A Brooch...

I was awarded the Silver Brooch at East Kingdom 50 Year. I am grateful to their Majesties for including me in the Order of the Silver Brooch. I know I swore when I went up there. I know I was completely surprised - my dear Lord Guinemer did a wonderful job of keeping me in the dark the whole time.

I've been working on my arts lately, pushing myself to do better research and produce more correct documents. I know what I'm striving for now - deep authenticity in my work. A little winter bird asked me what I wanted out of my path. I almost choked when she asked me, partly because I knew at that time what milestone was coming soon on her path and partly because no one had actually asked me that before. I've thought long and hard about the question Mistress Christiana asked me that day and I have an answer now.

I want to produce works that are complete. What I mean is that I want to create something that when anyone views it gets a complete and total sense of the time period the work is from. I want to include the specific little details that make a piece period - glossing, marginalia, short hand, etc. I want a piece that I create to look as full and alive as the exemplars. I also want to create pieces that are original, that look as though they're another page of the book, not exactly *that* page of the book. Eventually, I want to help other people do that too. I want to be able to do a thing so completely that I can teach it. After all, what good is knowledge if you don't pass it on?

That's the goal of my path. There are many people I want to learn from to achieve this. I don't know if I'll ever wear the belt of one specific person, or a belt at all for that matter, and that's ok too. This doesn't worry me, or bother me. I want the knowledge and skill more than anything else.

So now comes the fun part of achieving my goal. It's all art, and that's the best part. Research is art. Painting and calligraphy is art. I feel like I took a good step with the Deed scroll. I also feel like the Deed scroll fell short in some really important areas. You'll have to read my documentation to get that info though, it's too long for a blog post.

(I feel like there's a Muppet's song playing in the background now... 😄)

So this is me, on my way. 😊