This article was written by Sebastian de Sandoval.This summer, he took the time to paint a marshalling staff. Below is his process, pictures, what he learned, and what he would do differently.

Upon deciding to make a marshalling staff for myself, I looked upon the bare wood I had acquired, and went, "How can I make this *more*?" Inspired by the fact that a C-7 rifle with its stock fully extended is precisely one meter in length (and thus can be used a field-expedient meterstick), I decided to add measurement markings to it that could be used in the field, when a marshal may not have another measuring device handy.

As such, I noted all the length maximums for fencing weapons by Society standards, comprising a table of nine values (albeit with some duplications) to give the maximum grip, blade, and overall weapon length for daggers, single swords, and two-handed swords.

Designating one end of the staff to be 'zero', I then measured and marked rings along the length of it to indicate the designated length, giving the staff a distinctive and asymmetrical appearance. At the least, I do not have to worry about confusing it with someone else's!

After painting it in the customary gold and black colours, I added some hand-painted lettering to indicate the lengths on each ring to reduce confusion when using it in the field. As I customarily carry a hardcopy set of the rules with me (for event sites with no internet connectivity), I didn't feel it necessary to write what each one was intended to measure, only the measurement between it and the 'zero' end of the stick. (The 'zero' is also not marked, but is trivial to determine which end is which by paying attention to the sequence of the measurements.)

I did also consider putting an 'endcap' on the stick of paint so that the zero would not be at the end and subject to being shortened by wear and tear over time, but the convenience of being able to put a fully-assembled weapon end-down on the ground next to it to measure the overall length was more persuasive to me. As the existing end is fully painted, any significant amount of damage will be clear to me and I can check the measurements to revalidate it if a significant amount of bare wood becomes visible again.

An additional thing I may still add, or add to the next version I make, is a series of marks of 0.5"/12mm distances to measure the deflection of blade tips for flexibility compliance. Rather than a single measure, I contemplate an extended set of them because it will be easier to align the weapon being tested to them in the field if there are a number of places to pick from -- I cannot count on there always being a table or other option to secure the weapon/blade being tested at a consistent height, so building some flexibility into the measure will make it overall more useful.

If you are not part of the Society for Creative Anachronism, there will be a lot of terminology in this post that may be confusing. Head over to the SCA official website to learn more!

The November event in the SCA is my anniversary event for so many things. On November 5th, 2016, I attended my first event in Montengarde (Calgary) where I watched my now Laurel, be elevated to the order. They were one of the first people I met in the SCA, when I walked into a cooking night and listened to them talking about mummies. (The mummy focus has continued, much to my delight). So this past weekend, was Feast of the Hare, the major event for the Canton of Caldritihig. This particular event has so much more meaning for me, since it is the first event where I was event steward, in 2023, right after I moved to the Kingdom of Ealdormere.

I will start at the beginning and see if I can remember and include all the amazing things that occured that day.

We arrived to the site early, since my spouse was setting up to run a rapier tournament after the Baronial Rapier Tournament took place. I had been preparing to compete in the Baronial Arts & Sciences Competition with my reliquary purses entry. The theme for the event was "The Five Senses" and my primary focus was the sensation of touch, with multiple different textures and fibres for everyone to experience.

Most of the day, however, was spent doing Turkish Coffee Readings. By the time my display was up, I had ten people set to have their fortunes read in the delicious grounds of coffee. While I was making the coffee and everyone was enjoying it, we discussed our medieval personas. One of the coolest experiences I had with this was Master Rigel's persona, I learned so much and was blessed to be able to do their reading in their persona. It was a lovely experience and was a high point in the day. For those that enjoyed the cookies I made, these are the links to the recipes I used, for the Almond Flour Cookies and the Rice Flour Cookies. One of my guests took a picture of me in my new garb, one hand on my ibrik while I was waiting for the coffee to boil.

After my readings were done and Sebastian had won his rapier championship, a truly wonderful moment took place. In the Society, we have mentorship relationships when we have a particular area we want to focus on. My Laurel, Monna Caterina di Alessandro di Guglielmo Franceschi is my mentor in Arts and Sciences. They are my supporter, cheerleader, and a resource as I create art and study the sciences. They were the first to support me on my coffee journey. In late 2023, I reached out to the community looking for a mentor in the art of service within the SCA. I keep receiving service awards and I discovered that I love putting together and running events. When I ran my first event, I put the whole thing together in a manic six weeks. One of the volunteers who supported me in that first event reached out and we began to develop a friendship. They have been a wonderful, supportive, and caring individual over the last couple of years and, a few months ago I asked her if she would take me on as a protege. We settled on Feast of the Hare to be the event where I take my oath to her service and she takes on what is likely to be the very entertaining task of mentoring me. In front of friends, family, and the people closest to us, I became protege to Viscountess AElfaeda FitzAlain of House Blackcloak, receiving the legacy belt that her first, and only, protege wore. I can't even put into words how I feel other that gratitude and joy. And the first and best piece of advice she has given me has been "It's okay to say no." Which is likely going to be the one lesson I will struggle the most with.

After that memorable moment, the event wound down to court, where I witnessed the elevation of Duchess Breyla La Viennette to the Order of the Pelican. The speeches were beautiful and moving, and seeing the joy on her face lit the entire room up.

Court also included another service award to add to my collection (I have service awards across three kingdoms now), as I received the Baronial service award, the Order of the Hare Salient, and a scroll so stunning and unique that I cried. (Sorry, no picture yet). Sebastian received a grant level award for rapier, The Order of Thorbjorn's Hammer, and a scroll that reflects the Spanish nature of his persona. On top of both of us receiving awards, we also won our respective Baronial Championships, so I get to spend a year as A&S Champion with my wonderful spouse as the Rapier Champion. By the end of the day, I wasn't sure what people were congratulating me for, becoming a protege or a champion. Both still have me grinning from ear to ear.

Feast of the Hare is the event that has come to mean so much to me, being the anniversary event for all the important moments in the SCA for me. And the event team that ran this one set the bar for events so high that it's an inspiration for what an event should be.

During the Middle Ages, devout Christians believed Reliquaries contained divine powers of restoration, luck, healing powers, or could bestow blessings and miracles. Such items were teeth, bone, pieces of wood or cloth that were believed to have been handled by Christ and his Apostles or were bodies of divine saints blessed by God. People considered such items more valuable than gold or gems. They kept reliquaries in containers to store, protect, and maintain the relics within while still displaying the item.

People kept these sacred objects in boxes, cases, and purses made of expensive materials like gold, silver, ivory, and silk, and decorated them with precious gemstones. Artwork and surviving reliquaries from the time show they often highly decorated them, which depicted scenes or reflections common to a Christian theme. On display is a chasse from the Met Collection from the twelfth century, show depictions of the crucifixion, Saint Peter, and Christ’s Apostles on it. The oldest forms of containers for reliquaries and sacred items were cloth bags or purses.

Chasse with the Crucifizion and Christ in Majesty ca. 1180-90, on display at the Met Museum

Sometimes people created purses expressly for privileged individuals, designing them to be hung around the neck. This allowed pilgrims and travelling holy men to still display the sacred item while keeping their hands free. It also ensured the relic’s safety during travel, allowing them to keep it close and easily tucked away. The material of such purses varied, with surviving extant examples being made of cotton, wool, linen, and silk and dyed in bright, contrasting colours. Stars, crosses, and even personal heraldry decorate the surviving purses in collections and museums.

Five purses from the fourteenth century were in the treasure of the cathedral in Sion, the oldest diocese in Switzerland, at the Abbey of Saint Maurice. The same individual is believed to have created all five purses, which were all made of spun silk and dyed in a variety of reds, blues, violets, greens, and yellows. The same individual likely made a sixth bag as the five in Sion; it is a blend of wool and silk and has a heraldic design. It was found in the Cathedral of Chur, on the other side of Switzerland.

Scion Purse IV photography done by Kornbluth Photography

These six bags range in size from 20.5cm to 34cm in height and 16cm to 26cm across. All of the bags are flattened rectangles; the knitter knitted them in a circular fashion and bound them off at the bottom. Each bag has nine to fourteen tassels adorning it, with each tassel ranging from 13cm to 14cms. A braided string is woven through the top of each bag, acting as a closure for the bag. The stitch count on each bag is approximately seven stitches to a centimetre; the knitting needles used are likely no bigger than a thin wire.

Various excavations have yielded knitting needles from that era, such as those discovered in York’s Aldwark tenement housing, which were crafted from copper alloy and had blunted tips. Archaeologists have found surviving ivory knitting needles in ancient Gaul, and they have also discovered examples of poured iron needles at dig sites throughout Europe, the Mediterranean, and Northern Africa. Several different materials, including metal, wood, or ivory, could have been used to make the needles.

Pictures from Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: Finds from Medieval York

Paintings from the time depict images of women knitting, like that of the Virgin and Child altarpiece from the collegiate church of Borja, commissioned in 1465 to Nicolás and Martín Zahortiga. The figure is knitting in the round with five needles, as was the practice of the time. The earliest verifiable form of the purl stitch was in 1562 with the stockings belonging to Eleanora of Toledo. Knitted items such as reliquary bags were knitted in the round and finished flat, the closing of the bottom of the bags as the binding off of the stitches. Knitted socks, like the cotton examples found in Egypt, were knit flat with hooked needles.

Virgin with Child, Nicolás Zahortiga from the Collegiate Church of Borja

Materials for knitted purses ranged from wool, silk, and goat to linen and cotton. Surviving reliquary purses on display are made from wool, silk, linen and cotton and references in the Bible and in the Ottoman Empire to Angora goat hair being used to make cloth. Because knitted reliquary bags were often personal, people used the most expensive material they could obtain to make the bag. Silk was a desirable choice for several reasons. It was more expensive as it was difficult to acquire, as only spun silk was used for knitted projects, it absorbs and retains dyes better than other fibers, like linen or wool, and the resulting texture was more pleasant to the touch than other fibers. Silk, when stored out of sunlight, maintains dye colours and doesn’t degrade as quickly as plant fibers would. It also has the characteristics of being isothermal, maintaining a more consistent temperature to the contents stored inside, and is less absorbent than wool, keeping the items dryer. Mohair has similar dye retention and fibre characteristics like absorbency, to silk, though is coarser to the touch.

Chart created based on high resolution photos of extant, made on Chart Minder

The dyes used to achieve the colours for knitting ranged from plant materials, like madder and various species of lichens, to shells and molluscs. Someone even used animal blood to elevate the colour red. In the fourteenth century, the silk used for the bags were likely dyed with the highest quality materials, like molluscs from the Muricidae family, to achieve the violet colour, and madder mixed with blood and rancid olive oil to achieve the vibrant shades of red found in some examples. Animal fibres do no keep plant material for dye as well as cotton or linen, though silk readily absorbs and keeps dyes from most sources.

Purses served important purposes in history, as places to hold wealth, keep treasured possessions, and store sacred items. Surviving examples of purses beyond those of reliquary purses are made from a wide range of materials and varying levels of decoration. The reliquary purses that remain with us today show a level of skill and quality of the artisans, though made of materials that was only available to a select few during the time. The Cathedral treasuries in Sion and Chur protected the purses from light and the elements, giving us a glimpse at the skill and artistry of the fourteenth century.

Below is the purse knit in mohair based on the design from Scion Purse IV, completed November 2025

For the 2025 Feast of the Hare, I decided to enter into the Baronial Arts and Science competition. I only had a few months to put together a project, so I fell back on my old comfort projects of knitting. (For those wondering, I will never enter a competition with my coffee research). I opted to make a reliquary bag based on one of the patterns from the extant examples found in the treasury of the Scion Cathedral. There is a theme for this year's Feast of the Hare: Bring the Stars. Since reliquaries often depict religious iconography, having celestial bodies on the reliquary bag was common practice, as shown by the extant pieces. I proceeded to make a bag using the pattern of Scion Purse IV, using cotton. While sharing my progress on social media, I received several messages from Laurels that I would "lose points because I wasn't using silk" and that "cotton wasn't a period material."

First off, cotton was very much a common material in the Middle Ages, especially in Asia and the Near East. Cotton had been used by Egyptians for centuries, as seen by stockings that have survived in burial sites. Second, reliquary bags were made by the materials that were on hand. For a wealthy noble that joined the Church, and the Church itself, having access to valuable silk and wool silk blends was perfectly normal.There are six purses presumed to have been knitted by the same person found in the Church treasuries, five made of silk, one made from a silk and wool blend. However, other fibers existed during the time period, including cotton, linen, wool, mohair, and hemp.

Plant fibers break down and compost faster than animal fibers, so having fewer remaining examples surviving to modern day makes sense. There is also the human factor that archeologists, up until the last few decades, did not see value in the fibers found in burial sites or excavations. Many articles were thrown out or destroyed in the process of creating museum displays.

So I made two bags based on the surviving extant. I did not make an exact replica, but bags that could have existed in the Middle Ages. The other part of the competition is to create an item that affects one or more of the sense: Sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. I put together samples of different materials that could have been used to create reliquary bags that people may touch, samples of dye materials that may not have been available in Europe in the Middle Ages, but are used to dye materials. It would be impossible to recreated the dye material of the violet colour of the original bag, since the molloscs and lichens commonly used during the time period are critically endangered. The display fills the visual requirement with two bags covered in stars. The bags themselves fulfills their Excellencies request to bring them the stars, as I will be gifting the Baroness the cotton bag. And the display is interactive that people can touch and feel the different materials, including smelling samples of Medival dyes ingredients. Below are several pictures of the creation process that I had documented as I made the bags.