Whew! That's over!

I've been madly working on many fronts, one of which being feast preparations for our local SCA Barony. We finally finished that project yesterday, it was fabulous, and while I am busy in my head with plans for an even better event next year my hands are back at work on my IRCC3 camicia. I've only got about 18" of plain hem stitching left to do and than I'm moving on to the blackwork!

Fantasy shopping....

They have the most wonderful Spanish case/traveling desk for sale on ebay...


I want!

Holiday yummies!

Tonight is the annual Yule party for our local barony and Boen and I have been up for hours working on our contribution to the potluck feast. We are making an absolutely enormous meat pie with beef, almonds, raisins, apricots, apples, bread crumbs, eggs, milk, coriander, cumin, tumerick, onions, garlic, lemon zest and juice, bay leaves, salt and pepper...all baked up in pastry with a topping of egg custard.

It smells as yummy as it sounds!

For those of you who don't recognize this dish from the list of ingredients (which I wouldn't have until earlier this week) this filling is one of the many variations of a South African classic: Bobotie. We used this recipe for the ingredients but changed the technique a bit. Basically we precooked the meat (as did several other recipes) and added a crust.

I love that it is completely possible/plausible/believable in the context of a medieval kitchen, yet I've had Bobotie pie at a restaurant and found the recipe in a gazillion places on-line.

I hope it tastes as good as it looks(and smells)...

Back to work...

on the Pavillion!

Maybe it's the fall weather but I'm getting the itch to get back to work and finish my pavilion before the next SCA Camping season. It seems like forever since I worked on it but the break has been good for me. I thought my way through the quandry caused by finding the roof panels which I had misplaced.

I'd re-envisioned the sections I had at hand into a completely different style of pavillion (a Bell Wedge instead of round) and finished enough of the hand work on the rest of the pavillion that I really didn't want to go back...but I don't have too! I've been wanting to make detachable walls to convert one of the awnings into a bedroom and I think I can dismantle the extra roof to use for some of the parts of the bedroom walls.

Yippee! Now to implement the plan....

Better Late than Never

I have finally got some Pennsic pictures to post.

This is of me, all dressed up and ready for the Red and White Ball.

And this is my Boen.

Name/Device Progress

We received letters yesterday that both Boen's and Aurora's names made it through the first stage of approval with the SCA heralds. Yippee!

Our devices? Not so much.

They have a problem with our seme of eyes but I am pretty determined to have my eyes somewhere...

Back to the drawing board with that one (OK, 2), sigh...

Fizzing with Anticipation!

The paperwork to register Boen's and Aurora's names and devices was sent in a while ago, improved, and entered into the record of the AEthelmearc Internal Letter of Intent AE136 on May 1, 2011. The commentary was due at the beginning of June and the publication of it's progress thru this stage of the acceptance process could happen any time now...I can hardly wait!

My chair plan

A question has been raised on the yahoo groups medieval encampments list regarding appropriate furniture for a late period, French, encampment.

I have been looking at extant examples of portable furniture from that period and have found variations of this chair from both England and Spain. I haven't looked at French furniture yet, but I suspect they also have a variation. (FYI, I took a brief look at French furniture yesterday and the form--"Caquetoire Garnie"-- does appear.) Some versions seem to collapse by removing the spreader bars between the sides, others may add or substitue hinges in the spreader bars, and some versions add hinges or other joints halfway down the legs for an additional point of collapse.

I'll add detail of my sources ASAP (NOTE: sources now added), but in the meantime I wanted to share my sketch-up model of a type of chair which I have never seen in my (admittedly limited) experience of SCA camping. To wit,

the Friar's (Monk's) chair

As usual, if you click on the picture it will take you to sketch-up where you can pivot the view or download the model to tinker with.

Folding sillon frailero of walnut (sixteenth century)

Musee Episcopal, Vich. Bacelona. "as in many early examples, the frame can be dismounted." From "Furniture Past & Present, L. Boger, Doubleday, 1966












Folding sillon frailero (sixteenth century)

Spanish Interiors and Furniture: Photographs and Drawings, Arthur Byne and Mildred Stapley, William Helburn, Inc. 1921

My Tudor Trailer

Last summer I learned about the existence of a free downloadable 3-d modeling program (google sketchup 3-d) and started working on a plan for my dream portable house for SCA Camping.

I decided to complete my pavilion instead--for a variety of practical reasons, including the fact that I could work on it thru the winter in our heated house instead of trying to work in the frozen garage--but I still LOVE my trailer plan so I am sharing it with you here.

Aurora's 7x14' Tudor Trailer (Plan/Visualization)

It will have both a queen size bed and an additional sleeping berth/daybed, a "working" fireplace (canisters of gel fuel only), an outdoor kitchen based on drawers which pull out from under the bed, and both a woodpile and stone water trough to cover the wheels.

I love-love-love it!

I based the shape on various other pop-up SCA trailers I have been studying on-line. The intricacy of detail is based on extant examples of historic housing, notably:

Staple Inn, Holburn, London, England














and

Little Moreton Hall, Cheshire, England














For those of you who are wondering about the trailer details just click on the picture to go to sketch-up where you can download it and wander about (it's a 3-d model, remember?) to your heart's content.

On Authenticity...and the art of shopping

I've been thinking a lot about 'authenticity' in the SCA context lately.

On the one hand it seems like a kinda silly concern, I mean, we've got personas from all corners of the globe, walks of life, and hundreds to thousands of years of human history all thrown together in a little itty bitty space carved out from the surrounding 'real world.' Even if said world wasn't encroaching on every side, our play space is a great deal more like Riverworld than Medieval Europe! So why bother?

On another hand, following my medieval interests/passions to the fullest extent I can (or care to) manage at any given time is one of the things that interests me about the SCA. I hand sew my garb and laboriously stitch my way through endless eyelets because I *like* it. Both the process, and knowing that I have done my best to make something both beautiful and as 'in-period' and inoffensive as I possibly can.

So, yet another hand! When I consider the probable 'authenticity' of my gear - projects - whatever, inoffensiveness is something I strive for. By which I mean that I work to reduce the likelihood of my person/encampment knocking someone *else* out of the dream. I am very concerned with trying to present plausibly 'in-period' manifestations of the material goods I need to make my SCA play comfortable for modern me, while keeping in mind another couple of concerns (more hands).

Hand 4: Can I afford it (in terms of money)?

Hand 5: Is this a sound decision for me in relation to the modern world I live in? AKA, can the earth afford it? This one is tricksy for me. I will often, but not always go for the product or material which seems the most ecologically sound, or safest, or most renewable even if it is the farthest thing from what my persona would have had, 'in-period.' Provided that it still looks and feels right to me.

And the list of hands just keeps on going...

I have my reasons for all of my decisions. The interesting thing to me is that those decisions vary from "I just don't really care about this item, at least not yet" (which would explain my choice of blankets for my encampment) thru "I chose to use this *totally* non period item because it presents a period appearance and fulfills some other need I have" (in example, my gowns made out of beautifully woven but largely synthetic upholstery fabric and my in-tent chandeliers with electric candles) to "I want to try to replicate the shape, use, method, style and feel of this authentic article which my persona could well have owned, and I'm going to do my very best to do it in a way which would seem within the bounds of reason for a person of her time" (witness my lovely folding table 'with it's chains' which will appear in the blog at some point in the future.)

It's all about balance and I find the process of considering and actively *choosing* the right item to fill a place in my list of necessary gear very interesting in and of itself.

Which brings me to the shopping...

My darling gave me a 2 burner Coleman stove for Christmas this year. Which was a perfect gift since it meant we *didn't* have to worry about either watching over a campfire, or starving to death at Pennsic. But I keep finding myself interested in having a second option sometimes for convenience--like a solar oven I could just put things into before I head out of camp for the day--and sometimes for pretty--which is how I wandered into these...

Couscoussier * Brazier * Cazuela

I keep thinking how nice it would be to have a neat little charcoal fire, make a little stew, do a little barbecue right over the coals...and the pots can be used on a gas burner too...hmmm.

I could order it all on line, all it would take is $$ and it's all perfectly plausible--and largely documentable--for late period Italy!

Believe it or not, only a small part of the point of this post is to show off the cool stuff I found (although it is cool!) Mostly I am struck by how a relatively small change in items can dramatically increase the authenticity and inoffensiveness of my encampment. I just switch out the cheap aluminum "camping" pans I was planning to buy for a couple of cazuelas and voila! Instantly improved authenticity of cooking experience and the look on the table. Someday I may decide to go with a fire instead of the Coleman stove and Voila! Completely inoffensive cooking. All without doing any kind of research into period cookware because, honestly, I'm just not there yet.

Which I guess is my point.

I think we have to give ourselves permission to be 'not there yet.'

Furthermore, I like to think that if we do that, and make our subsequent choices as inoffensive as we reasonably can, the 'authenticity' of our individual and collective journeying in these later middle ages will be much improved, quite painlessly!

I submitted my device!

Creepy huh?

It and my name are now off traveling thru the mysterious lands of the SCA heraldry approval process. May their journey be both safe and swift!

If all goes well I'll soon be working on that tent liner...

Sneak peek of my proposed device