Tell us a bit about the PNW Gathering for those who are outside the US or may not know about the event.

The PNW HEMA Gathering started in 2010 as a small get together in someone’s garage, followed by beer. Since then it has slowly grown as a yearly gathering for the clubs in the Pacific Northwest aka PNW. This region includes Oregon, Washington, Northern Idaho and British Columbia. When society falls apart we will all band together to form the great nation of Cascadia where we will thrive on our abundant natural resources and vast knowledge of craft beer brewing.

Women’s longsword eliminations

What was the reaction when Lonin League got nominated to host this year’s PNW Gathering?

We weren’t so much nominated as we had the most people actually interested in putting it on this year and no one else objected. But we were a very enthusiastic little posse and we had a lot of fun ideas we wanted to make happen. Things really got exciting when we ended up booking SANCA (the circus school we train in) as the venue. That opened up a ton of opportunities to show off our space and the uniquely Lonin things about our club.

What was your role in the event?

I was one of the four core organizers. Leigh, Aidan, Erik and I started on this adventure back in January. This was an amazing team and we all worked together incredibly well and naturally fell into each of our roles. Erik ran the tournament, including judging training and recruitment. Leigh rocked the socks off administrative stuff and all the social media. Aidan wrangled vendors and recruited our amazing lineup of workshop instructors. I did all of the graphic design/website, budget coordinator, set the schedule and general wrangler of the event.

What’s with the name Swordsquatch?

Mostly just that we are giant dorks.

Early on we decided to rebrand the event to go along with the new direction we were taking things. One of our major goals was to create an environment that wasn’t solely focused on the tournament. We wanted to keep things hella fun and uniquely Seattle. Also we have a problem with puns. Someone should probably hold an intervention.

… if you’re asking literally what’s a Swordsquatch that would be a mashup of “sword” and “Sasquatch” aka Bigfoot.

There’s some pretty rad promotional artwork, and those medals are unique. Can you tell us about who made these and the concept?

THANK YOU That was all me (except the t-shirts, designed by the wonderful Pat Jenson) I wanted to break away from the standard HEMA photos and HEMA black so the only possible solution was neon pink and monsters.

The medals started from the concept that “we fight with steel, our medals should be steel.” Also I like playing with fire and chemicals. I went through several iterations on the design playing with the shape and the layout of the swords and mountains and tiny squatch. The medals were cut out using a waterjet (thank you, Rusty Oliver of Hazzard Factory). I then used the toner transfer technique to iron on a laser jet print out onto the blank medals, then drop them in a bucket of acid for 20 min. Finally with the help of local knife maker Hazel Zel Margaretes of Sideros Design, we used a blowtorch to get the different colors… also I may be an overachiever.

What are your three favourite moments from the weekend?

1. Handing out the prizes for Bigfoot Brawl. — The BfB was our diabolical plan to get people to spend more time free sparring. We had a space dedicated all weekend to open sparring. We weren’t recording winners, only who fought who and what weapons they were using. No rules other than to negotiate with your partner the level of contact and keep it safe. By the end of the weekend over 200 matches were fought! We saved our best prizes for the the person who fought the most number of unique opponents and for the person who used the most variety of weapons. Moses Jones and Matt Mawhirter spent most of the weekend in the Brawl and were just awesome. They both had basically the same numbers with 76 different opponents and 27 different weapons used. They each took home a sharp from Angus Trim.

   

   

2. Flying Trapeze — We train in a circus school and mostly just get to watch as they play with all the fun toys and jump on the trampolines. But we finally got our turn! SANCA has recreational trapeze set up where anyone can get on and fly. We had 3 hours blocked off for everyone to get a chance to have a go and OMG it was so much fun. I went several times and got to learn the second trick where there is a second guy on the other trapeze and you hang from the bar on your knees and then he grabs your hands and then you’re just swinging from him. It was super mega awesome.

3. Getting to cut with Angus Trim’s 2-handed falchion — Sunday we had a big cutting party outside where we finished off the unused tatami and made a giant fruit salad. Gus made this SUUUUUPER awesome sword that is just made for taking off heads, it’s beautiful, he graciously let me cut with it and it was so good. It was also my first time cutting tatami — super fun.

   

What piece of advice do you have for first-time event organizers?

Teamwork. This event was a complete team effort. From the leadership on down everyone was in it together. For our core team this meant seamlessly picking up the slack as life got hella real — there was a ton of illness, death and a major surgery — but we all were there for each other and kept encouraging one another and kept going. When we started expanding our team we gained some wonderfully capable people who jumped in on our vision and did their jobs wonderfully. And at the event everyone including those who weren’t official volunteers were always ready to help and be apart of what was going on. We created an environment where everyone wanted things to go well and were invested in making it work.

Also plan the shit out of everything *before* the event and then when it’s actually go time, chill and roll with the punches. And having 16 backup plans for every piece of the puzzle is also useful.