Genevieve
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	The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam...

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Phoenix Eye goodness
2003-06-16 - 11:50 p.m.

Returned from Phoenix Eye. It was a very fun event, well worth the long drive. I got to see my sister, Clint and the cutest nieces. And they are really cute. Of course in my sleep deprived fog I forgot to pack the digital camera. We hung out on Saturday morning before taking them to the event and then on Sunday morning before lunch with Clint for Father's Day. He is such a good daddy. Speaking of, I was good and remembered to call mine. He's a great dad too.

Saturday morning we made it to site by 10ish and got set up to enter the competitions. I confess, this was my first time really entering an A&S competition. Since it was a pentathalon, I had 4 entries and with Theo's help I made an interesting shortbread from Fabulous Feasts for the fifth. I think on the whole, I did alright considering I had all these great plans a few months ago, and ended up kinda grabbing stuff together last minute.

I entered my silly nalbinding hat with decent documentation and included copies of Thora's article and the pictures from Hald's Ancient Danish Textiles. The winner of the Other Needlework category was Seraphina's Sprang, which was very impressive.

Then I entered my simulated satin tablet woven band (for Alan's hat) with this documentation and some print outs of Thora's article and the picture of the original fragment from the Museum of London book. The winner of this category was Lady Morganna from Black Diamond with her woven damask of blue and cream pearl cotton. Some of you might remember this from Ice Castles. It is truly amazing.

Fourth was a whipcord display I set up (similar to the UofA class) and a new (better tension than the one I gave to Brigit at UofA) green and gray wool/silk cord. This I used to even entertain my 3.5 year old niece at one point before the judging started. She was so excited with the cord she made, she showed it off to Daddy when she got home. And I really helped her reinforce her left from her right. I got the highest scores in documentation and authenticity. I added a little bit to my article and included printouts of the pages from Hald, and the Norway museum pamphlet. I also got lots of fun comments and questions about it during the day. The winner of this category was Rachel's silk fingloop braided cords on tassels. She had really great tension and documentation.

Finally, I started and finished a simple flat cap for Christian (since I promised I would), and entered it. It was small, but entirely hand sewn, with fingerloop braided trim. I made it of black cotton velvet and lined the crown in red linen and used a layer of felt to give the brim a bit of body. Chris was cute when he pointed out it was in Bera's colors. :)I still need to get a picture of it. Here is the quickie documentation I came up with. I also included copies of the relevant pages from Arnold, and Lisette's class handout since I used her and the AoD's pattern instead of coming up with my own. :) The highest scores I got on this was for authenticity and workmanship. :) The winner of the accessories category was Lord Wolfram von Traus with his excellent pattens.

So, on the whole I thought I did relatively okay. The lowest scores I got was on complexity, and I expected that entirely. I don't think I'll ever make a practice of entering every darn competition that comes along, but it was nice to have the little kick in the rear to get real documentation together for at least 4 of the entries.

Overall, Sacred Stone won the Baronial challenge (IE: they had the most winners of the 50+ categories) with Windmasters' following them in second. Hidden Mtn and Nottinghill Coill came in 3rd and 4th separated by only 2 points. The winner of the pentathalon was one of Jessamyn's apprentices, Wolfram. He is scary talented and a focused engineer. He entered a to-scale mini trebuchet, 14th cent hand cannon (boom stick), a pair of 14th cent shoes, a pair of pattens to go with, a suit of chain mail (coif, shirt, hose, gloves...) and a pourpoint (with all the shoulder piecing)! He might have entered more, but who knows. He was the obvious winner for the pent I think, crazy man. As for WOW factor, there was a guy who set up a Japanese Garden in the bed of his truck in the parking lot with small japanese maple, conifer, lilies, hostas and even a water feature! There were other neat things like Lousie's small needlepoint laurel wreath for Jessamyn done as an Elizabethan slip, some fancy knitting, bobbin lace by a 9 year old, and Seraphina's ever increasing Sprang display. It was truly an amazing display of the arts.

I had prided myself on having traveled the furtherst until I met Baron Sir Frederick and Baroness Lucia of the Barony of Wyvernwoode in Trimaris who drove up for their "sister" barony's event. They were very cool folks from the Tampa Bay area. But I did get a personal thank you from the autocrat for having come all the way from MD, so that was nice. After the event we all went to Susanna's house about 45 min away and hung out until far too late A&S geeking and chatting.

It was a great weekend. I'd been meaning to make it to this event in years previous, but something else always popped up. I'm glad I made it this year. And the Sacred Stone folks are always so nice to me.

And now I can hear my comfy bed calling me.

Gen... gen... come to bed...

Then again, maybe I'm misinterpretting Alan's snores...

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