Travelling Time and Space

Eeep ! It's almost August ! How'd that happen ?

Time keeps flying past. Art-Sci came and went, Castlemere's Summer Camp Days zoomed past and this past weekend saw the final installment of a series of allday workshops on a variety of topics to keep us busy over the summer. Somewhere in the whirl of days was my birthday celebrated with family and a few good friends over fruity Sangria and lots of good food and now we're headed with giant steps for the trip to the inlaws and the bgin of preschool for Finndragon.

And here we thought, summer were slow ...

The dance workshop this past Saturday was a blast and everybody who attended seemed to have had a good time [some more than obviously expected *G* That can happen if you allow your spouse to drag you along, you know ?]. Jen and TRacy had driven over all the way from Oldenfeld to corrupt us to Renaissance dancing and they did a fabulous job.

"Boo-yah" if you didn't come out to play :o)~ You missed a fantastic day and the opportunity to improve your footwork.

Sunday was spent mostly lolling about and recovering from a very active week and weekend, and today I'm catching up on a truckload of laundry after cleaning up the Finndragon's lair. Oi ... 

After much brainstorming and reflecting I'm glad to notice I'm not the only one running out of entertainment after all meetings and official duties have been taken care of.

My light sensitivity doesn't allow me to spend long hours at the listfield and classes aren't offered all that regularly and if they are they tend to conflict with the aforementioned duties, unfortunately.

Plan of action : Bring more homemade entertainment for fun under the sun-shade.
A game chest is already in the works and currently contains equipment and instructions for several dice games [curtesy of Mistress Ysabela and her awesome class on period dice games], a wooden tic-tac-toe game and a Glueckhaus board, a bag of glass game pieces and nasty evil plastic gold coins to be replaced with pewter ones sometime in the future. Next items on the list are juggling balls, a set of handpuppets and curtain to go between two banner stands, a Tafl board and either Fox & Geese or Nine Man Morris [and maybe Valhalla, even if its origins are more than dubious :o) but it looks nifty].

The idea is to have it ready for our trip to Coronation so if you're feeling like a game or two feel free to swing by. Leave your cellphone and the rest of the modern world at home :o) and play with us. 

http://world6.monstersgame.co.uk/?ac=vid&vid=114216550

Here I am, back home again from a short but great trip to Trimaris' Summer At-Sci this weekend.

I was sleep-deprived as one could be and apologize for being loopy and not coherent at times, and the sweltering heat and lack of airconditioning wasn't really helping, but I had a great time chatting and catching up with people and seeing the beautiful entries our fine artisans had prepared for the event.

I left Jacksonville at 5am on Saturday morning after a 4h short night. Finn was running a fever from his vaccinations on Friday and kept us awake. So was my brain, busily rewriting my documentation just when I crawled into bed :o) I told it that the documentation was printed and filed and to get over with it but it took another hour before it finally gave in. Sometimes my brain is not my friend. The drive to Weeki Wachy was nice and uneventful. A slumbering and later morning-fresh Florida is absolutely gorgeous and I chose back routes that allowed me to see more of its wild nature. I arrived on site shortly after 8am and from then on kept running into happy smiling people. Of course, while I did bring the camera I again failed utterly at taking pictures *sigh* Mea culpa ...

I set up my miniature which you can see here

 

And here

 

is where I'm reaping rewards.  My miniature and the accompanying documentation were so well received I scored a perfect score of 45 points and I was awarded a Non-Pareil and the Laurel's Acclaim. I'm still speechless but I do have the scrolls here so it must be true.

Today I'm heading over to the 'Cursed Library' (tm) to show off calligraphy and illumination at a demo and I'll be bringing the angel with me. Stop by if you'd like a closer look :o)

 

 

So yes, only a day ago I said I wouldn't wreck myself trying to finish up the project I was playing with to enter it into Summer Art-Sci this weekend. Well, suffice to say I.. err, changed my mind :o) Certainly of advantages was the fact that the project, a little Italian miniature, was very focussed and specific. This meant I didn't have to go searching for every tidbit of information in every book I own and could possibly Interlibrary loan. In fact, it is all pretty much narrowed down to one particular book, Cennini's "Il libro dell' Arte". Like so many visual people who love books I don't really read books, well, at least not the ones with pictures. For days I can simply skim the pages for pictures, drool over details, ponder compositions and layouts and pretty much soak up every it of visual information provided. Then, when I'm all contend and full with pictures, I might actually read the accompanying words. Studying the text of a book is 'work'. So after more or less stumbling over the information on brush making in Cennini, something I vaguely remembered but never really paid attention to before, I decided that a treatise on painting might be just the right thing to read -and- execute at the same time. Ergo, the project. Every step of the project I related to Cennini and the text almost became silently spoken words in my mind as if I were a student listening to her Master while working diligently on an exercise piece following his instructions. I think it turned out really well. We'll see what the rest of the world thinks this weekend and I'll fill y'all in on Sunday or Monday :o) [For a sneakpeek you can check out my webpage, of corse]

- getting scrolls done for Art-Sci - fixing a bag of tokens to give out at Art-Sci - not running myself ragged trying to finish the little miniature in time for Art-Sci; maybe I'll enter it as display only or work in progress ? Thoughts ? - no new dress for Art-Sci yet; I'll continue to work on the red dress but if it doesn't get done, it won't get done. - fiddling with database software for my ink research. There's got to be a better way of organizing this ... - lots of running around - lots of sun and swimming and barbequeing Lotsa love -Mi

Revamping in progress ttp://maeva.eiriksdottir.googlepages.com