Seams Like a Lady

An Tir West War is a large SCA event that happens July 4th week near Gold Beach, Oregon. It’s at a gorgeous site in a valley surrounded by lush hills, minutes from the ocean.

This year, we had a baronial encampment, and were lucky enough to be immediately adjacent to a camp with many friends in it, and diagonally across the street from another camp with many friends. I’ll be honest and say that most of my war was spent between these three camps, meeting new people, hanging out, and there was much nerding out over Roman everything, metalwork of a variety of kinds, as well as mead, the SCA generally, and mundane topics. Without taking any proper classes, I managed to learn how coins are struck, courtesy of Max, who was doing so in camp.

Speaking of classes, I truly did not take any classes. The ones I was interested in were either bumping up before or in direct conflict with the ones I was teaching. I don’t like to jump from taking a class straight to teaching a class, so I skipped. I got the handout for one of them, though! I ended up teaching three classes. I was scheduled to teach two, but the first one filled up so quickly, they asked me to teach it again! There were approximately 17 students in the first one, 9 in the encore (without any advertisement other than the sign up sheet and word of mouth!). That was the soldering lecture. I told my husband on the drive down, and I told all my students, that I had thought it was such a niche topic that if I’d had two students, I’d be happy. So with 26, I was over the moon. In the second class, EVERYONE had some experience with soldering, as well. Including the current king of the Outlands, who does spectacular eutetic (copper salt) soldering. He was kind enough to share photos during the petting zoo portion of class, since I have not successfully done that myself.

The last class was All About Necklines. I got both of my passions in this war! It was also well attended, with, I think, 14 students. It was well received and there was some great discussion. It really felt like people learned some things and there were one or two “aha!” moments. It’s a beginner sewing class, with beginner to quasi-intermediate techniques. I did manage to forget the pattern that I promised to provide in the handout. I need to include the pattern as PART of the handout, really. So that’s going up on this site today, as soon as I can get the scanner to work. More accurately, as soon as my husband gets the scanner to connect.

Overall, it was a lovely event. I get up early. Like, 5:30 early, when camping in the summer, when no one else is up. So chilly mornings were spent curled up with a hoodie and a book until the rest of camp stirred. It was modern but magical. My goal for next year is to have our period encampment fleshed out, as well as my winter wardrobe, and make that time feel period appropriate and magical.