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Name: Okaara
Age: 16
Nameday: 3359.9.15
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual, but she's never really thought about it. Love is love in the Weyrs, after all.
Rank: Weyrbrat/Candidate
Location: High Reaches Weyr.

Physical Description:
Okaara is of average height with a slim figure. Thanks to a life in the 'Reaches, she is pretty fairskinned, with a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks that intensify when she spends time out in the sun. Her wavy strawberry blonde hair that falls just past her shoulders; she tends to wear it up in a bun with a knitting needle as a hairpin.
The most noticeable thing about her is her hands; they're covered with scratches and scars and her fingertips are fairly rough from a life of spinning and knitting.

Personality:

Okaara is a wellmannered, polite girl with a quiet sense of humor. She prefers not to toot her own horn, but is more than content being a member of the choir. The support team, if you will.

Like most children of the Weyr, she needed to grow up quickly and find her place, so there are moments this sixteen Turn-old girl acts like she's in her twenties - usually towards younger Weyrbrats, who see her as that nagging older sister. She'll give her advice once, then leave it. If they want the help later, then she'll be happy to provide it; if not then she's hands off and leaves them to their own devices. Same thing applies to anyone else she gives advice to.

She isn't a social butterfly, but she's not shy. She just prefers small intimate groups (like the knitting circles) to large ones, where she thrives on close contact and one-on-one interactions. She prefers to focus and be engaged with just a few people at a time. Larger groups tend to exhaust her, and she can't abide things like Gathers for very long - so many people and conversations to keep track of!

This isn't to say that she's a total stick in the mud. She's a child of the Weyr after all. Her humor can be rather wicked, but she doesn't usually make jokes to the room at large. Rather, she leans over to whoever she's engaging with and makes her amused observation about someone nearby or whatever's going on, in low tones for their ears only.

Positive Trait List

Patient, Workaholic, Reserved

Negative Trait List

Sarcastic, Exacting, Sensitive


History:

It all began with Karella, a Weavercrafter who was posted to High Reaches Weyr after she made journeyman. To say Karella didn't like this posting when it was first announced would be an understatement; she was from the warm tropical region of Southern Boll, so spending her life in what she considered 'the benighted mountains' amidst the nigh-eternal cold and snow did not appeal at all.

However, High Reaches needed a few good knitters and crocheters, and Karella was incredibly quick at both. But that wasn't the only reason the craft posted her there....they'd noticed that Karella was a good teacher as well, and she'd be able to instruct members of the Weyr in the basics of the craft as she worked. While Karella would be primarily taking requests from the higher ranking Weyrfolk, she'd be able to create her own knitting circles there and increase output to the commonfolk of the Weyr too.

Which is what happened; Karella eventually married a man of the Weyr, and their descendants, like Okaara, still live there. Some left to give back to the Craft in the form of apprenticeship themselves, but the rest still know how to spin, weave, and knit and churn out warm clothes to stave off the cold, using patterns native to the Weyr that had almost been forgotten until Karella revived them.

Okaara is not descended from Karella by blood, but by fosterage; she was the child of another woman in the Weyr who knew without a doubt she wasn't made for parenting. As is the way in the Weyr, the Headwoman made inquiries after she was told by the Healer that the baby was healthy, and found a young weaverwoman named Kasiva that was willing and able to take the child.

From an early age Okaara was raised to learn the family 'business' as it were. First, she helped her mother with the spinning, but it wasn’t long before she started helping out making hats and kept progressing. She liked knitting projects almost as much as she liked seeing people wear her things, and joined a knitting circle as soon as her mother said she was able to.

There was a brief period when she considered leaving the Weyr to join the Weavercraft herself; the ladies in her knitting circle said she certainly had the chops to and her apprentice request wouldn't be denied, but she realized she loved the Weyr too much to leave it. Besides, becoming a proper crafter might make knitting stop being...*fun* for her.


And then Thread returned. Okaara, like many other Weyrbrats and asked to stand out of loyalty to their home. She'll never say she wasn't scared spitless at the idea of fighting thread, but she did her duty. She's now waiting for the next clutch.



Other: Anything else you want to add? Not at this time

Candidate Specific Questions
Do you want them to have an official Search RP? No. She's a Weyrbrat and would automatically be allowed to stand.
Do you understand they will age every passing year regardless if you're there to RP the or not? Yes
Do you want them to have a possible Stands Impression?

You're right. I can certainly rewrite that. At the time, I was thinking of a conversation I had with knitters online where it seemed like a lot of extremely old techniques and patterns that used to be common knowledge seemed to be brand new discoveries for a lot of younger knitters. "Uh, no. jacquard style float catching is NOT new. New to YOU, maybe, but you did not discover this. Trust me on that."

Now that I've got my copy of the Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, I can fix that. I know there's a section in there about the knitting patterns - lemme reread that and I'll edit that as well as the other stuff.

Thanks for the feedback! smile