I did my normal thing and made some belt favors and medallion cords for the Kingdom to celebrate the Coronation of Murdoch and Rioghnach. Twelve belt favors for some of the Kingdom awards, and six 8-strand braids for whatever they want. These will all go in the Barony’s gift basket to the Kingdom. Since the Coronation is today, I can talk about it.
On Saturday, at the Baronial Investiture event of our local group, I was inducted into the Kingdom‘s Order of the Millrind. This is a grant-level order for service. It was entirely unexpected, and I am thrilled that my service is considered to be at the level of the other members of this order. Previously, I have received two local service awards (Order of the Gold Comet, Order of Copernicus) and the Kingdom AoA-level award (Order of the Keystone), but did not imagine that my service was so appreciated. Here is my awesome scroll:
Twelve years ago, when I was inducted into the grant-level order for arts and research, I don’t think I understood how big a deal these Kingdom polling orders really are. I do now, and I am honored.
I neglected to post about this at the time, but back in March when we were getting ready for my sweetie’s elevation, I made three more eboshi for our friend Gwen.
Of course, Gwen has been camping with Kaminari for years and has several eboshi, but nothing deemed nice enough to wear while heralding an elevation. So, I made three more for them. One floppy nae eboshi, one linen tate eboshi lined with heavy interfacing, and one mesh tate eboshi for summer wear. The mesh eboshi has a silk band for the extra-fancy.
Our SCA Kingdom, the Sylvan Kingdom of Aethelmearc, had its Spring Coronation last weekend, so I made some braided medallion cords for the Baronial gift basket to the Crown.
I was a little short of time, having entered the six 16-tama braids I made in the fall into a largess derby in January, so I did mostly 8-tama braids. One of the braids is the 16-tama double-rai braid, four are yatsu se, and one is shige uchi. I should do a batch of the 9-tama shige uchi braid next time.
Sweetie needs some braids to make tokens for her elevation later this month, so I spent a few weeks doing nothing (braiding-wise) besides edo yatsu in silk.
These are all 8-strand “round” braids about an eighth of an inch in diameter. The violet braids use lace-weight silk yarn, but the lilac braids use reeled-silk. This fine filament silk is a bear to work with, especially in bulk lengths like this. Each braid is about four yards long, starting from about five yards of material.
Back in 2018, when I was being elevated to the Order of the Laurel in the SCA, Sharon made some parts of a Sokutai Sugata for me to wear as my elevation garb. She made the two most important upper-body garments, the houeki no hou outer robe and the shitagasane middle-layer robe with its long kyo tail. I made or purchased many of the accessories for the garment such as the kanmuri headgear, sekitai belt of stones, shaku baton, and hirao belt. However, the lower-body garments and some accessories were substituted with less-formal items because we ran out of time.
To prepare for her elevation next month, I decided to make at leat two of the missing items, which had been on my to-do list for some time. I made the uenohakama out pants, and the oguchi lining pants.
Most of the time, when you see the uenohakama, they are lined and appear to be both of these garments in one. The lined uenohakama are for winter wear. These are for summer wear and are unlined. uenohkama are made very differently from regular hakama. They open in the front, and they only have one long waist tie that connects the front and back at the sides. The tie is arranged so that it can be knotted at the right hip, and there is a fly strip that covers the opening at the front.
The oguchi are supposed to be a bit longer so that the hems are visible sticking out from beneath the hems of the uenohakama. I wound up making mine about the same length as the uenohakama, so I sewed on an extra bit at the bottom to add weight and appear as a hem. The oguchi also only have one tie, and it is arranged to tie at the left hip.
Layered together, the two garments look like this, though you’ll have to wait until after Hara’s elevation to see what they look like as part of the outfit.
The Barony of Delftwood in our sylvan Kingdom of Aethelmearc invested a new Baronage yesterday! The call went out from the Baronage of the Barony Marche of the Debatable Lands for largess to add to our gift basket to the new Baron and Baroness. I decided to make some braids!
All seven of these braids were made on the marudai using cotton crochet thread. I used four plies of thread per strand, four strands of blue and four strands of white. The braids are a variety pack of 7 different braid shapes. All have ring and toggle closures and come with an extra jump ring so that they can be used as medallion cords. They are all approximately 30 inches long.
I completed these braids back in November or December, but I was holding off posting about them because I was going to put them in the Coronation gift basket in April. Then, I found out there was a largesse display at Baronial 12th Night.
They are all color variations on the same braid, with 8 red and 8 white strands per braid. The effects of the different starting positions produce end results that are similar to those produced for other 16-strand braids that are doubles of 8-strand braids.
My sweetie made some fancy Japanese garb for the current Sovereign and Consort of our SCA Kingdom. She did all the work on both outfits except for one part. Eboshi are kind of my thing, so she let me make eboshi to go with his outfit.
From left to right there is a soft linen nae eboshi, a tall linen hikitate eboshi, and a tall mesh hikitate eboshi. So far, I think I have only seen him wear the mesh one, but I think it is always good to have options. Here’s what the completed outfits look like:
These outfits probably would look awesome even without a hat, but the eboshi really sets the mood, I think.
Speaking of regalia, I have made enough regalia for my current Baronial office that I was starting to worry about keeping it all together. When you have three storage boxes full of surplus fabric, no problem is unsolvable provided it can be solved with fabric! I decided to make a simple shoulder bag big enough to hold the banner, belt favor, and medallion of office. Then I decided to add a populace badge and A&S badge. Soon enough, I was finished.
It’s just a simple fabric satchel with a flap closure and a wide fabric strap for shoulder wear. The whole thing is linen, including the strap. It’s about 15 inches deep, so I can tuck the banner all the way in. It’s only about 14 inches wide inside, so the banner won’t fall all the way to the bottom. I thought about adding some pockets to the inside, so that small items like the medallion won’t fall to the bottom, but I realized that if I got into designing a pocket system inside, I would never get it done.
