Highlights and observations about Crown, Nordmark and Sweden

I love visiting Nordmark, and enjoy every trip - even when one of us has been sick. I've always been treated with great kindness and courtesy, and every visit reminds me of the high standards for medieval recreation that Nordmark enjoys and considers routine.

I think it's partly the SCA culture, but partly from the Swedish love of crafts and making stuff, where kids are taught knitting, textile arts, woodwork and other skills in school as core curriculum. Aside from chocolate, the nice souvenirs (not the tat) are linen and wool textiles, woven, knitted, felted and embroidered, along with small wooden items like boxes or cheeseboards. I'd have gladly spent a week browsing fabrics around Sweden

I once told helwig that I got one year of domestic arts in school, at age 13, and she said, 'that's far too late! we spend one year on knitting alone!'
( natter natter )

My first (Pelican) regalia

At Coronation in January HE Eleanora gave me a box of Pelican tokens made by Lord Vrank in Frankmark.

I finally finished a hood (actually this was me refurbishing a hood that was given to me - new silk lining, new shoulder and back gores to widen it, new front opening instead of pullover, new cloth buttons and - cheating - I attached a length of fingerloop braid on the edge of the opening for 'buttonhole' openings) and stitched them on.

It proved warmer at Crown than I expected, so most of the day I wore the green gown and undergown without the plum surcoat, and the hood over the veil. For the procession I wore my heraldic cloak.



I hadn't realised just how much the gold silk glows in certain lights.