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2006-04-07 - 10:30 a.m.

I'm finding it very difficult to introduce myself to the scribal community in the west though, since I don't want to introduce myself with "hi, I'm Celynen, I have a Laurel in C&I". I've explained in this blog before that I try to be subtle. But sometimes I'm apparently too subtle, like at last night's scribal practice (I went to one I hadn't been to before, which meets over near my parent's house).

I'd brought the boy, so I really couldn't get any work done. And the scroll I brought only had the underlayer of paint down (hey Taffy, I promise your Pel scroll will be done before the kid starts college ;) You can't really tell the caliber of someone's work when there's only one layer of paint to go by... So, when about saying it was based on a 1570s English Patent of Arms. Someone asked about my gold leaf, I said it I used 22 k loose leaf. Someone asked about the kind of size I use. I explained that I prefer this French brand but that I can't get it here, and I used some cheap crap from Michael's and that I didn't like it because it was too thin, and so I'll probably go back to making my own. Hmmm, thinking about it now, I missed a great opportunity to be less subtle. I should have said that I prefer this French brand that I got as a gift for my Laureling...

Mental note, if someone every asks about size again....

Anyway, I was there for a few hours, trying to jump in and add comments that at least made it sound like maybe I had some advanced knowledge on the subject. But I was sitting there with a scroll that looked very much like the layout used on their new "pre-print" templates and people mistook it for one... so people assumed I was a new scribe (heheh... and come to think of it, I had a hand in making those templates what they are, since the person who created them did so after she came over to my place and I showed her tons of medieval LPs, GoAs, and AoAs and started in on my "why don't we model our scrolls after period Arms scrolls and not manuscript art?" rant)

I must work harder to sound learned... but that's really hard to do while one side of my brain is occupied with keeping the baby happy. I think I end up just sounding like a "know it all", which is really NOT the same thing ;)

Oh well.

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