Crown Tourney

I spent Wednesday and Thursday reviewing what I had written, trying to catch errors and smoothing the rough edges. Today I printed off a couple copies of Sleeping With the Wolf to hand off to the proof readers at Crown. Even as I was making the copies I saw a few errors in spacing. Darn! Well, I'm not going to change anything now. I'll let the proof readers get back to me with the errors they see. Tomorrow I'm off to the Northshield Crown Tourney. With the icy rain and snow (hello, spring in North Dakota!) I'm afraid the roads will be bad. A friend and I are leaving at 6:30am to hopefully be there by 10am for morning court.

What is a morning court and a Crown Tourney? I'm so glad you asked!  I'm in a historical re-creation group called the SCA. The SCA is an international organization that studies and recreates the Middles Ages and Renaissance just for fun. There are members all over the USA and Canada, and Europe, Japan, even Israel. The SCA has divided up the areas where members live and play into Kingdoms. I am in the region called the Kingdom of Northshield. Twice a year an armored tournament is held to determine the next King and Queen. We call that the Crown Tourney. The fighters are paired up and the winner of each bout advances to the next level until only two fighters are left. The winner of the last fight is the Crown Prince or Princess. Yes, women can fight and enter the Tourney to win the Crown. Not everyone in the SCA is a fighter. I am not a fighter. Many people do other cool things like brewing mead, making armor, sewing historical clothing, embroidery, woodworking, singing, jewelry making, blacksmithing weaving, cooking, spinning, book binding and illuminating books by hand... Just about anything that was done in period is done by someone in the SCA now. I myself am involved in various fiber arts like knitting, spinning and embroidering. I also make my own costumes. If I write that a character is wearing a Viking Apron Dress or a 16th century Florentine gown, you can believe I have a pretty good idea what that is like, because I've researched it, sewn it and worn it. See? Here's an example of each:

For more info on the SCA go to my Kingdom's homepage http://www.northshield.org/  or the Corporate homepage at http://www.sca.org/.