Old Picture

Recently a friend of mine found this old picture from about 6 years ago when my helmet and brigantine was new. The jeans and tennis shoes have since been replaced as well as the leg armor.

Aventail

I am about 2 days behind schedule but I did manage to finish the aventail Sunday. Now I need to attach it to the helmet. Robert should be dropping it off tomorrow, so hopefully by Thursday-Friday it should be done.

Well it’s been a pretty slow week. I should be finishing the Mail aventail today or Friday and will attach it to the loaner helm this weekend. This should make the Helm SCA legal and let me get Robert authorized for heavy weapons.

I liked the Banner and Pennons so much that now I think it’s time to get a Standard. Someone on the Armor Archive makes beautiful Standards and I think I will give them a try. I still need to design the Standard and will work on that this weekend.

Since I seem to be planning out my weekend I might as well look at further out to fill up more weekends. Looking at upcoming events my short list will be:
Havoc in Hastings (Hastings, MI August 30-31 )
Rain of Arrows (New Lothrup, MI Sept. 13 )
Vikings Come Home (Kalkaska, MI Sept 19-21)
If possible I would also like to attend: (not sure if work will co-operate)
Harvest Days & Chivalry Tourney (Camden, OH Sept 5-7 )

This makes for a pretty busy September. I may have to skip at least one of these events between real life and work. I am duty bound to Pentamere and feel I should give preference to events in Michigan so if anything has to slip it will be the Chivalry Tourney.

Missing Pennsic and Chainmail

Erevon dropped by Sunday night and we had an impromptu Pennsic pity party. We both worked on our chainmail projects and generally bemoaned the fact we would not be attending Pennsic. He is not going this year due to a couple family matters and I am not going as this is my off year. My wife hates the camping and we have come to an agreement that we would attend every other year. So my August yearly vacation consists of alternating between Pennsic and somewhere my wife would like to go.

The chainmail project I have started working on is a butted chainmail aventail. Robert (my nephew) has been working with me to get authorized as a Heavy Weapons fighter. He is using several pieces of my old armor. My old barrel helm allows too much exposure to his neck so I am putting together an Aventail. I hope to have it finished this week and attach it to the helm so we can get in a more serious practice. I will get some pictures up when his loaner kit is finished.

I put to together a gorget first and that helped but there is too much gapping when he tips his head forward or back for the helm and gorget to pass an inspection. I believe a nice aventail will take care of this problem and look better than anything we could do to the helm or gorget to get it to pass. I haven’t done chain mail since the early Nineties and it brings back some memories of when the Shire of Stormvale produced a hauberk as a gift for the King nearly twenty years ago .

New Gonfalon and Pennons arrive!!!

About a month ago I ordered a Gonfalon and Pennons from The House of Dirk and Arrow. Examples of their work can be found at http://dirkandarrow.com/.

I had come across their work on the Armor Archive and was impressed. Since I have the artistic talent of a Walrus, I thought I would give them a try. I received the finished product last week and they are outstanding in quality and construction. I recommend them for anyone who needs beautiful and durable heraldic display. I am particularly impressed by the Panther Pennon. This only took a couple weeks total so that was also impressive.

I am going to save up my shekels and order a Gonfalon of my wife’s arms in September and also a couple more Pennons.

The Armor Archive can be found here. http://www.armourarchive.org/