but not all of my life is screwed up.
Nov. 8th, 2010 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwySo! Prior to the arrival-in-Copenhagen debacle, I was in Sweden for Kingdom University, my first visit to Nordmark (but not my last: I'll be going back to Attemark in < 4 weeks time for their Yule party, the day before I leave Denmark and head back to Amsterdam). Wednesday night I was a bit worried to get an email from SAS saying one of my flights on Friday had been cancelled, so I had to call them early Thursday morning and get rebooked, meaning that I had to change my pick-up at the airport Friday afternoon at the last minute. So I ended up having about 4 hours to kill at the Gothenburg airport, which wasn't as inconvenient as it may sound. I had all of my calligraphy stuff with me, and a half-finished scroll for an event in three weeks time, so I sat down, pulled out all my stuff and did some combat scribing (Swedish people are either (a) extremely polite, (b) extremely shy, or (c) extremely noncurious, because not a single person asked me what I was doing. Nor did I catch anyone glancing at me surreptitiously. Strange.). And then I napped for two hours.
Got onto sight around 10:15pm, and ended up just going to bed -- having gotten up at 7:00am, I was pretty tired.
I taught introductory illumination first thing Saturday morning, and had 12-15 students come (it was a two hour class while most of the others were one hour, so I had some people come for just the first hour, some for just the second). Two people actually completed a painted initial by the end of the class (both of which I got to keep, woohoo, scroll blanks!) and everyone else went home with a partially finished one, plus the exemplar they used. I look forward to seeing these get finished and turn up as scrolls in the future.
At lunch I sat across from Felicitas, the new baroness of Gotvik, who is a delight. She was also extremely helpful with my travel arrangements earlier in the week, as it appears that the Swedish train website won't accept foreign credit cards, but doesn't actually tell you this anywhere. In a reverse of the usual set up, lunch was the full three-course banquet, and then supper was a more relaxed and informal affair, with cushions and rugs on the floor for people to lounge during court.
In the afternoon I went to a Renaissance cookie baking class, where we made two types of cookies and then proceeded to eat them. I like that kind of class.
There was a pretty long court in the evening, what with the creation of the new Barony of Gotvik, but I was surprised when Princess Eleonora's herald announced that she was going to be presiding over a regency court for TRM, because the first thing that went through my head was "But Caoimhe didn't tell me they needed any scrolls for this event!" -- and then my name was called. They've granted me their sigillum coronae, which was truly unexpected and I hardly feel like I deserve; I've just been doing what I should do as signet clerk. All of the real work has been done by my scribes, to whom I often come at last minute with requests and then they perform miracles. I'm just the coordinator.
But it was a lovely surprise, though I did have to laugh -- the scroll hadn't made it to the event, and my thought was "it's because they didn't have their signet clerk make the arrangements for it." :)
After supper there was some fantastic live music, by three extremely talented musicians who had a huge repertoire of instruments and also sang. There was dancing, but not much actual medieval dancing, it was more the type of dancing you get when you go out dancing in a club. A little strange doing that in full medieval clothing, but still a good time. I didn't stay up too late; I went to bed about 12:30 and was sound asleep before anyone else in my room returned.
In the morning I got a ride to the train station, had an uneventful train ride from Mullsjö to Copenhagen (riding first class from Nassjö to Copenhagen, which meant comfy chairs and free wifi!), where I met up with Ana Maria. So the entire event itself was lovely and very nice, it's only what came after that was somewhat more frustrating.
I still promise to write about Indonesia.
ETA: I forgot to add that I finally got to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cameleopard in person, and she gifted me with a bottle of cloudberry liquor that I am very much looking forward to trying.
Got onto sight around 10:15pm, and ended up just going to bed -- having gotten up at 7:00am, I was pretty tired.
I taught introductory illumination first thing Saturday morning, and had 12-15 students come (it was a two hour class while most of the others were one hour, so I had some people come for just the first hour, some for just the second). Two people actually completed a painted initial by the end of the class (both of which I got to keep, woohoo, scroll blanks!) and everyone else went home with a partially finished one, plus the exemplar they used. I look forward to seeing these get finished and turn up as scrolls in the future.
At lunch I sat across from Felicitas, the new baroness of Gotvik, who is a delight. She was also extremely helpful with my travel arrangements earlier in the week, as it appears that the Swedish train website won't accept foreign credit cards, but doesn't actually tell you this anywhere. In a reverse of the usual set up, lunch was the full three-course banquet, and then supper was a more relaxed and informal affair, with cushions and rugs on the floor for people to lounge during court.
In the afternoon I went to a Renaissance cookie baking class, where we made two types of cookies and then proceeded to eat them. I like that kind of class.
There was a pretty long court in the evening, what with the creation of the new Barony of Gotvik, but I was surprised when Princess Eleonora's herald announced that she was going to be presiding over a regency court for TRM, because the first thing that went through my head was "But Caoimhe didn't tell me they needed any scrolls for this event!" -- and then my name was called. They've granted me their sigillum coronae, which was truly unexpected and I hardly feel like I deserve; I've just been doing what I should do as signet clerk. All of the real work has been done by my scribes, to whom I often come at last minute with requests and then they perform miracles. I'm just the coordinator.
But it was a lovely surprise, though I did have to laugh -- the scroll hadn't made it to the event, and my thought was "it's because they didn't have their signet clerk make the arrangements for it." :)
After supper there was some fantastic live music, by three extremely talented musicians who had a huge repertoire of instruments and also sang. There was dancing, but not much actual medieval dancing, it was more the type of dancing you get when you go out dancing in a club. A little strange doing that in full medieval clothing, but still a good time. I didn't stay up too late; I went to bed about 12:30 and was sound asleep before anyone else in my room returned.
In the morning I got a ride to the train station, had an uneventful train ride from Mullsjö to Copenhagen (riding first class from Nassjö to Copenhagen, which meant comfy chairs and free wifi!), where I met up with Ana Maria. So the entire event itself was lovely and very nice, it's only what came after that was somewhat more frustrating.
I still promise to write about Indonesia.
ETA: I forgot to add that I finally got to meet
cameleopard in person, and she gifted me with a bottle of cloudberry liquor that I am very much looking forward to trying.
