Fan Expo

The Fan Expo comes around every year.  We did well this year...darn near sold out of stock.  Thats a good thing.  There were a lot of problems....the day was stinking hot, and the lineups were sometimes very very long.  Even the convention centre had problems....the security personnel limited every venue at one time or another simply because of the huge number of people exceeded fire marshal requirements.  (The Fan Expo web site has posted an apology).  On Saturday morning, the lineup stretched from the CN Tower  to Union Station four deep.   The lineup to see Summer Glau never got less than 100, and you had to buy tickets to get into line for Bill Shatner.  I didn't see very many short lineups for autographs....last year there were times when some of the celebrities were twiddling their thumbs, but not this year.
     The guests of honour were many and varied...from William Shatner to Ernest Borgnine.

 

Doug Sneyd was there again this year.  He was one of the old guard at Playboy magazine...(if you look closely at the enlarged picture above, you can see some of his work.. his remarkable and easily recognized  pencil art decorated the magazine from 1962 until the present.  Above, I am posing with Doug and Tess.

This is a better picture of Tess Jewell, the brilliant, and remarkably decorative lass who spent the weekend showing off my beautiful armour.  I did not succeed in getting any firm commissions, but the year is young....she handed out more than five hundred business cards to interested Zena wannabes.

I'll post some more pictures when I get my camera charged....grin!

Saturday. Already!

Gracious gracious me...is it Saturday already? What happened to the last three weeks?
Well...lets see....in no particular order...

Got flu shots, went to the States twice to pick up and drop off orders, taught the last of the Monday and Friday fighting classes, and am progressing well with the Sunday classes, built a breast-back-tasset-and fauld combo in 16 gauge for Riley, designed and built angel wings for Chris, (check out the armouring blog...http://southtowerarmouringguild.blogspot.com) built breast-back-tasset and faulds in 18 gauge for Chris, built vambrace-elbow-rerebraces, as well as cuisses and knee cops for Chris, helped Mark build his cuisses, arms and articulated knees for his wedding, went to a wedding, ran a tournament involving slashing pumpkins to death, got a medical appointment (blood pressure is okay) and a dental appointment (got a filling collapsing into toxic mercury slush), got snow tires on the car and I'm sure somewhere in there is a night or two of sleeping.

I could not have done it without the assistance of Mark, Jenna, Rob, AJ, and of course, Brenda.

Now I have to winterize the motorcycle...but first....a last bike ride! And on the 28th of November no less! Oh My Sweet Potatoes, that will be a cold 'un! But I just gots ta do it, just to say I HAVE! So in a couple hours, I'll drive to my friend Jim's place for his surprise birthday party. That should be fun!!! Cold enough to freeze the nuts off a steel bridge, but still, fun!

Now that the pressure is off, we are getting ready to travel on what is not "quite" the trip of a lifetime, but it "should" be a good one! Jeff and Andrea will be looking after the ranch while we are away, Mark will be in the shop finishing up his armour, and Brenda and I will be bouncing around countries in Europe like billiard balls on a glass table!

So what do I have to do in the few days remaining? Hmmm. Pack. Make appointments with curators in England and Malta, finish up a chain mail coif for Alan, update my web page with a nice new front page intro (www.southtower.on.ca) appropriate for winter in Canada, and try to support Brenda who is actually doing all the work around this place. I'll be posting updates on this blog on a fairly regular basis over the next few weeks....in lieu of postcards. Don't know how many pictures I'll be able to load up, but we have a couple of gigs in the memory card on the camera, so I think I'll be posting the diary, and filling it up with pictures in January. This has worked well in the past.

Oh, and for what it's worth...the helmet up at the top of the page is not mine...its a commercial helmet to which I attached wings. You don't think I had time to actually make that helmet too did you?

Busy week...

The last couple of weeks in the shop were really odd...I finally finished those swords for the Guard...some were really bad. Other were not too bad, but I had to do my own plating this year since I could not find anybody who could nickel them to my satisfaction. Check one on my professional development. I also did some experimental heat colouring of steel. The scrap breastplate below was the result of that experiment. Check two on my professional development. This helm which had been mocking me for almost two months suddenly figured out how to be fixed. Hey, I'm not proud...I'll accept the accolade. But two months...should have been less. But I was preoccupied.

A sword which should not have broken, broke. I am not thinking of welding it back together since although it is very nice, it may have other problems with it. I hate returns.

Jason and Austin seem to be enjoying themselves in our last advanced class at the Plant Rec Centre. Austin and I decoded one of Talhoffer's moves, so score three on my professional development.

I am not quite sure what to make of that smiley shield of Jason's.

Though he does seem to be using it with a certain amount of aplomph.

Most of these activities are detailed in depth on my other blog...the "armouring blog".

The Longest Day, the Shortest Day

Yesterday, Tanya gave her husband the ultimate fortieth birthday present...a string of interesting things that all became part of a quest. He is a Dungeon and Dragons gamer, and a great lover of fantasy swordsmanship and so forth. She had been planning these quests for quite a while now, and back in September, she asked me if I could give a little lecture on how to fight with swords. In two hours. As part of a quest.
I reminded her that my art is a real art. And that it will take more than two hours to actually learn how to do this for real. But after I thought about it for a bit, I decided that it "might" be possible to get a few things into their skulls, and provide a memorable day.

And I am sure it was. They showed up, tired, hung over, after spending an evening in the Ottawa jail, and a couple of hours at a local reptile zoo (learning charisma and snake handling), then they became mine for two hours. It was great. They will never become swordsmen after only two hours, or even after ten. But, they had an excellent time. They learned a couple of strikes, a couple of blocks and parries, how to salute, and they got to try on some chain maille, and a full size suit of plate armour. That alone would have been memorable, but I added in a half hour of accuracy training (cut the pumpkins with the sword. The seeds go flying. The crowd goes wild.

It finished up with me knighting them, giving them their "knightly buffet" (a more or less gentle slap in the face...mostly less), their commissions (actually clues to move onto the next part of their quest...a food quest I believe) and they wandered off, no doubt wondering about my sanity for doing this for a living.