Collegium Caidis Wrap-Up

Once a year the SCA Kingdom I live in has a weekend event called Collegium. It is essentially a weekend workshop with varying classes. The classes are taught by volunteers from within the society and run the gamut from martial skill classes to various crafting classes. It is a great opportunity to learn a new skill and get your feet wet, or even to learn and advanced technique for a topic in which you may not normally have access to a teacher.

I enjoy collegium because you can really see a lot of cool things you might not normally see. This collegium was really the first one in which had a “major” so to speak, so I tried to focus on weaving classes. (Plus the two performance classes I wanted to take were both cancelled. Boo. )

It was pretty eventful. I went to a card weaving class and an advanced Viking wire weave class, as well as learned to play some medieval board games.

The wire weave class was great, I learned how to do double and triple weave, and well as learning some fantastic tricks for the overall process.  The handout was amazing, and it came with a chart that indicates how much a piece will stretch as it is drawn through the board, which will save me a ton of time deriving my own.

The picture below is of some single weave bracelets I made recently to give you a general idea of what some wire weave looks like.

The card weaving class was a bit beyond me, but I got some good basic concepts down and went home that night later to figure it out. My husband is like my silent weaving partner.  He has no interest in the act of weaving but loves the set up. Strange boy. He finds the patterning, math and way the string moves to be fascinating, like a puzzle.  So as we went home, and I tried to explain to him what I had been doing he grew interested and wanted to help me figure it out. Lol. We spent that night watching videos and discussing everything to break it down. I’ll be warping up my first double face pattern soon, and will let everyone know how it goes.

The games were fun. I went with my hubby and a couple friends. I beat my husband at Nine Man Morris, and then he absolutely destroyed me at Pachisi.

The other eventful thing that happened was that I finally submitted my arms for registration. I should have done it a couple years ago when I got my AoA, (Award of Arms) but there were complications last time I tried.  Here is what it looks like. I am not very knowledgeable in heraldry, I just made the picture, but I think the blazon is going to be something like 

“Per chevron vert & purpure , two trees displayed argent, and a wolf rampant to sinister argent.” 

I think. I'll know for sure when I get my paperwork back. 

This will be my personal my coat of arms.  If it passes through the system, it will be registered exclusively to me, so that wherever I go in the society (even overseas) if you see this you will know it is me. Neat! Now comes the paperwork part and the waiting. It’s going to basically go through a lot of checks, to make sure it’s different enough from anything previously registered. I’ll hear back official word in a few months. 

All in all it was a pretty fun weekend, I learned a lot and I have a lot of new goals and projects planned out for the future. Thanks for reading

~ By Goblin Gal

#SCA #wireweaving #Viking #cardweaving #Collegium #CAID