Sunday, April 12, 2015

Pent 2015

Well, it probably should rightly be titled A&S 2015, but as I entered pent this year (apparently that's not normal in one's first big A&S event.. seemed reasonable to me!), this year was All About Pent.

Pentathlon is hard! 5 entries, 6 presentations (one overview and then a period of judging for each piece). You're talking about your work /all day long/. Which is at once awesome and amazing (and throat rending.. NB: bring ricola next year), and a smidge rattling when you get near the end of the day and you look at a simple entry and look at the judges and go 'yep. It's .. er.. lard. There's not much to say about lard.'

The final slate of entries ended up being the aforementioned lard (rendering pork fat into lard), knitting stockings, a carved drinking horn, pysanky and the tape lace bobbin lace hanky.

See? Lace hanky. It and the eggs were the pieces that made people pause and go 'ooh!', which is fair. There's few people who do either. Socks are socks, a beginner horn isn't exciting, lard is /really/ not exciting, but eggs? What's up with the eggs!? And lace? Most comments on the lace involved variations on 'you're crazy'.

Which is not inaccurate. ;) I came away from the event with nothing but warm fuzzies. My judges were helpful and enlightening, people were interested and respectful, everything went smoothly (the bumps of forgetting two of my pieces at home, and having two pieces judged in the same time slot were minor hiccoughs, we coped. My husband is a saint.)

I loved it, I am delighted by the winner, her stuff was amazing (both other entrants had great work, losing to either of them was no hardship whatsoever.)

I did manage to finish Secret Project #3 (I'll make a whole post about him soon). A little crowned penguin for Her Highness.

Doesn't every almost queen need a knitted penguin with a crown?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I was totally into the lard! :)

Mahault of Swynford said...

Your lard was actually pretty awesome! I think it was one of the coolest entries of the day- something totally medieval and so domestic. Plus, it was lovely and clean looking.

Grab me at an event and maybe we can chat! I make soap and kind of enjoy talking about weird stuff like that :)

Mahault