1. A&S War Point
I never thought that I would get to participate in a war point, so I was very happy to have had the opportunity to be involved in this one! Happily the East/Mid won the A&S point, and I came in the top three artisans on the East/Mid side. A very good day and a great experience. I hope the war point happens again next year.
Article from the EK Gazette about the war point.
2. A&S Display
3. Artisan's Village
I participated in both the peace week and war week glass Artisan's Village again this year.
4. Classes
Of the 3 classes I taught, all seemed to go well. I taught Recreating Historic Beads as a Beginner for the second time this year. I fixed an issue from last year, where I had too many separate handouts, something with made the class a little disjointed. I reworked my handouts so I only had 3 this year, and the flow of the class felt better.
The class on Reproducing Glass Beads Using Archaeological Reports was an expansion of a previous class. I added in information about how to find these resources based on feedback from my peer, and it was exactly what the class needed, I think. The attendees seemed to find value in it, and I know at least two people who I talked to came because they were having research problems with a specific project they were doing.
The last class Recreating Anglo-Saxon Glass Beads was one I taught for the first time, and it was my first hands on class. The 45 minute lecture at the start on Anglo-Saxon beads was well received, and made the class useful for those who were not able to secure one of the hands on spaces. It was nice to be able to use the research and documentation I conducted for A&S competitions to teach a class. However, I learned the most from teaching the hands on portion of the class 1) people of widely varying skill levels will attend this class. I had people who just learned to make a bead at Pennsic and people who were intermediate bead makers both in the class. I was prepared for varying skill levels, but I didn't think I'd get brand new bead makers in the class! 2) Get extra helpers or a co-teacher! There ended up being 8 set ups for people to use to make beads, which was more than I thought I would have. This was great, as more people could take the hands on part of the class, but it also meant that I had to help more people at the same time. Luckily, Erica was there and graciously agreed to help, as did another advanced glass bead maker who attended the class. 3) I think that next time I will choose just a few few beads (each of a different skill level) for people to reproduce, rather than letting them choose any bead from Brugmann's book to work on. I will also demo those beads before letting people play. This way I can focus a bit more on teaching people how to really look at the bead, considering its shape, color, measurements, etc. before recreating it. I talked about this a bit during the lecture, but did not demo it.
