girls on a road trip

I crawl out from under the heaps of apples and the much smaller heap of Nanowords to post a picture-studded side-trip. Specifically, a little about the Golden Swan event in October (this is apparently a non-chronological blog).
I've posted before about the Tournament of the Golden Swan. It's a persona-development SCA event, originally designed to encourage the more creative and less combative aspects of the Society for Creative Anachronism, or more pragmatically described, to give non-fighters something to do. This is done by testing how thoroughly entrants have researched and imagined the medieval person they present themselves as being.
Given that it's been going a fair few years, the contest has been stuck in several ways in a very SCA mindset, perhaps describable as a 1960s take on a romantic Victorian idea of the Middle Ages. As knowledge about medieval society and daily life has grown, and research within the SCA reached a higher standard, the better-researched your persona, the less likely you were to find a good fit with a contest that required an embroidered favour (an SCA tradition, not a medieval one) and expected entrants to inspire the lord who fought for them. Last year the outdated format was addressed once again, and actual changes were made.
Perhaps relatedly, there were three entrants this year, compared to none last year.

I leap ahead chronologically to show off a painting I did several years ago, for the Wild Women of Frozen Mountain. It's based on a German playing card, the Queen of Animals, and depicts a wild woman (covered in fur) with a unicorn.
It was hung up inside the hall, so I took the opportunity to get a digital pic of it.
Geez, guys, you could hem it sometime, you know? 

Anyway, Joan and Rosie and I drove out Friday morning--a beautiful clear Friday morning--from Port Moody. The plan was to have enough time to stop for scenery and wineries, and this worked out nicely.

Stop on the journey. Rosie surveys the Hope Slide. It must have been too cold for the chipmunks that Deirdre and I saw and fed, because they did not appear, though we made coaxing noises.

Stretching our legs in Manning Park. High altitude and shade meant lingering frost on the grass.We did not spot the derelict cabin this trip.

We did, though, encounter this cool tree-trunk,. Is it safe to turn your back, or will it lurch after you?

Despite wineries, we arrived in good time, and set up our tent alongside Alicia and Stephen's tent. Most people were sleeping inside the hall because of the cold, but we hardy medievalists were relying on wool and down (and straw mattresses) to shield us through the night. I have a photo of the frosty grass taken early the next morning, but perhaps the point was made above. It was cold. The stars were amazing, bright white in a black black sky. Until I set off the motion-sensitive light outside the hall.

Swans at bowls, on the field behind the hall. Most of the contest is indoors, sitting and chatting in close quarters, thus not appropriate for taking photos. Outdoors it's more relaxed, and I followed the gamesters about making quick sketches. This one they posed for.

Another shot from the bowls game that meandered all about the site. It started in the field beside the hall, wandered past the bandshell, behind the mock-frontier streetfront, through the seating for the fair bbq, past the animal pens, and around to the fighting field. (There was fighting going on, with HH Gemma exclaiming 'Man fall down!' at intervals.)

A game of 9 mans morris outside Alicia's tent. Entrants need to show competence in pastimes their character would have known, as well as skills in their craft or station.
Needless to say (but I will say it anyways) Alicia kicked butt in every category. Happily, all three entrants carried it off successfully and joined the Order of the Golden Swan.
We packed up as early as we could manage the next morning and set off, managing to stop at another couple of wineries on the way back, and take our pictures with the sasquatch.

A Garbage Gobbler, an icon of my childhood travels. Joan poses with it on our way out the gate.

Then I ran away with the sasquatch and was never seen again.

moderately eventful

Last week I was off to sunny Penticton (which it was, yes) for the Kingdom Arts & Sciences (& Bardic) Championships. A pleasant ride on the ferry, where I ensconced  myself in the buffet and nibbled my way across. Picked up by Stephen, Judy, Connie and Stewart, to drive for 4 hrs or so through ...
snow,

 no snow,

 snow,

 no snow,

to sunny Penticton.

Where I helped with judging cheese made in a gourd after a Middle Eastern recipe,

 a 14th century Egyptian shadow puppet play (yes, I have video, but who knows if it will post?)

 and sat in on the judging of an Elizabethan portrait miniature. (which reminds me, I need to send some parchment scraps to the painter, so she can try them out.)

More text later!

wherein I am artsy

 Thought I'd be lazy and just post some of the photos I took in the summer, a couple of which aren't bad, or might be mildly interesting.

 This below is a view of the shower (women's) at Coopers Lake Campground, the site of the Pennsic war. The building is over 100 years old - if you zoom, you can see adze marks on the roof joist. For several years, these three stalls (and three on the other side for men) were it for showers, unless you rigged something at your campsite. Now that Pennsic gets over 10k attending, there are a couple of shower trucks and other buildings, plus most group encampments have shower tents. It's still a rare occurence to find the whole room empty, so I commemorated the moment. About 2 or 3 am, I think it was, and the greenish light gives it a nicely underwater eerie look.

 At Mark's urging, I took my camera on a couple of early morning walk-runs around the camps. I may have mentioned that many groups do elaborate painted fabric walls or trompe l'oeil gates. This group went for the macabre. If someone had been awake I would have asked if it was a portrait or a generic head.

 I took so many photos on the way back, of changing landscapes, rock formations, cool clouds and lotsa vistas. This one comes under cool clouds--I like the way the sky mirrors the perspective of the lane lines, though I probably should have trimmed off some of the top third to emphasise it.

 Rock formations, did I say? Nature--not that subtle, really.

 We pulled over into this tiny town below for the sake of photographing the, um, mesa, that overlooks it. Although we found a good vantage point and got shots of it alone, I prefer this view interlined with houses.

 I'm a bit of a sucker for neon. We came out of the last hotel early early-oh, and I saw this sign against the hill. Just in time--a couple of minutes later the lights went out for morning.

random trip pics

These are still from the drive to Pennsylvania. Pics from the war itself next post.


More Montana geology. On the return trip we went through Wyoming and Nebraska and Utah, where I took more photos of landscape than of geology.


The rest area at Moorhead. Elisa and I recognised it as one we'd slept at two years ago, and very nice it was, too. Grass, trees, recycling, all good things. Do feel free to make your own Bewitched joke at this point.



In the restaurant (Brigid's Pub) at the hotel in South Bend that was our last night's stop before the war. I'm not sure why there's a callbox in the corner, but there it is.

for you the war is over

Was ritually said to prisoners of war in WWII, to discourage them from escape attempts. In this case, it's simple fact, as I'm on my way home from the Pennsic war. South Bend last night, rolling in about 3 am, Cheyenne tonight just before midnight. Tomorrow is Baker City. Then home.
Typing from Springhill Suites, Marriott hotel in Cheyenne. This little suite is so nice that I harbour thoughts of just staying here for a few days instead of going home. It has not just the usual desk, but a mini sitting room with couch, chair, and coffee tables. Two closets, the microwave & coffee set in a sort of mini kitchenette so they're separate - the layout makes very effective use of space.
And as you know, I don't stay in hotels that often, so it's always a bit special.

Pics of Pennsic when I'm not asleep on my feet (well, on my bum, since I'm sitting down, but you know what I mean).

amoeba book reproduces by fission

A strange and sudden freedom has fallen on me. As you may recall, I've been
struggling along with the ever-expanding expansion of Cost of Silver,
occasionally despairing of it ever being completely filled in, and repeatedly
extending my self-imposed deadlines. Well!
Over the last few weeks, I'd been comparing the almost-completely-filled-in
first 'half' with the much-left-to-go second 'half' and realising that if I did the
English Civil War justice, I was going to have a novel of at least 180k,
probably more.
Also that, although I had tightened the timeline considerably, there was
still a natural break between part one: fen-draining and vampires, and
part two: war and witchfinders.

As part one crept up past 90k, I began to believe that either I had two books
on my hands or I needed to stop expanding and start trimming. Yikes! But this
is what's great about having an agent who started as an editor. I emailed her
and asked 'how about I send you part one and
you can give me an opinion as to which way I should handle this?'
She said 'great, send it to me.'

After some Adventures in Formatting, followed by Adventures in Printing,
The Cost of Silver part one: The Astrologer's Death, 94k,* is on its way to
my agent for her considered advice.

And its author is on her way to Pennsylvania for two weeks of mostly-offline life.
I've brought actual paper notebooks and pens, so I'll still be writing. I'm planning
to mess around with a YA story idea riffing on the YA paranormal romance genre,
most easily summarised as 'Maenads at Band Camp". I think it will be fun.

Posting from Missoula Montana - goodnight!

*part two stands at 55k, which is a little under where the sketched-out first draft
stood when I started expanding it in January. So I must have written about 90k in
7 months. Maybe I really am a 'book a year' writer!

clawing my way

from under a heap of apples, rather like James T. Kirk in the tribbles episode, only apples are hard and some of them have mushy bits or bug-bites.

Last weekend I was in the Interior, attending the Golden Swan event and spending time with Alis/Rajpal and Lucy, my most distant apprentices. Riding with me was Deirdre Greenwood, with whom I am in apprentice negotiations. This was the road-trip test, to see whether either of us had such annoying habits that the other would want to leave them behind at a rest area.
I am pleased to report that we both made it back to our respective homes. Though the last part of my trip makes for a long and convoluted story that can only be properly shared in person, and all I will say at present is that I am really surprised BC Ferries has apparently no provision at all for dealing with someone who falls ill during the trip. I mean, not even a place to lie down.
But I am back now, and mostly recovered. It has been a social month so far, with the spare bed not having a chance to be folded back up between Deirdre, Alis and Sitavati, and Stephen visiting, and that just at our place, not counting travels & socialising.

Me with three apprentices, in front of my little tent, Cawston BC.

The apple trees have taken advantage of my absence to start dropping fruit in earnest. We gave two buckets away, and I still have a sinkful to process into dehydrator loads and frozen crumbles. I'm missing the boy and his appetite for apple pies, since the freezer will only hold so many. I may have to start pushing frozen pies onto stray visitors: 'What do you mean you'll be on the road for 3 days? Look, I'll bake it for you, then you can just eat it on the way!'

Then there's deciding on an itinerary for the UK visit, booking b&bs, and figuring out how to pack for the very professional & businesslike World Fantasy Convention and also for hiking around the UK in the cold. Which I admit is a damn fine problem to have, and I'm not actually complaining, just noting what has my brainpower booked lately.

Do I have any writing-related thoughts? Yes, I think I do. As with other times that I've attended Golden Swan, which is a persona-development challenge (sometimes called competition, but since there can be several winners or none, it's not really competing), I notice that what makes a presentation of one's persona work is not so much the big-picture info-dumps, but the small details of the texture of one's life. Lucy did well with her entry, in part because she knew the layout of her home, the way down the stairs with the low beam, drawing water in the courtyard to wash. Another entrant did less well because she knew how 'male children' were taught, but could say nothing about her own son's education, whether he liked his tutor, what he learned quickly and what he was slow at.
The other thing I notice is that while those small, telling details are effective, they need to be researched, or you risk breaking the illusion with a mistake. Anne Rice broke the illusion in Cry To Heaven (for me) by having a character burn a parchment letter in a candle flame--I've worked with parchment, which is essentially fine, thin, smooth rawhide. Imagine burning a dog-chew and you see the problem. Similarly, an entrant this year presented an 11th or 12th century noblewoman and told us about her psalter, made by 'students' at the nearby priory. Um, no. Personal ownership of books is a watershed moment, and it comes at the earliest in the late 14th c. by which time books are being produced in secular workshops. She had, essentially, told me that she'd researched everyday life in the wrong century, and skimpily at that.
Ah well, pedantry: hobby, sport, or vocation?
Or just a relief from the burden of apples?

Forced-perspective cat

menaces tiny deer. Roger Corman directs.

Nature, red in bloom and berry, is yapping about my heels like a border collie, lately. The rhubarb has sprung up again, after a disappointing first season, and the Transparent tree has already begun to drop apples. I have a huge bowlful that I need to process and turn into crumble or pie soonest.


I've been trying to thin out the apples, but it doesn't seem to have much effect. The deer is helping, so to speak, but concentrates his efforts on the same areas I can already reach. That and he's eaten the tops off the broccoli and the tomatoes, yet we aren't allowed to shoot him within city limits.
The alba roses are pretty much done, the gallica are still blooming away, and the front yard roses are small but steady--the Dortmund continues as usual, promiscuously.


Last month we drove out to Le Coteau and other farms & nurseries on the south island, and came back with more blueberry bushes, a josta and another currant bush. The last two have been planted behind the workshop, where a stand of volunteer poppies is flourishing away already.
We also stopped at a couple of wineries, a ginnery (I'm sure that's not the word) with an amazing steampunkish distilling apparatus, Babe's Honey and Sun Wing Tomatoes.
The spearmint honey doesn't taste at all like spearmint. It's like a double buckwheat honey. Mmm.

This month I've been to the Stranded Mermaid Tourney, near Lund, and to July Coronation, sort of near Yakima. Clear hot weather for both, with a side of mosquitoes. I'm hoping that will be it for the next while, so that I can get back into the routine of writing.
Still, had a great drive back from Mermaid, the ferry from Powell River to Comox, then taking the Seaside scenic route whenever possible. Stopped in Qualicum, and Kellii and I went wading in the shallows, which were bathwater warm and clear enough to see all the tiny tiny crabs skittering across the sand. Near the Malahat, the wind picked up, and swirled clattering arbutus leaves and barks in a russet barrage against the van. Three times this happened, as if we were driving into a pocket of autumn. I hope it doesn't mean some sort of arbutus die-off.

Coronation was at Fulbright Park, near Yakima. It's big and flat, with a stream/river running along one side. It had been mown a few days before, but not baled, and I spent part of the first night making mental plans for what to do if the field caught fire. Given that most SCA members are unacquainted with camping except within the SCA, and seem to think of open flame as a sort of special effect or CGI, I think it must be entirely due to that god that looks after imbeciles that there's been no serious fire in the last dozen years. One encampment had low tiki torches to mark their entry, and had cleared the hay away to a big pile right next to the torches and almost exactly as tall.
I figured I could, with the right incentive, scramble through the wild rose and thistles on the bank of the river closest to us, and land in the water. Fortunately it didn't come to that.

However, while investigating the river bank, I discovered that the edge of the field was full of great big teazle plants, and cut about a dozen teazle heads for Elisa to make a teazle comb, for next year's Fort Rodd Hill. And, y'know, they're cool, as noxious weeds go.
Alicia and I set up under a big willow tree (YES!) with shade from afternoon on. We laid a thick layer of straw in the tent, and laid tarps and mats over that, then our beds. I wished like heck that I'd brought one of the tick bags from home, so that I could have stuffed a tick with unthreshed hay, and maybe snuck a bagfull home to try making a bee-skep with it, and see if it worked better than threshed & baled hay, which is annoyingly short.

Because I didn't have many commitments, I was able to reduce my TBR pile, just a little. Finished The Last Apprentice, by Joseph Delaney, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, Darkborn, by Alison Sinclair, Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett, The Silver Ship and the Sea, by Brenda Cooper, and Precious Dragon, by Liz Williams.
Didn't get as much napping in as I'd hoped, even though I should have been tired enough. But I did sleep most of the way back from Yakima, shirking my duties as shotgun to keep the driver entertained.

I still haven't seen the actual deer, by the way. The photographic evidence is all Mark's work.

the whirligig of time

brings me back to the present. Kristen and I arrived in Olympia Friday night, very late, and left very early Saturday morning to get me and my stuff back to Victoria. Today I should be all bright and chipper, surely?

Knowledge Gained though not necessarily assimilated:
Pennsic was fun. Worldcon was more fun but less sleep.
Someone cleverer than me could write up an entertaining compare-and-contrast between Pennsic and Worldcon, for way too much happening at once, the Brigadoon Effect, geek culture, etc.
It takes longer to reach Olympia from Montreal than it does to reach Pittsburgh from Olympia. I blame the Great Lakes.
Funniest road sign: Bong Recreation Area.
Most disappointing Worldcon panel: Medieval Technology.
Person most worth buying drinks for: Mary Robinette Kowal, using the keywords 'puppetry disasters'.
Most worthwhile purchase while on the road: 3 flavours of fudge. Sugar hit is at least as effective as caffeine.
In sidetrip bargaining, the Badlands loop is worth at least an hour at the Montana Valley Book Store. (fulfilling a decades-old whine on my part)
Just because something is called a Kaffeeklatch, there is no guarantee that coffee will be present.
One of the things I love about the SCA (despite everything): the Chinese makeup class was taught by a Black woman. The Asian lady in charge of the gate was dressed in lovely 12th c. Norman fashion.
Wooden pattens can be played like castanets (or is it zills?).
Bring food with you. Just in case.
Mur Lafferty is not a mythical creature.
TNH has no fear of heights (possibly not even reasonable caution of heights).
Published writers may not be able to correctly identify passive voice.
Even if you have just learned how to make a brush from porcupine hair (not quills), your travel partner probably won't let you stop for that roadkill porcupine on the way home.


More later, with pictures. Maybe a nap now. Also later, possibly, griping about Customs & Immigration.

still not a travel blog

although this morning we're in South Bend, after a somewhat harrowing trip through driving rain from Chicago on the toll road, the unlit part, with (of course) construction closing lanes from time to time and lots of semis. The lane lines were often invisible under the rain, and Kristen was navigating by semi (ie there's one beside us, don't bang into it, there's one ahead of us, let's hope he can see the lane lines).
First night we reached Butte, second night Fargo--or to be more precise, the Anaconda rest area and the Moorhead rest area. I stared at the mineral samples at Anaconda, and remembered researching the mine just recently for the rewrites of Chimp/Transmontane. Also my painter-self kicked in, exclaiming 'ooh, azurite and malachite! Realgar! ooh!'
We hit a proper rain of tiny bugs in North Dakota, so thick it sounded like rain. Only the pressure-wash effect of semi-spray last night finally got most of it off. This is a big van, too, so short people like me have to lean over the hood to clean windshields, coming away with a fine coating of dried bug on one's shirt. Fortunately the first station we stopped at had long-handled squeegies.
Western Washington was hot hot hot. Montana was rainy. Surely this is a reversal of the natural order?

Olympia this morning

Is still cool, but promising to be hot once the sun is properly up. I slept with a sheet only, plus occasional cat, after pathetically conking out while Kristen was still loading up the van. It's a big van, with truck plates, and it will be interesting to see how it handles after I've been used to our zippy little Sienna.

Going through Customs--no, I should say going through Immigration--was stressful. I kind of understand how Customs works, because they want to know what you're bringing so they can collect duty on it. But I can't work out what Immigration wants, other than for everyone to bloody well stay home, and with the two services supposedly unified, I don't know which kind of question I'm being asked. And many of those questions seem to involve what I would consider my personal life. Like, why am I driving to Pennsylvania while my husband flies? How do I know the friend that I'm driving with? Surely I work in my husband's business?
Gah.
Is it that strange to have friends from across the US border? To not be my husband's chattel?
Oh well, done now, and can look forward to the trip and driving. Kristen's doing a photo essay, so we'll stop fairly often for pics, but I don't expect I'll be posting any while in transit, even though I have a camera, not to mention the webcam on the EEE.

I used to wonder if I'd show up on some list or other because of having gone to Seattle for the WTO protests, but so far there's been no sign of that, only the 'Im in ur nashun steelin ur jobz' deal. Maybe it would be different if I'd been arrested then?

So. I'm not expecting to do a travelblog, given the spottiness of online access for the next while plus I Am Revising Willow Knot Like, A Lot This Month And Should Not Go Online Until Maybe Worldcon.
I squeaked into one of the workshop sessions for Worldcon, with the longer Bluebeard story. It's still pretty raw, but I couldn't tell from the info whether admission was juried at all, or just first-come first-served.

My belongings may be packed, but my thoughts, clearly, are strewn across the room in all disorder. So I'll sign off now and see if I can bundle them up in a sheet or something.

a sense of calm urgency

Is what we're supposed to employ as we evacuate the Library, should evacuating the Library be called for. It's the first item on the emergency list recently sent around.
And it's what I need presently, since I will be leaving on the 25th for the Pennsic War, followed by Worldcon in Montreal. It's not so much the prep for the trip itself, it's the multitude of things that suddenly needed doing before I leave.
* dental app't
* subsequent repair of old filling
* optometrist app't
* subsequent choosing and fitting of new glasses
* subsequent adjusting of me to new glasses
* regular blood test
* vet app't for cat
* weeding in front yard
* processing the first batch of Transparent apples
* pastry for pie to be frozen
* writing up notes for house-sitting
* finishing reshuffling of scenes for Willow Knot

And last-minute additions to packing:
* sewing up new shift for hot weather
* sewing up new kirtle for same
* finding wool to trade for sewing of nicer kirtle
* oranges (or lemons? must choose) watercolour
* next thing that I haven't thought of yet (repeat)

One major worry is taken off my mind by the arrival of my friend and apprentice Judy to house-and-cat-sit. Priss has been uncommonly clingy and whiney since I was away at Fort Rodd Hill, and I tremble to think what a horror she'd be after 3 weeks without regular company. Not to mention the gardens going unwatered and the apples falling to rot.
Judy arrived Tuesday night and is already enthused about making rosepetal jelly and apple juice, so that is well. Hopefully she'll also have time to enjoy sitting in the garden and dropping in at the several coffee places nearby, and of course, reading.

I'll be on the road for a few days, and my online access until Worldcon will be spotty, so I expect this month will be fairly uncommunicative. I had hoped to do another roses post, but haven't found time. However, here's a picture of the Kazanlik in the front yard, which is about 8 ft tall and hardly ever produces flowers. This year I managed to catch one bloom while it still had petals. The blooms aren't showy, but they are smack-in-the-face perfumey, which unfortunately doesn't come across in a picture (or fortunately, given scent-sensitivities). Kazanlik is one of the attar-of-roses varieties, like the damask in the back yard.

And just in case you're sick of roses, here's a bundle of blueberries.

Time is, time was

Because of the I-5 closures, we stopped in Vancouver instead of proceeding to Eugene for 12th Night. I spent Friday in the wilderness of Ikea with Chris, finding as-is furniture for his new place, which I have now seen, though I failed to inspect it as mothers are supposed to inspect their child's lodgings.
I have no idea how to be a parent to an adult. Is there an online tutorial? Or is it okay to act as if we're people who know each other?
Home again Saturday morning, and my internal calendar is muddled because of this and because of having Monday off (not a bad thing, but a muddling thing). I felt all through Friday as if it were Saturday, and today feels a bit like Sunday.

Muddled calendar being my segue into the realisation that I'm not going to be able to sit down and write a proper diary of either the UK trip from April, or World Fantasy in October. Instead I shall sprinkle recollections and observations through the next several posts.

UK 08, flying: The in-flight movies were shown not on sweet little back-of-the-seat screens, but on columns of ceiling-mounted mid-seat-range screens. If one happened to be sitting at an angle to the long string of images, the effect was more than a little disconcerting. One expects infinite mirrors to reflect oneself.
I am cheap, and had books, so didn't bother to rent a headset. Instead I slept, or blinked awake to watch the soundless films. Without sound, PS: I Love You becomes a Japanese-inspired horror film about a vengeful ghost possessing his lover's friends and acquaintances. August Rush, unfortunately, was inescapable as the melodrama intended, and somehow I doubt that the dialogue spackled the visible plot holes*. Juno was harder to judge, because I remembered enough of the reviews that I couldn't approach blank-slated. Mostly it made me desperately want to adopt Ellen Page. I may have to rent and watch Hard Candy to balance my impression of her adorability.
Two of the movies used captions to indicate the passage of seasons - is it that hard to figure out from visual cues? The third used captions for locations.
All three movies used 'spooning', the man curled behind the woman, as the indicator of the true match.

UK 08 arriving: Lucia from VPX is awesomely crazy. She met us, jetlagged and deaf, at Gatwick, and drove to Lincoln, stopping on the way to drop Mark off at Peterborough train station. The next day she drove from Lincoln to Diss, to the bed-and-breakfast Gables Farm, with the aid of her trusty GPS Jane. (I envision Jane as looking like one of the Angels from Captain Scarlet). Jane did not approve of us stopping at the Peterborough station, and in retaliation sent us to Lincoln via the A15 instead of the A17.
Here is Lucia, inside one of Lincoln's wonderful Norman stone buildings, St. Mary's Guildhall (built 1160), which we visited by appointment, and were shown around by Ken Franklin of the Lincoln Civic Trust. Under the floor of the Guildhall (originally a royal residence for Henry II) is a section of Roman road, which has been excavated and can be viewed through a glass floor.
There is not enough room for all the history in England, so it has to be stacked.


And here is me, outside another one, cleverly called Norman House, and presently closed. It was built between 1170 and 1190 (builders weren't any faster then than they are now) and you can see how it's been altered and changed about to fit fashion and use. The rectangular windows are Georgian at the earliest.

The first Norman stone house I fell for was Hemingford Grey, in its fictional disguise as Green Knowe, and visiting Hemingford Grey was the highlight of a previous trip to the UK. Not having fictional associations with these makes it not quite so heart-racing, well, not psychologically heart-racing.

Physically ... the Norman House and the Jew's House (also Norman) are on Steep Street, which Lucia and I must have climbed three times that day. Oof. The road really does look like that. Here's Steep Hill from the bottom.

The Jew's House is now a very posh restaurant, which I would have been willing to splurge for a meal at, but it was already fully booked for a special occasion. Sigh.
Instead Lucia and I met Zolah, Rocambole and Ferret of the Furtive Scribblers Club, my other writing tribe, at a lovely Chinese restaurant quite near the Guildhall, and we ate and talked until the restaurant closed and tossed us out into the street to wander through the charity shops.

And that was my first day in England.

* so, rock and classical musicians are just like the Montagues and the Capulets? seriously, it cannot be that easy to legally give up a child; all of those boys should have been snapped up for adoption within minutes; count the Magical Negroes; has this kid been listed on canon_sues?

Interior journeys: awful damn scenic

Two trips into the interior of BC, one in July to Castlegar, the second in October to Oliver (and also to Nelson). Attempts to drag along travelling companions failed, which meant at least that I could sing in the van, because I don't sing where people can hear me.
Castlegar is in the Kootenays, and would like you to know it's the Greatest Dam City in the World, being right close to a large dam (the Hugh Keenleyside Dam, sorry no tours) with a mildly alarming array of bridges and on/off ramps (not as scary as Portland, but Castlegar is much smaller than Portland).
If I were a much hardier cyclist than I am, more in JH-R's league, I'd probably want to cycle the railbed trail between Midway and Castlegar, which looks even more scenic than the drive, but I'm a feeble old lady, so I'll just look at the pictures, and look out the car windows.
Oliver, which I've written of before, is the Wine Capital of Canada, with a classy wine shop in the town, and any number of wineries (even a fruit-winery) on the way, plus the fruit markets in the Okanagan. I'm told that while it's dead easy to find work, it's nearly impossible to live there because of the cost of housing.
Nelson is where Roxanne was filmed, with Steve Martin, and it is picturesque like anything. It had an influx of new people after the film, because it was so clearly an ideal small town, with the result that it too became an expensive place to live.

The Castlegar trip was to attend Troll Stomp, and to spend some time with my apprentice Lucy and others of the Wild Women. The Oliver trip was for the last Tournament of the Golden Swan to be held at the Skunk Hollow site, so there was a valedictory feel to the weekend, even while I was visiting with Lucy and Evangeline, and with Nan Compton and her family, and others I don't see often.
(Even before online nicknames, much of my acquaintance used pseudonyms and aliases--please note also that my acquaintance includes a number of people who are willing to camp in the Interior of BC in October.)
Castlegar is about 7 hours drive from the ferry terminal (how I measure every trip off-island--no point counting the ferry wait and so on), Oliver only about 5 hours. Nelson 8 or 9 hours. So it's fortunate that the view is not only attractive but variable. There's more than one ecosystem on the way.

On the first trip I remembered to borrow a camera(!) and take some photos of the places I look for and stop at, so here you are, a little visual relief from the usual wall of text this blog provides.

The Hope Slide. This happened when I was a small child, so it has a different sort of meaning for me than most historic sites. An avalanche that covered cars on a BC highway, the very sort of highway my family travelled every summer, and that my dad travelled every weekend to get back to us when he was teaching somewhere else. A couple of the cars were never recovered. Here's a shot of the mountain, and you can still see how it fell away.


The Manning Park cabin. The first time I saw this, I was driving with my friend Kellii as navigator, and she'd brought a book of West Coast ghost stories to enliven (endeaden?) the trip. So we were primed to see this as a haunted cabin. It's fairly close to the western end of the park, right after an eerie stretch of bog (lots of that in Manning Park) separated from the road by a rushing bit of river. Just out of this photo is what looks like a boathouse, though it's rather too far from the water, and might be a summer kitchen or other outbuilding. I don't know its history, but it should have one. Maybe I'll make one up sometime.



Bromley Rock Provincial Park, where I care little for the striking rock bluff or tiny white sand beach (okay, I do, but I didn't take pictures), and instead am drawn to the scrap of former road that the rest area and parking was built on, which remains behind the outhouses. Even when the park is busy, this spot remains quiet and set apart, as if it's waiting for something to come along it.




On the July trip return, I stopped just outside Castlegar and picked up two hitch-hikers, a young dreadlocked guy and girl who were heading to Vancouver, to be supportive for the trial of their friend, an American deserter who'd been hiding out in Nelson. They were good company, though I will offer this piece of advice for hitching: when your ride stops to fill up, it's a nice gesture to offer to clean the windshields, especially if you're too broke to put in for fuel.

On the October trip, no hitch-hikers, though I did drive into Nelson and back with Lucy and Evangeline to save them from having to hitch-hike with all their camping gear. And going to my van on the ferry, I met two young women who needed a ride into Victoria, one of them with a guitar. Pleased to hear both of them talking over the coming election and preparing to vote, and glad I wasn't a slacker myself in that way, while Lucy and her sister were planning to be helping with the vote in Nelson. Yay for the engaged citizenry!

retreating for New Year's

Tomorrow morning I leave for the Olympic Peninsula (weather permitting ferry travel) not to return until Tuesday. I'll be travelling with Alicia and Halima, to a semi-SCA (ie non-official) scribal retreat organised by Tamlyn. Other people will be very busy and energetic, but I'm teaching a mere two classes, so I'll be for the most part treating this as a retreat (gasp!).
I'm taking a bunch of books from my to-be-read pile, my laptop and some mapping materials. I'm going to read, drink tea, and maybe get some writing done. I may get back to Tom's story while I'm letting Willow Knot lie fallow.
Mark the wonder husband scanned a heap of coloured pictures to use in the class on drapery in painting, and hopefully I'll come up with useful things to say about them. I've copied into a handout what Theophilus, Cennini and Dionysius of Fourna have to say about painting drapery, but my own observations will have to be spoken. I may revise the handout for next time, if this isn't such a specialised class that I never teach it again.
I made some very rough notes about looking at drapery as either calligraphic or sculptural, and as either revealing the body or hiding it, but I haven't built them into sentences and paragraphs the way I usually do.
My excuse is that I agreed to teach the course in November, when in the midst of Nanowrimo, and that in December getting my Christmas prep done (for once) in good time only left me about 3 evenings free, some of which I spent feeling too achey to concentrate on anything anyways. And that the first time I teach any course it's flawed. My first set of students are always lab rats, which is too bad, but can't really be helped, and usually they don't do too badly from it.
The road trip should be fun, though it won't be all that long. I've packed a few cds. The site has a tv and dvd player, but on reflection I decided that my Christmas present of the complete Sonny Chiba Streetfighter oeuvre might not be suitable for the other attendees, and hopefully I'll have a chance to watch it with Chris when I get back. That was one of his presents to me. Scanner Cop was another. I'm so looking forward to those.
There's a resolution for January. To catch up with my unwatched martial arts and horror dvds. Evenings are now reserved for that activity.
Happy New Year to my presumed readers. May your coming year be as full of wire-work and stunt doubles as you desire.

nanowrimo aftermath

I went off to Bremerton without my laptop. Intentionally. It felt odd to walk into the Coho caff without looking for a 3-prong outlet. Instead I tucked myself in a corner and wrote Christmas cards. What are you writing this month? This month I'm writing Christmas cards and letters.
All my US cards have been addressed, stamped (with the stamps on hand, lord knows if they were correct) and posted from Port Angeles. If I can get the UK and Canadian cards off this week, it will be an unprecedented achievement for me. Usually I send New Year's cards, or Epiphany cards. What may yet bring me down is the writing of Christmas letters, and over half of the UK cards require letters. One year I got all my cards off early, and never mailed the letter-included cards at all.
I'll have to offer myself some sort of bribe.

The drive back from Bremerton to Port Angeles was entertaining. The weather along the route varied from snow to sleet to rain, and all pretty much horizontal. Probably a dozen cars in ditches, including one lying right on its side on the shoulder, and two or three attended by police cars with flashing lights. I crawled along at 30 mph for much of the snow passages, keeping carefully in the tracks of the car ahead. I spent enough time behind a red pickup truck to wave goodbye to it with quite a feeling of regret when it took an exit.
Very scenic, though. Very winter wonderland calendar picture with the snow. The rain less so. Driving through falling snow is mildly hypnotic, for me at least, and just before I reached Port Angeles I was overcome with a conviction that I'd driven past it without noticing. Yes, I know it's next to impossible to drive through Port Angeles without noticing, but bear in mind that when I was driving the I-5 on a fairly frequent basis, I managed to drive through Seattle without consciously registering it. And Seattle is bigger than Port Angeles.
Do not underestimate my powers of abstraction.

Accomplished: Well, I didn't make the 50k wordcount target. But I had fun. My main character has caught a wendigo in a sack, been swallowed and disgorged by a monster, scared off the Bad Thing by exposing herself to it (there are folkloric precedents, yes), sulked her way into being allowed to witness the ceremony for restoring life to her murdered friend (motif J1955, in case you wondered) even though she isn't in the right clan, and is about to confront the Bad Thing again in a carnival Spook Ride, while dealing with distracting feelings about the Girl Who Might Be an Angel, as well as an old flame who works at the carnival.
Eventually I should stop dropping visual hints about the angel-aspect (dust cloud billows up like wings, light halos hair) and start just calling her that--there's still the question of what kind of angel she'd be. Bendy the devil is a devil, that's established, but I'm not sure whether his belly-mouth tells the truth more than his head-mouth does, and what about his arse-mouth? It hasn't said anything yet, but it could.
It would help if I knew what was really going on, but it's too soon in the story still. I have no idea where the unreadable book with the Library of Alexandria bookplate will come in, but maybe I'll figure that out.
1/3 of Christmas cards sent, 1/3 addressed but not sent.

Reading: things to do this month are finishing Christmas cards, baking, and reading. Harsh, mm? We don't do the tree until Christmas eve. Not much shopping, since most of my gift-list are adults now, and adults get charitable donations.
Read Blood Engines (great title) by T.A. Pratt, urban fantasy, published Bantam 2007. It took me a while to get wrapped up in the book, and if I hadn't been in a ferry lineup I might have put it aside. Pratt has taken the chance of starting with a somewhat off-putting main character, who does improve and learn from her mistakes as she goes. The secondary characters Rondeau and B carry the weight of reader interest for the opening. B in particular intrigued me. At first he seemed like a Tim Powers character who'd wandered in (which is a good thing) but he became more integral to the story and to providing an alternative way of being to the MC, Marla Mason. Once the chained god Chang Hao showed up, the story picked up greatly for me.
On the downside, it was another festival of infodumps. This time it was backstory for Marla and her colleagues. While I do very much like the idea that we've come into Marla's story partway through, and all these characters have a history, whether of their own or with each other, I don't necessarily want to know all about their history when they first appear. Seriously. For instance, Marla did a serious wrong to Rondeau when he was a 'child'. Cool, this is intriguing. It's not so intriguing when I'm flat-out told about it with no relevance to the story. Much later, Marla confesses the story to an ally - see, there it was relevant. And it would have been a shocker if it had first come up then, instead of having me going yeah, yeah, already know that.
This bugged me enough that I did not bother to read the teaser for the next book. And dude, I always read teasers. And prologues, and acknowledgements, and dedications, and appendices. But I couldn't face the strong possibility of yet again having every character's backstory dumped on me, plus, I suppose, whatever items of interest had been added in the first book.
There was a lot to like in Blood Engines. If the infodumps could have been trimmed out, I'd be almost certainly buying the next one. As it is, I don't know.
Second thoughts: I skimmed through the last part of Tinker, with a growing unease. Here's my issue. You've got the impossibly gorgeous long-haired Nordic-type elves, who have kind of a crap political system (I give Spencer credit, the elf social system gets some criticism), with whom our heroine allies herself, not entirely by choice (again, good for Spencer, I like uncertain and equivocal alliances).
The baddies, and are they ever bad, are another supernatural/alien race, the oni. And their slave-races, the kitsune and tengu. Spencer is obviously an anime/manga fan and that's cool too. However. One of the sympathetic elf characters says twice that the oni and associates "breed like mice". Anybody else catching ugly echoes here? Because I am.
The human baddies are the Chinese, who stole Tinker's dad's plans and killed him in the doing, and built the Gate that dumped Pittsburgh in Elfhome. There are supposedly Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh, though I don't recall any Chinese characters actually appearing. It turns out

*SPOILER ALERT*

that the Chinese govt is actually being run by the oni, and all the Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh are actually oni in disguise.

At which point, the WTF indicators lit up. Look, I'm just an old white broad who never got past second year in Asian languages, but even I know that oni are Japanese, as are kitsune and tengu. Where is Japan in all this? Why is China ruled by Japanese spirits, and why do they not have Chinese names if they've embedded themselves in Chinese culture as long as suggested? Are there no real Chinese or Japanese people? Are they all evil spirits that breed like mice?
I'm sure Spencer is a very nice person. And none of the Amazon reviews commented on any racist subtext. So maybe it's just me. But it made me uncomfortable, and I'm not inclined to read the next one.

Interior journeys

No, not pretentious, merely a lame pun. Last weekend I travelled again into the interior of BC, this time to Oliver, a little past Keremeos and Ashnola. Oliver, the Wine Capital of Canada (is every small town in BC the capital of something?) is working to be wine country, with tours and tourists and quirky shops and wineries.
I wasn't there for the wine, though I did mention it to Mark afterwards as, y'know, something we might do, just for, y'know, fun some time. Our travelling is so firmly SCA-business-related and there's so much of it throughout the year that going somewhere just to go there risks straining the brain-muscles.
On the way back I managed a stop at Crowsnest Vineyards, because driving past every single one seemed perverse. I tasted their two sample wines and bought a 2005 merlot, just because.

The travelling part: I drove there and back by myself, after dropping Mark off in Vancouver so he could share (and further learn) what he'd studied at the two swordsmanship seminars he'd just been to.
The drive to Oliver was smooth, the weather was clear and warm, except for the pass in Manning Park where snow lay on the branches and roadside. The road was clear, and the scenery was--I had to keep reminding myself to look at the road. Spiky evergreens, spattered and occasionally hidden by a bright tawny yellow tree, branches flung up and out like someone in hysterics, a lamp-yellow you could warm your hands at. I don't know what kind of trees they are, I confess this. Birch? I could tell the stands of pine, unfortunately, by the red, dead clusters and swaths of trees hit by the pine beetle. The red-leaved bushes were sumac, (non-poisonous) as I learned at the event.
I stopped briefly at the Hope Slide, and thought about '55 metres above the original ground level.' Driving through the Sunshine Valley spooks me a bit more, perhaps because of the view of the former highway, running into the mass of fallen rock.
The drive back started well. I stopped at Bromley Rock, to stretch my legs and look at trees and rocks, and regret that I hadn't brought a camera.
Mark says he's given up suggesting that I take a camera with me, so this is permission and encouragement to him to start up again, and remind me of the bare, grey, hollowed out tree-root clutching rocks in Bromley Rock Provincial Park.
The campsites or picnic sites are on shelving land stepping down from the road to the water, and the parking lot is built over a section of old road, which now curves past the paired toilets and runs slowly into the foundation of the present highway. The asphalt is smooth still, narrow cracks marked by moss and tall weeds here and there. Young trees are springing up along the edges of the road, making a natural avenue, a little too closely set to be planned. The new highway was high above my head, invisible and muted, and no one else had stopped at the park. I walked along it to the end, something I always want to do when I see old disused roads, but rarely have the chance to.
I suppose roads are liminal spaces, like thresholds, wells and hearths (remembering Dr. Doyle's comment on threshold burials in Well Below the Valley). It was easy to believe in ghostly travellers, in time being muddled and doubled, losing its way on a lost road. There's a lovely evocative passage in one of Hugh Hood's books, where the narrator hikes along a narrow hill or berm and realises that it used to be a railway track, and that in his youth he'd stood and watched the train come along it. One of the Goderich (New Age) stories, I think.
Between Princeton and Hope the weather turned to driving rain and gusty winds. Still scenic, but requiring more concentration. Most impressive was the continuing road construction in Manning Park, where the new road face was skinned with rainwater as smooth as a lake, and reflected the yellow and green of the trees as clear and unrippled as a calendar picture. Until I drove over it, of course.
The toughest part of the return trip was finding the New Westminster apartment where I had to meet Mark. This took easily half-an-hour, including driving up and down the wrong street twice, and largely fruitless quests for a)a public phone with b)a parking spot with a block of it.
Would I rather drive the Crow's Nest, or Vancouver? Let me think.

My purpose was to attend the Tournament of the Golden Swan (hereinafter Swan), mostly to spend some time with my amazing apprentice Anne (sometimes Alis, this time Rajpal), partly to help with judging as needed, to teach a class if anyone wanted, and to visit with a few people I don't commonly have opportunity to visit with.
As it worked out, I did sit in on a fair bit of the judging, had only one student (but eager) in the class, and skimped a bit on the visiting because of the judging, which is only loosely scheduled and can go on. And on. Rather like me sometimes.
Did manage a brief escape to buy local wine at the recommended Toasted Oak, though had to skip the tasting room (yes, another, later, visit is a good idea). I was in full 14th c. middle-class woman, with wimple and gorget, and Rajpal was in full Hindu male with turban as appropriate.
Does anyone know a joke that begins 'So, a nun and a Hindu walk into a wineshop...'? It seems there should be one, unless it's the rule of three and we should have had someone else with us. The staff were quite nonchalant about the whole thing.
Particularly appreciated was the chance to talk with Anne about writing, she being a talented writer (and role-player, and so on). We talked about the difficulty of handling dementia or similar mental problems in fiction. Which sparked some thoughts that might deserve their own post. Hm.

The purpose of Swan is to create and portray a medieval persona. Not someone in fiction, or someone who did exist historically, but someone who could plausibly have existed but didn't. In other words, to do for a weekend what the Society for Creative Anachronism allegedly does all the time. Very few people are willing to attempt this.
PARMA does this at our Fort Rodd Hill demo in late June, but as interactions with the public more than with each other. Often the public has no clue what sort of questions to ask, so I tend to make things easy by telling them what I'm doing, like grinding pigments to make paint, trimming a quill so I can write, boiling parchment scrapings to make size glue, and so on. I rarely get questions about what I'd eat for breakfast, how many rooms in my house, the names of my servants, or anything really prying.
Swan is considerably more intensive, though it has the misleadingly cosy atmosphere of a kaffee-klatch, probably due to being only open to female personae. I have several philosophical disagreements with the concept of Swan, but that, again, is another post some other time.
During the presentations and judging, I did some thinking about how the creation of a persona relates to the creation of a character. The Swan candidates, using words only, need to make their interlocuters believe in their homes, their families, their daily tasks, the journeys they take and the hopes, opinions and faith of someone who never existed. Like radio-plays convincing by sound that the characters are climbing a mountain, or in a storm at sea. Like convincing by a pageful of words and three key details that a character is running through the cobbled streets of a medieval city, desperately afraid of something.
It's always in the details.