Jubilation

Jubilation is my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

In case anyone missed it, we lucky few, we band of brothers - i.e. Great Britain and the Commonwealth - have been celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.  On balance it's looked a lot jollier than Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.  Judging from the pictures, de rigeur behaviour for that was to stand very quietly in the streets in case a sudden noise brought the celebrations to a quick end.

It's been all go here.  Processions, parties, flotillas of boats on the Thames, beacon lighting and bunting.  Lots of bunting.  I ran across an agitated man attempting to buy some at the end of last week only to be told by a sad shop assistant that he couldn't.  She placated him with England bunting, but you could tell he didn't think it was the same thing really.  

In the best traditions of England, the weather cooperated, dropping a further river all over the Thames, but then cheering up long enough to let everyone mow their lawns.  Then it rained again and hasn't stopped since yesterday morning.

Truthfully, however, I've done very little in the way of actual Jubilee celebrating.  Mostly I've been catching up on sleep and fighting my way through a new set of Renaissance patterns.  Oh, and sorting out my computer.  Conveniently that decided not to work on the day I had set aside for catching up with all my online games.  Dave from Mumbai was his usual helpful self, but in the fault lay, as so often, with the weather.  Or my SLder tendencies.  Or a combination.

At any rate, I am now back after a partially enforced absence and am embarking on a D&DNext playtest via Google+.  As a monkey.  Just because.  He's called Fuyuki.

Ninja Monkey by Loam.  From Deviant Art

A not-terribly-interesting update

Short roundup of what's happening in game world.

Den - the one-shot adventure I am running for a group of 4e novices - has gone well.  They've survived a horrible cult, a deranged halfling priestess and a selection of misguided mushroom people.  They've also acquired a meteorite shard of dubious origin and rescued most of the people they set out to rescue.  Result all around I'd say.  Even better is that the group wants to continue.  Makes me happy. 

Tombs I are confronting one of the more irritating opponents the Tomb of Horrors has to offer.  A gargoyle that turns itself back into impervious stone when you hit it hard enough.  Alas for them, it guards the way to their ultimate quarry, so they are currently surrounding it and waiting for it to come back to life long enough for them to hit it.

Tombs II are engaged in negotiations with a group of pirates as they attempt to make their way to Sigil.  Slaad eggs are involved.  Their tiefling warlord has been notably inventive.  It was her plan to take a brass band and mercenaries to a dock to create a large-scale distraction. 

Our home game is approaching a climactic encounter.  We get to play tonight and I'm looking forward to it.  This is a campaign devised and run by my son, so we're making the most of him before he vanishes into exam hell.

On the practical front, washing machine loaded with bloodstained shirts (fake blood, which I'm assured comes out with pre-washing, although I have my doubts).

Planning session for next years Youth Theatre productions.  With a team of two, it's extremely difficult to get all 150+ members on stage every year, so I think we may have to think again about how we do this.  And find plays.

What else?  Oh, yes.  Replace the burst tire.  Leaving the boot depot of dreams yesterday, I managed to burst a tire and ended up waiting for the AA in a garage forecourt while they fitted the temporary wheel.  All was well and the necessarily slow journey home was rather therapeutic.  Driving through the Dales in the rain is remarkably beautiful.  Soul food - which let's face it, I probably needed.

Boots, hats and treasure

Heading to York this morning to collect multiple pairs of boots.  To be accompanied by super-talented ex-student so that we can discuss poster design.   Hopefully she can also map read as this place is somewhere in the middle of a field if Google Maps is correct.  There is considerable getting lost potential here, I feel.

On my return, I shall hurl myself into hat construction.  Squashy, vaguely renaissance hats are a huge boon to a largely female cast, half of whom are playing men.  Long hair is not awful for the period, but the fringes need to be off the faces.  Hence hats.  Luckily they are not hard to make and are a great way of using up fabric scraps.  Waste not want not.  And here I suddenly turn into my mother, whose favourite saying this was.

In gaming news, it's treasure time for the Lost City crew.  Half of them anyway.  This split party have been battling insects and arachnids for the last six weeks.  The team charged with taking down a huge spider queen and her spawn have succeeded.  Their treasure has been consumed by said spider over the course of her long career.  Apparantly.  I'm not sure any spider, however huge, can reasonably eat weaponry, but so says the module.  I'll roll with it.  If the party want to pick through spider entrails, that's fine by me. 

Stuff to gladden adventuring hearts

The other half of the party are still effecting regime change among the Trignotarbs.  Their task is somewhat harder, but I am confident that they too will be collecting a treasure bundle and some valuable, level-raising XP shortly.  They have an angel on standby to hoist them up and down the walls, so all should be well for them.  If they can avoid the healing sapping larvae.

C is for Cybernetics, Costuming and the deadly Catoblepas

C

My father was a cybernetician, so I couldn't really let C pass without mentioning it.

My father, doing his imitation of a rogue pixie. 
Photograph (c) Paul Pangaro 1985 (with apologies for not adding that before, but I had no idea who took it)

I admit that I also had a sneaky hope that few others would pick this as their letter C.  It was not to be.  The talented Suze over at Analog Breakfast got the jump on me.  Go over there, read her piece and starting pinging each other.

G (my dad) will get more mentions in due course.

Elsewhere in the in the land of C, we find costuming.  Regulars will know that I have an ongoing fascination and frustration with sewing machines.  An enforced purchase of one back in January and a deep-end plunge into doublet-making has borne fruit.  I no longer assume turkey when an instruction tells me to baste.   I can put in darts and I know the difference between on grain and bias cutting.  It is a whole new arcane world to explore and I am (much to my own surprise) enjoying it.

Long term I will end up with a wardrobe full of costumes ready to dump on unsuspecting cast members.  At the moment, I have a room full of fabric and several doublets and floppy hats in various stages of construction.

C is a rich mine as it turns out.  My final entry is a shout-out for the Catoblepas.  This noble beastie appeared in early bestiarys looking like this -

Early form catoblepas

It seems the original incarnation was a mistaken view of the gnu or wildebeest.  As with many mythical beasts, the creature subsequently found its way into RPGs in a rather more malevolent form.  My first introduction was through D&D when a huge stinking harbinger of doom arrived during one game and killed us all.  You never forget your first catoblepas.

Monstrous catoblepas

Pictures are on the tiny side, but you get the idea.

Interfacing - my new friend

Spent quite a bit of yesterday clearing the sewing machine and piles of assorted half finished costumes out of the dining room.

Not, you understand, because we eat in there, but to make room for the Chessex maps and the dice.  Our dining room is for games.  We managed a short gaming session on Sunday and it was clear that miles of fake velvet, two bags of hessian, several piles of possibly useful scraps and a disorganised sewing box did not mix well with the usual paraphenalia of dice, minis and maps.  Losing the vital packet of sustaining hobnobs under the debris was a bad moment.

Chocolate Hobnobs.  Vital gamer food.

I moved my kit.

Now that I have the dream machine and am no longer afraid to use it, I have been working my way through Sewing for Dummies.  Having dismissed the beginner project devoted to a "cute frilled apron", I moved straight on to the much more tiresome area of sleeves.  These require some actual skill, which I do not have.  Learning fast mind you.  Have to.

Panicked phone call from my co-conspirator on the Malfi costumes means that I recklessly volunteered to do the basic work on three doublets, a padded underskirt and an assortment of hats.  A visit to Caroline yesterday morning saw me returning in hunter-gatherer triumph with a car full of interfacing, patterns, more fabric scraps, 10 metres of black lining, two vast pieces of vaguely brocade and a slight feeling of panic.  Caroline was her usual soothing self.

"You'll be fine.  You're an intelligent woman." 

Agreed, I am, but is mere intelligence enough to get me through making this?  Three times?

Doublet pattern (assembled)

So, yesterday evening, I did the unthinkable.  I got out the ironing board and set it up in my new hidey hole.  I have stated before that I do not do ironing.  Ever.  Drip dry is my mantra.  This however, was ironing for my new friend and subject of this post.  Interfacing.

Fusible interfacing is wonderful.  It does not fray.  It can be cut at the same time as the fabric.  It is then attached to said fabric to reinforce it.  This helps the fabric to stay fairly firm and stops some fraying.  In order to accomplish this, it must be ironed on.

Interfacing.  Fusible.

And it was, dear reader, it was.  I now have the components of two doublets in interfaced bits awaiting assembly.  I've used an iron willingly for the first time in over a decade.  I'm about to go and stare more fabric into submission.

Whether the finished results are worth anything remains to be seen, but I've got interfacing to help me now. 

The costuming world is about to become my mollusc of choice. 

In my head, anyway.

Back to the games and other trivia

Ah Crivelli.  One of my favourite artists.  His fruit obsession is a source of joy.  Anyway, an image of a Mother for the day.  One who bears precisely no resemblence to me.

Shush.

I should be at the theatre and will be in about half an hour.  Overslept.

However, it is Mother's Day.  I am a Mother.  Therefore it is decreed that as a  Mother I can have on this day an hour to do what I want.  Which is update games.  So I did.  So there.

And where are they now, those brave gamers of mine?

Well, it's all fairly exciting.

Tombs I are embarking on the epic fight against their fully-equipped, fully-rested evil selves.  From experience, this is a very tough one.  See here for why. 

Tombs II are busy concocting an elaborate and wondrous plan to raid a Gith pirate ship.  This involves incompetent mercenaries, a small band and a missing otyugh.

Lost City are dealing with Trignotarb succession issues on the one hand and a gigantic spider with nasty young on the other.  In both cases, the tool of choice is violence.  Team Spider are also getting to know the oklu - as strange servitor race with interesting powers.

Den of the Slave Takers have met the Slave Takers and are trying to get far enough into the nasty temple of Torog to rescue the prisoners. 

All normal stuff in fact, but I am happy to be back to more regular updating.

In other news, my Twelfth Night costume does not make me look like a light-fitting.  It is made of upholstery fabric and feels suitably heavy and good although I'm dimly aware that I may resemble a short, fat armchair from the back.

Today I learn to climb stairs in a long, full skirt, up a vertical ladder and down again.   This will be entertaining.  Or not.

Awardage went hilariously awry.  Many of my nominees were also nominated by other nominees leading to a sort of knock out effect.  It doesn't help that Google has taken it upon itself to prune my reading list.  Apologies to all concerned.

Twelfth Night

As one goes, the next thing rises.

This weekend - Twelfth Night get in.
Monday - Technical.
Tuesday - Dress.
Weds-Sat - run of show.

It all feels very well prepared.  Ready to unleash my lack of coordination on the general public.

Get to see costume today.  I'm assured that it is very nice - which sounds good.  I like period costume on the whole as I tend to look more human than not in it.  The real exception is Regency.  That straight down cut is great for the slender, but makes anyone with a bust look like a light-fitting.  Luckily, this production has taken the Georgian option, to match the theatre, so all the women should be fine. 

Will find out this evening.

It's written in American ...

Somewhat belatedly, Amazon have delivered my copy of "Sewing for Dummies."

My imediate reaction was "what the hell is a Notions counter?"  Images of some kind of inspirational tick box were swiftly dismissed as the next sentence mentioned "sergers" and light dawned.  The book is written in American.

I can adjust to that.  I spent a lot of my childhood in the US.  I'm versatile.  I understand that "pants" in American is "trousers" in the UK.  I no longer suffer boxer-shorts imagery when I read about the construction of pants and the selection of fabric needed for such.

I'm also retrospectively very glad indeed I didn't read this book before embarking on Antigone costume hell.  If I'd read through chapters 1-6 as recommended, I would never have impulse-bought a sewing machine at all, still less constructed 17 more or less useable sets of random pajamas.

Not that the book is bad.  Far from it.  It is very good.  Relentlessly cheery and full of useful information, it has inspired me to make a duvet cover and matching pillow cases.  It will give me the toolkit I need to make normal things.  It will educate me in the proper use of a sewing machine and offers handy tips on fabric choice, needles, corner turning and other basic mechanics.

What it won't do is tell me how to make costumes.  For that, I am turning to this:

Janet Arnold looks like a kind of goddess to me.  Her books combine beautiful illustrations with simple patterns and from these I will work to make wonders out of old curtains.  I will start simple and work up.  In theory at least.  The temptation to make a set of boot overlaps is nearly overwhelming.

The Notions counter?  It means Haberdashery.

Doublets and trousers and boots, oh my

Not one of the actual doublets, but roughly the same style.  In fact, if you imagine a mini-ruff poking out at the neck, the exact same style.  These are currently being created on someone else's sewing machine, for which I am duly grateful.

Given the state of tizz I got myself into making 17 sets of pajamas, the potential for disaster in anything this complex is ...  I can't think of a suitable word.    Just fill in the blank which whatever seems most appropriate to you.

These creations will appear in Malfi, but will then be added to the ever-growing stock of costumes and will undoubtedly be re-used in many productions to come.

Trousers are being attacked as we speak.  Another 5 pairs to find and fit.  These are easy.  Charity shops sell many pairs in suitable (i.e. dark, heavy) fabrics.  Nobody is an odd size.  Consider that a done deal.

The crisis point there is boots.  In the interests of creating a kind of house style with internal consistency, we reckoned boots would be the best thing for all the people playing men to wear.  Note that phrase.  "All the people playing men" includes a large number of girls.  Male and female legs look rather different, hence boots.

We've messed about with the notion of using strap on boot flaps.  They look like nothing a person would wear.  We've experimented with slip over boots.  "Slip over" is the exact term as it turns out.  The simplest step becomes a death trap of slippage.  Not viable.  Especially not on a raked stage.  Some of the tension will go out of this lovely piece of revenge tragedy if the cast spend all their time sliding inexorably towards the audience.

More charity shops.  Or possibly riding boots.  If anyone knows of a good source of free non-rubber boots, let me know.

Sadly excited

One of Hartlepool's prime attractions

Off to Hartlepool today!

Not words that would normally make me ridiculously excited, but I've never claimed to be anything other than an obsessional geek.  Forgive the exclamation mark.  I regard these as the sign of a diseased mind, but some statements need the emphasis.

The port town has two things strongly in its favour.  The first is a wonderful maritime museum.  It's true that I probably won't get to visit it, but the Trincomalee is such a beautiful ship.  For someone who gets seasick in a deep bath, I have a passionate love of the sea and all that sails.  As long as I don't have to get on board and, you know, actually sail.

The second - be still my beating heart - is a college which does courses in costume design.  They do millinery.  They do corsetry.  They do pattern cutting.  Friend and I are going to attempt to inveigle ourselves onto some of these courses.  As my co-conspirator put it, "we don't need the actual degree after all.  We're both much too old and we know how to spell already."

I imagine myself armed with rigilene and making these:

Another Hartlepool attraction

Cake may also feature if we can find any.

Dreaming on

Having been horribly failed in my attempts to get myself qualified to teach adults and therefore to earn a slightly more respectable wage, I have turned my attention to other avenues.

Followers will be aware that costume has been on my mind and in my hands a lot recently.  Also, as it conveniently turns out, with the grandmother of one of my students.  She and I have been meeting regularly to talk fabric and doublets and it's all be huge fun.  Last week, over coffee and cake (she is my kind of lady), a cunning plan evolved.  We should descend on Hartlepool and take part in some of their degree courses on costuming. 

At the moment, it looks promising for a pattern designing course starting on Monday.  Already, in my mind's eye, I can see myself constructing things like the picture above.  Wild fantasy I know, as I've only just acquired a sewing machine.  But you gotta have a dream.

They do millinery and corsetry as well.  Who knows where this could lead?

Behind the mask

Masks are done.  They don't look as terrifying as the inspiration (pictured below), but they're not bad for scary.

The reasoning behind this bit of costuming is mixed. 

These madmen only appear in one scene and their lines are almost-but-not-quite rational.  Webster offers us a mad lawyer, a mad priest, a mad astrologer and a mad doctor and gives them all lines explaining why they've ended up the way they have.  Which is great.  Huge fun to play and so on.  However, every single one of them is also playing someone else as well.

Now in an ideal world, what we'd do would be workshop our way through using different vocals and physicality to emphasise the differences - and we will use those as well - but time is short.  Easier by far to use masks.  The voices will all sound slightly different behind the cloth and the movement issue is solved because these things act like blinkers and force you to turn to look at the person you're talking to rather carefully.

That's the practical reasoning.  The artistic/aesthetic reasoning is that back in the sixteenth/seventeenth century, mental illness was treated with a dazzling mixture of fear and contempt.  Masks immediately dehumanise the performers and also gives us a nice visual seed that can come into play a little later.

With sweet irony, Ferdinand brings the madmen in to send the Duchess insane but ends up going mad himself.  He spends the last third of the play convinced he's a werewolf.  Yes, yes, I know, but that's Jacobean Revenge drama for you.  There is a scene late on in which Ferdinand is confronted by a doctor and has a similar mask dropped over his head.  Being Ferdinand, he immediately rips the thing off and attempts to tear out the doctor's throat with his teeth, but it's a nice visual to bring up.

Long silence, purple hands

Apologies. 

I've never left a gap this long between posts before.  From this you will gather that costuming has been going on apace.  I've spent the last few days with my hands in the dye buckets.

That's been interesting in itself and I now know a lot more than I did about how well fabric takes to dye.  In the case of curtain liner (the stuff I used for the Antigone outfits), that is less intensely than I wanted.  The effect is quite good, but it isn't enough.

I've also made the revelatory discovery that dye does indeed dye.  It may not stick to the fabric as much as I'd want, but it does stick to skin.  And work surfaces.  And tiled floors.  And just about anything else it comes into contact with.  Lucky I was doing it in the kitchen.  Yes, I had that much sense.

Anyway the bulk of it is done.  Took them all down to the rehearsal yesterday and put them on the cast.  Since a lot of them immediately started wrestling each other, I know that the stitches at least will hold.  Looking at the colour scheme as a whole was very helpful.  It highlighted the intensity problem I mentioned, so I'll re-do a batch of the Chorus costumes next week over half term.

Malfi costumes are also hotting up.  I'm picking up a load of stuff to be finished today.  Easy going there I hope.  Faustus got the worrying maths treatment this week as well.  A swift count up revealed that I'll need 61 costumes.  That's costumes, not individual garments.  I'm trying very hard not to panic.

My precious ...

It's arrived.  My own personal sewing machine.  I can safely and happily destroy this one as it is under guarantee.

My relief knows no bounds.  It has an instruction manual, does overlocking and more importantly than anything else, I CAN THREAD IT and REPLACE THE BOBBIN without having a breakdown.

Sanity looms.

Sewing machines again

Sorry to bombard everyone with this ongoing saga, but I'm finding my own ineptitude both funny and frustrating.

I put out a plea for the loan of a sewing machine last night and got two immediate offers.  Wonderfully.  So I went and picked up the volunteer this afternoon.  Threaded it and bobbined it up with no trouble at all.  Felt smug.  Too soon.

The machine works just fine - except that it seems to have tension problems.  Half an hour, a ruined top and a small screwdriver later, I too had tension problems.

I'm buying my own machine.  I really can't deal with breaking another one that doesn't belong to me.

It's due to arrive on Friday.  Lay your bets now for how long the all new idiot proof machine lasts in my hands.  It was recommended by the WI, so it ought to be safe enough, but at this point I don't trust myself.

There will be an inevitable delay on the costume front.  Sorry, Antigone cast.

For goodness sake, give me a blasted break technology ...

Rant warning ahead.

I've got on fairly good terms with the borrowed sewing machine lately - to the extent that of the 32 clothing items I need to finish by Wednesday I've done all but the last eight and half.

The motor is giving up.

I am giving up.

I cannot find an easy way to replace the motor.

Have to admit, right now I want to do nothing more than throw jam jars at the nearest wall and scream a lot.  This was my mum's solution to the insoluble and it sounds incredibly tempting.

Rant over.  Blood pressure still up, but rant over.

Shenanigans

I have spent most of this week engulfed in curtain liner.  The result is many pairs of vaguely functional trousers.  The tops come next, but late last night, bludgeoned by an unexpected fever and reeling from my fifteenth pair of cotton trousers, I went online and looked at the recruitment forum.

Imagine if you will, my astonishment at seeing some hopeful players hunting for a DM to guide them through a short 4e adventure.  On the Paizo boards, that's a bit like finding hen's teeth.  As the publishers of Pathfinder, the bulk of the PbP games use that system. 

You can see where this is leading, of course.  I volunteered.  A couple of old lags chimed in.  Suddenly there is a six strong party wanting thrills and noble deeds.  They'll get them.  One of the players had an outstandingly cack-handed first experience so I feel honour bound to try and put that right.

The tops are on the way too.  Dye buckets may get a look in tomorrow if I can keep the sewing machine from crashing.  That part will be fun, but I'm not counting my chickens just yet.  I had to take the whole thing apart earlier today to extract some rogue lint.  Adventurers are easy meat in comparison.

Numbers

Numbers are looming over me.

Costumes:
Number of Antigone trousers made and fitted - 6
Number of Antigone trousers to make -  10
Number of Antigone tops made and fitted - 3
Number of Antigone tops to make - 13
Number of Malfi costumes made and fitted - 0
Number of Malfi costumes being made - 5
Number of Malfi costumes that have unassembled parts - 11
Number of Malfi costumes that don't exist at all yet - 15 (Urk.  This is a bad number.)
Number of Faustus costumes that can be made - 8 (I know what the devils will wear)
Number of Faustus costumes unconfirmed - 33 (there are many changes and it is a big cast)

Rehearsals:
Number of rehearsals to Antigone get in - 6
Number of rehearsals to Malfi get in - 12
I'm not even thinking about Faustus in those terms yet.
Number of words learned for Twelfth Night -  0 officially, but about 50% in reality

Gaming:
Number of online games being run - 3
Number of online games played in - 3
Number of live games prepared for - 1
Number of pre-gen PCs for live game printed - 0
Number of Mikelmerck posts achieved in last week - 0

I look at this and realise why I don't like maths.  It keeps telling me things I don't want to know. 

Trousers. Not as simple as they look.

Despite my best efforts, the Antigone trousers are making slow progress.  The legs are simple.  The top end?  Ugh.  You have to leave enough space for anatomy.  Not hard in fact as if you do what I did (in my innocence) you end up with something that will comfortably accommodate two cast members at least.  This plainly would not do.  The poor kids would have been wallowing in unseemly yards of  fabric.  Plus, I don't have enough material for such indulgence.

I ended up cutting out a random chunk and re-stitching and now have a pair of vaguely functional trousers.  They are neither elegant nor anything a person would choose to wear, but that is the nature of costumes.  Since then I have disembowelled a pair of ancient pajama bottoms and things are going better.

Oddly enough, I have no problems with really quite difficult things - like outre robes and dresses for the damned, but plain simple trousers have been eating my life for three days.

Mikelmerck Bestiary, your turn is coming.  I have earned you.

Last classes of 2011

Got my last set of classes today.

I always do a mental tally of what's been achieved over a term - nothing formal, just a kind of balance sheet to help me focus on what needs to be done next.  A priority roadmap, I suppose.

We have dates for all our productions and some of them are coming up very soon indeed.  Antigone needs to be ready in the first week of March - which essentially gives us 6 rehearsals (12 hours) plus a dress/tech to get it right.  Planning is on course for that.

The cast have the bones in the right place, but some are behind on the lines.  Among the principals, nice performances are emerging, but they need to find more variety.  With these heavy roles it's a great temptation to give each line the same weight in an attempt to convey all the ideas.  That leads to shouty, dull performances, so we'll be looking at finding ways to give some light and shade to the scenes.  Most of the story is basically a monster family row played out in public, but I think there needs to be a greater contrast in the rare moments when Chorus and principals are not on stage together.

Malfi is now fully blocked at last.  Spent Thursday working through the small bits we never managed to do before, worked through the fights and sent the cast home with instructions that lines must be learned for progress to be made.  Costuming on that is moving ahead as it's complex and a pain.  We can't do a "proper" period, so we'll be concocting a house-style.  If it is internally consistent with the world we're building, it will both work and look good.  Fabric and colour are the keys here.

Faustus has the longest rehearsal period.  It also has the widest spread of cast experience and the big issue here is to help them blend.  Everyone is talented and some are very promising, but for a lot of this large cast, this will be their first attempt at a major piece of classic storytelling.  I'm lucky enough to have been able to seed it through with some very good, very experienced senior members who are acting as mentors (whether they know it or not).  I am much further behind with costuming ideas on this one, but that isn't the priority here.  Not yet anyway.

As far as Bowes goes ... well now.  The nativity went well (I didn't see it, but my spies are everywhere).  We are now therefore back to Drama Club only.  What normally happens is that we get a lot of new members off the back of the nativity (which is partly the idea, after all).  They start again in January and by the end of the Spring term we should be working on whatever their summer show will be.  I'll write something for them.  The theme pretty much has to be the Olympics (2012, unavoidable).  Some kind of Greek myth I think. 

Cast will range in age from 6-11.  I will probably only have one or two boys at most.  Ability will also be varied.  Suggestions?