#sword journal

[cwen-northwick]

Some glamour shots of the new rack! She's hickory and bloodwood. In person she's a very lovely deep amber and warm maroon, but with every picture I've taken the colours have been very different. Collapsible and the exact length of my shortest rapier so whatever case I get for the blades, she'll fit into nicely. Not sponsored, but Doug from Hold My Sword did great work and I like it a lot. Thank you, Doug!

[rotbarts-travelchest]

Sword journal, some date in the bpast

2.5 hour kings champion bear pit

Three hours of demo fighting

Still can't protect my face properly but I'm getting better at everything else

Death now

[cwen-northwick]

Power out in my home. After sundown. Candles insufficient for reading. Wife has claimed the portable game console. I decide to do some rapier drills to pass the time.

My roommate's cat, a cranky and mercurial beafte, arrives to inspect my form. Humouring the beafte, I gently boop her upon the muzzle. She parries the blade with respectable form. Thus she is this evenings drill partner.

She is, gratefully, indulgent enough to allow me to repeatedly tap her collar with my point (we are, of course, practicing form and neither speed nor power). She is also, gratefully, playful enough to continually move away from and bap the blade, keeping the drill from becoming rote and requiring continual readjustments.

If you have access to an indulgent yet combative beafte, would recommended using them for drills.

[cwen-northwick]

You

Yes you

The Lovely Reader reading this

Do you struggle with self-esteem and savoir-faire and panache and positive self talk? Use this

O N E W E I R D T I P

To improve your 🪙💰VALUE💴💵💶💷 as a fencer today!

When you've done 🐕💩 in a fight and and you've been stabbed IN👏 THE👏 HEAD👏 more times than your concussion says you have and your lunges are sloppy and your footwork is clumsy and you want to talk critically about MY FRIEND who is also YOU, THE LOVELY READER READING THIS, instead of doing that you turn to your opponent and you push out your chest and you say

"My dear, my love, my sea of stars! How elegantly you disengage against my blade! How agile yet languid your steps! Your offhand is decisive whether dagger or buckler or the Noble and Inimitable cloak. Your technique is a guiding light that ever shall I chase."

And then you

Shut

Your

Mouth

This will earn you 💋love💋 and 👨‍🎓respect👩‍🎓 and 🗡️prowess🗡️ and 💑community💑 because everybody will enjoy fighting you so much that your PERCEIVED LACK OF COMPETENCE will be outweighed by your EXPERIENCED ABUNDANCE OF GRACE and also Their Majesties will kiss you

On

The

Mouth

And if they don't then you will continue this technique u n t i l t h e y d o. #nohetero

Send tweet.

[cwen-northwick]

I am rather disappointed that the biggest local tournament is kicking off tonight and I am going to miss it. This will be the last time I qualify for a torchlight tourney and the first time I could fight in one, but it would take me away from wife less than week before our son's birth. Worse, there is a melee happening, and despite being the rapier commander for my canton, I am unable to represent them for it. It is the first of many sacrifices I will have to make for my wonderful child.

Fortunately, my loving but distant friend Cwendoline Bunbury--the sole cadet of the famed but ailing Master Earnest Bunbury, OD, WS, no relation--has just come from the country to visit us, so together we shall study the blade among the wildflowers of the Ansteorran prairie until the disappointment fades and leaves only soreness of muscle and fullness of heart.

[cwen-northwick]

I was very kindly gifted a new blade at War of the Rams. A local BoM had finally grown tired of my sword blading ways and has taken it upon themselves to solve the issue. Sometimes I worry that I'm not really part of the community, that I'm still just an awkward little kid at the edge of the playground, but it's hard to argue when someone wants you to play with them enough they bequeath a weapon upon you.

The girl is missing some parts. I was gifted a blade, and a hilt, and precious little else. They are in need of some cleaning and the rubber tip appears to have fused with the blade somehow, but otherwise what is present is in good condition. Some elbow grease and new pieces and she should be a fine addition to my arsenal.

The blade is a few inches longer than my previous weapon. I believe the blade is about 41" or 42" but it's difficult to tell precisely with the tip still on. The tang is shorter and the base is thicker, so I think she'll need a heftier pommel to counter-balance elsewise she'll be quite front heavy. She tapers quite strongly along the blade also, and I imagine that will effect blade control somewhat but I confess any assessment I made would be a guess. Some more wise in the ways of blade construction tell me what it signifies.

I've no budget for new parts at present. I shall be visiting my father tomorrow and he has a lathe that he has agreed to let me borrow. We'll fashion a new hilt in short order, and though it will not be the best piece, it will be a start. The pommel will take some time to source, so I suspect she may have a wing nut affixed and called sufficient until I can acquire something better.

In the meantime, I've elbow grease to spare. I've been semi-bedridden this week, having caught some dreadful malady of the lung whilst at war and my body itches for something other than laying in bed and coughing. So tonight I took out my sword sponge and took to scouring the metal.

The blade is much improved I think. There are still some marks, but I think it may take a sand blaster or the equivalent to work those out. My father owns such a creature, and I've a mind to run the hilt through it, but I doubt it will be big enough to fit all four feet of the blade in it. I'll use a chemical cleaner and then some oil to keep the grime for coming back. That will need to wait until after Father and I have finished manhandling the pieces tomorrow so as to spare me from having to clean it twice.

In all she's coming along nicely and I am hopeful about how her new garments will turn out. I will be back with more photographs once I have aught to show. I think sometimes about what I would do if I could never fence again. A nice stall at the edge of the lyst where I maintain swords has a certain charm to it. Would any of my Lovely Readers want to shop at Lady Cwen's Blade Atelier?

[cwen-northwick]

The first tournament I ever attended was Queen's Champion for Nicolette in 2023. It would be nearly a year before I received my fighter authorisation. I remember floating around awkwardly between the few people I recognised, sitting away from the actual tournament for fear of being in the way, and when newcomers were called, I was too shy to actually go up in court, and simply watched as others got a welcome that was intended for me also. Yet I enjoyed myself and dreamed of the day I was fighting alongside the sea of faces I would come to know there.

It should be weeks until my son arrives. Perhaps even days, if the sober warnings of our doctor bear out. I will be stepping back from fighting for a while. I suspect I will need to pause my sword journal as well as my tournament career as I tend to the boy. I shall still be at practices, though they will be fewer. I fear my time will not be what it was. It is well then that my final event before this change was also Queen's Champion.

My first bout was loss to a Master of Defense. I was praised by the spectators for not dying to his first attack as is so often the case, he being famed for a fast and long initial strike. Instead I tied up his blade and made him work to find openings. My second bout was a win against a Gentle who described themselves as new. They did not yet own an offhand, so I left mine on the side as well. I dealt with them handily.

My third fight was again against a Master of Defense. The first pass was a loss, but the second I was able to lock up his blades. I rotated into prima and over his guard. With a nimble drop of my tip, I came down and struck him on the collar bone. However, in the closing, my shield drifted just out of position. He was able to sneak a dagger past and caught me in the gut. It was a double and my loss. Except that I received praise for that strike for the rest of the day.

My fourth fight was against a White Scarf. She took both my arms in the first pass, and my leg on the second. While on the ground, I cleared her blade and made my strike, but my tip glanced off the visor of her helm instead of landing. In that tempo she struck back and I took another loss. My fifth fight was against a Knight of all things, but a cadet as well. In our first pass, I startled him and his reflexively struck me in chivalric style with a percussive blow that landed on my buttocks of all places. After three rounds--with him continuing to apologise for such an illegal blow all the while--I took only one point from him while stepping into his strike twice. Both of these fights I am cursing myself for such rudimentary failures. Point control and rushing: things I should have long ago trained out of. Alas, so it goes.

My final fight was against a Dear Friend. When I first joined the SCA, they were the one who taught me how to fight. They showed me how to spar, how to use the equipment, and what things like White Scarves even are. They were my first back then. They were my last fight now. I wanted to use Queen's Champion as proof of everything I learned these past three years. There was no better fencer to prove myself against than them. In truth, I hardly remember our passes. I could not tell you what tricks I used--only that I came in, kept my shield engaged, and struck. Two short passes and I had done it. I had defeated them in honourable combat before the Queen and everyone. I embraced my Dear Friend and related to them how much the victory meant and what it represented. They assured me we would fight again as we made one final trip to the lyst ministers.

I was elated. Perhaps the many MoDs and the Scarves of the day were yet beyond my skills, but none could deny how much my skills have grown. My closest companions were with me and congratulated me on my many good fights, I could finally doff my many layers of hot armour, and I could await court with a light heart.

And then Court happened.

[cwen-northwick]

There is an other side to the frustration of a skill plateau. Failing to progress at the pace you would like is, pardon my French, a big downer, but when you finally do make the breakthrough you've been looking for you will find joy also. The skill plateau is not just failure but also success. You may need to recalibrate your understanding of success though.

I lost most of my fights last night. Practicing mostly with white scarves will do that. However, my technique was still an improvement over where it has been. I stepped into shots less, I made fewer impossible lunges, and I was less provoked by obvious bait. After our fights, one taciturn Gentleman took off his helmet and he had the biggest smile I've ever seen him wearing. I got a number of compliments on my performance last night. Even if I wasn't winning, I had still improved. I have been focusing on my defense these last few weeks and all three of the white scarves I fought remarked on the progress I've made.

Could I have performed better? Theoretically yes, were I a person with a better technique or physical conditioning. But had I improved from where I had been? The scarves seemed to think so. It's a matter of reframing what success looks like so you can truly know where you are on your path. To borrow some mathematical terms, kills are discrete but improvements are continuous: winning a fight is an arbitrary metric that doesn't have gradients of success--you either did or you didn't-- but improvements have infinitely many little success to mark them by. If I only gauge my progress by the fights I win, I miss all the little steps on my path that I've taken.

And it's okay to take little steps. Life is not a movie. There is no singular moment where the ghost of my mentor speaks to me in a crisis and suddenly I have perfect technique and save the day. There's very few paradigm shifting breakthroughs in real life. But there is fighting better today than I had yesterday.