Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Beginnings

Hi, and welcome to my new blog ! This space will be dedicated to my adventures and experiments in the SCA, the Society for Creative Anachronism, if you are not familiar with it.

First, a little about me. In the SCA, I am known as Kirsa Oyutai, and have been active since January 2007. My personna is Mongol, from the Altai mountains, set somewhere around 1200, at the time of the great mongol conquests. I received my AoA on February 9th 2013 and am an archery marshall since September 4th 2012. I have made a request to become a protege of Magister Godfroy de Falaise and received (as a total surprise) a reflexion belt from him at the FĂȘte des Glaces on December 7th 2013.

Master Godfroy de Falaise and me at the FĂȘte des Glaces
Why did I choose to document this journey ? I tought it would be a good idea to keep track of documentation, experiments and all manners of goodies all in one place, for me or whoever else would be interrested to view them.

Why now ? Scadians most likely have the answer from the title of my blog already. For others, in the SCA, there are three main paths to follow, the one for combat / Knighthood, the one for arts / Laurels and the one for service / Pelican. Since I am only starting out on my path, I used a play on the word chick to describe me as a girl, but also as the small chick nourrishing itself from the pelican in it's piety (a classical medieval pelican depiction showing the pelican wounding himself to feed it's chicks).

I have not planned to limit this space strictly to the service aspect, but to the whole medieval experience. I will most likely post pictures and resumes of events, of classes I took or taught, of simply what excites me at the time.

Next event, Birka, for the first time ever !

A market day at Birka

We're back from Birka !

Shopping happened, fun was had, friends were hugged and Birka Plague was avoided (at least, for me), yay !

Driving was kinda long, but it was all worth it. We didn't see a whole lot on the road, except beautiful snow capped mountains and lots of trees. Getting in the hotel was another story, as we kept bumping in people we knew. One of the biggest highlights of the week end, is that my brother Eginhard finally made it to Birka at the last minute, and he made it into a surprise. It was great also to meet Mariota and Conogan, who had made it all the way down from the maritime.

After getting our stuff in our rooms, we checked out some of the merchants who were open already on Friday night. Eginhard found a nice enamel chirurgeon medallion and I bought two jewelry items, a brooch and a pendant. We then went to eat at a local restaurant, who's specialty was pizza.

A deer brooch and a caribou / deer pendant from Raymond's quiet press
And pictures while we waited for our lunch