The St Lukes Artisan’s Fair is looking to be the Arts and Sciences gathering of the year. Part of the event is the Laurel Challenge Tourney in which members of the Order of the Laurel may issue challenges to the artisans of the Kingdom. There are a number of excellent challenges already posted to the event website, and the number is growing.

Of course I’m issuing a challenge:

Challenge: Needful Things
Challenger: Master Richard Wymarc (rwymarc@gmail.com)

Fine clothing, strong armor, good food and beautiful art are all well and good, but often it is the little things that bring the middle ages to life. Nothing evokes the medieval life like seeing a Lady pull out a wax tablet to take notes, or a craftsman using hand-made tools, or a child playing with toys that you have seen in paintings.

Your challenge is twofold: First, to create an artifact. Something small and useful, well made but utilitarian. I’m not looking for flash: Appropriate decoration is good, but daily usefulness is the primary concern. I’m not thinking of gloves and hats, I’m thinking combs, pouches, boxes, needlecases: The small useful stuff you use without thinking about it, or the tools that you would use to make other things.

The second part of the challenge: In addition to the artifact, I require a “How-to” article with a clear, concise, step-by-step set of instructions, illustrated as needed, that will allow others to re-create what you have made. These instructions should include examples of the item in period, and documentation of materials, tools, and techniques. The instructions should focus on construction. If you are making a drop-spindle, I want to know how to make one, but you don’t have to teach me to spin as well.

See you there!

My son and spent the evening at a concert at the Birchmere courtesy of my lovely dear wife: Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm performing. It is now one in the morning and my ribs still hurt from laughing. Mike and I have been fans of Jonathan C. for a while now, but Paul and Storm are now on our playlist as well.

The venue is wonderful, the staff where great; the audience made up almost entirely of geeks having a very good time… and the music was excellent. Good memories…

If you are unfamiliar with Jonathan or Paul and Storm, do check out their websites:

http://jonathancoulton.com/
http://www.paulandstorm.com/

UPDATE: a very good review of the concert can be seen here.

I went shopping at Needlewoman East today and found the Japan gold I was looking for. I can now get started on the two cloak closures I committed to. The new Stierbach baronial cloaks are red and white silk, with the baronial arms worked on them in appliqué. For the two closures, I have a length of the red silk and will be working celtic bulls in couched gold. It has been years since I last used gold, but as I remember it goes fairly fast, and is not too difficult to get a good result with good advance planning. I will post pictures of the work in progress.

I’m playing with the look of the blog. I have found a theme closer to what I’m thinking of, and now I’m planning on tweaking and modifying until I have the look I want. One of the things I’m liking about WordPress is how simple maintaining the blog can be if you want simple, and just how deep into the code you can drill if, like me, you are a tinkerer.

Note that there is now a translation widget bottom left. I don’t know how good a job it will do, but I do now some of my readers are not native English speakers.  I need to add it to the website as well.