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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Why does the universe hear ‘I want my mother’s table loom’ and SuperSize my thought?

Greet Gijsberts

Just came back from the Mission, where I was looking for a garb belt. No luck there, though I did bring home a boiled wool men’s blazer to cut up for my detachable sleeves and braid extensions and a great pair of shoes that will work well for garb.  Shoes are tricky.  That was very lucky, esp as these are cutout in the back to show off the fancy heels of the socks I’ve been working on.  Cool. Anyway, I’m poking around the ‘Weird Stuff’ section, and I see a FLOOR LOOM.  For $89.  Amazing.  A floor loom is way … Continue reading Why does the universe hear ‘I want my mother’s table loom’ and SuperSize my thought?

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Folding Chairs Through The Ages

Greet Gijsberts

Look here. "the folding stool as a ceremonial chair developed in two ways: one secular, and the other ecclesiastical. the makeup of the roman ‘sella curulis’ assumes, through the longobard ‘sella plicatilis’ in steel, the form of the carolingian ‘faldistorium’. here we notice another typological alteration. the crossed legs are frontal instead of being placed laterally. this was to emphasize the crossing ‘X’ – structure which became a symbol of authority. the most emblematic example is the throne of dagobert I, king of the franconians." Continue reading Folding Chairs Through The Ages

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China isn’t quite the Third World, is it?

Greet Gijsberts

With this second example, I’ve started a "There’s a Culture" category, in appreciation of successes in past history, which we would do well to simply copy, if not take as inspirational benchmarks. This one is from An Intimate History of Humanity, by Theodore Zeldin.  Again, highly recommended. "History is full of people who talked as though they were alive today, and yet it is assumed that the experience of the Celestial Empire was so exotic that it has no relevance to the West, which sees China simply as a developing country waiting to follow the Western path to prosperity.  But … Continue reading China isn’t quite the Third World, is it?

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Assassin’s Meeting Ideas

Greet Gijsberts

UPDATED 11/13/06 The Assassin’s Meeting: As explained by Geoffrey (our Hospitaller), the idea is to provide everyone with someone else’s Victim Identity card at check-in.  During the day (but not on the field, so as to Keep It Holy – sanctuary! sanctuary!) everyone is trying to ‘assassinate’ his or her designated victim.  If I was assassinated, I would receive my own VI card from the evildoer, exchanging it for the VI card I’d previously been assigned, and would trot back over to Troll and report myself dead, by whose hand, and by what means.  Then, at Feast, awards would be … Continue reading Assassin’s Meeting Ideas

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Tudor Planning

Greet Gijsberts

The previous post reminded me of something that I recently read in A Primer on Sustainable Building, which I’m reading for work. There’s a famous story told by the late epistemologist Gregory Bateson about New Colleg in Oxford, England.  The Great Hall had been built in the early 1600s with oak beams forty feet long and two feet thick.  Three hundred fifty years later, when they developed dry rot, a committee was formed to find replacement trees.  They searched but couldn’t find any (to fit the job).  A young don joined the committee and said, "Why don’t we ask the … Continue reading Tudor Planning

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Tudor Efficiency

Greet Gijsberts

All right, so I can’t suppress the architect tendency.  Check this out, from Treehugger.com: Tudor houses, built at the time of Henry VIII, are more energy efficient than homes of today. According to a new study by British Gas, tudor properties with their solid construction and stout oak beams, leaked 10 cubic metres of warm air an hour vs. 15.1 for suburban mock-Tudors built in 1960. The houses were constructed for the rich and were the work of skilled artisans. They used wattle and daub, an early form of plastering, which was inserted wet, but forms an almost airtight barrier … Continue reading Tudor Efficiency