Scroll Pictures (FINALLY!)

After months of teasing you about getting pictures of my latest scrolls (that I actually got pics of before TRM's got ahold of them) I finally managed to get the camera, the correct memory card, the cord to connect said camera to the computer and time to do it all in one place at one time! Woot! So without further ado, here they are with notes and notations as best I can remember them!

This is from a 9th Century Swiss Missal. I have fallen in love with this style and it's beautiful blue caps:


Another from that same style:

Detail of the side artwork. The men were barefoot in the original, but I felt for an AoA scroll, that a Lord should at least have shoes! There were also three people in the picture and one of the men (I believe the one in blue) was originally drawn with that saintly halo around his head. We may be making someone a Lord, but I don't think we can elevate him to sainthood!


Yep, same style, same era.
And some detail of the cock.


This was for the Order of the Cygnet, our youth's primary award. It is based on the acanthus leaves from the French from a tutorial that I found online. I'll post the link in a separate post.

More Detail. Sorry it is blury. One day I'll actually get the scanner set back up and can get better pics!

And this is for the Order of the Rising Swan, the secondary youth award. Usually given to teens or mature tweens. Just something simple. French style.
And the detail:

I hope no one is offended, I called this one my phallus scroll because, well, hmm, er, it just had too much of "that" shape on it. I'll spare you the detail photo!


Back to that Swiss Missal.

Detail of the B.



And the side:
This is a baroness' scroll that I was honored to be in attendance when it was awarded. It is from a Dutch book of hours. It's fairly simple and I need to learn how to do the shading around them like in the original manuscript.

And the detail:

Well, hopefully that will hold you for a while. I've got scrolls to work on for Daggers and Hemlock, but after that should be pretty free to do more scrolls.

Pictures!

I found these online from RUM court. The first is the pic of me in court in my Flemish working woman's outfit.

The next picture if Lavena in her Busy Bee Dress. The Queen requested that she stand and show herself as well. So glad she did! Lavena has been working hard the past two weeks doing things for TRM at Pennsic!



OK, that's all for now. :)

Ok so it's been a month

Or more since I last posted. Sorry, just been busy and this is the blog that gets neglected. This month I have managed to make about a dozen original scrolls for the Crown of Meridies, a new kirtle, apron, kerchief and chemise, helped make peach mead, went to RUM (Royal University of Meridies) where I taught a class called An Overview of Hats, and recieved our kingdom's A&S award, which was really cool.

Aside from that most of what I have been doing is getting ready for a new homeschooling year (see our homeschool blog , knitting (check my knitting blog Knit Stuffs), and trying to stay out of the miserable heat (we have been having record temperatures well over 100°F with heat indeces at over 110°F!) I envy the 68°F that Portland was having yesterday while we were sweltering. It doesn't help the electric bill either when it is this hot. It's triple what we pay in the winter as we don't run the heater then.

Things are wrapping up nicely for the event. And I will begin shopping soon (probably next weekend as there weren't any great sales for what I need.) I'm glad that I budgeted using non-sale prices. Hopefully next week there will be some good prices on meats which will greatly help with my budget. I keep remembering things I need for the feast that aren't food related like dish detergent, bleach, paper towels, garbage bags, food storage bags for leftovers, etc. I still need to make the hats for the kitchen staff, so I may make myself sit down and whip out about a dozen of those tomorrow. They don't take long. OH wait, my sewing machine is crapping out on me. Hmmm. OK, maybe I'll make myself sit down and figure out what is wrong with the sewing machine tomorrow and then whip out a dozen of those. My staff looks well put together (no there will not be a dozen people in the kitchen at one time!) and things are shaping up nicely for the class. The Crown won't be coming (darn it) but that will probably be a good thing seeing as we have lots of fairly new people who might freak if royalty was present "What do we do? What do we do?" :)

Just an update

Feast planning and preparation is going well for Daggers and Hemlock. We are having a work party on Saturday at Lavena's to (hopefully) finish the sheet wall project. Also we have a practice feast next Sunday to give my kitchen crew a bit of practice with some of these period recipes seeing as many of them have never done a fully period feast. I need to remember to add some live cultures into the milk the night before so that Greet can more easily eat the cheese.

Today I'm working off 3 hours of sleep but have a huge list of things to do. No particular reason why I couldn't sleep last night, I just couldn't fall asleep. Ended up reading the last third of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and still couldn't fall asleep.

Hopefully I will post more later with some pictures of the last scrolls I sent up to TRM's.

Friday Night Projects

Last night was another night at Lavena's Sweat Shop! We managed to get all the tokens for Daggers and Hemlock drilled for the cords to go through them. I keep meaning to take a picture of them to post. (Not that I can find my camera cord for the computer to upload them here!) And when I left at 11:30 Cody was still going strong with sanding the edges smooth. He was doing a great job! I spent most of the evening as people's helper. I was knitting on Lavena's double knit bag for a while and then got side tracked with other people's needs.

Gridded off one of those stained glass windows we are going to use as decoration. We are thinking about leaving them black and white (or more like black and light tan as that's the color of sheets we have) for now. Perhaps color them in later. One of the thoughts that Greet http://szarka.typepad.com/sca/ and I came up with was that these were the drawings that the stained glass artists used in their creations. They would take wood or pieced vellum or parchmnet or even fabric (but usually wood) and draw out the designs in full scale. These drawings would then be used to cut the individual pieces and lay them out. The windows were built on these and then transported once finished and secured to the churches. From what I have read there aren't many extant pieces of these kinds of drawings left.

I also ran sand paper patrol for Cody. I showed him how to "cut" the sandpaper without scissors. :) I guess hanging out in my dad's woodshop all those years has paid off in some form. I also drew the grids for the lightboxed "window" that Melissa drew. We have a lot of work ahead of us before the event. I still need to make "kitchen hats" for my kitchen. That's just a simple process of washing some muslin, cutting out circles and strips of fabric and sewing them together. This isn't rocket surgery, but I can't motivate myself to do it. I must not be close enough to my deadline yet. :)

July fourth we are having a big "shindig" and work party at Lavena's again so that we can get some of these projects knocked out. Hopefully I will remember the camera and find the cord.

On the scribal front, I sent off yet another package to TRM's full of scrolls. I've decided not to send them priority anymore. They were supposed to have arrived yesterday morning and they didn't arrive in time. I spent extra money to have them delivered a day early and they still didn't make it on time. I've got pictures, but still need to track down that cord! It's got to be around here somewhere.

Two posts in one week!

And if I get around to taking pictures of the latest scrolls I've done for TRM Meridies then I might just make it two posts in one day! Woot.

Friday night was a lot of fun with finally getting the casting done on the event tokens for Daggers and Hemlock. They have a dagger on one side and a hemlock leaf on the other. Very nice. I think I would have prefered a one sided coin. We need to really work on making them thinner though. They are weighing in between a half and a full ounce each. We used over 2 pounds of pewter to make the 61 tokens. I sure hope that is enough. Our next thing to cast will be regalia for both Order of the Meridian Cross and Order of the Argent Comet. It should be pretty cool looking by the time we are done.

Cato is going to try to come home today. He's been over in Mobile working and staying in a hotel as they are moving into their new building and of course they can't take the whole company down and do the move in 4 or 5 days, so they are only able to take systems down at night so it is taking them 2 or 3 weeks. He's working easily 18 hour days! Poor guy. But it is Father's Day and I think he wants some clean laundry. (Sounds like a college student - come home, eat do laundry, get presents, go back to school.)

Emily got a hamster. Don't think I mentioned that yet. She's cute. Dark dark gray with big shiny black eyes and the cutest little ears! The cats are only mildly interested and Ki-Ki didn't even give it the time of day. What good is a rat if it is protected inside a plastic ball? Jack is terrified of her when she is in her ball because she feels invinsible and runs after the cats. I'm waiting for Prince Charming to start playing with her ball like his other balls and give her a good whack down the hall. Although we did learn that if she is starting to go down her tube not to accidentally drop the lid. I had to do a "frantic rodent extraction" on her after she managed to turn herself upside down and all freaked out. Then she peed on me. Serves me right for scaring her.

Oh, I got pulled over by the police the other night. Seems as though I forgot to renew my tag before my birthday (I took a moment to make sure my driver's license was still up to date - it was) and the light above my license plate is burned out. The lady was very nice and didn't give me a ticket, just advised me to take care of it. And fortunately it was a Santa Rosa cop and not a Gulf Breeze cop so I didn't have to worry about those flashing lights belonging to my brother! Now *that* would have been embarassing!

OK, off to the showers so I can go buy some sort of beast for Cato, finish the scrolls I need to do and get caught up on some laundry. Toodles!

A month later

I almost want to say, "Meanwhile back at the ranch" I keep meaning to update my blog, but time just gets by me. Then a month later I realize all the things I wanted to blog about but never got around to :)

So I guess we will start with cooking. I'm the head cook for the Shire of Phoenix Glade's http://phoenixglade.org event Daggers and Hemlock. I sort of fell into this. A portion of the menu is posted on the website. We had a great weekend of successful cheese making. Although Greet http://szarka.typepad.com/sca/ did request that more live cultures be added to assist those with lactose issues. Will do that in the next batch (especially since someone who will remain nameless gluttoned herself with nearly a pound of cheese in a matter of 3 days! Oh but it is SO good!) We also had a good turn out on the lentils I'll be cooking, although we've decided to ditch the eggs. Eggs cooked ontop of lentils that have had saffron added to them tend to turn a funky color if not consumed immediately. With all the meat that will be served we aren't too concerned about our guests not having access to protein.

Mead! We finally cracked a bottle of the mead we put up last year. I know I didn't talk about this, but last spring we put up many bottles of some ginger honey mead using two different kinds of honey. One was using honey from Aethelmearc and the other was using honey that Lavena purchased at Sam's Club. While we liked the pre-fermented "syrup" better, we found that we actually prefer the fermented mead with the cheap honey better. Who knew? They also tried the red hot cinnamon cordials as well, but I forgot to get some (too consumed in cheese making and mead tasting).

Garb and Grub was fun on Sunday. We ended up with a small tent city of 5 "EZ Ups", a table groaning with food, and lots of fun discussion. I think every group should have a monthly Garb and Grub just to get together, eat a bit and have it easy. The fighters did armor up in the blistering heat and Sulva had a few heat issues herself (mental note, don't take Sulva to Fighter practice in her heavy Italian Ren in the future.)

Sewing. Ive been doing quite a bit of sewing in the past month. It all started with Lavena saying, "Oh Melbrigda, you need a new dress of Kingdom Art Sci." So I put scissors to cloth and made a dandy (if I do say so myself) Flemish Working Woman's Kirtle complete with apron, chemise and kerchief. It actually wasn't as hot as I feared it would be and the kerchief kept my hair off my neck and allowed for breezes to pass through. It's heavy though and I've got the fabric to make another out of a lighter linen (currently it is made from $1.50 a yard clearance twill, but hey, it was $1.50 for all cotton!) I'm also in the process of making Cato some "fancy garb" because he wants to look cool. Reminding him that I just made him some cool looking garb last month with a hat no less he responded, "But I've already worn that to one event." He's turning into a real Garbie Doll. Speaking of which I really need to get the words to the song Garbie Girl that the girls have parodied from Barbie Girl. So I'm cutting out his tunic and hand embroidering the trim for it. I also have fabric to make Sulva a lighterweight Viking Apron to go over her plaid Viking Dress. I think the gray flannel is going to be too hot to wear until, oh, January!

Scribal stuff. I'm still working furiously on doing original scrolls for Their Majesty's scroll cases. I was so proud to be part of the first court (we think ever) in Meridies where all original scrolls were handed out. That was just so cool! It's no secret that I am not a fan of "pre-prints" or "paint-by-number" scrolls, so seeing all those original scrolls being handed out was ultra cool! Hopefully we can get more scribes doing original scrolls as they are just so nice! I sent up a batch to TRM last week as I had promised I would and have 4 finished and 2 lettered scrolls that I hope to finish today. I also need to mail THL Simon's Grant scroll to him now that I've got it finished. That's a "today project." I'm hoping that I will be able to at least take pictures if not scan this set of scrolls before they go out.

OK, all for now. Got a huge list of things to do that I put off yesterday since it was my birthday and I decided I really didn't want to do those things. :)