College Thursday Shenanigans Part 4

This Thursday we had our AGM. We *elected* a new Seneschal, Reeve, Marshal, A&S Officer (Me!), re-elected the existing Herald, 2 new Fresher Reps, and created the positions of Web Minister and Chronicler and elected people to those. We also talked about upcoming events and finalising things like getting the armour finished and some new rapier helms etc.

During training there was rapier and heavy training, and Ellen and Erin did some dramaz with me and went through my lines for the play at Festival. So far I have learned the first 10 lines of my monologue and now understand all the flowery language (thanks to Ellen and Erin who do this kind of thing a lot) and know how to emotify it all :D

During the evening A&S session:
Morgaine made a particoloured T-tunic (aside from hems) - YAY another successful tunic I have been involved in the making of :P
Edmund started a coif
Elizabeth and Cara worked on corsets
Lee, Arryn and Ariel looked at books and researched
Renonys started making a new doublet
Keg and Alana worked on padding the College armour
James, Ariel, John and Rowan began work on their swords (thanks Gabriel!)

And for once, I wasn't the last person to leave! Yay! Times are changing, I get to be home before 11 like the nanna I am :P Not many photos this week as I was busy helping and stuff

I'm a bit sad about missing Autumn Gathering because all these new people are so excited and its always a great event - wish the original plan had gone ahead and Gathering had been over ANZAC so that I could go to both but oh well, I just have to realise that Festival is going to be so much better, and I'll get to hang out with the new peeps (and maybe even more new peeps) at Pencampwr :P

I havent made much progress on my Festival garb this week, mostly due to being super tired and wanting to nap all day every day. The new khaki kirtle is at the stage of having its skirt put on. I will have some time to sew tomorrow at WAMA faire and on Sunday so hopefully I'll get back on top of things. Aah less than 2 weeks!

The end of an Era

Last night at the St Basil the Great Newcomer's feast we decided to do a symbolic office handover for the St Basil the Great Seneschal. Normally we don't do these things at events for Colleges because the Guild requires we elect by vote but it had already been decided that Alanna Galliwood would take over from me and I wanted to give her a really meaningful beginning to her term as Seneschal, so I spoke to the B&B and we did it in court (and only slightly tearily).

There is no regalia (yet) but as a token I passed on a tower belt mount to Alanna, that had been given to me by Jonathon Makeblise (a long time friend of the College) only a few weeks after I joined St Basil the Great.

It has been a very good 2 years. From having the "Seneschal's basket" unceremoniously dumped in front of me with the exclamation "It's not my problem anymore!" from the previous Seneschal, to racking my brains as to why we couldn't enthuse the 2008 bunch as they all dropped off one by one, to the absolute joy that was Pencampwr last year with so many excited new faces, running out of College tabards to give people at our fundraising lunch, patterning endless dresses and working through all the various problems, to completely failing at ever putting in a budget (except perhaps once), having actual College heavies in armour for the College Challenge, actually seeing College people over the summer holidays for the first time ever, all of the guys who were brave enough to wear the College loaner leather pants, and just so many other things that really make me proud of the people I know.

I am still intending to play a big role in the Thursday night A&S sessions with the College, but it will be very different. I wont have to feel responsible for the shape of the room afterwards, or being back from dinner in time to welcome guests who didnt join us for dinner, and will be able to pack up and leave whenever I need to (only just watch how often that happens :P) I'm also intending to be Alanna's biggest source of support as she learns all of the ins and outs of being a College Seneschal, all the frustrations and worries and joys and fun.

For now I guess I'm happy with where I am, as I am focusing on study this year and don't want to overcommit myself. But who knows, I will probably end up in a Baronial or Canton position quicker than I expect thanks to helium hand.

There are some photos of the Newcomer's Feast on Alianore of Essewell's facebook here

More blog posts soon on festival sewing and College A&S night (I found my camera!) once we are no longer in danger of having our internet shaped :P

Second College A&S Night

Summary of happenings last night

Morgaine patterned a cotehardie with Baroness Branwen and made a coif
Baron Kilic worked on his armour
Elizabeth had her corset patterned by me and she started cutting it out
Cara worked on her cushion cover, appliqueing a contrasting square onto the front
James (newcomer) began taping his sword
Alanna made a tafl game board
Keg made a polearm
Renonys started embroidering a St Basil the Great tower onto her bodice
Gilbert planned outfits
Three newcomer boys went to Spotlight and were never heard from again :P (they planned to go home afterwards so hopefully they're not still lost in there)
I did a bit of work on my coif

It was an ok night, but we still haven't got very far with garbing the Newcomers. Ah well, there will be enough loaner garb for them for the Newcomers Feast next week, then we can really get started.

Unfortunately no photos of this "enthusiasmpocalypse" (as Keg refers to it) as I've lost my camera! *sobs*

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

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.

All Hallow's Eve Masque Ball

Aneala's yearly Ball this year was a masque, and we were encouraged to have a go at the "fantastical masque" styles of the late 16th century. Of course I just had to, as the styles are completely different from anything we do normally and looked like a lot of fun.

I took my inspiration from this Inigo Jones sketch (http://http//www.elizabethancostume.net/masque/index.html) of a masquer playing a River Nymph.

I decided that the components of my costume would be a bodiced petticoat with a faux chemise over the top (affectionately referred to as the "midriff chemise"), a petticoat skirt (changed at the last minute to be a blue petticoat with a lace overskirt), a half length petticoat skirt, and an underbust corset with triangles of lacy stuff hanging off it. I mostly tried to use fabric I already had and would never use for anything else.

For the mask, I wasn't sure what to do. In the inspiration picture she isn't wearing a mask, and I think this is because the theory was that for these types of things, the whole costume was the mask, more of a whole body disguise than just a face covering. So I wanted to make the face covering reflect the rest of the costume. In the end I made a tiara type thing and attached big drapes of chiffon to the back (like in the picture) and the front (not like in the picture). The look I ended up with was somewhat "Princess Jasmine" and was I think what led to a number of people commenting on how nice my "Middle Eastern garb" was but it was the look I was after so I don't really mind.

More details on construction: The bodiced petticoat I was hoping to use for other outfits so it is made out of linen, interlined in the front with cotton canvas. It closes at the front with hooks and eyes. It is machine sewn with hand finishing. The chemise is made out of shantung look satin and is a simple square necked Italian style chemise. Instead of being gathered to a band the neckline and arm holes are gathered into strips of blue braid. The corset is navy velveteen and boned with cable ties. The idea here wasn't for it to be really tight, just to make a smooth line over where all the skirts are fastened and I think it looked quite nice. The petticoats were all thrown together from various bits and pieces I had lying around (apart from the bottom layer blue petticoat, that is from one of my first outfits).

And now, the unveiling:

I will talk a little bit about Lachlahn's outfit as well because I also made that. I took the inspiration from a book Rosalind had. I actually took a picture of the relevant page for exactly this type of thing but my phone has run off and so I can't put the picture up here. Anyway, the images in the book were slightly later period (early 17th), in particular the skirts were a lot shorter. I chose to tweak the design slightly to be more like a German Waffenrock with much longer skirts, like the guy in the woodcut. In keeping with the "soldier" look I attempted to make a helmet out of cardboard as his mask (as the original inspiration picture had one) but I didn't have enough time to do it properly and botched it. Instead he has a quick-last-minute-rummage-through-discount-bin-at-Spotlight affair.

Basically he is wearing a Tudor shirt, hose, and a man-dress. The man dress is square necked, made out of (significantly un-period) white brocade with handsewn gold braid trim. The skirts and skirt lining are not attached to each other, instead just hemmed individually as I was worried attaching them might affect the drape of the skirts. The outer skirt is bound with bias binding and the lining is zig zag stitched.

Finally, I was really proud of how the St Basil kids really took to the theme and had a go themselves. We went through pictures together and figured out what common elements of the outfits were (mostly layered skirts, drapy fabric, sashes) and a heap of people went away and designed their own costumes. I think St Basil made up at least half of the people who attempted "fantastical masque" outfits so I was super proud. Not to mention Alana won the Golden Rose Bardic Competition, making her the Anealan Bard for the next year (with a song she wrote herself and sang while playing the psaltery she made herself), Aoife came runner up in the same competition, and Edmund won the Best Male Garb competition. Also, 7 St Basil people were involved in the play that was performed *is very very proud*

Back Row, L-R: Adamo of St Lazarus in home decorated mask, Elizabeth of St Basil as a fairy, me, Renonys of St Basil as a Sun, Edmund Lyon of Sterling in his new Tudor court garb, Annelyne and Lavaeolus

Front Row, L-R: Alanna Galliwood as a dryad, Aoife with awesome ribbon sleeves as an unthemed masquer, and Aimee as the ocean.

Finally, for more photos of this really cool event, Alianore put an album up on her facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13357&id=1685283854&page=4#/album.php?aid=13357&id=1685283854&page=2