Freezing Rain

What a blah day out there...we have not seen the sun for a couple of weeks! Everything is covered by a half an inch of ice. The car's windshield wipers are frozen into crystal sculpture. Very pretty if you don't have to figure out how to free them without breaking them! Yet, I have to go out today to get my allergy shots...an annoying development which keeps me going into town every few weeks whether I will it or not! It would be nice if I could combine my shots with going in to teach my classes, but honestly, trying to fight off an allergy shot AND teach a class...I don't think I have the steam....grin! These are not benign little pollen allergy shots, but rather life threatening doses of the stuff which has killed me in the past, and it has to be strong enough to almost kill me again. (no Jennifer and Zlanth, I still reflect in a mirror...the miracles of modern paramedical technology are illustrated every time I stand up and walk around!) The stuff knocks me on my heels for a day, and often the whole next day as well. I call it a shot of 'instant stupid", and is better than a half bottle of Bacardi's to shut down the creative bump.

The picture is from last September....I went to Marmora to show off my armouring. This is a pic of the horse stall they set me up in! Very pretty! Good thing the event was outside....those felt tapestries were full of some mustiness which made everybody cough.....a white mold, probably non-toxic. A couple of days hanging in the sun probably fixed it up. S'long as they are kept out of the damp, they are okay. Those tapestries have a long history. They had been in the offices of the Ren Faire, and never made it out to the auction....understandable since they were soaking wet at the time. They had been made for a big company and had been in trade shows all over the world. I felt it was a shame to see them go into the dumpster...they look all right though don't they?

Well, its past time I got some work done.

Full house

This was the scene of mayhem as we attempted to teach a full size class of 25 people to handle swords. (Well, okay, that is an old pic....but indistinguishable from last night!) I love large classes. Trouble is, they make it difficult to give everybody their proper amount of time.

I read somewhere that there is a rule of 10%...that is to say, ten percent of the people use up 90% of the resources in any "system". I found that I spent most of the hour on only 4 or 5 people. Then I found that if I actually dis-engaged myself from that person, that another instructor would quickly latch onto them for much the same reasons that I did. A few poor students get the most attention, the better ones don't get any attention.

There is a lesson here I think...I wonder if it applies to the working world. The less input from the boss, the better you are doing. That was never really MY feelings though...normally as I plugged away through the working world, the boss would watch, and let me weave this elaborate rope with which he would eventually attempt to hang me. Maybe I just had "difficult" bosses...or maybe I was always destined to be gallows bait. Maybe the 10% rule doesn't apply in ALL cases...grin!

Ah well...I was quite pumped last night....lots and lots of people. We filled that room! And good people too! I did an informal survey; about half of them found out about us by word of mouth...a friend had taken the course, most of the rest had seen the posters Jean had plastered all over the College, and a few had actually read the literature the college had put out. The fact that 4 of them had read the literature was encouraging....that info was printed on pulp paper, and was published and distributed for last September! They had hung onto it all this time! Remarkable!

Anyway....today is a full day of armour making....my shoulders are twinging in sympathy already.

(Oh, and Jennifer, I did vote...and the Conservative party got elected. This should be interesting...the first Prime Minister NOT from Quebec in half a century! We have a 4 party system here...the body politic having fragmented over the years. It is also the second minority government...in order for the party in power to pass a Bill, they have to get more than their own party faithfulls on board. This allows elected Members to have influence even if they are not in the "ruling party". It is usually a good system....for awhile. As long as nothing too dangerous happens....)

Let it snow, let it snow let it snow!

(click on images to enlarge....)

The top pic is my back yard today at around noon. The bottom pic is Nate's armour, finally all done. The faulds don't look too bad. They are all laced on, no buckles on the front. He might change that...but this is ready for delivery right now.

Armour.

Got this finished yesterday. Not so bad...I think!

I am working on the faulds....that is the skirt part. This is just the top part. This armour is 1/16th of an inch thick (16 gauge), hammered out on the block, and shaped on the anvil entirly by hand. Then it is sanded with 80 grit, then torched all over to make it a nice "plum" colour. The clear coat lacquer will keep it that way for a few years! This one needs another coat of lacquer...some scratches from the construction exist...but a square of tee shirt cloth soaked in lacquer thinner will soften and blend the scratches in the lac ( a five minute job!).

Teaching Today!

Today is the first day of teaching the Basic Chivalrous Sword Handling course for this year. I have got several calls from people wondering what they should wear.....I wear Tee-shirts and rugby pants....and runners. The Kenjuitsu CAN be learned wearing a gei and a Hakama, but for the basic stuff like this, it is sufficient that you wear comfortable clothing, and to BE comfortable. I have this head cold which means that I won't be getting up close and personal in the takedowns, I just hope my throat will handle the "lecture". My love of talking is going to be severly tested.

Other than that, I discovered that the armour I am making for a nice fellow in Maine is actually too small! Too short in the back, actually. How annoying! Oh well, an extra piece in the back plate always looks good. I'll try and post pictures of it tomorrow.

Happy Ukrainian Christmas!

Its the 12th day of Christmas, and the "real" Christmas, according to most Slavic countries who follow the old calendar. I could have made a whole big old blog about this day, and how we Ukrainians celebrate it, but the wizard over at the Wizard of Oz http://othersiderainbow.blogspot.com/ has done a fine job of doing just that! Its worth the trip over the rainbow to visit....I promise. Tell him I sent ya.

The illustration? Oh just some old book that I just can't read......my folks never saw fit to teach me Cyrillic. Pretty neat armour though huh? Very Narnia like... Interesting, the heels on the boots. Clearly horse people.....
as usual, click on the image to enlarge...if anybody wants more like that, email me, and I'll send 'em to you. I have about 4 or 5 engravings like that one.


Merry Christmas everybody.

The daily grind

(click on image to enlarge)
Went to the auction last night. Picked up a couple of items....a wrought iron piece, a poker I think, and a fire tongs. the fire tongs were pretty plain, but the under bidder wanted them. So, I got the poker for half of the 12 bucks I paid for the lot. Thats all right. I am SUCH a Ferrengi....grin! I have GOT to put up a place on my web site for all these auction "finds"...I keep buying this stuff for re-sale, and liking 'em so much that I keep them.
Today, building up a nice 2 piece back and breast plate. I am so looking forward to getting my English wheel running...it will reduce the pounding on steel dramatically! Well, thats the plan anyways! In some ways I like the pounding....makes a nice pump in the arms, strengthens the grip. However, I can only do this for about 2 hours a day, spaced out into 4 half hour sessions. Makes for a very unproductive day! It only takes about 8 or 10 hours to make a 2 piece cuirass, but if you can only work on it for a couple hours per day, well.....the orders start to stack up! Since today is Saturday, I will be getting visitors. Jean V. will be dropping in to work on his armour...2 years in the making...it is the "stick to it" attitude which I really admire.
Well, "to horse".

The Last of the Four

Here we go....the last of the four helms for Wisconsin. I emailed the fellow, and am awaiting his verdict.

Did anybody else see the history of the Sword on the History channel last night? Quite interesting....a lot of very nice sword work. Its funny....I love swords, I even teach sword handling in much the same way as the fellow on the show did, but I firmly believe that the sword was more (in his words) "iconic" than useful in the medieval battlefield. In my opininion, it was seldom used for its intended purpose. Maybe that is just as well....
They had a lot of nice armours there as well. A nice barrel helm much like the ones I made here. A couple of nice helmets which stood up to a lot of hacking. And a gorgeous sword being made in the finest Anglo-Saxon tradition...absolutely gorgeous. It took the smith 2 weeks to make it. I am a little surprised he got it done so quickly!
Well, back to work for me....a couple of hours of rolling the edges of a nice breast and backplate which will end up in Michigan. I'll try and get pics of that up here when they are done.

Here is wishing everybody who comes and visits the very best of the season.

Barrel Helms part deux

Well, here are three of them, ready to go. Well, actually, two and a half....one of them still needs work...the top one. All the pop rivets must now be changed over for solid rivets, now that everything is in place! (thats what apprentices are for!) I also stil have to do some file work to decorate up the eye slot a bit. Have to be careful though...too much file work can render it unsafe! (An SCA Marshal tries to fit a broomstick into the eye slot. if it goes in, it is unsafe. I believe this is done when the occupant is out.) I tried to make it as much like as an American Eagle as I could, and still let it be good and European medieval. It looks kind of crummy close up but the crowd can see it just fine, and it is certainly distinctive. The lion on the middle picture might confuse people though. You can't really tell what they are from 40 feet away, hopefully the lion has spikey enough legs to make it different from the smooth eagle wings.

The bottom one is kind of neat. With those 12 gauge face plates, you don't need a centre bar to keep things from shifting around, so I did some file work on the edges. The top point was an aesthetic mistake, but for vision, that extra quarter inch cut out makes all the difference. The vision in this helm is stunning...you put it on, and the metal is so close to the eyes that it sort of disappears. I don't think it needs any brass work, or any further finishing....it looks different from all the others, and it is functional. It is doing its job...

The last of the set will be a brass Fleur de Lys on the brow, and that's pretty much it. Maybe I'll get that done today! These little details take a LOT of time...but it is time I quite enjoy useing up. These are not especially pretty, or especially artistic, but they are interesting, visually exciting, and they illustrate how a little customizing will go a long way to make a plain helm into a good looker. None of these nasals took more than a couple of hours to do.

English Wheels are finally in!

(click on the above to enlarge)
I know, getting new English Wheels is nothing to really get excited about, really, but woo hoo! That was my big shop purchase of the year. And I also know that almost nobody has a clue what an Engllish wheel actually IS! I'll put pictures up tomorrow, but for right now, I am just happy to finally get this tool I have heard so much about for so long. It is a fairly simple machine....A flat wheel 2 inches wide, and 8 inches across forms the top wheel. The bottom wheel is a bowling ball...or rather a slice of one. The metal is moved between the two wheels, and they magically form the steel into, oh, a fender, or a breast plate. Well, that is the plan anyway.
Major piss offs, aside from the inch of ice on everything here.......Fed Ex ground. Honestly, I have never had so many problems as when I started using Fed Ex ground. Its no cheaper than UPS, but it seems that one in 8 shipments goes wonky somehow.
Oh, enough bitching. The day was lovely, trees looked like they were made from glass! I had a rare case of sunlight glinting off the ice covered branches, with a gentle snow squall. Couldn't quite see across the St. Lawrence River for the snow.....it was so pretty! And tonight! My Ed the Sock Hot Tub Party. Hope all my blogging buddies can make it....should be a perfect evening to blow in the new year.

The cartoon strip? Well....it seems that my friend Rxxxxxxx was one of the actors at the new vendor run Ren Faire which took over from the professional faire this last summer. There have been dozens of oddball things happening...people outright lying to us is only one of them. (The bare faced lies is why I am not putting money into this show.) I am blown away by the fact they actually ran a faire...but when you think about it, how hard is it when everybody is behind you? The vendors all will do their part, the beer pretty much sells itself, so where can you lose money? Especially when you don't pay your actors! Rxxxxxx and many other actors simply did not get paid. And so a dream crumbles.....

Christmas week!

Oh My Dog, its Christmas Eve! How did THAT sneak up on me so fast?
Its been a busy busy week here at the armoury...made 5 helmets in the last two weeks. Above is a picture of a few of them. They are not done yet....they still have to have the front Nasal bars put on, and some decorative brass work. Right now, they don't look pretty and chivalrous...they just look mean! I didn't really plan it that way...its just the way the new face plates come up, giving the eye slot the flat inward facing triangles.
Those face plates have big 3/4 inch holes in them so that the wearer can actually breathe in this helm. First one I made out of 16 gauge....I found that I could bend it in my bare hands....all those holes took the strength out of the face plate. Into the trash it went. Made one in 14 gauge steel. Better....but still needs to be supported in the middle. Client liked it, but I didn't think it was as good as the 12 gauge I eventually made these out of. (The smaller the gauge number, the thicker the metal. A stop sign is usually 14 gauge steel just for comparison purposes.) These are true battle helms....tough enough to withstand a guy with a baseball bat! Fairly roomy inside, about 3/4 inch of padding needed all around or else it rings like a church bell.
These are going to support the Wisconsin Renaissance Festival. The owner is a really nice sounding Dude, who is looking to get a troupe armoured up for, oh, just general purpose armoured soldiering. Human Chess games, Royal guardsmen, that sort of stuff. He wanted it to be good enough for anything. He's getting that!

Well, a couple of hours on these helms....then maybe seeing if I can find some "Peace and Goodwill Towards Men".

Merry Christmas

Christmas.....

(Dunstan made this!. Click on it to Enlarge)

Got the tree up, and decorated. We are using the new LED lights...they make all the difference for peace of mind. No hot bulbs....and you can string as many on as you like, they won't load down your circuit.

Small things to amuse a small mind, I know, but what can I say...I am so full of the mellow joy of christmas I can only say Merry Christmas....drive sober...and don't feel obliged to make EVERY cookie Jennifer....or drink EVERY beer Zlanth. Well, maybe scratch that last admonition.

Anyway, not a bad picture of me up above there. It was at the Ren Fair, oh, three or four years ago, and this little girl came up on my deck, took one look at me, and screamed. Then hid behind her mother. This was very disconcerting. Her mom told me that she had never seen a man with a beard before. (Oh, the horrors of modern culture!) I knelt down to her level and said to her mom's knees...you didn't scream like that when I brought you your presents last Christmas eve! The sobbing stopped. A little eye peeks around the mom's knee....Santa? she asks. Of course I reply....this is what I do during the summer when there is no snow! She came out all the way and asked me who I was giving presents to during the summer. I gave her a candy (I always had baskets of candy out for the taking) and explained that during the summer, the daddies all want a toy. But daddy toys were usually big, sharp, and dangerous to anybody who is not a friend. (chuckles all around). then I said...Now take your daddy and mommy next door to look at the musical instruments next door. Those are toys for mommies. And they have big gong you can ring! (groans all around).

The top picture is what I looked like at that show! Click to enlarge it...my beard was magnificent and full..like Moses' beard! The nice lady is Myrna, my neighbour...she showed up without telling me she was coming...the stinker! That show was in Toronto, a good 7 hours drive from here at home in Ottawa!

Night all....

A clean house....

Brenda is getting ready for a fun filled holiday season. Hopefully some family time with my brother, and a good time during New Years! She is happily making ice cream this week. It is so cold out that the ice cream tub (which needs to be chilled really really cold! And we gots that this week!) lives outside. I want to make apple cinnamon oatmeal ice cream, my signature dish. She will be making vanilla cherry, and lemonchella ice cream. Also, with luck, rum raisin ice cream. There is something about home made ice cream which sets it apart from store bought...I think it is that the eggs are fresh instead of processed. I will be getting sooooooo fat this Christmas!

Maybe I should bake cookies...though I think I am getting a shipment of cookies from a professional chef in the Toronto area of my aquaintance.

Well, back to work. I think Brenda has some curtains to hang....

Love.....L'Amour.....

(click on image to expand it)


A broken heart is a terrible thing. A fellow in Western Mass. left a diamond ring in a dude's car...with a note that perhaps it will go to somebody who knows love. Its a 15 thousand dollar ring! Oh My! This story here...http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051216/od_nm/ring_dc;_ylt=AghJjuG3tmJNK2u22NjjC_8uQE4F;_ylu=X3oDMTA3NW1oMDRpBHNlYwM3NTc-

And of course, my blogging buddy Pei Ling over at http://peebrain.blogspot.com/ seems to be an angel with a broken heart. I have featured her poetry here from time to time....if an old Cossack like me can enjoy it, it must be special!


I carry your silence
In my heart
I wear your image
on heavy glass shapes.
It is scratchedand worn
in perpetual soft focus.
Your silence is
a dull bladethat I gut passion with.
Each cleft crushesmore cleanlythan a clean cut.
Your image is an overlaythat I tween with razors
Too few pixels were sampled,so you are left,a flawless gouge
on my left breast.
I carry your silencein my heart.
Sometimes I forget it exists.
Sometimes it b-b-breaks.

Web sites! Arrgh!

Nothing like a computer to enable you to do an hour's work in only six hours! Finally finished updating the helmet section though! What a job! Lots of new helms (well, new pictures anyway) and a few things moved around so as to make loading quicker.
Everything that could go wrong DID go wrong! I actually dropped a file! Butterfingers, I could see doing that in an office with a manila folder, but a computer file? I was moving it from point A to point B, and addidently dropped it...somewhere on the 'puter. Not sure where. Had to use the "find file" function in order to track the little sucker down! It was buried down somewhere in the "quicken" files.
Then I discovered that these three files which to my eye are the same, are actually not recognized as the same by the links! Helm1.JPG, Helm1.jpg, Helm1.jpeg...... Consistency! I need consistency!

Got a couple of games at auction t'other night. One was Myst, and the sequel Riven. I have decided that Myst is the most boring game since watching the Montreal Expos! Not exactly point and shoot! Waste of another 2 hours! I just kept going to see if it would get better! It didn't! I think it would be more entertaining to use the CD's as skeets!

Brenda has been in court all day. She is not a witness, so she just went for interest sake. (The lady next door is accused of setting fire to her house) She was all alone at the courthouse, hearing all those awful things said about her. I personally don't believe she did it....at least not intentionally, but as soon as mental health is brought into question, the whole world just seems to turn against you. Brenda spent the time holding her hand, and letting her sob. Either she or one of her personalities did intentionally burn the place out, or it was simple carelessness with a cigarette. Either way, she lost everything.

People say....I can smoke if I want to...there is no evidence of second hand smoke hurting anybody. Well, how about second hand fire? Half the fires in Canada are directly or indirectly caused by smokers. Even kids playing with matches....where did they get the matches from? That alone would be a good reason to re-think putting a burning weed in your face. But judgement is not mine....I can only try to understand.

Weird and dumb!

Moose stories are always good! (Thanks to Oz for the above pic!) Canadian traffic jam....

Below is the story of two drunken moose. Not sure why I find this funny, but somehow......

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2005/11/14/1306604-ap.html

Then of course there are dumb and dumber! The dumb story is this one....

OSLO, Norway -- Norwegian pizza deliveryman Vegard Sjaastad saw a familiar face when a customer handed him a Visa card.
It was Sjaastad's own credit card, with his picture on the back of it.

Complete story is here....http://www.theksbwchannel.com/food/5483008/detail.html

And the dumber story is here. Being blond myself, I can see how a visit to a hollywood home would imply some cocaine. And if I were an "aspiring model" (presumably wearing a tee shirt with a logo saying "who needs brains when I have these!) I might figure that the large block of cheese on the coffee table is actually a brick (OMG!) of cocaine. And if I was "REALLY REALLY STOOPID" I would hire some dude to kill the owners of said coke, er, cheese, in order to rip off the biggest high I could imagine in my wildest dreams! But... it gets worse!

Read all about it here.....http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/1206cheesy-plot06-ON.html

Now, THOSE stories should put a smile on your face!

Oh Bloody Hell!

(Viking helmets...out of my shop....click on pic to enlarge)

(to the tune of Oh Holy Night)

Oh....Bloody Hell!
The whole shield wall is crumbling!
I fear that soon I shall see Odin's face

Yea, there it goes, the foe is over running
There's little time and I can't find my mace

A ray of hope, my weary brain rejoices
For up there dawns the salvation of my hide!

Fall on your face! Pretend the foe has slain you
Then shiv him in the back, and then
Run, run like the wind....

That shiv, that friend of mine,
oh dear old shiv, that friend of mine...

flagrantly plagarized from
Strygor Von Talmutz from his songbook
"A Viking's Christmas in Wales"
(bet you thought I had mercifully forgotten it didn't you!?)

Fine bunch o lads (and lassies)

Tonight, this bunch of reprobates will be training in tricksy ways to play with live steel! Yaaay!

Well....its...what I do.......

Shakespeare and Spam

I don't believe it...got a bill from my server for extra traffic. Great, I though, more web traffic, means more hits right? Um, no, this was email. "You mean this extra 8 bucks a month is to cover the email? But 90% of it is spam!" It was delivered nonetheless....and therefore you are stuck with it! (actually, I deleted 69 messages a moment ago, leaving four real email messages!
I don't think thats right.......lets tweak the spam filter up a bit! There, that should work!

But honestly, eight bucks a month! That is, like, an extra hundred bucks a year just so I can hear how the Hoodia Plant will...hmmm...what WILL it do? Thats over and above my regular half a grand a year service. OMG!

I will have to do something about this!


On a related note, has any of my loyal readers downloaded a "re-director" while blog surfing? Last week, it seemed that every second blog I surfed into was a variant on a porn site. They were interesting (No, not in THAT way!)because they could not be bookmarked, and when I tried to cut and paste the URL's into a complaint letter, my Windows would crash! This happened twice, and again on a Norton scan...so I do not believe it to be a co-incidence!
(A dozen times through with Adaware, Spycatcher, and Norton (oooh..it didn't like Norton or RegCleaner!) seems to have cleared it.



-------------------------------- Shakespeare on Spam (by Anonymous)

These several airy unnamed messengers
Do daily cram my inbox bursting full;
And with a battery of promises (Of manhood's lengthening, safe and natural;
Of sites whereat strange couplings may be seen,
Or beauties nubile as the law allows;
Of meetings with old schoolmates, none of whom I've spared a brace of thoughts for these ten years)
Make sifting out my correspondences A passing trial.
O, take care, my friends!
The rambling jest you send has like been seen Ten times, forwarded by some jackanapes;
And sooth, I'll not contribute to a chain
But risk the lapse in fortunes an I don't.
Of all conveniences, these are most meet:
The Bulk folder,
"Select All,"
and "Delete."
_________________Please help support BreakTheChain.org Visit the Chain-Breaker's Gift Shop

Helmets

Here are a couple of rough and ready helmets I am sending to Chicago and Wisconsin, respectively. Not by best work, but then, these are NOT the haute couture of armour making! Actually, I didn't like the size of the holes for breathing in the bottom helmet (imagine breathing through that!) and made them a little bigger since this pic was taken. The brass is a Scottish Thistle.

I was supposed to go across the border to to ship these today...I usually combine my trips over with stuff with picking up stuff Stateside. However, UPS (the USELESS PARCEL SERVICE) seems to sending my incoming packages all over the Eastern United States! Fascinating! I'll go Friday. Instead of going to see Harry Potter.