Okay, what did people call bronchitis in the Middle Ages?  Warning, medical experimentation ahead.

Clearly brought on by a case of burning the candle at both ends of the day in prep for Daggers & Hemlock.  First it was a sore throat, and then a head full of goo, and now it’s fatigue with coughing.  From my experience with bronchitis (after chickenpox) for three weeks in 11th grade, and bronchitis (in Italy) for three weeks during graduate school, and then a return of bronchitis (don’t remember how long) while I was doing the bulk of the writing of my master’s thesis, I expect I’ll be coughing for a while.

Fortunately I didn’t promise to teach any classes at Coronation on Saturday.  Unfortunately I’m going to be meeting a bunch of people, so I get to demonstrate the ‘pay to play’ cough plan – sentence, then cough.  Sentence, then cough.  Long sentence = disturbing cough fit.

Although the coughs do nice things for my tummy muscles, they are exhausting.  Syrups don’t help and the chest docs agree.  Chamomile tea and Vick’s VapoRub prove to be the best (and cheapest!) suppressants so far.  Interesting to look at the ingredients in generic VapoRub: Camphor, eucalyptus, menthol are the actives, but also cedar leaf oil, nutmeg oil, petrolatum (yuck), turpentine oil, thymol.  That last is from oil of thyme.  Interesting herbals there.

Enough sickroom stuff.

I spent Labor Day weekend working on garb with mom, while watching endless episodes of Brother Cadfael and Upstairs Downstairs.  Perfect television.  I cut out fabric for a Viking undertunic and apron, both linen (though the undertunic is that weird cheapo stuff they sold at Gulf Wars).  I’m not going to handsew the undertunic – that fabric doesn’t behave like Real Linen ™ so it doesn’t crease under my fingernail properly.  To the machine it goes. 

The apron is out of the leftover saffron-yellow I did Spoon’s shirt from.  (WHICH HE STILL HASN’T COLLECTED!!!)  I’m not sure I like the color combo – and yellow does nothing for me or mom, who might borrow the ensemble if we go to events together again.  So although I’m going to go ahead and sew it up…I keep telling it to look out for the indigo dyebath.

I also made up a new fillet out of my new batch of heavyweight bleached linen.  Must do a barbette and tippets too from linen, but I’ll use the handkerchief-weight for them.  Also the new tippets will BUTTON ON, since ties are cute, but they don’t stay put, and they’re loopy.  The illustrations don’t show tied on tippets.

Button onto what, you ask?  Onto the sleeves of my cotehardie, of course!  Don’t get excited, I don’t have a new dress yet, but I do have a bodice pattern.  This took us quite a while to do, but it went fine, and looks wonderful.  I can’t wait to have the opportunity to work some more on it.  It needs sleeves fitted next.

(Why is it that ‘trash fabric’ always turns out to be in a color that makes you look fab, even when you’re on Death’s door?  This is a very firm cotton twill in teal, which I would never use, because it’s too stiff and hot, but makes a fabulous ‘straight-front-seam’ GFD sloper, because we could really tug on it.  Maybe I’ll find a way to make trim out of it near my face on something.  A hat?)

I also did some knitting.  (GASP!)  More on that later.