Apprentices

So I now have an apprentice. What shall I do to...I mean with her? Really she is pretty driven anyway so keeping her nose to the grindstone is not going to be an issue. She also has projects galore, so giving her projects seems like a waste of time. This is my first one of these so I am still not totally locked into how I want to run my end of this relationship.

She just finished running K&Q A&S championships so making her get more involved in A&S competitions just seems silly. She is also the current champion of archery in our barony. Hmm....period archery shoots? She does have to run our championships this year. Am I even planning on asking her to do specific things?

Keeping her focused on one thing so far has been the theme of our working relationship. She does get a bit distrac.......oh shiney. Oh wait, that is me, not her. Currently she has been working on netting, and been doing it for quite a while with some nice headway.

Oh yeah, she is about 8 months pregnant. Period birth....ooh ick...no. Lets stick with the modern age for anything to do with medical baby issues. I am actually looking forward to making adorable cute little clothing. Wait, here I am doing stuff for her. Isn't she supposed to be doing stuff for me. No, that is not too likely to happen much with any apprentices I take. I view the apprentice-laurel relationship as more a guiding hand on my part, not the dictatorial despot (aww shucks)

I am fairly firm about wanting to do things in a "period" manner, but again she is already leaning (or frolicing gaily) in that direction. If she cannot find instructions in a book contemporary to the age, then she is not happy. That is actually ahead of me, but then I do lace and embroidery, neither of which seem to have much in the way of instructions, just patterns. She is more into making gun powder, fingerloop cords and netting.

I am really glad she "gets it" when it comes to the authenticity side of the hobby. One of the hardest things is to instill a love for doing things the old fashioned way in people in our society. For some reason some people (often the most outspoken) seem to take any discussion of authenticity as a direct attack against them. I have never really understood why you would join a medieval recreation group if you did not want to do medieval recreation.

So if she is already interested in authenticity, and talented, and fairly firm in her likes, what is my job here? Hmm. I might have to think on this a bit. Low maintenance apprentices, just what I was aiming for. This might be easier than I thought. All I have to do is walk around saying "Yup, thats my apprentice" like the proud mama.

Go Alys.