Greet's Middle Ages

Craft materials are not groceries.

I've become fond of the blog "The Happiness Project". (No, I haven't read her book, but I'm sure it's lovely, if it's anything like the blog.

Reading a couple of years of intermittent posts in which Gretchen explains the Truths of Adulthood, Secrets of Happiness, and Personal Commandments that she has found for herself has helped me understand that I can do this too.

(I don't entirely understand why I have this reputation for intelligence when I can be really, REALLY slow about some things.)

So..."Craft materials are not groceries."

You know how groceries work.  You run out of eggs, you buy eggs.  You don't have something particular in mind, you just know that at some point in the next couple of weeks you're going to be standing in front of the fridge with an urgent need for an egg, and you need it to be right there.

Well, maybe craft materials used to be like that.  When I was ten, and had no allowance, and depended upon my parents taking me to either the library or the fabric store.  But now that there's the internet, and places everywhere at hand, and since the internet delivers...I have too much stuff.

I've gotten to the point where piles of materials no longer make me feel rich, but hassled.  Like a closet ripped from an episode of Hoarders is arguing with the lovely new ideas rolling by my door.

So I've been culling my stash.  It's been slow going, fighting the internal 10-year-old who is terrified of interminable summer with no tv allowed.  Here's another Gretchen-worthy Truth, stolen from XKCD:

 I've got a box of Ziploc bags...craft closet, you're getting pwned.

For anyone who's ever left a comment...

I promise I didn't mean to ignore you.  TypePad has evolved so swiftly, and spam comments (hiss!) proliferated so quickly, and I went back to school, that I just stuck my head in the sand re: comments.  I've figured out how to kill spam comments efficiently, and I'll look for some sort of notification setting, so I can tell when you lovely people talk back to me.

Spring Sewing

I've been sewing as part of a Big Barter lately.  (And a little bit for me, as I stop quite so much faffing around in tertiary personas - trying to stick with 6thC and Bronze Age lately.)

But it's been good that I've done quite a bit of reading and garbing for High Medieval, since now I can help out a friend.   This brave soul handed over her fabric stash an embarrassingly long time ago, and asked for a wardrobe's worth of "loose 14th" work + nicer clothes, that are fitting to a very accomplished potter.  Here's my progress so far, with a few things I've thrown together for me, just to see what my stash is up to:

The four hangers on the right are for me, but all the rest is The Trade.  And this too, which hasn't been cut up yet, except for that embroidered undertunic peeking out...

The three hangers in the center, (blue, brown, and blue) are done except hems, which I hope to finish this weekend at Kingdom A&S.  When I'm not chatting and taking classes, which look really good this year!  I want to check out these classes/demos:

• 10am The Honorable Lady Brighid of Ferncliff Early Period Embroidery
• 11am Lady Juliana verch Hoell Coptic/Tarim Naalbinding Stitch
• 1pm Baron Charles O'Connor The Period Concept of Beauty
• Print carving and regular wood carving Baroness Katherine of the Wode

though with temperatures in the 90s, attention span for me is always iffy.

I've done some Sable Sword cloak sewing, too, a couple of linen ones for summer, but I have no pictures of them, either in progress, or on their recipients.

Wine List, February 2011 (aka Way Overdue)

(Here ought to go a pile of apologies for forgetting how to blog.  Let's call that done, and get to the good stuff.)

Way back in February, my adopted group Glynn Rhe, threw an event called Wine List.  The "List" part had to do with a tournament, in which all participants put a bottle of wine on a blanket, and then everybody fought everybody else, and the winners* got to take home the wine, and some prizes, besides.

*There were teams involved.  I really only understand about that much, and that the Viking was on the winning team, and that's why we had a pile of wine to take home.  I was busy with the next bit.

The "Wine" part of Wine List not only has to do with the prizes for the "List" part, it is also the theme of the non-fighting part of the event.

I love a theme, therefore I appreciated wine.  First, I learned how.

The fabulous Martabon (Mistress?  Not sure.  Didn't I say there was wine?) traveled in to help our own Mistress Odindisa show us how to talk about the wine we were appreciating.  They gave us a chart, which was a particularly good idea, because now I can read what I thought about it three months later.

We graded wines on the following aspects (I quote from the chart, and editorialize in italics):

Appearance/Aroma/Flavor: Is the color pleasant or does it seem too thin?  Are there distinctive aromas you can identify?  Is it dry or sweet?  Full-bodied or light?  Does the flavor seem consistent with the aroma?

Overall impression: After the aftertaste has faded, what do you think of the beverage overall?  Is it pleasant and applealing? Simple or complex?  Are all the components in balance?  Does it make you want another sip? (My favorite criteria.)

Drinkability: Is this good enough for you to drink an entire bottle by yourself? (Don't you like how the standards seem to be increasing?) Maybe you'd take a few sips and give the rest to your spouse?  If served this beverage in a restaurant would you have to gulp it down so you could order another glass of something else? (Ick.)  Would you serve this to good friends?

We drank/tested a fair few:

Barefoot CA Riesling, CAVA Brut, Fetzer Gewurtztraminer (by FAR the favorite at the event), a homemade blueberry, Morgan Creek blueberry, Beaujolais Louis Jadot, Frunza Merlot, Barefoot Shiraz, Barefoot Chardonnay, and Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon.

We also used 5 steps in our appreciating:

1. See - clarity and color.
2. Swirl - look for "legs", the drips back down the glass vary in viscosity, and "strong legs" is called a more full-bodied wine
3. Smell - here we tried to assign metaphors like "floral" or "fruity" (other than grape)
4. Sip - My notes say here, "ketchup: Shiraz, mustard:Merlot, Pinot Noir/spicy".  There were TEN samples, y'all.
5. Savor - What's the aftertaste?  Disa and Martabon had these lovely "wheels of flavor" which were very helpful to pin down a flavor, or just jog one's vocabulary.

Since I'd had so much fun appreciating wine, and Martabon's husband Sir Gwydion seemed lonely at the Beer Appreciation table (the fighting was just winding up), the class headed over there.  Fortunately it was close by.

Warning: I am learning to be downright snobbish on both beers and wines.  And now I have picked up some knowledge to reinforce my uppity opinions.  Did you know that hops, those awful sour things, were only added to probably perfectly good beer as a preservative to keep the beer good on the way to India?  Which occurred AFTER 1600?  So there, I now feel I never have to drink a hoppy beer again.

Here are the ones I really liked. 

I also like the taste of malted barley, which could just be sprinkled on the top of baked goods, to my mind.  And the explanation of the yeast eating up the sugars in the fermented barley, peeing alcohol, and then dying in its own pee, is never going to leave my mind.

After so much alcohol appreciation, we waited around for dinner, and the Viking appreciated cabbage, by frying it with bacon, and we all sat around and appreciated more wine, and the smell of dinner cooking.

There.  A proper blog post.  I have a couple more brewing (ha!) and am headed to Kingdom A&S, so maybe I'm back on the wagon again.

Hysterical historical video mashups

"Beowulf": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiBaSqO7n9U

"The Vikings" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIvJ2P0giVc

"William the Conqueror": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ8A5gRe_Dw

Apparently these are part of a series - they're wonderful.

(School/work is going really well - but yes, it's taking away from the craftwork/blog while I adjust.  Honnora's diamond twill apron is nearly done - just lacks straps.)

MGT 2010

The Viking, er Saxon* and I went to MGT, and tried out the wool geteld as a pavilion, with one side propped up.

 

(*He's decided to switch sides and move back in time to meet me.  Looks like I get to avoid making myself a Viking apron for good!)

Our friends Vladimir and Illaria sat with us, and brought rugs and their very comfy upholstered chairs.  Besides the upholstery, I really like how the high backs fill in the vertical wall of the tent, visually.  I'm wanting to find more pictures of people seated for more chairy ideas.

We really liked how the tent worked as pavilion.  The front poles are stolen from my sunshade - there's two 8' poles in the middle, and two 6' poles.  This setup works well to hold lots of people and stuff - and we could even lower the lamps over a table and feed a bunch of people in rather grand style.

Honnoria, here's how we decided to hang your lamps.  The chain *barely* fits through the eyebolts of the ridgebeam lap.  But the chain is long enough to pull them down significantly.  As the year progresses and the dark comes earlier, I hope to get a chance to light them in the tent.  I want to see how much oil they use, and how bright they are...I wonder if there's a light meter in my camera!

Your Viking apron was rather admired...it's very soft.

This MGT was the first that I had my own pavilion as "home", and so did less bopping around to everyone else's.  Pros and cons to that - I didn't get around to as many people as I usually do, but then again, lots of people did come and say hello.  I made progress on the other edge of trim for Honnoria's apron (the diamond twill that Bergthora is loving on has tablet-woven trim, woven directly onto the cut edges of the fabric to finish them.  You can see green/red trim sewn on with yellow weft here - the other edge will be blue with yellow dots.)  Progress is important these days that I don't have so much time to do SCA stuff.

Another pro was getting to be a resource for people - apparently people see things on this blog, or they hear that I have a thing, and have questions about it.  Bringing all my goodies with me means they can investigate their own questions - I love that I can facilitate self-directed learning, and it motivates me to keep making stuff!  One person (Holla's husband, are you Ingolf? Sorry to not ask your name!) actually recognized my bee-on-a-stick standard as a Frankish bee!  That just about made my day!!!

MGT is actually about fighting, not just bringing out all one's pretties, and I managed to pay a little bit of attention.  I'm starting to get a handle on how fighting styles differ, and forming some theories on how they interact.  Not that I think I'll ever be able to sideline-kibbutz the field, but it'd be nice to be able to provide cross-training support to the Viking Saxon, so that he can play with as little pain as possible.

Leftover dye

What to do with a small batch of leftover black dye?

I needed to dye a bit of fringe leftover from the first diamond twill, black.  Small pot of RIT.

 

I'm inordinately proud of this idea - the point is to make my braid look like a bell-rope, like this:

Tassels everywhere!!! 

(This kit improvement is motivated by helping serve Madhavi's super-authentic Indian feast at Trimaris' 25th year.  My kit has a LONG way to go, before it looks as good as this, but that's part of the fun.)

Cotton dyes incredibly quickly - no wonder it replaced linen and wool so fast - but then I had some leftover dyebath.  I dyed a small bit of wool to use for appliques, but still had some leftover.  Can't throw it down the sink...

Hurrah for not having to completely remake the Viking's banner just yet!  This may not make it through the rain, but it looks quite a bit better already.  I'll iron it in hopes of setting the dye further. 

RUM 2010

RUM was held less than an hour away this year, so I got to go.

The Royal University of Meridies is the annual big teaching event for the kingdom of Meridies, and it also hosts meetings for many of the kingdom's service groups, resulting in the usual problem of too many places to be at one time, and difficult decisions for someone like me, who has her hand in too many Yahoo! lists.

So I chose according to Most Pressing Responsibility, which was first that I'm the new chatelaine of Glynn Rhe, and there was a series of How To Be The Best Newcomer Supporter Ever classes offered by the chatelaine of the entire SCA, so of course I had to see what she was like.

(I've already broken one of her suggestions, in that it's been more than 72 hours and I hadn't blogged yet.  Oh well, I'm learning.)

But there were all sorts of other lovely ideas about expectations for demos, followup, what loaner gear should be like to encourage retention, etc.  I look forward to Baroness Marie's summary of what was talked about.

I also took Ailleaghan's "Medieval Foods for a Modern Palette" cooking class, in view of my Pressing Responsibility for feast this year, and feel a little better about having the skills to pull this off.  Neat tip about how to use Excel to keep track of amounts and repetition of ingredients - since I'm working hard to become an Excel monkey mundanely, this is fun.

I hauled around some cardweaving that I'm doing to bind the cut edges of Honnoria's diamond twill wrap Viking apron.  I think I've got a new loom design worked out, based on the archeological board finds that I've seen somewhere, probably in Collingwood's book.  (I don't have a new board yet, but I've been using a segment of my warping frame with only two pegs, and it's working fairly well, and would work better if it were wider and had a big hole in the tummy end.)  Sorry, no pics, still camera-less, and I haven't taken a moment to sketch yet.  Bad Greet.

I didn't make all the social rounds I usually do, having showed up Not Early that morning and skivving off in advance of approaching thunderstorms, but it was nice to catch up with those I saw.  Fun to see more developed Roman and Kentish kits coming along...I wanted to take pictures of Her Highness Lethrenn in her new Kentish, but...no camera.

I also wish I could have stayed for the singing, but mundane life called, and I missed the Viking, who stayed home to handle Stuff, and was asked about.  We plan next to visit Trimaris for 25th Year (I'm really looking forward to the Indian feast!) and think our next Meridian event will be MGT.

A bit of blog housekeeping

Apparently relying on TypePad to forward blog comments to my email is a mistake.

I apologize to all those commenters whom I haven't replied to...I try to respond to every comment, because I'd like GMA to be more than a brag sheet.

On the flip side, GMA seems to have attracted enough traffic to make comment spam worthwhile in somebody's estimation, so I'll be adding the "check TypePad comments more often than every blue moon" to my todo lists.

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Also, I've added a Google search box, which is supposed to search just this site when Google's crawlers get around to find it, or perhaps my code is wrong somehow.  I'm giving it a week, and if it doesn't work by then I'll try again.

Future event plans - visiting Trimaris

Right, the usual apologies for being quiet - it's trendy to blame Facebook, who am I to be different.

AND MY CAMERA HAS DIED.  SHUTTER BUTTON KAPUT.  INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING.  (I will limp along with my phone-cam until I can get a replacement.)

But since good things keep happening with my friends, I feel obligated to share and help as I can:

Major squee for Madhavi, my Indian-persona-ed pal in Trimaris.  Madhavi is one of the considerable forces behind the SCA-India Yahoo list, and she's also an AMAZING cook (which in the SCA, frequently translates to "feastcrat", or person who coordinates, researches, shops for, and does the bulk of the cooking for 80-200 people at a multi-course meal, usually on some theme).

For the fabulous occasion of Trimaris' 25th Anniversary, she is presenting an Indian-themed feast.  (See her wonderful website about it here.)  Since I have a secondary Rajput persona, I thought - "Ooh, I want to help serve that."  And bring textiles.  And finally finish off my getup - because although wearing all that borrowed jewelry was fun, it really wasn't Quite Right.  (There should be many more pearls.  And black tassels.)  

Not to mention that the Viking and I lovelovelove Indian food, Labor Day weekend is long enough to get down to Ocala, it's also the Coronation of friends of mine from Tally (I'm SO EXCITED FOR YOU GUYS), it's right after my birthday (so clearly I should get what I want, right?), and I can see my mother, who plays in Trimaris.

AND.  Her Highness Princess Grainne is Anglo-Saxon, she of the warp-weighted loom project that I helped a bit with last year, so of course we need warm-weather clothes for that.  I've been promising the Viking a long Saxon tunic, and have lovely orangey herringbone linen twill for him, and I've warped my loom with more diamond twill, though it's going to have some interesting blue and gold striping.

I'm also in the weeds regarding sewing for potters - I owe two various things, which I'd like to finish before Pennsic.

Did I mention I'm jobhunting?  

Need someone to charm clients, research solutions,keep up with filing/bookkeeping, progress long-term projects, compose communications,and keep an ear to the ground?  I need work that will help me direct my business degree – let’s help each other!