Incremental Updates: Part 1 - The Apprenticing - After all the Halloween parties, it was a big project-push week to get some artwork done for a calendar and the newsletter done for the barony, plus some super-secret projects I couldn't talk about. Saturday Nov 3, I went down to San Diego for an event, and carpooled with Meala. We shared a dayshade (good experience), and I got my secret weaving project warped with Thea and Caterina. To explain, we ran around two tent poles, wrapping yarn that I spun and dyed so that it could be measured off and woven in a method called "card-weaving." Once the warp was set up, I could take it home and finish it during the week.

Sunday Nov 4 was the annual Hogwarts party that Rae and Renata have been throwing for years now. We dress up, have fun, and generally goof around in character in a park all day. This year, my role was to be the "Quidditch Captain for Hufflepuff" -- which meant I was all about being the captain of the sports team. I made little black-and-yellow striped bits for my team to pin to their lapels or tie in their hair or whatever, and I was all about team spirit. We played hard, we played well, and we came in 3rd place in Quidditch and 2nd place in the house cup. Oh well. *grin* But I had an ABSOLUTELY fantastic time with friends, and it was a huge success. (And there will be photos, very soon.)

Funny story: Some gang-bangers came through the park at one point, and one sat down at our party. I got up to politely ask him to move along, and I took my "wand" with me (since in the party, you shouldn't go anywhere without your wand). Can you believe I took a little piece of wood with me, basically a stage prop, to confront a real gang-banger? *shakes head* Fortunately, the cops were *ALSO* watching the park closely, and the 3 gang-bangers were sitting on a sidewalk talking to 3 squad cars and a motorcycle cop within 60 seconds. Talk about some good muggle security around Hogwarts! *grin*

All the following week I was wrapped up in the last of my super secret projects for my apprenticing. I knew that Tonwen (Rae) was making some sort of token (or doo-hickey as she called it) to exchange as a gift to me, that she was taking me as her apprentice officially. I wanted to do the same, to give her a token of my arts. Since my main strengths are in Textiles and in Music, I made her a token for each.

The textiles token was about 38+ hours of spinning on a drop spindle, to spin up and ply some dreamy soft and silky alpaca. Some of the fiber was a fawn/natural color, some was naturally deep black. Remember that I mentioned doing some dying with Theresa? The fawn yarns I dyed in several natural dyestuffs, ending up with two shades of gold and two shades of green, plus all the black yarn. The dyeing probably was another 12-15 hours of work, and about an hour for the warping on Saturday. Then I still had some more black to finish spinning for the weft (that's the back-and-forth string that turns "just a bunch of strings" into woven cloth).

Once I had the weft spun and plied, I set up the whole thing in the living room on C-clamps, and started weaving. My roomie and I extended invitations to two different friends to spend the night on Friday, so I had to break down the weaving just to give the boys guest beds in the living room, but I had to have the weaving done anyways to pack everything for Saturday. I probably spent 1 or 2 hours total on weaving and tasseling the ends of the 9-inch piece, and that was enough to say "here's a token of my work." Possibly 58 hours of work into the token, and I was really happy with the final look. Hmm, I'll have to go over to Rae's and take some close-up photos of the finished piece. I think I forgot about my camera by the end, but I have lots of process photos as I was working on the materials. My intent is to write up a research and documenation paper, to also give her as a token of my work.

I also had to fix my painted blue dress I'd been working on since the summer. I'd been hand-painting stenciled patterns on the fabric for months and weeks, and at one point I just decided "that's enough stars painted for now, and I'll just stitch the dress together to wear it as is." I tried a seam-treatment that now I hate, and so I also had to rip out the old seam treatment and put them back together my favorite way instead. But I got most of it ripped out by 1 am, when in bed I was propped up with lots of pillows and thinking "put the scissors down and go to sleep." At 2 am I woke up, still sitting up, still holding the scissors (pointy-end up), and thought, "Put. The. Scissors. Down!!" and I did, and I went to sleep for real.

I had already spent Thursday evening with Scott (Lorccan) getting all the scribal work done for Saturday in advance. I'd worked on the website updates, the computer files, and the supplies for the Royal Scribe earlier in the week, so when Scott and I finished dinner, we were able to immediately start penning the actual awards. I wish I'd taken photos of the Count and Countess promissories that I penned, since I did all the calligraphy on both pieces -- they do not have stock calligraphy forms where we can just fill in the name of the recipient.

So on Saturday morning, after weaving until midnight and cutting up seams until 1 am, I got up fairly early. And predictably, I was up and showered and dressed and making coffee while it was still dark and no one else was awake yet. But once everyone was awake, I was able to finish sewing the dress together, put on my long hair for my costuming, and we headed to San Diego. Nate was a dear and packed the car for me while I was sewing, and then we worked on lyrics for the drive.

My other token for Tonwen was a song called "First You Take a Sheep" in honor of the many times a project can be taken back so many levels to before the leather is made, or before the fleece has been shorn, or before the milk has been collected for cheese, etc. I'd faked it on three verses until I could finish the research on "how do you make cheese?" among other verses, and Nate prompted me on my cheat sheets until I had the revised lyrics.

I was surprised with not one, not two, but three awards in court at Coronation. The Queen and the King each gave me their own Sigil for thanks, and in early court they presented me with l'Honneur de la Chanson or the Honor of the Song, which they specified for being given for "Overall Artistry." This music-specific award is one of the rarest in our Kingdom, and one of the coolest, since the award is a Goblet. I was crying happy tears of surprise, as was the Queen as She described my musical contributions to the Kingdom. I was stunned and honored, to understate my emotions.

After the morning court, we held the apprenticing ceremony during the lunch hour. I asked my household and our sister household to stand with me, until it was time for me to be led in to Tonwen's setup. One of her peerages in her lineage (Husam), came and led me in, and Marion heralded the entire ceremony. We exchanged pledges of fealty and promises to one another (that she would teach me and that I would learn, that sort of thing), and signed a contract (gorgeous, penned on vellum with real oak-gall ink), and exchanged vows and tokens.

Then I gave her my textiles token and sang her my song.

The comments I've seen on other people's journals about the apprenticing:

Aliskye wrote: "Tonwen took Eilidh as an apprentice on Saturday in what I think was probably the best apprenticing ceremony I've ever seen. The wording was extremely period and they had a written calligraphed contract to cut in half. Eilidh ended up with a fabulous song that she wrote. If I ever have an opportunity to do this, I would like it to be much the same."

Thomas: "On Saturday Tonwen took Eilidh as her apprentice. Eilidh had a song to sing after, and I recorded it on my little cannon camera. It came out much better than I would have thought. Earlier this evening I added some titles and pictures and posted it on YouTube. I have to say that iMovie ROCKS."

And here's the video (Thank you so much, Thomas!!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95drcoTBot4

(Oh my goodness: As of today's post, the video has been viewed 769 times and favorited 9 times. Wow.)

I promise I'll have the lyrics done soon!

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Thomas!