Spread the word

[Sir Edward]

Hey all, since this board is brand new, and I've told practically no one about its existence (just a few select people), feel free to spread the word. I'd rather that this grow virally, than go around blasting 'ads' for it on other forums.

My feeling is that this could serve as a good place to keep in contact with knighthood and chivalry enthusiasts, particularly those we have random meetings with at renfaires and the like, and don't have an easy way to trade contact information. I plan to print out some business cards with the URL to hand out to armored folks I run into.

I suspect there's a wide range of enthusiasts out there, from those who just like to dress up, to others who really want to live the chivalric ideal. I don't want to exclude anyone. I also don't want this to get completely taken over by SCA stuff the way the ArmourArchive has, but SCA members are certainly welcome as well. I'm hoping we can create a wide-reaching community resource for all who are interested in knights, chivalry, weapons, and armor.

If this forum stays small in membership, that's OK. It'll at least work well as a social hangout for the MDRF folks if nothing else.

[Sir Brian]

Greetings and well met Sir Edward!

Thank you most kindly for the gracious invite to this esteemed forum truly I am honored
and humbled to be amongst this august gathering of chivalric enthusiast.
(ok enough with me abusing the thesaurus). 

Really, thanks for starting this forum. As you stated if anything it will be a great way for
the REN-Fanatics to keep in touch. 

A little introduction for those who have not met me yet.

My Name is Brian. I am 44 years old and work in the Marine electronics trade in a shipyard.
I have been married for 18 years to my forever lovely wife Rosemary. She has a daughter
from her previous marriage who is 25 and engaged to be married in May.

My wife and I are new to the Renfair scene (went to our first MDRF just last year) but we
definitely got the “bug” real bad because we visited eight different renaissance fairs from
Florida to the Great Lakes fair in Ohio in the 2007 season!

Of course my favorite kit is my early 14th century knight. I have a couple of variations but
not much as yet. I decided to shoot for an early 1300s timeframe, at the very dynamic time
in the middle ages of transitional armor.

Enough of my ramblings, hope to see you at one of the local fairs! – For my wife and
I, “local” means within a 500 mile radius! 

[Sir Wolf]

Greetings

I guess this would be a good as any for introductions.

My names is Chuck Russell and am 31 years of age.  I have been married for 6 years and have 2 wonderful children ages 3.5 and 5 months.  I was bitten by the ren bug I'd say a number of years ago. i cant honestly tell you when the first faire was, but i have a picture   I've hit PA, PITT, MD, VA, NJ(ug never again) and NCRF  After college I got married and started getting into living history and reenacting so my faire dates got less and less and then not at all.  But thankfully Sir Edward was there to pull me back in

As for favorite time period its hard for me to say. I love history.  I am tring to make a decent period kit from every hundred years or so.  I have around 15 kits started but the only ones 100% finished are my 1st AD roman legionary, 1066 AD Norman Invaider and my 1470s WOTR archer and billman kits.  the others are all missing small things like shoes here or sword here etc etc like that.

Sir Edward has convinced me to drop what I'm doing and make a mid to late 13th century kit with him.

[Sir Edward]

I guess while we're at it, I'll give some intro for myself too...

Most people call me "Ed", but the full name of "Edward" is more proper period name. I just turned 35, and by day I work as a systems engineer on linux servers, and have been a ren-rat forever. I started attending renfaires more than 20 years ago (25 maybe?), but it was only 9 years ago that I started attending more than once per season. Prior to that I had been attending the MD faire each year, and for a few years while the old VA faire was open, I was hitting that one in the spring. The new VARF gives me my spring fix these days.

In the last 9 years I've also been able to attend CRF (Carolina), NCRF (NC), Sterling (NY), CO, TX, PARF (PA), and Pittsburgh, though I've never taken any armour to those.

I've been to Pennsic and to another SCA event before, but never dove in. I used to be part of a different smaller newly-forming re-creation society which dissolved a number of years ago.

I've been an avid sword and weapons collector since I was about 12, and 9 years ago I dove more deeply into knights and armor (though I had been interested in such things as a kid as well, and have taken chivalric virtue seriously for much longer as well).

Now I'm studying historical swordsmanship through a program at VAF (Virginia Academy of Fencing) which is being taught by Bill Grandy. And it's a blast!

Welcome aboard guys! I hope we find more like-minded people to participate. Hopefully the forum software is easy to maintain in the long run and won't overwhelm the server. Heh

EDIT:  Forgot to mention-- I have two kits: One is my 15th Century (I think) plate armor, which is really "munitions grade" SCA armor, but looks pretty good I think. The other is my 13th Century kit, with aluminum mail. I figure I've probably placed myself between 1275 and 1295 with the equipment I've chosen.

[Sir Edward]

My wife and I are new to the Renfair scene (went to our first MDRF just last year) but we
definitely got the “bug” real bad because we visited eight different renaissance fairs from
Florida to the Great Lakes fair in Ohio in the 2007 season!

No way! So was this your first year at any faire or just MDRF? I knew you two hadn't been at it for a long time, but I thought it was probably more like a few years. Your kit looks great for putting together in a short time frame! And hitting 8 in a year, you really hit the ground running! That's awesome.

[Sir Wolf]

I'd like to introduce a new member here, say hi Sir Ace! hehehe Sir Edward, you should remember your old college roommate

[Sir Edward]

I'd like to introduce a new member here, say hi Sir Ace! hehehe Sir Edward, you should remember your old college roommate

You know, he still hasn't posted once?

It's been nearly a year.

[Sir Edward]

Hey all, just a quick post here. The forum is over a year old now (about 14 months!), and our membership has slowly grown.

But I'd love to see more folks joining up! This forum can cater to a wide range of discussion topics, from arms and armor, to renfaires, to chivalry in both a historical and modern context, to knighthood orders, to medieval swordsmanship, and so on.

I've even tossed around a few ideas for creating some sort of knighthood organization (either informal or more organized), or some sort of wiki system where we can post articles and information.

I'm looking for ideas as to what you'd like to see added to the website, and ideas for how we can spread the word and recruit folks into the forum.

Thoughts? Ideas?

And don't forget to send people our way who might be interested in these types of topics and activities here!