East Kingdom Spring Coronation

A few Easterners gathered outside the Armory
Photo by Jenn Surabian Bachour

It's been a while gentle reader, thank you for hanging in there. Today I'm going to tell you a story:

Once upon a time in the beautiful Kingdom of the East, there was a little Shire called Quintavia, and in this shire was a wonderful place known as Higgins Armory.

It was a collection of all things knight - weapons, armor, and period references. It was much beloved by the people, but tragedy struck and on December 31, 2013 it closed. Much of the collection was auctioned off, some went to the local art museum, and the lights went dark in the big steel building on the hill.

I live around the corner during this time, and watched on my nightly commute as it got darker, and darker. One night all the lights were on, and then they never came on again. It was heartbreaking.

Until recently! A developer purchased the building, renamed it the John W Higgins Armory and is working on renting it out. One of my Shire, Perronnelle de Croy, was brave enough to approach them about using the space, and they took a chance on us. We were the first group to rent the great hall as it's now called.

Boyar Aleksei Dmitriev put in the bid for Coronation and asked me to be his deputy. He assembled a team of cooks and staff heads from the Shire and we set to planning. There was a very slight chance that Aleksei would have to be handling issues with his father and we put in place that Siubhan Wallace would be my deputy should that happen.

The site walk was bittersweet. What used to be still echos, but we started to see what could be.

My first site walk in January

I set up a volunteer sign up through volunteersignup.org which is a GREAT tool, highly recommend, and a couple other tasks.

Then a week and a day before the event Aleksei, who had been away handling issues with his father, stepped down formally.

I swear I spent that entire day sending emails. I scheduled a staff meeting Sunday and we went over the plans and any open issues. At that time we had 36 pre-registrations.

Siubhan became by mobile secretary and made any calls that needed doing during the day and checked in with the food folks: Aethelhawk Keyfinder and Cassandra Böll von Bayer. We had cooking nights Wednesday and Friday that I'd previously scheduled in the commercial kitchens of Camelot and Mosaic. I got to work printing site booklets and signs.

Friday was prep day at Higgins from 9-3. Brokk brought the Shire storage trailer (for which we are eternally grateful) and our wonderful Seneschal Matthias Grunewald had gotten the royal thrones and banners for us to prep.

The Barony of Stonemarche lent us their 90 heraldic banners they use in the Armory at Birka (Thank you Master Harold von Auerbach and Mistress Aine Callaghan!) and my wonderful household member Syele von Heidelberg who drove up to grab them from the Seacoast. Perronnelle did an amazing amount of work soliciting other banners and working with the Kingdom Chamberlain to get any kingdom banners to site.

We came armed with ladders but discovered (thank the gods) that the site had a scissor lift which Perronnelle swiftly mastered, marshaled troops, and set to decorating.

Our rental delivery came from Paul's Rents in Leominster (great service and great prices) and the guy running our delivery was as in awe of the place as we were. He kept saying how this had been his favorite place to go on school field trips and how glad he was that the site was being used again.

Perronnelle and Team did an amazing job

This was the first time Siubhan and Aethelhawk had gotten a chance to walk through the building and we quickly realized that the reality of the layout. There was no way we could serve dayboard in the main hall as planned. This had been an ongoing discussion and Aleksei and I had come up with an alternative prior, but until we were in the space with half the chairs set up did it become quite apparent we had to go to Plan B. Beyond that, Plan C, and eventually Plan D.

So this is around 12:30. Aethelhawk, Siubhan, and I walked through what was going to be our prep area and realized the only thing making it the prep area was one sink, which we could live without. So prep moved to the first floor, dayboard and dining to the second, and all my wonderful maps went straight out the window.

Suffice to say I tracked 20,000 steps on Friday, and we got an extension on our set up time and the volunteers which were left quickly got the tables and chairs set up. I then left to go check in on cooking and strategize the new layout at around 7pm. The outcome of that meeting was someone else was going to be running the dayboard service, Weehafoc (Aethelhawk and Siubhan's son) stepped up. (and did a marvelous job)

Matthias, our Seneschal, was there helping food prep. Well, he was running a meat slicer the rest of us were scared of and I may have joked with him that losing a finger is a knightly virtue. When it came out that pre-reg was up to 310 he joked with me that we might hit 500. At this point, gentle reader, I might have said some very unkind things to Matthias, and we all laughed, and laughed at this possibility. I then went off to reprint and redraw all the maps, have my household bartender Tho make me a drink, and sleep.

The shirt I wore all Friday said "Blessed" and I truly felt I was. I cannot say how much I appreciate the work of all our set up volunteers, event staff, and especially Siubhan.

Saturday dawned bright and cool. I tricked my friends into getting up early by promising them a great breakfast at a local diner and got to site. We swiftly and efficiently loaded in and got straight to work. 10:30 I got the news we had hit 475, after last court (first court of the day) started I got the news that we were at 510, and we ended the day at 667.

I only made 14,000 steps Saturday, mostly because I stayed in the dayboard area. Kudos to my parking staff led by Andreiko and ably assisted by Duchess Thyra (the most beautiful of traffic cones) who found places to park everyone, and to our Theresa Giani and our gate staff who swiftly and efficiently checked everyone in.

There were a few fires that needed putting out, but honestly, it went very, very, smoothly. Our shoppers Bianca Anguissola and Elvira Ballesteros found every rotisserie chicken in the area and other supplies to supplement our dayboard intended for 400. We never ran out of food.

I'd also like to thank here Master Malcolm Bowman, the herald for last court. It went on for 3 hours, about twice as long as estimated, which was a good thing. It meant most people snuck out and ate during court and we never had the massive tidal wave we braced for all day. At most people waited 5 minutes for food. That's a miracle with 667 people. A. Miracle.  

I got this shot while running around

Also to the folks who cleaned up at the end of the night. I was along the gallery watching the Great Hall empty. It was like watching piranhas devour a cow. A flurry of activity and it was clean. My clean up rock stars were Sir Colin and his wife Baroness Margaret of Lochleven. They work so well as a team and they just kept going.

I'm still in awe of my team. Such a success!

Jenn and Joe at the site were so wonderful to work with. Anything we needed they worked with us. They truly felt the love of the East Kingdom in how welcoming and respectful everyone was.

I'm sure I'll update this with more pictures and names as I recover mentally. In my mundane life I work in finance, so we're a little busy with the tax season tornado.

And as I said on the East Kingdom page- thank you to each and every one of you who came. Again, I feel blessed to have been able to make this happen.

Thanks,
A Very Grateful Fortune

Shire Yule - Adventures in Event Stewarding

Lovely singing sotelte by Toi de Poisson
The fruit are all marzipan!

I had the blog post about Autocrating/Event Stewarding all ready in late November and then.... well. Quintavia Shire Yule happened to me, and just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. So while I'll finish that post at a later date, I'm going to go over what happened (and how the issues were resolved)

Our Shire hosts a very informal Yule event each year. It's a potluck, donation-only, garb-optional event. It's a great time to encourage newcomers to come check us out and hang out informally with each other.

We also give out our Shire awards known as the Keeper awards: The Keeper of the Light, Keeper of the Chalice, Keeper of the Torse, Keeper of the Silver Rapier, and Keeper of the Golden Arrow. Each Keeper has a physical token for their award, for example: I was awarded the Keeper of the Light of Quintavia in 2012 and took the lantern with me to events until it was my time to pass it on to Lady Rosina von Shaffhausen.

So in the early summer at a business meeting when asked if anyone would like to organize this event I volunteered. We've held the event at the same church for about 4 years that I have been to, and it runs relatively the same way each year. Should be easy.

The church where we hold it has a new admin who is in the office for a half day once a week. Emails were exchanged months beforehand reserving the space and requesting contracts. When running an event I very much like to drop off paperwork in person, but the admin insisted I send it by mail to the church's PO Box in town. So I went off to the Post Office near my work and dropped it off.

The Sunday before, after a business meeting where another event steward complained about having issues contacting said church for another event, I emailed her about getting into the space an hour earlier than we'd agreed and found out our contract and check had never arrived and she'd given the space away to a church member for a function. This was Wednesday morning. The event was on Saturday.

I had a moment of blinding panic and then starting making calls.

Thankfully, my protege sister Lady Simona bat Leon lives in a co-housing community with a large hall and commercial kitchen. She was able to get us in for a slightly shorter duration but it was free. Her neighbors are also geeky and made more space for us and moved their bi-weekly gaming session. It was only once I'd found a new site that I contacted our new Seneschal Mathias Grunewald and let him know about the changes. I also emailed our Exchequer to stop the check. This goes back to my philosophy of always having a solution when reporting a problem. Had it taken me longer to find a site I would have alerted my Seneschal at that point, but there is no sense inciting panic in more people if it's avoidable.

Then I set to work changing the Facebook events, emailing the lists, and updating the Shire Facebook. I had to wait until I was at a desktop to change the event announcement on the East Kingdom site. Our Chronicler changed the Quintavia website for me. But within two hours I had updated all media I had and let everyone know.

I celebrated with a Job Well Done Iced Caramel Macchiato.

I had also been working on site tokens for the event inspired by the lovely Morgan Donner. She had made woodcut paper crowns based of this painting:

Peasants at the Hearth by Pieter Aertsen 1556

Mine were faux woodcut because as much as I love my hobby I'm not investing $50 in block carving tools for a free event, instead I invested $2 in a couple felt tip pens.

I started out with a sketch:

The sketch

Finished panel #1

Finished crown

I colored over the sketches with a basic felt tipped pen and included marks to make it look like mistakes in the carving and variations in the width of the lines. I made the panels fit on standard 8 1/2 by 11 paper with about a half inch overlap, 3 panels per page, alternating our Shire heraldry and a jewel. Then I used the magic of the photocopier and made about 50 of them.

I think they came out great and we had a great time coloring them and putting them on.

Lady Bianca Anguissola

Lady Elvira Violante Ballesteros

Archer Dave (Lord Mikail) and I 

Bianca and I 

I also made little star ornaments for the occasion out of air dry clay with the help of my household member Lady Syele von Heidelberg and her amazing tiny cookie cutter collection. The star cutters were intended for bento boxes or fondant icing similar to these. The stamping was done with a cookie stamp kit.

We meant to make like.... 40. We made 100. Thankfully I only stamped them with the word "Yule" and not the year so we can use the additional ones next year. I may paint them, as the clay did not dry as white as I would have liked.

How Syele and I left them until I got creative at 1 am and decided they needed stamping!

I used a cookie stamp kit I had to make the impressions and then baked the clay for about an hour in a 150 degree oven. 

Finished ornament, mine now hangs in my cubicle. 

Oh yes, and of course during set up I locked my keys in my running vehicle while putting up signs and had to be rescued by the good people of the Berlin Police Dept. That was the icing on the cake. AND YET I would love to run this event again.

But it all turned out beautifully.

The tablescapes using a mix of Shire servingware, House Strangewayes green glass collection, and festive red ribbon. 

Shire members enjoying the wonderful food

The kid's table. Where I ended up sitting somehow. 

Toi's gorgeous sotlete, which moved, chirped, and later sang 1950's classic hits.
I am trying to figure out how to upload the video I have of it. 

It was probably the best Yule we've had in years, we all sat and talked with each other and the shortened time meant we could all be there together. Lady Toi de Poisson outdid herself with the most amazing dessert, and she truly is a treasure. 

So remember - whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. But you will survive it.