janestarz | Always wear protection

A painful lesson is learned most quickly. "Always wear protection" is a very good lesson and this saying can be applied to many different arts, hobbies and trades.

This is what happens when you fail to learn your lesson:

When I was younger, I used to count the bruises after I got home from an event. More often than not there were more than 20. Now that I am older and ~~do not rush blindly into things~~ appear to be more lucky when I blindly rush into things, I no longer count them. Still, it feels like a mark of pride to be sporting such a bruise even if it was caused by carelessness. It feels like the testimony of a good event.

What happened? I was sporting a 25 lbs longbow during the event. My costume does include bracers, but these always slide down over my hands, and start to irritate and hurt, so I chose not to wear them. As my coat has narrow sleeves, this does not interfere with loosing arrows.
In the endbash one of my arrows fumbled - the nock slipped from the bowstring and I loosed my empty bow at full-pull, the bowstring thwacking my arm. Luckily, this means the bow did not take the brunt of the backslash (loosing an 'empty' bow is nigh blasphemy!), sadly: my arm did.
This was a 25lbs bow, and just the one shot. Imagine how it would be with a 50 lbs longbow...or with multiple shots...

The bruise only hurt as it was growing - between 2 and 6 pm yesterday, but the pain stopped when the bruise had fully developed. Now not even my tunic brushing it hurts, though I won't chance fondling that arm for a while.

I also came up with a new plan for some sub-bracers...perhaps it will work.