Letter to the Equinox herald, September 2014

The following was sent to the Equanox herald, (northern regional herald for the kingdom of Ansteorra) on September 30th, 2014. This letter was sent in response to several general requests made for an informal accounting of my activity as a consulting herald.

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Greetings unto the Equinox Herald,

I offer this informal account for the month of September, 2014

Submitted recently: 
With the conclusion of September, I will soon be turning over to the Mooneschadowe provincial herald the last of the following list of submissions.

Sigríðr [redacted] name and device
Ewan [redacted] arms for registration.
Thomas [redacted]  name and device for submission
Lilias [redacted]badge for submission
Lilian [redacted] Name and Badge for submission
Elyssa [redacted] ’s arms for resubmission
~ included with this last submission was a letter requesting a waver of the resubmission fee due to extenuating circumstances on the part of my client.

With the exception notes on the last, each client has also presented the requisite check to the local reeve for their submissions.

Submitted previously:
Further along in the process, I also have a badge submission for [redacted] that should publish with the next batch of submissions in OSCAR.

At the other end of the process, we are all waiting (with admitted bated breath) for the next LOAR to publish so that the nearly year long saga that has been the device for Derega Tote can be decisively ruled on, and hopefully registered.

Current projects:
I am still working on one client who is… indecisive on her arms, but I trust she will codify her decision within the next month.  Furthermore, my forensic reconstruction work with [redacted] name and arms are going to be moved to the top of my priority list for October, with the hope of completing them and turning them back into the college by the end of the month.

I am also consulting on another badge submission (this one for a northern household), and offering heraldic procedural consultations on an armory change.

I have two clients  who are best described as at the ‘concept stage’ currently, for both their arms and heraldry at the moment.

One of my newer clients is researching a Mongolian name and arms set, to which I quickly paired him off with someone much more knowledgeable on the subject and extracted myself as the (unnecessary) middle-man in the conversation.

Another client, whose name is registered, is set to submit a wonderfully simple, but elegant device for herself, I am just currently waiting on the information for her submission form so I can fill it out and begin the process with her.

Going forward:
It has been mentioned to me, and rightfully so, that there are serious concerns about the pace of my heraldic activity. More specifically, a good number of my friends within the Ansteorran college don’t want me to burn out. In this, I share their concern, and agree that the current pace of things is unsustainable. However, the facts being what they are, I have begun to formulate a strategy, and mores specifically a pace for myself moving into the future where I can more realistically set expectations with clients, and better manage my own time.

With the current rush of clients reaching its ebb, and the half of the remainder after that only needing monitoring and paperwork, I am in a good position to being setting a limit for myself of three submissions per month. This will let me pace myself, and more accurately project my availability to my clients as time progresses.

Though, honestly, another side effect of this current pace is that a majority of the people who currently want heraldry or names are getting them, ergo, the number of potential clients is greatly reduced from the backlog of people who have been waiting ‘in the wings’ for  ‘just the right moment’ to actually register their name and device.

Realistically, my hope is that by January, I will be in a good position to work on one or two clients at a time, and not be dedicating huge measures of energy to them.

And as a  closing point, I would like to once again state how much I appreciate the work and assistance of the college of heralds, and the Facebook SCA Heraldry Chat group  that has been instrumental in helping me work through many of the nuances and challenges of these submissions thus far. Without the help of the great heraldic community, I doubt that any of these submissions would have made it this far.

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Honorable lord Ivo Blackhawk