Novice Schola - Teaching Time!

This weekend I went to Novice Schola for the very first time! I had three goals for the day: keep my cadet, who was autocratting her first event, sane and alive; play tour guide to a group of new people for whom this was their first/second event; teach one class and help teach another and have the students enjoy them!

Liadan did a great job autocratting, and the event seemed to go very smoothly. She had a lot of amazing helpers.

The new people took several classes and seemed to have a good time! They were relieved when I discovered that I did not need to go to court (although it turns out that Liadan got her baronial service award, but no one told me about it before hand :( ). I think they all came out of the day with new skills and a better idea of how the SCA does things.

And the classes!

First I assisted with an Italian fencing class that Remy <link> was running. We had a pretty good group - I think about 12 people with a wide variety of skill levels, from "never held a blade before" to "cadeted and otherwise fairly known in the community". I think that everyone got something out of the class - whether it was basic blade work or the specifics of Capo Ferro. Certainly they seemed to enjoy it. My only regret is that I had to leave a little early because my two classes were back to back. Luckily they had a woman would go around and give a 10 minute warning near the end of each block.

The second class I taught was my first official embroidery class! I took all the work I'm been doing recently and ran an intro to goldwork class. Of course, for being at a Novice Schola my class was full of everything but. I think the newest person had still be embroidering for well over a year. That was fine with me - I was prepared to teach the basics, but this left more time for the actual goldwork portion. I do wonder if that means the class was a little scary sounding for someone who hadn't ever embroidered before and if I can do something to help with that.

So with a full class, I carefully set aside the knowledge that several of these people had been embroidering for longer than I knew the SCA existed and pushed forward.

I handed out kits and had them set set up their hoop and trace their design while I babbled about historical goldwork. And I really did feel like I was babbling - I jumped around more than I wanted to. The handout was nicely divided into examples, and thread types, and embroidery terms. I think that works for the handout, but it certainly did not work for speaking. Which is fine, but I need to be more prepared for that next time. While I talked about the threads and styles I handed around the items that I've made throughout the years, including unfinished projects from classes I've taken. The Opus Angelicanum (side note: learn to say that without stumbling) seemed particularly helpful to see in person (and incomplete). There were some epiphanies about how the patterns are made in metal backgrounds.

I had all my metal threads too, and passed some of those around. I almost forgot to do that part. I think it would be better to start with those and the thread types and move onto the pretty objects afterwards.

Then we went into actual embroidering. I had given everyone one bobbin of metal thread, and offered a second strand to people who wanted to do two at a time (which was almost everyone). In the future I think I should just give two bobbins of metal thread from the get go. The free thread tended to get in the way.
In general the embroidery part seemed to go smoothly. The main sticking point was lack of time. I should have had them start while I was still talking - which I know, from my own class experiences, but I got focused. One of the students also suggested this, and of course she's correct. But we had time to talk about crossing points and corners, and thanks to that 10 minute warning I managed to talk about plunging right before the end. I usually plunge all the threads at the very end, but I should probably have them plunge their beginning thread during the class, so that we don't have a chance of missing this Very Important Part.
When we talked about turning corners all I had to help people was to say that it is difficult to keep the two threads parallel and to be careful. Well, almost as soon as I got home this showed up on my feed. It's a collection of tutorials for goldwork by Ruth O'Leary, and one thing she suggests is couching down each thread individually at the corner to keep them flat. Which is, of course, simple and brilliant. So if any of my students are here, I suggest that!

All in all, it was a great experience and I will be excited to do it again. I've also been thinking of what I could do for a 102 class - I might try to do a class on cutwork. At some point, far in the future.