I think this donation of partially finished projects is a great idea.
I've seen it done here in the East to what looked to be good results,
and I myself was given a vest in need of buttons and button holes. I
think it is a great way to scaffold (think vygotsky) new people to
projects they can't yet do on their own. The other use I've seen this
put to is to help older members get rid of half-completed projects
that are collecting dust and will never turn into completed projects
otherwise.

Ze'ev


--- In ThinkWellTNG@yahoogroups.com, Grimwulf Harland <grimwulf@...>
wrote:
>
> Occasionally, to encourage someone whom I see potential in I will
make a
> portion of a project: an annular brooch to fasten a keyhole neckline, a
> buckle and buckle-plate for an eventual belt... just something that can
> be used almost immediately with a little work, but suggests a greater
> end use. The first one's free, as the saying goes...
>
> It's good for people to have a little help along the way, and know that
> you think they're cool enough to undertake a custom project for. I
love
> scribes and illuminators dearly, but I can't wear my scrolls. One
> exception after a fashion is my wife: I asked the fellow who three
years
> later would become my apprentice to make a reconstruction of the
> Mastermyr chest for her laurel scroll. The text is carved on the lid
> and front of the box in an Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet. She keeps her
> fiber tools in it, and we occasionally sit on it during outside courts-
> oak is strong!
>
> My personal experience has been that getting personal thank-yous is a
> lot more constructive than telling me, "you oughta be a peer someday."
> I heard that for nearly a decade by peers and non-peers alike, and
it is
> extremely frustrating. There is no surer way to make someone miserable
> than to tell them, 'you ought to have this thing that you don't have
and
> cannot easily obtain' over and over and over. Love of money and the
> root of all evil. That sort of thing.
>
> Rather than succumb to the temptation of actually saying, "You're cool,
> and I see you as an equal," I stop somewhere around "You're cool!"
If I
> follow up with a small object that I have made (or had made for me),
> that makes it that much more personal, and memorable. One of the best
> things to happen to me in the SCA was shortly after I arrived in my
> now-home kingdom. I was showing one of my projects to a countess... I
> don't even think she was wearing her hat; I was just talking to someone
> who was interested in my work. She gave me a stamped coin (Order of
the
> Rose/ patron of the Arts) and effectively told me to keep up the good
> work. I directly responded eight years later by cutting dies for her
> reign's personal coinage. Then after stamping several hundred coins, I
> gave her the die with her portrait on it.
>
> I had a lot of things I wanted to say, but I was wondering how other
> people deal with the encouragement issue. I also like to go a little
> further out of my way to ask people what they're working on, and follow
> up later for a sort of 'status report.' People need to know that
others
> are interested in what they do, and that their efforts are
appreciated.
> Awards are nice and all, but they don't ask about what you're
interested
> in doing- they only state a portion of what you did.
>
>
> -Grimwulf
> Calontir
>