Welcome to my Very First Blog Post

 I have toyed with the idea for a while now...creating an online blog to share the things I create. It was recommended by many people I respect that I should have an online presence with regards to my experiences in developing my skills as it relates to the SCA arts and sciences. 

It's funny that I grade other peoples writing skills as a Teaching Assistant and grad student so wrriting this seems a bit weird. I do feel I need to compile, collate, and document the many, many things I have made in the past decade of actively playing within the East Kingdom of the Society for Creative Anachronism. I was quite surprised at the volume of objects I've made either to build my 15th century French persona, Lady Juliote de Casltnau d'Arri (I feel sorry for those who have to read my name in court) which is why I go by Lady Lilou. 

People as me where Lady Lilou came from. I started playing again in 2012 after 25 years of marriage, family building, then divorce number 1. I was like all newcomers, excited about ALL OF IT!! Wanting to do ALL OF IT, ALL AT ONCE! One of the first things I wanted to do was develop my persona based on my mother's maiden name, Julien. I asked her where her family was originally from and she said as far as she knew, it was Sorrel in France. That is where I started. I discovered that it was in the Toulouse area in the Langdoc region. My first SCA name was Julienne de Langdoc. While pretty, did not meet the criteria from the College of Heralds. You see, in order to get your name to 'pass' it has to be historically accurate and while Languedoc was accurate, Julienne was not, at least not in the 15th century. I worked with my Canton's herald and we went back and forth for about a year through which I was called my Julienne, Lillianne, etc. At some point, this morphed into Lilou and not Leeloo from the 5th Element movie played by the beautiful Mila Jovovich. When my heraldry and name were finally passed, I was officially Lady Juliote de Casltnau d'Arri. You see, Juliote was a name from the Languedoc region of southern France in the 14th and 15th centuries. 

It took a few years of borrowed garb, over a thousand Pinterest pins from online manuscripts, extent images of medieval garb, recipes for oak gall ink and paint, embroidery and beadwork to figure out, I liked to make pretty things. I use my creative outlet to calm myself (when I am not scrambling on a self destructive procrastination time crunch) and create...something. 

My work as a grad student and teaching assistant take up much of my time but I do find moments to make a piece of, while I would not call it art, art. I have extreme imposter syndrome when it comes to writing so this is a challenge for me. My goal is to get more confident as I work through the backlog of objects, scrolls, and medieval garb that I have made over the last 13 years. 

If you care to join me on my journey, you are welcome. I make a mean cup of tea and will even share my to die for cranberry almond cookies!