This would be the motley crew I served with at Barnes and Noble the past two weekends. Yours truly in pigtails. From the left: Edwin (herald), Greet, Geoffrey (Hospitaller), Elspeth (Arts & Sciences), Edwin, and Greet. I’m happy with this version of my garb, as it’s ‘earliable’. But there’s more in the works – I just got tired of sewing, and there’s holiday traveling to do. More in the new year! Continue reading Gift wrapping, forsoothly!
Treehugger featured a great post on a neat place today. Guests at Oasi San Benedetto are invited to participate in a number of activities, but the ecological guest ranch specializes in the history, production and use of natural dyes and offers a series of related courses. San Benedetto is home to the small but well curated Museo dei Colori Naturali where one can discover ancient and modern techniques for making dyes from herbs, flowers and other natural materials. These colors look just like those in so many frescoes I saw in Florence. They have packages of dye, pigments for paint … Continue reading Museum of Natural Colors
From the Yahoo! Group SCA-Herbalist: Gather the acorns and shell them. Our ancestors would put the acorns in a basket in a fast moving stream and leave them for a few days. This allowed the tannins to leach out effortlessly. Most of us don’t have a stream handy to use. Cover the acorns with water and boil. The water will turn dark from tannins. Throw out this water and repeat the process as many times as necessary to get out all the tannins. (This will vary by species.) They say that you’ll usually need to boil the acorns 2-3 hours … Continue reading How to Eat Acorns Even If You’re Not Piglet
O’Toole’s Herb Farm is in Madison, Florida, a stone’s throw from Tallahassee. JUST BECAUSE HERBAL FESTIVAL, February 3, 2007 Our 5th Just Because Herbal Festival will be held on February 3, 2007. This date, the first Saturday in February, was chosen from an ancient Celtic cross-over date between winter solstice and spring equinox which has been celebrated for thousands of years. Days start to lengthen, renewal and rebirth are in the air. A joyous time to be had by all. This year’s will be filled to the brim with educational and fun mini-workshops. Concurrent sessions will be going all day … Continue reading O’Toole’s Herb Farm
I stumbled across this book today at the paperback exchange place. The History and Folklore of North American Wildflowers. I quote from the Spanish Bayonet entry (family Agave, Yucca filimentosa), because I have one by the front porch steps: In Virgina Thomas Harriot (1590) reported, "Here is a kind of grasse in the countrey uppon the blades whereof there groweth very good silke in forme of a thin glittering sking to bee stript off." In 1610, Sir Thomas Gates, governor of Virginia, described some Indian "womens girdles of silke of the Grassesilke, not without art, and much neatnesse finely wrought". … Continue reading New Book on Wildflower Lore
Courtesy of Yahoo!’s SCA-Herbalist Group: Here’s an article from the January 2007 issue of the Herb Companion on how to to make an Herbal First Aid Kit http://www.herbcomp anion.com/ articles/ 12_01_07- healing-herbs Continue reading Herbalist’s First Aid Kit
(Again I forgot my camera!) We drove the Sunbeam to Fighter Practice. I had become well-nigh annoying on this topic – ‘there’s FP on Sunday, remember?’ ‘You know you can wear anything along with your tunic that you want?’ ‘What will we bring to share at Grub and Garb?’ We got there very early, since the time had changed, and Geoffrey and PEG helped Daan get suited up. He says it reminded him of gearing up for a jump. (He used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes for the Air Force and loved it. However, apparently the gearing up … Continue reading Daan comes to Fighter Practice!
Amazing. "Two years later, the monks agreed to an even larger project, commissioning Mr. Jackson to handwrite and illustrate the whole Old and New Testaments at a cost of $4.5 million (underwritten by profits from the sale of printed versions of the handwritten Bible and by the generosity of donors ranging from a Boy Scout troop to the Target Corporation). The project would require that Mr. Jackson collaborate with a team of several calligraphers, to whom he would teach a script that he had developed just for this purpose. And a commission of monks would have to approve each of … Continue reading The Bible in Longhand
I spent several lovely hours pestering shoppers at our local B&N this past Saturday. Dressed in 1300’s Magyar attire, near as I know it to be. Sorry, I forgot my camera. (Again!) But I wore my newly finished drab cotton tunic with FIVE spools-worth of red embroidery at neck-hem-cuffs, my adorable plaid braid-covers, my very fashionable crocheted cap – which four people tried to buy off me. When they start offering money, I’ll be in trouble. (It’s from Romantic Knits, folks. Six hours to finish it, stomach flu optional.) I’m very sorry I have no picture. I pestered shoppers with … Continue reading Fundraising at Barnes and Noble
seems to be this series, Tales from the Green Valley, which is as yet UNAVAILABLE in U.S. formats. Or maybe it is – I’m not really a media geek – yet. I want to see this! How do you gauge gas mark 7 when you’re using a 17th century bread oven? Why did people 400 years ago save up their urine to help with the laundry? Why did farmers in Britain traditionally plough with oxen and not horses? These are just some of the questions five historians … Continue reading Much better than Colonial House…