Re: punching hot buttons

["S. M. Thorson" <smt2@st-andrews.ac.uk>]

Poster: "S. M. Thorson" <smt2@st-andrews.ac.uk>

Wrote Elen:

> When I create something for SCA-usage, I look at what research materials
> I have at hand *given* *the* *time* **and** ***money*** *I* *have* *in*
> *which* to *complete* *the* *project*.  Neither factor, time and money,
> is plentiful.

As has already been widely observed, this is true for everyone.  I can
certainly sympathise, since I've just crawled out from under the miserable
unnatural existence which is a PhD student's life. 

On the other hand, there are, as always in life, trade-offs.  People make
time for the things which are important to them.  I LOVE digging around in
old books, performing Stunt Philology <tm> and other such scholarly
things.  It's my profession and my vocation.  Much of my research is done
from a purely professional motivation (the infamous publish or perish). 
But not all of it is - one of the things on my list of projects for when I
get back within range of LC is to trawl through 14th and 15th C. Parisian
guild statutes (published, but not in the collection here) in search of a
very specific piece of information about medieval knitting.  I'm looking
forward to it.  Medieval French is more fun than just about anything I can
name, and it's also not been tramped over with great muddy boots the way
some aspects of English material culture have been.

BUT not everyone feels that way about the library, or medieval French, or
knitting.  So, they don't do that.  Should they feel bad, or defensive? 
NO.

Also, some of us a better or luckier bargain hunters than others - I
recently found 500 g of scarlet Shetland wool, absolutely perfect for my
ongoing stockings project, for 2 pounds at a local charity shop.  It's
very fine and will take forever to work up into stockings, but they will
be WAY COOL when they are done.  I couldn't have afforded to buy it from a
woolen mill, but I was in the right Oxfam at the right time, and made off
with it. 

Maybe if I wanted to be perfectly authentic, I would have researched sheep
breeds and fodder, raised the correct lambs myself according to medieval
theories of husbandry, hand-sheared them, spun the yarn on a drop spindle
and dyed it with cochineal or madder. Then I would have whittled my own
knitting pins out of a hardwood known to have grown in the medieval
Ile-de-France to actually make the stockings.  But that's beyond my skill,
financial resources, and interest, and I doubt anyone will complain that I
used machine-spun and chemically dyed yarn. In fact, I doubt very many
people will even notice. 

> I *also* allow for a really sizable amount of sheer inspiration and my
> own somewhat unusual sense of aesthetics.  I don't wind up with
> replicas, ever.

Does anyone?  Give 2 people plenty of red velvet, copies of the famous
Anne of Cleves portrait, and sewing machines, and then lock each in a
separate room.  They will make different dresses - recognizably based on
the same source, probably, but also distinctly different.

To use my own knitting for another analogy.  There are very few surviving
knitted stockings.  I have documentary records (accounts, etc) which date
knitted socks to the 14th c., but no known surviving artifacts and also
very few representations.  The stockings which do survive are much later,
and all of them, to my knowledge, have the heels rotted out.  Not knowing
how the heels were shaped in period, I have to wing it.  I do my best, but
am I doing the medieval thing?  I don't know.  I also don't lose sleep
nights over it. 

> bristles, to put it mildly, over that.  To be blunt, it ticks me off to
> no end. And it takes a lot of the joy and pleasure and ***fun*** out of
> doing this. 

Rude people are always frustrating.  It may be that they don't intend to
be rude - I've occasionally said things and realised later that they could
have been interpreted in entirely the wrong way, and that someone whom I
didn't mean to offend at all is upset.  Personally, I like to whack the
"but you can't document *that*" rudeness - when it is *meant* as such, and
is not simply ignorance - with "well, actually, have you seen this?" and
pull out something which better supports my take.  The other thing, and
this is hard, I know, is to smile politely, mentally take note that this
rude person is a twit, and cease caring about his or her opinion.

Alianora
*****************************************************************************
Stephanie M. Thorson			|  SCA: Lady Alianora Munro
Dept. of Scottish History		|  Clan White Wing
University of St Andrews		|  Tarkhan, Khanate Red Lion

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