First (on campus) College A&S Night of the year

This Thursday night we had our first on campus A&S night for the Semester. There is a large room in the (top floor urgh) Guild Building that we can use for free so that is very good as its quite central, and good for residential students.

Summary of things that went on:
3 new guys decided to make tunics and we figured out how much fabric they needed so they could buy it during the week
One of them started making a coif
Alanna did some planning for the Newcomer's Feast on the 13th of March
Renonys worked on her outfit for the Newcomer's Feast (Black and White themed)
Cara started making a Tudor bonnet
Morgaine made a (very cute) circular drawstring coin purse as a favour for her Lord
Elizabeth traced a pattern for an Elizabethan corset then did some braiding
Keg, Edmund and Gilbert "researched" on the computer :D
I worked on my petticoat
People threw things at the fans and generally died of the ridiculous heat
Icecream was procured from the 24 hour Caltex
Icecream was enjoyed

Unfortunately I couldn't find my camera so I was unable to document the madness productiveness :D

Fabric Splurge

So, I knew I needed silk for various things that I am making soon (sleeves, linings of stuff, doublets etc). So when a friend posted on Facebook that Fabulous Fabrics had an epic silk dupion sale table ($4 a metre) I kind of braved the 42 degree heat and furnace!car to get out there. The damage:

4m silver
4m rust
4m dark salmony pink
4m brown shot with purple
2m blue shot with reddy pink
1.5m indescribable purply pink colour

Hopefully that should keep me going for a while!

St Basil the Great Orientation Day

About a fortnight ago the College had a planning meeting for Oday, we set a number of goals, arranged for the prep for those goals to be done during the two weeks and that we'd have a big day of getting stuff finished at Alexander's house (St Lazarus Seneschal who happens to live within walking distance of UWA and has two St Basilites living there) the Thursday before, and all sleep over so that we could all set up together at stupid-o'clock and what not.

Our goals were:
Make our black and white pop-up cover
Update flyers from last year and make new ones
Get a blackboard to put demo times on
Make campus card stickers for members
Make a best club *random medieval year* sign to upstage the wanky drinking clubs who win Best Club awards
Make a photo board
Update last year's membership forms and print more.
Update the website
And it makes me super impressed and happy to say that WE DID IT ALL! Sure the pav cover took until 3am the morning of Oday to get finished, but it was still done!
Busy bee photos:

Top to bottom: Renonys floor-sewing admirably, Alanna and Cara working on the "Best Club 1096" Banner (Alanna is good for knowing trivia like the year Oxford was established) and Elizabeth teaching Gilbert how to fingerloop braid.

We all dragged ourselves out of bed/couches/floor the next morning and headed over with about 4 carloads of stuff. We always get a special spot thats on a corner so we have an extra patch to put the list field on but with our 4m pav it still isn't big enough. Next year we shall have to make them give us a double bay because we really don't get enough frontage for both the pav and the listfield.

We had the pav with two tables, one with flyers, bookmarks and membership forms, and the other with show and tell stuff - armour, garb, shoes, hats, books, other creations etc. We also had the photo board and a dress dummy with my court Tudor on it, as well as a list field with banners, the blackboard which we used to advertise when the demos would be and Baron Nathan put up his tent behind the list field to hide our mundane stuff and add atmosphere.

During the day we had fighting demos (both heavy and rapier), Elizabeth sat outside weaving and Baroness Branwen embroidering, we did some dancing, had people wandering around in front of our display showing stuff off and giving spiels, did a little singing (but only close range because ODay is very loud).

Sexy pav cover!People watching a fighting demo

Dancing demo, including James (yellow shirt) who wagged the orientation speech to come hang out with us earlier, hung out with us all day and is an ex-ballroom dancer and picked up about 4 or 5 dances on the spot!

We signed up about 80 new members, making it the biggest Oday I've ever been involved in, with almost 20 people involved in spruiking the club. Seeing as last year we only signed up 40 and had the biggest year in a long time, I'm both excited and terrified about the coming weeks! I have sent a HELP email out to the WASCAL list, hope people can lend us some time or spare gear to help get the Newcomers started.

More photos can be found in my Facebook album here
Also check out the new St Basil the Great Website, first created in 2006 and untouched since then. Newly revamped by Dylan Kerr with the help of Aoife and Alanna

The next task is to sign all the new members up to the mailing list and get prepared for training on Tuesday and Thursday, and the first on-campus A&S night of the year on Thursday.

College of St Lazarus Oday

So today began the Oday season with the College of St Lazarus (Murdoch). They only formed last year so today was really important for them, so naturally St Basil the Great was there in force to help out.

The space available wasn't as good as UWA - at UWA we get a big stall area on the oval, here we just got room for a table under a verandah so we couldn't set up a pavilion, banners or a list field. Instead we just loaded the table with books, bits of armour, A&S creations, flyers etc. Nancy brought her inkle loom and sat weaving which was awesome, and we did a few parades around the square and managed to recruit half the Kendo club :P

All in all we handed out over 100 flyers, signed about 30 people up to the email list (including some very bouncily enthusiastic ones) so this year looks like a good one for St Laz.