Today was even more “interesting” than earlier in the week. The hall we used for the Burgas Fair is the war veterans’ club and there were more retired soldiers around than prospective students. Also, the hall was unheated, so you could see your breath as you talked to the few high school students who have braved the weather to attend. Payback from the Fates, indeed! We’ll be heading home tomorrow and I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for a change. At least the snow has finally ended, so the drive home should only be about seven hours.
I’m really looking forward to the revel on Sunday. Almost everyone has confirmed and we’ll have a business meeting, dance lessons, and a feast with medieval food. We’re meeting in the Blue Room at the University, so we don’t get into the habit of meeting in someone’s home all the time (thanks for that tip, Guy!). The only catch is that I’ll need to cook something on Sunday morning after travelling all day Saturday. Oh well, it will be worth it in the end. I’m hoping we’ll sign off on the official petition to the Crown (to open the College) on Sunday. Alex is supposed to be working on it, so we can present it to the Queen at Winchester. I love how that sounds! We were originally shooting for presentation at the ID Coronet Tourney, but that was just too fast to get everything done properly. I now have my ticket for Winchester, which gives me even more incentive to get things finished on this end. We’ve got the (hopefully) final version of the College device and it looks very good. Jon even made a digital version that we’ll be able to use on a webpage, when we reach the point of actually having one! Nicky is also completing the documentation for our name. It is good to have reference librarians at your disposal! She is certainly one of our most participatory members, besides Sveta and Geri. I’m hoping both she and Sveta will also come to Winchester. Fingers crossed! We’ll be voting on officers this weekend and I expect I’ll wind up as Seneschal (unless I can talk someone else into it, so I can do A&S.). Nicky is already acting as both Exchequer and Herald and Geri will probably be A&S. Sveta has been acting as Chatelaine, so if those are all confirmed, we’re set for officers. Please note the distinct lack of fighters. We may wind up as a purely A&S College at this rate! The next revel is going to be mid-April and will be a Garb 101 workshop. I’ve made handouts for Sunday, so folks can get their fabric purchased and pre-washed so we can all get started cutting and sewing at the revel. We’ll have a lot of basic t-tunics at first, but several of the ladies are eyeing up full Bulgarian-Byzantine court outfits for the future. I’m trying to envision an entire College full of Second Kingdom Bulgarians. Wouldn’t that make an impression at a kingdom level event?! I’m hoping someone will want to focus on cobbling, since our current shoemaker is retiring and moving away from Blagoevgrad. I should probably try and get another pair of Tservuli before he leaves town.
I am going to have to do an update on my A&S 50 progress soon. I think I’m up to about 15 finished tasks and/or items for the persona challenge. One of the things I still need to work on is a more Bulgarian version of ordinary clothing. I’m currently wearing generic 12th – 13th century Western European stuff. It looks okay, but I can really do better in portraying my persona. Even Logan looked more true to his persona at his first event! That’s my goal for Rhaglan Ffair.
