Mid-November Update Time!

Right, so, it's been a couple months and I figure I should ramble for a bit about what I've been up to.

Mostly, I was trying to go from "outline" to "actual real paper" for a paper on (shock!) Fabris. I entered it in the competition at St. Elegius last weekend. It was scored in the "okayish" range - I have a very scientific and technical scale here - and I did get some feedback. I'm planning on reviewing the feedback, thinking about it, and using some of it to revise the paper for A&S Champs in February.

That was a lot harder than it really needed to be - my focus has been pretty shot lately, so buckling down to write was hard. Still, I got it done and edited and submitted, and I'm pretty proud of that. I lost in the research paper category of competition to Elena, but her research kicks so much ass and we were both super excited for the potential to lose to the other.

I also competed in Christoffel's Martial A&S challenge at St. Elegius, using some of Fiore's dagger plays to illustrate the structure of the manual. (And to get a chance to show off some plays that are flagrantly illegal for use in SCA rapier, which is always fun.) Jean-Michel won that with his sweet Lichtenaur play, though Christoffel was really excited to grab me later and tell me about how close it was, which was very nice of him to do.

Other than that, I'm primarily working on trying to Get Good at Fabris' single rapier. I think the biggest issues I keep running into are maintaining good opposition, more dynamic body movement, seizing the tempo, and breathing.

Yeah, breathing. Anastasia keeps pointing out to me after every couple of passes we fight that I need to remember to breathe. I don't think I do this when I'm doing Tournament Fights, just when I'm thinking too hard when I'm practicing. Still, it's worth fixing and isn't too hard to work on. I figure that I'll go back to working on guard transitions during my evening drill time, and remember to breathe during them.

Outside of that, I keep spending time with cloak! Besides needing a longer and heavier cloak (and given the weather lately, that would be nice to have for not-fencing reasons!) it's really all about getting used to the movement of the arm and trusting the drape of the material to protect me like it should. It's a ton of fun though, and I really appreciate why Fabris loves it so much. (Besides the fact that they were ubiquitous and never outlawed, unlike daggers in some places.)

I'll probably pop back up on this after Rapier Champions, unless I have more thinks before then. Which I might, never know!