and yet even more archery.

So, lets do the bullet point thing, shall we?

• Got a call from my arrow maker, the order I placed has shipped, meaning I will have my own set of professionally made arrows in time to shoot at gulf. 
• I went and working with Derega today for close to three hours, fletching the last of the provincial arrows. Not a terribly fast process, and not what I would call "fun" but the company was good, and we were watching a Pairot marathon, compliments of her Netflix account.

These were my last three arrows, fletched and ready to fly.



Derega was working on sealing her personal set while I was watching the fletching glue dry.

I think this was the third or fourth one I did. It was something of a learning curve for me.

These are the group arrows, all seven dozen of them. Note the different paint jobs on the shafts, compliments of several different people.

 

 

When my first attempt didn't turn out so well, Derega stepped in.

 

 

And a little bit of heraldry here; while Derega's official armory is still being worked through the college of heralds, she used some of the elements of the design to personalize her own personal set.

 

Some of the detail is lost in the photo, but you can get a good idea of the work she put in. She had a full dozen of these, each one with this design.

And her arms, for reference.

And last, but certainly not least;

• I spoke with Derega today, and she officially took me on as a deputy archery marshal for the province. The goal here is the train me so that I can apply to take over the role of marshal when she departs in the fall after graduating college.

Lord Ivo Blackhawk
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"God save the King!"

Some more arrow making

The knock and one fletching are completely gone,
and most of the second fletching is as well

After arriving home form work yesterday, I received a message of Derega, our archery marshal, inviting me over to come and help paint some more arrows.

The truth of the matter is that I had had a horrid day at work and needed to do something constructive before I said something highly "unproductive". The invitation was well timed, and headed that way after having dinner with my family. 

When I got there, the first thing she showed me was the rests of the first test firing Several shafts had had their heads knocked off, but one in particular has suffered a catastrophic failure. The knock, most of the wood attached to it, and one of the three fletching were ripped clean off the shaft. Derega said that the funniest thing about the destruction was that the wood around the fletchings exploded  on impact, not on the rack itself.

So, the first order of business that night was to recreate an arrow with that pattern so we could replace what we had. I used the painting jig like before, and even found my old pattern guide on the table to help me space the paint properly.

The white bands on each end of the color more or less vanish in this photo. 

After that, I set to work on the next dozen. I decided to keep them cleaner and simpler than the first set I painted, so I stuck with my heraldic colors (nothing wrong with signing my work, right?) and slowly worked my way through the set. It took about an hour to do all twelve, but I wasn't in a hear hurry. A good portion of the time was spent talking, it seems that our good archery marshal had not exactly had the best of days herself.

In the end, I had a dozen freshly painted shafts that looked sharp, and were easily identifiable.


The night was as much about conversation as it was about archery, and all of this was while we were listening to/watching "Into the woods", on her Netflicks account.

I seem to recall there only being one dozen shafts left to paint out of the 200 shafts we purchased for the group. Wonder who will paint the last dozen?

Lord Ivo Blackhawk
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"God save the King!"

2014 is going to be a busy year!

I would post my news and information here, but it belongs on my site so I invite everyone to go there and check it out.

Lord Ivo Blackhawk
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"God save the King!"