Things that have been occupying my mind

Now that's it's over, I can talk about the Big Thing that occurred earlier this week.

Back in March 2025, I competed for the first time in our kingdom Arts and Sciences Champion competition.  I wasn't expecting to win, but was told I was in the top 10 of all entrants.

Spring forward a bit to May, where I was asking to be on the team for the A&S War Point.  There are 10 spots with 2 taken by the King's and Queen's champions.  I was blown away to be asked and thrilled with the honor.

I was pretty confident in my knit pillow, but knew I could improve my documentation and my display.

I need to give shout-outs to everyone who let me stress-babble at them, were willing to read and reread my documentation, offer suggestions for improvement and all the support.

Taking into account suggestions from the feedback from the kingdom competition, I started two experimental archeology projects.  These were a matched set of cuffs, 120 stitches each, knit on identical sets of double pointed size 0000 (1.25mm) steel needles using the same 50/50 wool/silk blend I used on the pillow and two colors of 100% silk in the same weight.  This experiment was to compare/contrast the different in the fabrics with knitting in the round as the original pillow was done versus the flat knit on my pillow and how the yarn showed the elasticity/stitch definition.

Another suggestion that I worked on but unfortunately backfired on me was a slideshow.  I had everything prepped, but didn't realize I had to have it saved on the hard drive because I couldn't access my online stuff.  Lesson learned.

I added more information to my documentation and doubled the size of my paper.

I was as prepped as I thought I could be.

Monday morning I was awake bright and early to get everything to my table down at the Great Hall at Pennsic.

My scheduled judging was for 12:30pm which gave me time to go find my teammates and offer support/hugs to them as well.  I didn't really look at the other competitors because I didn't want to psych myself out.

I talked to a lot of people and truly appreciated everyone who stopped by with hugs, tokens, kind words, etc.  It was a very supportive atmosphere.

Then my judging happened.  As nervous as I had been with the kingdom competition, this felt so much tougher, even though I wasn't as nervous.  Weird, right?

I had four judges whom all had some fiber experience either knitting, spinning or embroidery though I think only two of them may have been fiber Laurels.  

My presentations, as much as I wanted to think it was organized, was not.  I feel like I jumped around and was disjointed.  The documentation had been provided to the judges a month ago and it seemed like all of them had read through it at least once.

At the end of the conversation with the judges, I felt I had done 'okay'.  Not great, but not horrible either.

The judges all seemed enthusiastic about my project and what I had tried to do.

Mistress Beatriz from Atlantia was the A&S General for her kingdom.  She made it a point to tell me that when she saw my project title, she fought to be one of my judges.  She also came back to my table later and offered me her card, saying we "absolutely had to keep in contact".

Now I got to wander around and look at the amazing displays.  There was one person who did amazing embroidered gloves, another with some incredible woodcarving and to my delight, the individual who taught a class on Asiastic spinning (that I missed) and this was her display.  I've got her contact info and want to ask a whole bunch of questions.

One of my judges, who seemed the most detail oriented, came back to offer me some commentary.  I won't go into it here, but I was a bit caught off guard at how unrelated/unreasonable some of the commentary was.

Packed up my table and went to chat with my teammates.  We got a group picture which delighted me.

Then I got to cheer for the 6 (out of 10!) Easterners who won their categories in either Laurel or non-Laurel divisions.  Pretty incredible for the team since there were 39 entrants from the known world.

Of course I was disappointed that I didn't win my category.

I haven't read the commentary or seen my specific scores.  My reasoning was that there must have been something missing from what I did/displayed that the judges were looking for.

This was a unique experience but I'm honestly not sure if I would do it again.

I'm going to set aside my A&S stuff for a bit to concentrate on a couple of other projects and will dig back in later this year.