Back in the day, some folks we made coats of plates out of street signs and old leather jackets from the goodwill store. If you stitched the pockets closed you could barely tell they were there.... (btw: this is awesome!)

Skafnir, Jonathan is right. You are a bore. You have no credibility in this matter. You have proved yourself to be nothing but a troll. Those of us who have known and dealt with Torvaldr in the past know that you are just being a loud mouthed ass hat. I have known Torvaldr for thirty years, and Stil...

Love that site. A lot of people are using sledge hammers in exercise routines these days. You can also use them.as an exercise mace. Mace is the third old school apparatus being brought back by the MMA crowd. It's great for polearm are long sword work. Unfortunately its too long to use in my livingr...

I talk about it more on my blog sometimes: www.scafighter.blogspot.com

Hey! I just finished my morning club workout as i sat down to log in! I do it three to five times a week. I do it mostly to build conditioning and to rehab my shoulder. I had tennis elbow this winter, really cutting into my training, and the clubs make good weights for the exercises my dr. gave me, ...

Ditto.

Valgard Jarl

So, your Highness, as I read this you won your first tournament--a crapaud no less--after you'd been fighting less than two years, you won coronet in less than three years, and you were knight exactly three years after you started fighting. Now I have known you since you were, what, ten? And your da...

@ Rhys, yeah, but I grew up in Cali too and, while a proud subject of the East, I am still a granola-cruncher at heart!

@ Ivan: so, get to work, boy! @ Max: your writing would be a lot cleaner if you stopped using the words "however" and "while". King Thorin of An Tid is 60. King Edward of CAID is about the same. King Rolf is 54. I believe King Michael of Atlantia is in his 50s. The oldest fighter...

Theodore, I have spoken to one witness to the incident, Viscount Brand McClellan, who witnessed the incident along with Duke Thorn the Cruel. Brand disputes this account. He says that after passing through the line and being struck from behind, His Grace stumbled forward unable to regain his footing...

I apologize to everyone still reading this. I said it was not supposed to be about Flieg any more, but I got mad there for a second. I am sorry.

Man that auto fill kills on long posts.

Giovani, You are way way off base. I know of no one more humble, welcoming or gracious than Frederick. He is among the finest and most courteous peers I know. When I said he might well be the mist beloved person in the SCA I was not being hyperbolic. Witness the number of people here, from kingdoms ...

Here is Flies's new song:, The Battles of Pennsic 93 (A comment on current trends) Frederick of Holland, Dux August, AS 46 (2011) Oh, Daddy tell me once again, how all this came to be, The way we fight the battles now at Pennsic Ninety-three. My son, it started long ago, I'm sorry to relate Way back...

While I have been as guilty as anyone of carrying it on, the issue I was trying to raise was not about Flieg specifically. It was about the conflict between a Chivalric (albeit idealized) attitude toward process and a more modern attitude. Every post I've read that supported the Marshal's court, inc...

@ Bob: actually, Bob, as most active of the SCA's founders, Flieg is the first coming. I have said for years, perhaps as many as twenty, that when Flieg dies the SCA will likely disappear, because we are *his* dream. (*wry grin*)

@ Bob: there should be no need to prove his innocence. The marshal's court needs to prove his guilt. But that is beside the point. @ Max, I disagree with you slightly on the interkingdom issue. I am not sure I can speak to the travel issue, but I do think that the SCA has more interaction between ki...

Ignoring all of the bull that has developed on this thread between Balin and the rest of the world, there are a number of issues here worth discussing. The first is that there was never a golden age of the SCA when everybody just got along and we were all noble and just and doing our best to recreat...

1.) Spin class has been great for me. It doesn't fit my schedule the way it used to, so I've replaced it with running (often on a treadmill) or honest to God cycling, plus just living in New York walking and taking the stairs in this vertical city. But Spin is great. 2.) The main reason I can still ...

I hadn't heard that version. The results of the first tourney were contested, but after the fact. The description, later than the one earlier linked to, is here: m Valgard Jarl www.scafighter.blogspot.com Medieval Fantasy as Performance: The Society for Creative Anachronism and the Current Middle Ag...

[quote="Duke Uther"]"I fully admit that I still prefer the smaller shield style. It is aesthetically more pleasing, more fun to fight, and I believe since it is harder is more worth doing. I really admire Gemini for keeping it alive. He is, to me, the knight who is still working in wh...

I'm prejudiced of course but I felt the s+s styles developed here were among the most aesthetically pleasing: Baldar's Asgard style (elements of which have now become almost universal in the Known Wolrd), Dun Tir centergaurd, Duke Wulfhere's distictive (and now extinct) style. Those styles have eit...

I am actually pretty convinced at this point that it was the low-profile thrusting tip that changed the small shield game. When thrusting was rare, the "sword back" stance was more viable. With the thrust becoming a universal attack you pretty much have to either bring your sword forward ...

Funny, Collin Dirge once peered in my ear like a doctor and said "I know Rolf is hiding in their somewhere." *G*

Valgard Jarl

I love it. I think the part about "fighter code" is priceless (of course, since I was trained to ALWAYS ask my opponent if he was happy with a fight, that means all of my fights must be crappy *G*). Of course, I completely disagree with your discussion of so called "odd" weapons....

What you call "false chivalry" and "conventions of combat" are often the same thing from different perspectives. Given the current Western flap over shield sizes, I found your mention of equipment under false chivalry to be both amusing and interesting--more from a political than...