In Attendance: Patrick (Seneschal), Nora (Reeve), Chantelle (A&S), Shannon (Herald), David R.
Apologies: Katherine (Web), Wendy (Chatelaine), Rob (Marshal), Nicola.
Absent:
Meeting Opened: 6:32
Reports
Reeve: See Quarterly report.
Herald: I've signed up for the appropriate lists and received everything off Patrick, but haven't really done anything yet. However, I've now completed handover to Nora for Reeve, so watch this space!
Marshal: [He's gone to France for Battle of the Nations. We hope he comes back.]
A&S: A few of us will be teaching at the Darton collegium.
Sewing is going well and happening not just on Mondays.
Monday is now a regular sewing night.
A and S is moving around in what seems a successful way. Thankyou to the hosts.
A and S has been discussed for the Bloth and the idea of having garb on manequins for the A and S display has been suggested.
Reports went in on time for Canton and Barony.
Singing is regular but irregular these last two weeks.
Dancing is also regular.
Rapier is regular and battling on into autumn on sundays and other random times.
I will be going to sg on the weekend of may 10 to do patterning and sewing with
them.
Webwright: I'd like to arrange a training session with our new officers soon.
Other officers, stewards, and regular users of the site are welcome to
take part.
David and I (mostly David, but hey!) have a new website for Cluain under development. I'll be doing some training for them too, over the next few months.
Thanks to Shannon and Nora for getting in touch promptly, so I could put Nora's details up on the website as our new reeve. I'm still waiting to hear back from Grim, after which I'll update the marshal's details. [Done]
As usual, you can see what I've been up to recently here:
http://ildhafn.lochac.sca.org/webwrightt#changes
I'd like to come back to the copyright stuff, and the FB page, when I'm back in town.
A couple of reminders:
1. Please make use of the instructions for making announcements:
http://ildhafn.lochac.sca.org/node/742
(But feel free to ask me any time you have problems, or if you need something on the site and are not able to attend to it yourself).
2. Officer and steward email addresses. (e.g. "seneschal@ildhafn.lochac.sca.org" or "bloth@ildhafn . . ")
Please use these only stuff that pertains to that particular office or event or whatever: when you hand over the office, and the email is redirected, we shouldn't have to change anything else. David has said that he's willing to make new email addresses when we need them - better to do that than use an officer email address somewhere that
will be out of date when the office changes.
Chatelaine: No report.
Quartermaster: No report.
Seneschal: We are looking for billetting for Del and Amalie during the Birthday Ball [apparently sorted].
We've had a request from a school teacher to do some background for a book her students are studying: if anyone is available and interested please let me know.
I've been told by the Marshal that the remaining Ildhafn helms are in bad shape and probably unfit for heavy combat. I have asked him to provide a written statement to that effect and a photo or two. Flogging them on Trademe, having first marked them
as unsuitable for combat, is seems the likely outcome, but this can be decided when we have more complete information.
Thanks to Chantelle for providing a written report on Festival for the website.
The Bank is not offering the kind of read-only access we would like, so Reeve will now send a pdf of account activity to the Council list weekly (thanks Nora). Stewards can get statements from one of the signatories on request.
Whilst we have the minimum number of cooks necessary for the Bloth, the steward would like to hear from additional volunteers.
Past Events
Chests workshop (Katherine):
Was a success! Over Easter weekend 11 people made 13 chests, including making hinges and nails, by hand. Many thanks to Ed and Llewellyn for running it; and to Rudiger who came just to help, and spent all Easter making nails without making a chest for himself.
The major complication was that the nails we ordered from the US did not arrive in time (arrived in the country with a fortnight to spare, but the courier company were then very slow). So we made more than expected by hand, and now have $325 worth of nails. After discussion with seneschal and council, we decided to treat the nails as an asset of the group, and sell them on to members who want them. Llewelyn and
Ed get first dibs on the nails, after which they'll become available to the rest of the populace at $20/lb [even the units are medieval!]. Once they've all been sold, the event will have become financially-neutral for the group, as planned (actually, we'll make a very small amount on the nails, as I rounded up the price per pound from $19.something). I'll advertise them to the populace shortly (after Ed and Llewelyn have their share).
I'll send through the details of the finances (and receipt for the nails) separately. I can do it this week if necessary, but I'd prefer to leave it until next meeting, if possible.
I'd be happy to see us do this sort of thing again. Pooling resources - both human resources, and using the group's money to bankroll supplies - allows us to make things we couldn't manage alone.
Upcoming Events: May Day, Birthday Ball, Bloth, Crescent Fence, St Catherine's
May Day (Wendy): At close of bookings last night we had 26 adults and 3 children booked.
As such, our total food budget is $210 and if Nora could please advance this amount, plus $138 for garland materials, to my bank a/c it would be greatly appreciated.
Nora - can you also please let me know who has paid so far?
There are 4 new people attending - 2 from the Argent Court, and a couple of Larpers.
We should have enough hobby horses to be able to have races. Cluain apparently
has some that Florence made a while back. I will ask Roger & Liz if they can locate them and bring them down.
Chantelle will be bringing her Kubb set so we can play that. If anyone else has any period games, please feel free to bring them along.
Unfortunately the long-range forecast for next Sat is rain, and showers for the Sunday. Hopefully this will change before then. We will make a decision and post it to the list by 9am on Saturday.
Birthday Ball (Katherine): 13 adults and a child booked, with two coming from
Southron Gaard (Ginevra and Amalie) and one from Rowany (Del). I may be looking
for billets and airport rides. [Also mentioned in S report]
Chantelle and Nadia are handling the supper (thank you!). They or I will be in touch with the reeve shortly to discuss an advance. I've advertised it to assorted other Early Dance and Folk Dance groups in Auckland and Hamilton - no new bookings yet, but a few nibbles.
Wendy - can I pick up some quartermaster gear from you on the 5th, when A&S is at your house, if that's not too soon after MayDay? If it is, I could come by later on - let me know when suits you. I'll need banners, signs, 6-ish tablecloths, lamps and candles, water vessels, and some serving gear. Chantelle and Nadia will let you know what
cooking gear they want.
Bloth (David): The Bloth currently has 15 people booked, and a handful of others who have said they are coming (either in person or on the Facebook page). Numbers are about what I thought they'd be, but I don't think we're going to
get the large numbers we thought possible. That's ok.
So far, there have been a few comments about the cost from those with larger
families; it's not surprising that they're finding it expensive, but there's nothing we can reasonably do about it.
Thanks to the sterling efforts of Angela, we have cooks either planned or on standby for all slots. It would be nice to have a couple more options, if possible. I'd certainly like to see more involvement from Cluain, but I'm not sure how to achieve that.
I'll be making some decisions re the timetable, and in particular the timing of the tournaments, this week.
November Crown Bid (Katherine):
I won't be reporting more on this until after the Bloth. Crown bids are due well after the Bloth, so I want to see how an event at that site goes before planning further.
Crescent Fence (Nicola): Draft bid received. Date (8th-10th of November) and general proposal accepted, budget and other details to be confirmed next month.
St Caths: To be held on the first weekend December. Chantelle to provide proposal.
Calendar: Rainy May Day might replace A&S. [This didn't happen]
General Business
List Field Project (David): There's a writeup of the plan here: http://ildhafn.lochac.sca.org/node/784
What's it going to cost? It depends a lot on what materials we end up using. Round dowels are in some ways easy to get, but either very expensive, or hard to find in the quantity we want. Square ones would probably look better, but are harder to work with.
Side rails: 25mm dowel is about $3/m if you shop around (it's about $10/m from
hardware stores!) 50x50 H3 treated wood is about $4.75/m. Scaling this back, I'd assume that if we can find it, 30x30 is cheaper, probably around $3/m.
Posts: 100x100 H3 treated wood is about $7.50/m. 1m high posts seem to be about
right (90cm is ok), but depending on what lengths we can buy, we may get some
wastage.
Paint: There's been quite a lot of looking around and talking to people to try and determine if list fields were painted in period. As far as we can tell, no. This makes preserving them challenging, as treated wood looks greenish, and untreated wood will rot. :(
How many bits: If we can get 2m side rails, I'd like us to plan for 18 posts and 72 metres of rails (which includes a couple of spare of each). That gives us a 10m x 10m field, if we set it up as a square, or a hex with 6m sides, or some other variation.
18 posts @ $7.50 each = $135
36 x 2m rails @ $3 x 2 each = $216
So that's $351. Depending on what we decide to do for some of the materials
(i.e. if we decide to also buy paint), I'd like to be able to spend up to $400. If we decide we want to build more in future, this should be a repeatable exercise (or if we need to replace some bits).
Does council think this sounds like a useful thing to build? Is it worth the money? And possibly most importantly, do we have the ability to store this?
Decision: General agreement on the scheme and cost. David to experiment with varnish, stain etc. Patrick to investigate space with Wendy.
Other other business
David: Check with Quartermaster that the inventory is current - especially the platters (many were thrown out).
Nicola: Chantelle to query Kelsie regarding business cards. General approval
for current form.
Financial Committee: Match the signatory list, swapping Liz for Melissa.
Meeting Closed: 8:34