The Fortress Newsletter Exerpt
The following is an exceprted article for The Fortress section called "Meet the Peers of Caerthe":
Meet the Peers of Caerthe:
Mistress Catrin von Berlin
(known as Gwen Cat)
Q: When did you start playing in the SCA and where?
A: 1982, Kingdom of the Outlands, Barony of Caerthe. The event was a Mayday event, and was memorable because the dress she wore did not have adequate seam allowances and she had to be sewn into her dress. Gwen Cat remembers fondly, the hand kissing, cloven fruit and courtesy or chivalry of the SCA.
Q: What or who got you involved with the SCA?
A: It was a gentleman she dated, who hasn’t played in the SCA in 20-some-odd years. She played off an on, until 1992 when she attended a class taught by Master Hagar the Black on garde manger (playing with food). That was what got her hooked on the SCA for good.
Q: When did you get your peerage, and what for?
A: 12/19/2003 she was offered her peerage by TRM’s Hoegaarden and Chiara. She was elevated at Caerthe's 12th Night - January 3, 2004. She shared that the Outlands doesn’t offer a peerage for a specific art, but she believes she was recognized for her cooking, her translation of parts of a 1581 German cookbook, Ein New Kochbuch by Marx Rumpolt. Prior to that she was apprenticed to Mistress Katherine Linnet Holford
Q: What are your interests within the SCA?
A: Cooking. She has maintained the Caerthe Cooks Guild website for 10 years now.
Fencing. Which she took up on a dare from Lady Tanwen and Mistress Rivka.
Dancing.
Q: What is your persona?
A: Catrin von Berlin is the only daughter of a Welsh mother and a Saxon father. She was raised in Berlin in the mid/late 1500's. Her mother taught her scribal, home, and performing arts, and her father, being a merchant, gave her a love of the fine things in life (fine fabrics, fine food,...)
Q: What is your best advice for a newcomer?
A: “Do what you enjoy. Find that thing that really interests you. Then ask questions, keep asking questions,” says Gwen Cat.
Q: What is your best advice for a new peer?
A: “Remember that you represent the peerage and that you are setting the example,” she says. She provided the anecdote that if a peer were to play at an event in jeans and a t-shirt then folks might believe that if, because that peer did it, then it must be alright.
Q: Tell me about your most memorable SCA moment.
A: Mistress Gwen Cat shared a most marvelous tale of attending a Kingdom of Ealdormere (Ontario (except for Essex County, and Northwestern Ontario around Thunder Bay) event with Mistress Kate. They arrived at the site, a boyscout camp and after changing – went right to the kitchens to help out. They set to the table making sausages, stuffing and cutting and working, when an impromptu bardic started in the kitchen. “It was not like the usual bardic, where someone sang, and it went around the circle,” she recalls. “Someone asked someone else to sing the history of the Kingdom of Ealdormere, and others joined in on the choruses, and then someone sang another song, they all sang. The warm kitchen, the singing, we felt like we were part of the family. It was magical.”
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Photo: Lady Tanwen
Website: http://clem.mscd.edu/~grasse/Welcome.html
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