Greet's Middle Ages

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.

Pomaireware bean pot debut!

(The cat checks to make sure I am not planning Fricassee d'Feline.)

This is the first in a collection I am making of ceramic cooking pots, in an effort to use more period gear on site.  Although I admittedly started this project motivated by appearance, I am learning that Ceramics May Be Just Better, aided and abetted by Paula Wolfert's  Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking.

Pomairewaire is from Pomaire, Chile, and I bought this pot from Earthfare, which is a grocery chain that will possibly be the death of my favorite health foods coop in Tallahassee.

Yesterday the pot debuted brilliantly.  After following Wolfert's seasoning advice, which seals the pores of the bottom of the pot with casein, I put a pound of great northern beans in six cups of water, set the bean pot in a cast iron pot (as a heat diffuser) and put the whole thing on one of the small eyes of our ceramic stovetop.  (The pound of beans had soaked for four hours.)

It took an hour to heat the pot, slowly raising the dial to a max of 3.5.  The beans went on at 11 am, and were done by 5 (probably at 4 - they were dry at 5) with perfect texture, yummy smelling, and no scorching.  I checked on it a lot, which probably slowed it down, taking the lid off that much.  Next time I will not touch it for three hours, and then start checking!

I'm thinking the next pot I want is an 10" dia. glazed cazuela, with a small hollow handle, so I can pull it off the fire.  It's essentially a  2.5" deep skillet, with straight sides.  You can use it like a small casserole, or like a skillet.

Note: Although the cast iron pot worked well as a heat diffuser, it lost its seasoning on the spot that the bean pot sat.  Probably because the ceramic held heat.  I'm going to need a proper diffuser plate anyway, because 10" won't fit inside any of my cast iron skillets.
 

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.