A Return to the SCA

I know this blog has been dormant for a very long time. Most of that time was because I had to step away from the SCA due to financial and personal reasons. I am now back and in some ways, I never left. I jumped right back into volunteering and try to take on more than I should. My husband stopped me for the most part, but almost pushed me into something new in the SCA. He said he did it so that I wouldn’t spend too much getting started. He is cute. (That didn’t stop me.) More on this later.

I also spent three of the most recent years getting my bachelor’s in psychology at Portland State. Can I tell you how much fun it is to take your last term of college via zoom? Then finding out the morning of your birthday that sorry, due to covid, you do not get to march in the probably the most important event in your life since your kid was born? I really hope you felt that sarcasm because Covid sucks in so many ways. 

In some ways, I feel, the SCA has benefited from the pandemic. While we can not meet face-to-face and fewer people are getting memberships because of loss of work, the number of classes that have been put online is immense! The amount of knowledge that is being shared… I don’t know if it would have happened without the kick in the butt the pandemic has provided. In the few weeks I have been back in the SCA I have already attended the Known World Heraldic and Scribal symposium and am signed up for two other learning events that are not even in my home state! Yes, I will have to get up a bit early to attend, but getting a chance to learn skills I haven’t had the chance to do, for free, I am so happy!

Now about the new thing I have dove into. Most of the stuff I have done in the SCA surrounds being a herald. Mostly voice herald (i.e. walking P.A. system) but also helped people register armory for SCA use. If you have no idea what I am talking about, what most people wrongly call family crests are personal armory. (Maybe someday I will do a post on this or just a link of someone who talks about it better.) While I could get back into consulting armory, the rules changed just before I left and I never fully got my head around them. It will take time for me to feel good about doing conflict checks and such so putting that kinda on hold for now. Since there are no events, there is no need for the walking P.A. system so that has left me only with sewing new garb (costume) for the three of us. I don’t want to sew right now and I have to go through all my fabric first and that is a long, involved project that I am not ready for.

So how did I dive is deep in my return? Scribal! From the card making, I have done in the past, I have played with watercolors quite a bit and know a good amount about their work and play. I have also a lot of color theory knowledge from my years of sewing and card making. I didn’t think to get into it when I was in the SCA last time due to my lack of knowledge. Since starting back I have finished painting five charters and have a new stack to work on with some Kingdom charters as well. I guess the baronial scribe liked my work. (He did but I am too shy to share what he said.)

So I am back and painting, learning calligraphy, and working on my first scroll layout just for fun. If you like to see what I have done so far, I started a new Instagram account just for my scribal work. I am still working on setting up a feed to live in the sidebar. Please feel free to head over and add some likes. With my ADHD, encouragement is needed. I am just saying “tell me it’s pretty,” I do need some love. 

If you would like to help get me supplies, I have links to my scribal needs lists at the stores I shop from. I am not getting any money from the links nor am I advertising for them, but these are stores that I trust and have shopped from before. I also have a link to my PayPal account that is used for most of my supply buying. All of these links will be living in the drop-down menu on the top right. I also have a wiki page about me and a link to my SCA Kingdom if you would like to learn more. 
I will post as I work on charters and other scribal skills. If you have questions or feedback, please feel free to do so.