Saturday, May 28, 2022

Marian Kirkpatrick - Silver Brooch

Today, the heralds will belt Our words out
Let awl and sundry of the East Kingdom know 
That We, Ryouko'jin, Demon King of the 
Three Heavens and Rani Indrakshi
Have heard of Marian Kirkpatrick,
Who punches out circlets and medallions
Leat-her be known for her creations 
And stand forth to receive the Silver Brooch
For she her skills burnish bright and 
Alinine with Our appreciation
We will not be suede from this decision!
Done in the strapping weather of May 28th
At the Wars of the Roses, AS 57
Barony of Concordia of the Snows

Wordcount 95

If BLOG isn't forever

And it's not the weather

Hand me my leather

The recipient had been written in for their leatherwork.  I went to their wiki to get some inspiration, and found that she liked to jump around in regards to her persona and garb of choice.  I reached out to their contact to see if I could glean some inspiration from their scroll.  The calligrapher and illuminator, Fiona, also requested I find out if they had anything that they’d like on their scroll, like a pet or a favorite color.  After much discussion and a photo of the recipient’s pup, I decided on leather puns - although I was very careful to keep it "safe for work," as it were. 

When writing a punny scroll I first go to the internet and google “subject puns.”  That led to 50 Hilarious Leather Puns (though fifty was a bit of a stretch, as they started repeating themselves very quickly).  

I then looked up the Leather Craft Tools List – An Overview and Leather Types. These provided me with a wealth of puns and words to play on.

When writing a pun scroll I will either start with the pun word and write the sentence around it, or write a regular sentence and try to change a word to fit a pun. In the end I wound up "hide"-ing nine puns in the scroll!


These definitions are largely for me and the words that I used that I wasn’t familiar with:

Belt - a band of flexible material, such as leather or cord, for encircling the waist.

Awl - Tool with a sharp metal point used for marking or piercing leather.

Herd - a number of animals kept, feeding, or traveling together

Punches - Used to make holes in leather.

Leath-er - the skin of an animal, processed.  Used as, “Let her”

Burnish - to polish leather 

Alinine - A type of leather,is dyed only with soluble dyes. Used for, “Align''

Suede - a leather made with a slight nap of short protein fibers.

Strop - Piece of leather, sometimes mounted to a board or solid surface, that is used to sharpen knife blades


This scroll was just a whole lotta fun to write.  A fun pun filled scroll is almost like a palate cleanser for me - especially when I am working on new and different verse forms, as I did with some of the scrolls going out just before and after Wars of the Roses.


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