[This is an in-persona post based on the Challenge of the Traveling Scholar.]
A bow from Sofya Chyudskaya Smolyanina to my fellow scholars on this traveling challenge. My travels recently took me to the Shire of Ravenslake in the north Midlands, where I taught my first class in my challenge on September 17.
Many good people at this event were engaged in teaching and learning martial arts so that they may better defend our fair realm, likely from the nomadic tribes which continue to encroach upon our lands. I, however, joined a small band of artisans in teaching more peaceful arts. I set up camp along a small path and offered to share my knowledge in the ways of leathercrafting to any and sundry who expressed an interest.
In total, I had eight students over the course of the day. The first was a small boy who — while very enthusiastic about hands-on learning — might have given me a gray hair or two under my povoinik. I turned to talk to another student for all of ten seconds, and when I turned back to him, he had found my sharpest and most dangerous knife. No fingers were lost, luckily, nor skin broken, and the other student was patient enough to come back later in the afternoon when the child had been reunited with his parents. She and another student made covers for ax blades; two others made scissors sheaths, and a few more practiced carving and stamping. One student began a small pouch for a brooch, which we agreed she could finish when I meet her in two weeks at a Fox Hunt. Enough students also were kind enough to donate a few rezanas for the cost of leather so I can request more from my supplier for future lessons. All in all, I consider this teaching experience a success.
There was also time to cool my wearied feet in the waters of a small, babbling brook below a copse of trees next to our site. While I now live in the booming metropolis of Novgorod and am used to large bodies of water like the Volkhov River and Lake Ilmen, it reminded me of small brooks that fed into the Dniepr by my childhood home near Smolensk.
Now, I am resting at home. And as the saying goes, at home, even one’s own walls are a comfort. Yet I must look to my books and continue preparing for my next class in another region. Where and when that will be, I know yet not…
Medieval Stuff 