Karen and I went to Panhandle Skirmishes this weekend. It's an annual SCA event up near Tallahassee, which Trimaris uses as practice for Gulf Wars. While neither Karen nor I fight, we went up anyway, primarily for a combined party for Earl Gregory (thirtieth birthday) and Ser Severin (twentieth anniversary of joining the SCA).

Lisa was pretty happy about the fact that Sev thought the party was just for Greg; she likes surprising him. She got her own surprise when she was called into court and made a Baroness of the Court for the years of service done for Trimaris and Wyvernwoode. Sev was quite happy for her, joyfully throwing his hat up in the air, then stunned as he was made a Baron of the Court as well. The crowd cheered several times, the awards being overwhelmingly well received (with the glaring exception of a certain lemon-faced countess and her dwindling gaggle of apprentices. Life lesson, kids: jealousy does not make you look pretty).

Of course, after Court they were immediately set upon by pick-thanks; one such flatterer fawning obsequiously over Severin, apparently forgetting that he'd been calling Sev an asshole just a couple of weeks earlier. What gets me is that these people obviously believe they're coming across as perfectly sincere.

The party, though it got off to a late start and the camp turned out the lights on the path through the pitch-black forest, was well attended and full of interesting party games (including, of course, Simon Says). I met a very cool Ansteorran Knight (and territorial Baron) named Pendaran, who told a story about a very prim and proper Ansteorran Laurel that shocked me to the core; apparently, she's very different in a non-SCA context. It's great to interact with Ansteorrans outside of the ArtSci hall at Gulf Wars, where the atmosphere tends to be needlessly adversarial.

Karen looked great in her new bodice; I've really got to get off my butt and finish some new clothes (and, while I'm at it, tighten the waistline on my old clothing; using safety pins to take up the slack is getting tiresome, and when I put heavy things in the pockets, it tends to pop them open).

Speaking of pockets, I thought the ones in my half-finished breeches would be too big at 16 by 14 inches, but there's still room to make them much bigger. I think that for the next pair of breeches, I'll have to see if I can re-create the feat of the man who, with "breeches very full", was arrested and brought before a judge, where he "drew out of his breeches a paire of Sheets, two Table Cloaths, ten Napkings, foure Shirts, a Brush, a Glass, and a Combe, Night-caps, and other things... saying... your Highnesse may understand... I have no safer a store-house, these pockets do serve me for a roome."