. We caught the shuttle to our hotel and mostly lounged around for the day as we had no real plans. We caught lots of pokey monsters and then we returned to the airport Monday afternoon to catch our flight to Barcelona, Spain.

Our flight left about an hour behind schedule and arrived only fifteen minutes late. Since we didn’t leave Miami until about 7pm, I was truly hoping that I would sleep the whole way but that was not to be either. I watched a movie, I finished a book, I tossed and turned for awhile – we were in luck because on a nearly full flight we had the three seats to the two of us. Still we didn’t sleep much.

We arrived Tuesday morning, caught the shuttle to the Hotel Arts in Barcelona and took a nap. We went pokey hunting. We found food. We returned to the hotel. We got to bed early. It was a good start to this adventure.


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My A&S Weekend

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It has been nearly a year since we moved south and into a new SCA kingdom – the Kingdom of Calontir, and I finally attended my first event as a member of this kingdom. I chose A&S as my first event because it happens to be where my interests are and it is generally a smaller event where I can meet more people and, when I enter, I get to talk to people more in depth.

Three years ago I entered the triathlon in the Kingdom of Northshield and my entries were: The Shrine (which was a bit overwhelming for the judges), my carved statue (which wasn’t complete and had rather low-level documentation), and my research paper (which lost points because it was too long and too in-depth to be just one research paper.) I lost the championship by less than a full point and won the Queen’s Prize which I felt was a very good outcome.

This year, because of the moving and not being able to find everything, and not having much free-time, I decided to just enter one thing. I didn’t know if A&S was basically the same as what I was used to as now there aren’t divisions and there are three levels to enter (novice, intermediate, and advanced) so you can pick the level you’re comfortable with.

I chose to enter at the advanced level because I’m pretty sure I’d get laughed at if I did anything else. I chose the category of string manipulation because it really best describes what I’m doing with this art. I started making some flowers last month. But right from the start I was thinking about the birds and how I’ve been wanting to concur more of the animal shapes. I decided to make a bird. When I finished that I made some more flowers and finished off a batch of grapes that I had been working on. I attached my new flowers and bird to a Styrofoam wedge that I had covered with silk and then brought the Shrine and the research to fill out the display. The documentation I wrote was six pages and was pretty much off the top of my head, referring to the book for more in-depth explanations.  Frankly, the joy in knowing this subject as well as I do now is that I can just rattle it off the top of my head and not have to spend so much time with the books. I also found the folder with every prior paper I ever wrote on this topic so I was covered when it came to the documentation.

We arrived to the site at 9am and got everything set up – I was in space 9 which is a good number for me. I took the glass off the shrine and put it under the table cloth because it’s much easier to see the shrine without the glass in the way. I installed the statues and other mobile things that cant travel in there because they would tip over, and then sat down next to my display to answer questions. I didn’t get judged until 3pm.

It was a very long day and several people commented that I always seemed to have a crowd in front of me. I gave a brief synopsis of my entry to anyone who was moving slowly enough to hear it. I answered every question and I met a good number of people, several of whom were very interested in the period and locale of my entry. By the time the judging started for me I was ready for a nap.

One of my assigned judges didn’t show up but thankfully there was another lady hanging out with my judges who sat in for her. They read my documentation and then we started chatting – we may have exceeded the time allotted to us. The written comments were glowing but sparse and I got a perfect score – it’s pretty rare to get a perfect score and I’m very pleased. There isn’t much I can get in the way of constructive criticism because it’s an obscure art form that I tend to execute with precision but I was pleased with the whole of the conversation and letting the judges know how I discovered certain construction methods to get things to look exactly like the pictures.

I did get a chance to look at the other entries and I was quite amazed at how different the entries are from the ones I’ve seen in the past – the focuses are different but all within the same broader categories.  This kingdom appears to be way more musical based on the entries I saw.

We packed up everything and then headed to court. There was a laurel elevation (which might explain the large number of laurels at the event but I somehow feel that the laurels here have embraced the A&S venues and foster them here more than they did up north) and they announced the winner of the Judge’s Choice Award – who just happened to be me! I was surprised – and they gave me a big basket of “All the things” as my prize. There are some great things in that basket and I’m sure to get use out of all the things in there.

So – for my first event in my new kingdom – I think it was a smashing success and I look forward to participating more now that things have settled down a bit on the home front. I am very happy I got off on the right foot because it will make it easier for me to get to know people here quicker. I’m still kind of gob-smacked.

 


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So Busy Again

So I’ve been working full-time for almost a year now. I’m getting ragged because there are still just as many things I want to accomplish but almost no time in which to do so.

And then to make everything more exciting we decided to move to another state. So we found a house we liked, put in an offer, jumped through the bank hoops, and now own a second home. We are currently in the process of moving to the new home. Meanwhile I am still working fulltime.

But I still want time to ART. I found an event that I think is perfect for me – The First Known World Fiber Arts Symposium in Ames, Iowa next month. So I now have the drive I need to get the flower directions written. About time right? LOL

Aside from all of that, I can show photos that I can’t put on the website. And in some strange way that sort of makes up for the fact that I’m not going to be able to see the exhibit in Lueven http://www.utopialeuven.be/en/utopia-different-perspective and see the refurbished gardens. I guess there will be time to see everything when I stop working in a couple of years.

So I should probably get moving on preparing the class.


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4 Years

I first met my hubby – in person – four years ago. We hit it off great and right from the start. Exactly one year later we got engaged and were married 8 months after that.

At about the time we got married we decided that we would move south to warmer climes in three to five years time. So it will be three years this coming spring and we are right on track for the three year mark!

In anticipation of that forthcoming move, we traveled to Arkansas again this past week and followed it up with a side trip to Albuquerque for balloon fest. We had a ball!

First in Arkansas we drove around the four counties that we have centered our search on and tried to narrow down our focus a bit. I think we’ve decided to center in on the area just east of the cities and south of the lakes. that would give us good access to town and still be out in the boonies a bit. While I like the house in the north it just seems like such a long drive. And who’s to know what will be available when we are ready to purchase? We also got to meet the local SCA group and are very pleased we will eventually be able to call them family. We toured a cave, we had lunch at the tea room, we went cashmere shopping – it was a very relaxing vacation.

In Albuquerque we went to balloon fest. We took the Gondola package which involved special parking, a closed off area near the field with breakfast and golf cart rides wherever we wanted to go. We also got a special pin and then I went off and bought all of the penguin pins. It was a very fun morning even if I did have to get up at 4am. During the few days we were there we also went to Santa Fe to visit the oldest church, the oldest house, and the oldest municipal building. We got some pilgrim badges for the shrine, visited a mine and got some stone beads and a bone button, got lost in the scenery, and visited lots of old friends.

And now we are back at home and there is so much that I need to get caught up on!

 


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Jet Lag

Today I got up at 3:30am. I do not hope to repeat the experience any time soon but it’s probably going to be awhile before it wears off.

So I’m going through the pictures and getting rid of anything that isn’t in perfectly clear and useable format. Then I need to weed them down to about six to eight pictures per shrine. What I’m thinking is two pages per shrine, and if I count the predellas as two (instead of six) then there are about 25 to cover. Three of them are post period but I think they need to be included because they show a nice progression of the artform.

This is what I’m like when I don’t get enough sleep. Or more to the point, get enough good quality sleep. I’m a little wired.

I have lots of correspondence to catch up on as well. There are plenty of thank yous to send out and additional questions that I need to get answers for because, for all I learned in the past two weeks, there are still big holes in my knowledge. And there is one location that I need to get pictures for yet.

The gratifying part of the whole experience was being told that my site is bookmarked because I’m “the go-to person on this subject matter.” Which also explains why the only useable results I get from web-searches generally come from my own website. It took me all day yesterday to get the logins and passwords for my site fixed but I’m now able to update the site (something I’ve been remiss in doing since the last trips’ updates were made) and managed to get the table of shrines all nice and pretty. And there’s my sense of accomplishment for the day.

Most of the shrines have been renovated at some point which is kind of sad because nobody ever wants to put things back in the same order that they found it in. There is also a significant amount of symbolism involved in the placement of the flowers which is missing from some of the shrines and so I have to look into that as well. And the renovations were generally done with papers and fabric coverings that were not original to the shrine. It’s difficult to know what is original and what I need to just ignore. Since I have a good selection of shrines to look at I should be able to get a good and educated guess as to what goes in each pile.

And then I still have several books that I need to go through as well. Just so much of everything!


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I Won The Scavenger Hunt!

After the very stellar yesterday that I had , just about everything would be considered down hill.

So today we got up and packed up every little thing after a big breakfast of pancakes and bacon and eggs for people who eat eggs. We then drove to Lier. Leir is a cozy little town South East of Antwerp. They have the Zimmer clock there which we toured. They have some nice churches and a Beginhof which we walked through. None of the churches seemed to be open.

Then we drove to St. Lenaards and waited for someone to come open the church for the 5pm service. That happened a little after 4:30 so we went in, found the shrine and discreetly clicked away. Noone attempted to stop us or yell at us. And this shrine was large and different from the rest of the period ones.. It was also THE VERY LAST SHRINE on my list! I have completed the collection! I have finished the game. I have pictures of everything now so I can go home and make flowers. Lots of flowers.

Do the hap hap happy dance.

We are now in Dusseldorf where we will have a fairly relaxing tomorrow before getting on the plane on Monday morning. We will fly home and get our missing 6 hours back that we sacrificed on the way over.

I am so exhaused. It has been a great trip with a lot of great high points. I have many new friends and a wealth of new pictures to work off of. I will still need to request photos from Ebstorf but that should not be a problem since I actually met the person who takes the pictures and she knows what I’m looking for so that should work well.

I can barely wait to get home and get to work. But I will need to find some untwisted silk thread so I can see how different it will look.


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The 28th Is Always The Best Date For Major Events!

Happy Black Friday!

I did not go shopping today. I did have to get up kind of early though and if my purpose for getting up early was to go shopping then I would have given up and gone back to bed. Because I slipped getting into the shower and have a small bruise on the inside of my thigh. I bumped my elbow getting into the car and my hubby threw my lemonade bottle in the recycle bin so there were no extra bottles to take along. I was kind of grumpy on the two plus hour car ride because we were ten minutes late getting out the door and this was one day I really didn’t want to be late.

But we got where we were going and parked the car and filled the meter and walked through the gate and we had two minutes to spare. We met Freida and were greeted by Wim and Hanna and taken into sub basement number two. But it was a long ride so we went back up to use the bathrooms before officially starting.

So first we did introductions. Hi. I’m Jonalee and I first got interested like back in 2003 when I requested detailed photos and Wim sent them to me. My goal is to create a shrine of my own.

Hanna is doing her thesis on the flowers and the part making them plays in prayer. She has read my entire website and considers me the go-to person! She then looked up all the books on my bibliography and will send me ones I don’t have. (My bibliography includes every single book and article on the flowers even if I have never seen it. This can be helpful to others doing research on the same topic.)

Freida is an incredibly crafty person who has made flowers in many forms and went to a class in Austria with a friend of hers from Minneapolis. She has also been a textiles curator and had to rush home and finish her 18th century ball gown for the period ball tomorrow night.

So we were all on the same page and our interests in the flowers were pretty much all from the perspective of making them, who made them, where, when, why, and documenting the existing remains of flowers.

They have three of the shrines in various stages of disassembly. We were both allowed to take pictures for personal use only (as the waiver did not show up in time we almost weren’t even allowed to take pictures). They have all been restored in the past I think. But I clicked away, my husband clicked away. Mom was taking pictures of people taking pictures. It was fun. We chatted the whole time, we exchanged information. I will probably end up going to Hanna’s graduation at the rate we were going. She did her senior thesis on the Fleur which is like so up my alley. And I have to send some pictures of Herentels to Freida because she wasn’t clear on what I meant when I said those flowers were distinctly different from the rest of the ones I’ve seen.

And I’ve seen them all now except St. Lenaards and we plan to do those tomorrow.

We also stopped at Martinus on the way back because it was only 16 minutes away and see the skull reliquary. Dated from 1601 to 1700 the flowers are all glass and metal. Some fabric around the skulls themselves but narry a silk flower I sight. I will have to find out why because I’ve seen other late flowers and they are an explosion of color and very realistic looking.

I am told there are no flowers in Cologne but we may go there anyway to see the Ursula shrine.

My work here is nearly complete. I did not plan for this to happen today and it really was thrown together at the last minute because I was so very close and my timing was incredible to boot. I am one very lucky little monster. Probably because today is the 28th and all the best big stuff happens on the 28th.

And there it is.