Author: Greet Gijsberts

Greet Gijsberts is a persona created to play in the Society for Creative Anachronism. She authors this blog in order to document her projects and adventures, and share them with a wider audience.
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Embroidered Herbal

Greet Gijsberts

(You really must click this one – it’s huge.) This is the result of a kit that my mother started before I was born.  I finished it last month. I want to make it into a gear bag – since I find myself shlepping an awful lot of gear to Fighter Practice, A&S meetings, and so forth.  But in the meantime it’s inspired a new banner here, and an ID card for me to give out to people.  The card image looks nice on the glossy perforated cards I use for Front Step Design. Continue reading Embroidered Herbal

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Beaded Bookmarks

Greet Gijsberts

The A&S crowd gathered at Seneschal Gabrielle’s on Sunday night to get something together for a probable craft fair come April.  I had the idea to copy a beaded bookmark, that I received as a gift last Yuletide. So here’s the results.  We managed to get twelve done in five hours, leaving time for munching, gossiping, and laughing, of course.  I think twelve is enough if we have several other sorts of things, like: Felt helmsEmbroidered games – Nine Men’s Morris, Fox and GeeseFlower wreathsPlacemats with culinary images + recipes, suitable for framing – we discussed this idea in lieu … Continue reading Beaded Bookmarks

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Books!

Greet Gijsberts

Somehow, I made it into my adult life with no books on medieval life.  All right, I have ONE – an excerpt of Bocaccio’s Decameron, which I bought fairly recently.  None of the retellings of Arthurian tales, of folktales, Maculay’s Castle and Cathedral, none of those are in my house. I have no idea how this happened.  But it’s getting Fixed, right now. I got some Amazon gelt as a Yuletide present (thanks, Mom!) and the following are on their way to my door: Renaissance Fashions (Dover Pictorial Archives)Medieval Costumes Paper Dolls (History of Costume)A Weaver’s Garden: Growing Plants for … Continue reading Books!

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Handspun, handwoven, Part 2

Greet Gijsberts

So here it is, off the loom.  This is not a big item – I think I’ll fold it in half, with the fringys out, and call it a zippered wallet.  That is, after I sew a zipper in it. But it was fun, and didn’t take very long – about 2 hours including the warping of the loom.  I think I could do two of them in three hours time, if I do them on the same warp. Playing with the colors was particularly enjoyable.  No right or wrong here! Continue reading Handspun, handwoven, Part 2

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Meet Maud, my Irish spinning wheel

Greet Gijsberts

(as usual, click to make it bigger) Why yes, I had a good Christmas.  Daan and I had to burn some time in a Wisconsin antiques barn, and they had not one, but about FIFTEEN spinning wheels.  This is, of course, because I stood outside in the rainy parking lot and said, where the fairies could hear, "Wouldn’t it be funny if we found some spinning stuff here?"  So I spent a couple hundred dollars on this wheel, and… a weasel, and a pair of carding paddles. A weasel is a kind of swift, which is doing above what most … Continue reading Meet Maud, my Irish spinning wheel

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First Handspun

Greet Gijsberts

I suppose I ought to apologize for leaving you for our Christmastide travels without posts.  Sorry about that.  But boy, is there good stuff piled around the cottage these days! Behold, my first handspun, being handwoven! (Click to make it bigger – you know you want to.) Wondrous and amazing, yes?  I got a drop spindle kit back in early November, and it came with this pinky purple mohair.  I knit (check out the gallery in the sidebar sometime soon when I get it updated) and had access to this loom when I was a kid, but had never turned … Continue reading First Handspun

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Gift wrapping, forsoothly!

Greet Gijsberts

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!

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Museum of Natural Colors

Greet Gijsberts

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

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How to Eat Acorns Even If You’re Not Piglet

Greet Gijsberts

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