The Monkey And The Plywood Violin

Documentation for use of a part-linen fabric in early sixteenth century German Clothing

2009-07-15T00:54:22Z

(11) Household book of Anton Tucher 1507 – 1517 – “Item, 28th November paid by Virgili to Hans Staiber for 6 ells gray fustian and ½ atlas cord for my granddaughter a gown."

Fustian = Linen warped cloth with a cotton weft, and damnably hard to get these days. And, of course, woolens still predominate. However, that's the first written evidence I'd seen. And in my era, too - most information I find is either from too early or too late, with little information in the first thirty years of the sixteenth century.

WW 2009, plus blitherings about clothes

2009-07-13T04:01:54Z

Back from the event, minus some nap and recovery time. I am not as resilient as once I was, and it's time to start implementing a preventative maintenance plan of sleep and hydration, it seems.

The pavilion is doing reasonably well with just the crow's feet and center pole, but no wooden structure inside. It's a bit like this one , but without the ropes running through the canopy.

However, my door attachments, which have always been jury rigged, could use work. They're the cause of the need for an emergency take down during the high winds and thunderstorm early Friday morning. I woke up and both doors were open, which had turned my pavilion into something that very much wanted to fly away, and caused me to lose one stake.

That meant that the formerly taut roof was now saggy and leaky. So the walls were pulled off, the stuff carted to the car for dryness' sake, and I was up a lot earlier than intended. The roof pulled a couple of stakes later and went over shortly. However, a tip-over in this design is non-disastrous, and putting it up later was simple and pleasant. The rest of the weekend was non eventful, tent wise, though I was pretty cold Saturday night. We ran the weather gamut this weekend.

Bumblebee dress Mark I was worn throughout the event, though I spent a lot of time in field hand mode when in camp, since two layers and no hat is cooler than three with hat. I require more aprons. Also, the support bodice had not been worn for an extended period of time in the heat before, and has stretched an important inch or so. The back will need to be taken in a bit.

Nghi in her sari. Drapes have not changed much in the past five hundred years.

Blurry full length shot of the Bumblebee. Also the pavilion.

This was day 3 of this dress and support garments, so the stretch is not doing great things for my bust shape. The dress needs another couple closures at the bottom of the bodice, and more stripes are going to happen on the guard. However, this is the cleanest and best shape I've gotten yet.

Compare to:
or

The likely goal:
Kampfrau
A fat lady!
Butcher's assistant

I got to take a very nice recipe redaction class, which was a lot of fun, and the Baronial Open House remains a tasty occasion. Sadly, dance was quite disappointing, with what I feel was a poorly chosen set and drawn out, inefficient teaching before hand. Also, it was on the warm side most of the time, and I let myself get dehydrated, so I had a headache most of the weekend. Hopefully I was not too much of a bitch to people.

Camp is turning out very nice, and we're getting a decent ratio of canvas to nylon these days: two red pavilions, a pair of white wall tents and a wedge, plus a couple of shade flies. Hopefully by next year I'll be able to bring a little bit of furniture, since the tent should be past all really major renovations by then. :)

The next question, of course, is whether or not I'm crazy enough to do this .

A water brush! I must have one

2009-06-29T23:18:11Z

http://www.sakuraofamerica.com/Watercolors-Brush

Discarded cabinets=chest in the making

2009-06-17T20:45:02Z

Went outside to toss some recycling and I came across four lovely pine cabinet doors. One is slightly cracked (not a problem - I have glue). One is slightly warped (more of a problem, but dealable). I see a chest in the making. I wonder if I have anything that'll turn into decent end pieces.

Anyone in Milwaukee who runs across more of these, or some other nice pieces of finished wood (not particle board) preferably blonde - please to let me know!

Back from the event

2009-06-16T01:33:03Z

Border Skirmish was a good practice for the longer camping event later in the summer. The pavilion got converted to ropes only a little earlier than expected, since a previous, more optimistic version of myself apparently ditched the hub that the spokes sat in sometime in the past year. My pavilion used to be a 12' round of this type: http://home.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/sca/tents/kuijt.article/ which I have never really been comfortable in the documentation for, and which requires a fairly large amount of support structure, though less than the sidepole type of tent.

It is currently a 12 foot round of approximately this type: http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/sca/tents/firstkr.html though my guy lines don't run through the roof. The crow's feet are currently extremely jury-rigged, since it was a bit of a last minute decision.

In addition, my old center pole, made from three 4' pieces of 3-4" diameter bamboo, was completely borked. Cutting the damaged part from last year off did not work, as the cracks only tried to work higher. I spent the first night in the Emergency Tent, a tiny, tiny dome tent bought about eight years ago. Fortunately, there was a man there selling these: http://store.colemans.com/cart/pole-4-fiberglass-used-6-poles-p-1477.html

I spent a little time pondering the use of something so incredibly modern, but I've been using bamboo, which while natural, isn't what you'd call authentic. And this is less obtrusive, stronger, lighter, and pre-jointed. Moving to hardwood would be very difficult, given my lack of woodworking facilities and the fact that I drive a Prius. And a bright red cotton canvas tent can only be so period accurate to start with.

Moving to this configuration has significantly reduced the amount of wood I have to carry, and has made samadi, who usually holds my center pole while I stake the tent, incredibly happy. The tent now goes up in ~15-20 minutes with two people.

The weekends for the next three weeks will be devoted to working on clothing, and perhaps reworking the ropes on the pavilion to a better configuration. At the moment, it has a bit of sag. More toes and a better distribution on the crow's feet should help that.

In other news, it was very cold and rainy - the first event to be that chilly. I lamented my lack of an overdress (time and effort constraints meant I went in two petticoats and a support bodice like these washerwomen: http://www.hermetics.org/solis/solis21.html and the maid in Susanna at the Baths: http://www.wga.hu/art/a/altdorfe/1/4susanna.jpg (1582 and 1526 respectively). I think that I have some wool on the lighter side, so I'll be making a woolen petticoat for cold days in the future, as well as finishing my overgown. Wore the wulsthaube (white mushroom shaped hat) and got a reasonable number of compliments on that.

No photos, I'm afraid. I bought batteries for my camera, then failed to charge them!

Book Blither

2009-06-08T23:46:57Z

Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw is quite good. It's a Regency/Austen style novel, but with dragons.

Oh, thank goodness

2009-06-08T03:53:41Z

I've been weird and out of sorts all day - frustrated, blah, etc. It's only been getting worse, and I can't really get much work done, though I did turn the bread shrapnel into bread pudding. And then I read a webcomic and started weeping.

It's just some kind of brain glitch - hooray!

Bread Shrapnel

2009-06-08T00:48:26Z

As some of you who know me in person may be aware, I am not what we would call a light and fluffy baker. I make dwarf bread. Sometimes, this turns out to be "mm, chewy!" Sometimes, when I accidentally under rise it, or heat the oven too high and kill the yeast early, it's more "here, the rats could stand to grind their teeth down a little." All of it, when it gets stale, however, goes clunk.

There are lots of recipes that call for stale bread. They work with very stale normal bread, or kindof stale my bread. Not really stale my bread, which mostly turns into a lump. The ends and crumbs get stale fast, which is why I keep a bread jar. Into it go all those little bits that are very stale, when the rats have a cage stuffed to bursting. If you leave the bread long enough, it actually gets so stale it breaks up again.

The bread jar just got really full, so I made bread crumbs. Ordinarily, this would involve a food processor, but mine is not about anymore. I use a stick blender for most of these types of jobs. Discovery! You can indeed make bread crumbs with a stick blender. Just...watch out for shrapnel.

In other news, rope purchased for pavilion. Am making bound canvas grommets instead of leather. Got surprisingly little done today, yet I am tired.

SCA musings

2009-06-06T23:51:24Z

Yellow onion skins in vinegar (with possible iron contamination - the enamel is chipping off my dyepot) turn silk the precise shade I think of as Steampunk Brown. I must consider this for the future.

Turmeric is also the only thing I have that dyes linen. My underskirt is now a fabulous shade of dandelion. I am pleased.

Pavilion has been hemmed and the sides taken in. It will probably have to go to the next event as the (probably) tremendously unperiod spoked wheel type, however, since I have not yet figured out how to make the leather grommets shown here (http://www.greydragon.org/pavilions/basel.html) to attach rope hooks.

Much to be done! Ack!

Doing a bit better today

2009-04-16T18:06:51Z

It's warm and sunny and I can have the windows open. Art angst has subsided to some degree, and I even managed to do a bit of linework last night. Not going to push it, though.

Had a long, long talk with Nghi about what to do on the art front, since things feel so dry. May go back and update some old good ideas with a better skill level. Feels like cheating, but it's at least a contribution to all those bad lines I need to draw before I get to the good ones. Trying to figure out what I like anymore, instead of asking if it's marketable. I have mostly forgotten.

Have dropped two of those pesky winter pounds. Remains to see if the rest can be invited to leave, or if they'll stay like uninvited guests. Will have to take all the corsets in again regardless, due to shape changes.

There is much to do and little time, and I'd rather be sewing, but rent still needs paid, so I'm off to write some more pizza recipes for other people's websites.

Goofing off

2009-04-15T17:02:08Z

I could have been doing something useful last night and this morning. I could have been writing, fixing my pavilion, or sewing. Instead, I messed with my hair. I put it up in rag curls last night with flaxseed setting lotion (1 cup water, 1 heaping tablespoon flax, boil until gooey). 7 rag curls, and the one in the back didn't quite dry, so it fell out pretty quickly. However, here's the evidence.

One problem with rag curls is that the ends get rolled tighter than the tops, because the curl gets bigger and bigger, so there's almost nothing by the time you get to the top of my head. That's still more fluff than I usually get, however. Then, I decided to play with it. Of course, I haven't had real curls since the early 90s and the death of my spiral perm, and the waves have even mostly fallen out as my hair has gotten longer. So I had no real idea what to do with it. In the end, I just yanked it up in a bun - a bun the size of Nebraska. A vain attempt to fix some of the curls has been made with vinegar sugar water.

Conclusion: I need to be more productive, I should figure out how to curl more evenly, and this is what I need to do if I ever want mad scientist hair.

Whew!

2009-04-12T00:44:59Z

Today was the search for a new desk, which took several hours, and ended us up in an Office Depot purchasing a particle board friction desk (tm), which I'd sworn not to do again. However, the wooden desk I had been using was a kids' desk, and tennish hours a day in front of it was killing my back. Now I have to learn to sit like a normal person again. Oh, and I have to put my apartment back together. Going from a 30" desk to a 47" one required some interesting rearranging. It looks like a furniture store exploded in here.

Honestly, buying a desk just feels so wrong. Especially buying one new. I feel like I've broken the scavengers' code. But it's much comfier than the old one!

Writing - I should do it!

2009-04-09T22:16:19Z

So, we have an approximation of spring here in the land of cheese. It is now mostly above freezing at night, and in the 40s and 50s during the day. There are colored things coming from the ground, which my sources refer to as flowers. And I have been greatly remiss in writing here.

My mood has still not quite settled out completely from winter, but at the moment, I'm merely having bad tendencies to catwax (clean the kitchen? do my writing? Why not work on my sewing instead?) with occasional mood drops. This is better than before. I still have not gotten up the energy to blitzkrieg clean the apartment, but spot cleaning is making this more of a habitation and less of a clutter factory.

I am so thankful to have such a small space to deal with. I am also very pleased that at no point did the winter blahs get so bad that I had to purchase bread from the store. While I skipped a week or so at a time, I made all of it using the yeast colony living in a yogurt container in my fridge. That yeast is now six months old. Happy birthday, yeast!

The rats are big and fuzzy, and like me, they have colds. I am hoping this will pass, because I'm far better at telling the severity of an illness in me than I am in them. Currently, it just looks like a spring cold, however.

Have been working on reenactment garb recently. I've got the support bodice together (meider/korsett). It's still in need of a few eyelets for the skirts, but the new drafting method has worked beautifully. It still needs to be dyed. I've also nearly completed a linen skirt (unterrock/stock), which also needs dyeing.

Need to look to the pavilion next, but I am also thinking about cannibalizing some of my older, less well fitted garments. It remains to see how much time is available. There's also a silk overdress to sew and dye (semi-optional). The pavilion pole, which is large diameter bamboo (due to my driving a small car and not wanting to rely on more than one other person for assistance), had never been stored in a climate controlled environment all winter before. The dryness of my apartment has cracked it significantly.

Most of the cracks seem non-structural, so I may be looking into doing a lot of binding with rope, just to make sure. I don't have a source of bamboo for a new one, nor the woodworking shop for a hardwood one. Either way, the pavilion fabric's going to need to be taken in quite a lot. I have been avoiding this, because canvas is big and heavy and annoying. Maybe I can convince Nghi to watch more movies with me while I work.

In art news, I got most of the way through a piece I was very fond of, then corrupted the file wholly. I had not, of course, made any backups. That's put me off it for a bit, but I'll see if I can jumpstart that again. Things were going very well, for a bit.

On a day to day basis, I'm afraid I'm quite dull. I write articles, doodle, sew, and wax poetic about food. That's really about it.

Rats! Paris and Hector

2009-03-30T01:21:50Z

Many things ongoing. I seem to have managed to work out fitting issues for this year's garb. Apartment is undergoing spring cleaning time, though it'll take a while, given the neglect. I have the attention span of a gnat lately, too. Bento lunches are still good if you do work at home, surprisingly - they make me take a lunch break. Several art pieces in the works, none at all finished. Recently did a purge and reorganize of my deviantart gallery, as well. Elfwood and Epilogue are at this point abandoned and will not be updated due to site policies.

And my breeder sent us an email asking for photos of our rats. So I took him some, and realized that I hadn't shown any of the new boys' pics here yet. So, here are

Baby Paris:

Baby Hector:

Baby Paris and Phone:

Grownup Paris:

Grownup Hector:

Grownup Paris and Phone:

In the Cage:

Anyone want a sweater?

2009-02-17T19:48:52Z

I have a black 24/26 ribbed sweater, non-fuzzy, pretty heavy. It's always been a little big on me, but these days it's ridiculous (I'm probably an 18/20 on top right now?) If anyone wants it, you can have it for shipping (or you can come get it). Otherwise, it'll go in the donation box near the supermarket.

Writer's Block: Cookies

2009-02-04T21:41:30Z

What is the strangest advice you've ever received from a fortune cookie?

Submitted By merrytook92

View other answers

"The old ones sleep, but they never die."

Winter War

2009-02-02T18:22:53Z

Hi, folks. I'm going to be coming down to Chambana this weekend for Winter War, though not in a professional capacity. Anyone want to hang out? You don't necessarily have to be at the convention, though it's easier to see people there, of course.

I made it out of the shire!

2009-01-27T00:50:29Z

75.8 miles since the beginning of October, when I started charting , and I just hit the Bonfire Glade. (Don't know what I'm talking about? see here: http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/). Was doing about a mile a day, on average, till the weather got nasty. Have slowed down since the beginning of December.

Sometimes you realize you got off easy

2009-01-13T22:14:00Z

http://www.racialicious.com/2008/12/21/original-essay-the-not-rape-epidemic/
Sigh. I hate people right now.

Because It Amuses Me

2009-01-07T01:53:58Z

New userpic.

Goth Morris Dancing...

2009-01-07T01:40:06Z

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010921.html

*stares at YouTube in fascination*

An Adventure!

2008-12-20T03:26:46Z

So, last night it snowed a foot, all at once. I carefully moved my car to the place I thought was the right one, so as to avoid a ticket. Guess what was the wrong choice! So, today I was well plowed in, with probably 4-6 inches still on the road, and a ticket in my car. I also owned no snow shovel.

Thankfully, samadi and space_geek_ken were on hand, and were willing to help me dig out. We initially began this project with two cookie sheets and a dustpan, but my building manager was kind enough to loan us 1.5 snowshovels (one was cracked), and not to laugh at us.

Eventually, we dug out of the snow bank and got onto the road, but all parking places were taken by then, except the ones we needed to shovel into, and rush hour was on. After much circling, getting slightly stuck, skidding and so forth, we decided that we needed to go buy a shovel for the car and some kitty litter. We went off to walmart, discovered they had naught, and picked up a very small snow shovel (probably for kids) and the litter at Big Lots, instead, since people apparently hadn't managed to raid there yet. Then there was a glorious stuffing of selves and Baker's Square, and the dreaded return. Upon which, we found that the parking space I'd carefully moved out of last night was vacant, and that the car fit nicely. The end.

I don't want to go on any more adventures. Also, we are looking into short term garage storage for the car during the wintery apocalypse.

The Colors

2008-12-03T06:39:15Z

The color combos I'm considering, though it should be borne in mind that I don't actually have the green fabric. I'm extrapolating what color it would end up. Not sure what color trim would be on the black ones. And those pictures are way more flattering than it'll end up. If I actually make a haori-thing (they're normally way shorter than that), I'm gonna look like a box.

I think maybe red with purple is the current favorite. And I know the black is more chocolate on screen, but I needed the lines visible.

Advantages of Being Really Spacy

2008-12-03T05:31:47Z

I'm thinking about making a haori sort of thing. Some kind of big, lined, rectangular-construction robe that'll fit on top of everything, no matter what I'm wearing. Today I dyed some greyish purple flannel more of a light plum/dark mauve, and I was intending to use my remaining Dylon to turn some of my mushroom colored linen sage for the shell.
However, while looking for the linen, I found a bunch of black twill I hadn't remembered I had, as well as a maroon flat sheet. Hmm. Goth haori? On the way, I also dug up a miscellaneous bin, in which I'd packed my spare air mattress pump (wish I'd remembered that before buying a new one), a bunch of leather, some videos, pigeon wings, and winter clothing.

Apparently it takes me all of three months to completely forget I own winter clothing. It's like my birthday. My apartment is giving me presents! The Cruxshadows agree with me.

Now I must make chubby woman in haori sketches to figure out what will be used for what purpose. The black and red could also easily go into some more skirts, since my black ones are getting quite ragged and I could use a nice one. Or I could make a purple and green something else.

One week till vermin!

2008-12-02T05:49:25Z

In a week, I get to have these: