What next?

I came back from March Crown with SO MANY INSPIRATIONS and SO MANY IDEAS so I need to take a second and just.

Calm down.

Firstly, a quick event summary:

Crown was excellent despite my SCA dad tripping in his first bout and doing something very-not-good to his spine.  It was kind of terrifying.  But I met lots of people and everyone was very friendly and very welcoming.  There was a rapier tournament on Sunday which was especially interesting for me to see– I’m familiar with the levels of ability and strategies that are common at my practice but it’s always good to see new people fight.  Especially people who are really good.

From a costuming note– pretty good!  I must’ve had beginners luck with my tranzado at Twelfth Night because it was driving me crazy on Saturday.  I also need to replace the sleeve ribbons on my dress since they got yanked a bit too hard and a few of them are tearing at the base.  I’m going to do what I should’ve done originally– listened to Aldith and doubled them up.  Sunday I wore boy clothes and that was pretty good as well, although I need to add something (probably a hook and eye) to keep the top of the doublet closed when I’m not wearing my gorget.  I didn’t put buttons all the way up because the consensus was that buttons under gorget== bad idea, but without them it flops open weirdly.

This morning I’ve been looking at blogs and patterns and portraits and wanting to try and make and do ALL THE THINGS but then started to get worried about the things I’ve started that have deadlines and spending too much money and and and and

This happened.  I can sort it by deadline and get an idea of how long each of these things is going to take and what I still need to get.  Only problem is that Excel doesn’t understand that BNE (before next event) is actually urgent and should be before the things that have dates.  Sigh.

William and Brekke are (apparently) hauling me to Great Western War and I want more than two changes of clothes before then.  Plan is to make a full ~1520 ensemble (I’m calling it Henrician because that’s what The Tudor Tailor calls it) and some more pieces I can play with.  I was cold at Crown so I need to get over spending money and buy some black wool to line a nice tabard to wear over my current dress.

My mom, who is weird, has ~3 yards of real Venetian velvet she bought IN VENICE in 1976 that she doesn’t want and now it’s mine.

Laptop for scale.  I’m thinking Elizabethan ladies doublet, probably using one of the extant pieces from Patterns of Fashion III?  Not sure yet, ideas welcome.  I have more than enough for a doublet but not enough for a gown, and a gown from this stuff would be intense.  It’s H E A V Y.

So that’s the upcoming plan and I feel a lot better and more organized.  The only thing I’m still currently debating/angsting (but only a bit) is– What do I want my focus to be in the SCA?

Not something that needs answering immediately, and certainly I will probably always bounce around a little bit, but what is it I really want to focus on and dig into?  Is it costuming?  Spinning?  Weave structures? Embroidery? I’ve always been a bit of a textiles jack-of-all-trades but I kind of want to get some expertise in something and I just don’t know what yet.

To be fair though, Crown was my second event.  I have some time.