And Now For Something Completely Different

 

Yes, here I am again; and I have done a bit of sewing; but mostly just been trying to survive the 2020 garbage fire which has not been easy on me.  But that's not what I'm here to talk about.  I did a new thing! to wit, coming up with the words for Elizabet Marshall's Laurel scroll.  

The elements that need to be in an SCA scroll are as formalized, in their way, as the elements in a medieval letter:

• The award being given
• The names of the monarchs giving it
• The name of the recipient
• The reason for the award
• The date & location the award is being bestowed

How you phrase and arrange these elements, however, are entirely open, and they can be frotzed however you like.  So, what's appropriate for a lady of 12th century England being made a Peer?  She's not a Norman, at least, so one does not have to fret about French (early or modern), thank goodness.  I started by trolling through every online source I could find of Angevin documents: letters, decrees, charters, anything that was out there.  (Someone is actually working on a definitive collection and translation of all the papers of Henry II!  Hooray!  Publication date?  January, 2021.  -_-)

Eventually I found a site that had transcribed the last big effort, from the early 1900s, of as much STUF as they could find from Stephen, Matilda, Henry II, Richard, and John.  It's all in Latin, and they didn't translate it, but did have summaries, so at least I had somewhere to start.  Some facts became immediately clear:

1. Charters of the time were repetitive.  Do not use a single noun or adjective where you can use three.
2. Charters of the time were extremely businesslike.  They're concerned with the "what" and not the "why".
3. (and this is obvious) There's nothing directly translatable to the normal elements of SCA peerage - you don't give someone a charter to declare them a knight, and the king is 100% not involved in artisan stuff.  

#3 was my first problem.  In later period, you can find extant examples where a royal is ennobling or in some wise giving an attaboy to their tailor or whatever; but earlier on, absolutely nope.  But what I did find was the first charter creating a peer of England: issued by King Stephen in 1139, wherein he created Geoffrey de Mandeville Earl of Essex.

Stephanis rex Anglorum archiepiscopis episcopis abbatibus comitibus baronibus justiciis vicecomitibus et omnibus fidelibus suis totius Anglie salutem.[1]  Sciatis me fecisse comitem de Gaufrido de Magnavilla de comitatu Essexie hereditarie.  Quare volo et concedo et firmiter precipio quod ipse et heredes sui post eum hereditario jure teneant de me et de heredibus meis bene et in pace et libere et quiete et honorifice sicut alii comites mei de terra mea melius vel liberius vel honorificentius tenent comitatus suos unde comites sunt cum omnibus dignitatibus et libertatibus et consuetudinibus cum quibus alii comites me prefati dignius vel liberius tenent.

And, my janky-ass translation:

Stephen, king of the English, to archbishiops, bishops, abbots, counts, barons, justicars, sheriffs, and all the faithful in the whole of England, greetings.  Know that I have created Geoffrey de Mandeville earl of the hereditary county of Essex. Wherefore I will and grant and firmly command that he and his heirs after him will hold jurisdiction from me and my heirs well and in peace and freely and quietly and honorably, just as my other earls in my lands better or more freely or more honorably hold their counties where earls are [???] with all dignity and freedom and customs with which other earls I have aforementioned hold dignity or freedom.[??????]

(See what I mean about the repetition?)

Okay, this takes care of the giver, the recipient, and what's being given; but there's nothing to explain why Geoff is getting an earldom[2]. The existing Angevin charters seem to be completely concerned with effect, not cause.  They do not waste time or ink on why a person or organization is getting something (or having something taken away), they just record that they’re doing it.  The closest one gets is either a note about restoring to how things were under a previous ruler, or a gift to a religious foundation which may allude briefly to doing something in the name of a saint.  So the usual “why we’re doing this” in an SCA scroll is purely ahistorical for this period, and you just have to make your peace with that.

One cool thing I did find, though, was in one of Matilda's[3] charters:

Precipio tibi quod seisias Willelmum filium Otonis de terra sua de Benflet ita bene et plene sicut inde seisitus fuit die qua rex Henricus pater meus fuit vivus et mortuus.  Et bene et in pace, libere et honorifice teneat sicut liberius tenuit tempore Henrici patris mei.

My slightly less-janky translation:

I command to you the seisin of William fitz Otho of his land in Benfleet well and fully as it was in the day when the king Henry my father was alive and dead[4].  And he is to hold it well and in peace and freely and honorably as freely as he held it in the time of my father Henry.

This is relevant because Elizabet was given her Writ by Margarita, but because of pandemic her actual peerage was going to be bestowed by Tindal & Alberic; so it was a nice element to knit in. 

So, our final construction:

Magnus Tindal and Alberich von Rostock, Consules of the East, to all dukes, counts, viscounts, barons, nobles, ministers, and all faithful people of the East, greetings.

Know that we appoint Elizabet Marshall a Mistress of the Order of the Laurel, even as decreed in the day of the queen Margarita our forebear, for her excellence and skill at embroidery and her service to the ancient and honorable guild and craft thereof.  Wherefore we will and grant and firmly command that she will hold this honor from us and our heirs, performing its duties well and freely and honorably, even as our other peers in our lands hold this honor, and with the dignities and freedoms and customs that these aforementioned peers hold.  And we grant and reaffirm unto her these arms by letters patent: Azure, three squirrels maintaining a threaded needle Or. 

Done in this year of the Great Plague at Chateau des Coccinelles.

Scroll in progress

[1] This formula, with minor adjustments, is in all of Stephen's charters, as well as Matilda's and Henry's.

[2] spoilers: he was an opportunistic asshole and Stephen was trying to get him to be inside the tent pissing out for a change

[3] if you're not up on your English history: she was the daughter of Henry I and a rival claimant to Stephen (who was only a cousin) for the throne, which led to a nice little civil war for quite some years.

[4] Yeah, I don't get it either.

Overdue Book Report: "Clothing the Past"

I know I promised this like two months ago; I'm sorry.  And honestly I have a lot more sewing I ought to be doing right this moment, but now the book is about to be overdue as well, so let's do this.

Title: Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe
Authors: Elizabeth Coatsworth & Gale R. Owen-Crocker
Publication Information: Leiden: Boston: Brill, 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-28870-6 
(There is also an ebook version, ISBN 978-90-04-35216-2)

This 450-page tome contains full descriptions (ranging from 1-3 pages) of ~100 medieval garments.  Each item begins with a full-page color photo, and finishes with a description of Materials, Dimensions, and Further Reading [about that item specifically].  The remainder of the text gives context for each piece--e.g., the entry for the Museum of London wool garter starts by talking about garters in general, when you start seeing them, what variations of material they were made of; and the entry for the Golden Gown of Margrete goes into detail about who she was and why she mattered...and then into why it may well not be hers after all, ahem.

the "Little Sampford" hat,
mid-14th century. Wool
felt originally covered w/
silk.  I HAD NO IDEA

Some of the items in here are old friends that many of us have a lot of bookage about already (e.g., three Greenland gowns); some are ones we know but may not have had access to much detail about them; and some are completely new, at least to me. That in itself is exciting--I thought I knew the whole canon.  NOPE!   They've also chased down as much data as possible about the newer finds, like the Lengberg lingerie...and some old finds, too, for that matter.   For instance!  They got access to an article I couldn't, so now I know that Gold Charlie's flat buttons have a wooden core, not metal and not felt. 

many diagrams!

An excellent feature of this book is that all textile terms more recondite than, like, "cloth" or "thread" are marked with asterisks to show that they're covered in the extensive glossary in the back.  Said glossary defines fabric types (e.g. felt, lampas, damask), sewing terms (e.g. gore, selvedge), specific period terms (e.g. chaperon, guibbone), and stitch & weave types (e.g. stem stitch, twill weave)....and they include small diagrams of the latter.  So, it's an accessible resource for even a comparative newbie to the textile world.

The items are organized in chapters by broad category of type: footwear, headgear, outer garments, vestments, etc.  (Not all of the categories are immediately obvious to me--hose and socks are separate from footwear--but the table of contents is clear and detailed.)  There are also a number of handy tables and diagrams at the front so that if you're interested in, say, Stuff From Germany or Stuff From The 12th Century instead of Stuff That Are Socklike, you can cherry-pick the entries of immediate interest.

Does it include every single item known to science?  No.  But most of the choices they made make a lot of sense.  You don't need the whole canon of Greenland gown remnants in here, nor do you need every single ecclesiastical cope; they chose a representative few.  And I'm not sure, but it might be otherwise complete for ordinary citizen garments between 700 and 1500. (They don't include the Thorsberg trousers, for instance; sorry.)  

The kicker here, of course, is that the book retails for $225.00 of your Earth dollars.  Even by scholarly-tome standards, that is a hell of a whack.  But if you can at all budget for it, it is worth every penny.  (And if you can't, grease someone who works in higher ed. who can ILL it, like I did.)

A Little Vindication Goes A Long Way

me, Thursday night

It has not been an agreeable week; and as predicted in last week's update, the most I have been able to handle was making up the cloth buttons for a late period jerkin my ronin-sister made for my dashing consort the other year (which, mind you, is a perfectly useful task I wanted to clear off the plate; it's just maybe not in the top ten of priorities right now[1]).  

Ninya and her repro BPJ[3]

It can be comforting and/or therapeutic to watch other people struggling as well; so it was nice to learn this week that a) there's this new BBC mini-series, "A Stitch in Time", in which the presenter (a fashion historian) works with Ninya Mikhaila (yes, that Ninya) to re-create historical clothing; and b) they did the Black Prince's jupon in one of the episodes.  So I threw that up on the YouTubes while doing buttons; and my expectation of either interesting education or cathartic shrieking angrily at the teevee was vastly exceeded by learning that their process for figuring out the quilting, and then doing the quilting, was pretty much EXACTLY WHAT I DID FOR THE POURPOINT.  I mean, even the swatches are the same[2].  Now, let it be said, our panel of local experts are challenging some of their conclusions; and the objections seem cogent, and entirely worth the debate; but whatever the ultimate truth is for this garment, I cannot properly express how much of a boost it is for my mental state to find that the Actual Academic Professionals started & ended from the same place that I did. 

Though it would've saved me a lot of drama and trauma if they'd done it a couple years earlier.

I am sufficiently re-energized that I'm going to knuckle down and cut out my consort's 14th c. shirt today.  It isn't quite the most urgent priority either (I have to get my project management class together, and do some Pennsic camp admin crap), but it shouldn't take me long, and then I have something I can just pick up and mindlessly seam for the next several evenings.



[1] particularly when we realized last night that he has grown a bit too prosperous for the garment at present
[2] well, they didn't have to go through the cotton batting stage, but.
[3] Another blogger went to an exhibition of the Stitch in Time clothes; better photos here

Restarting The Engines

I've not done a thing in the sewing realm since my last confession.  Partially this has been due to a whirlwind of social activity; and partially because the stress is ramping up pretty seriously at work and on the nights I am home, all I have been up for is flopping and staring at the One-Eyed LCD God[1].  And I'm about to leave for a work conference, so the ball is not going to get moved any closer to the line for another week.

On the bright side, I got to see Hamilton.   

And also, inspired by one of those social outings (a trip to the Knit Night at Club Cumming), I have at least managed to start a knitting project that had been stalled for [redacted out of embarrassment] because I had broken the needle I required for it.  Serendipitously, there is a friendly neighborhood knitting store right around the corner from the club, and they hooked me up...a two-minute job I could have done at any time in the past [redacted]...but anyways, a nice small comfortable project is off and running, which is a thing I find can sometimes help me limber up my sewing mojo.  

To be fair, I have started some back-brain processing about my dashing consort's 14th-century kit.  I daresay I can knock out the shirt and cap with minimal drama, and that should give me a leg up to start worrying about the hard bits.  I would have said that about the braies, too, but a bit of desultory looking-around suggests that there are more options and directions than I quite realized.  There's what most people do, which is in essence loose linen boxers with a drawstring waist.  But that's not as who should say accurate.  Plus, accuracy is a moving target, depending on when you are in the 14th century, and whether you're doing the new-fangled tight-fitted fashions, and so on. (Here's a nice survey article of the situation.)    Since this is supposed to be field wear, I guess we should err on the side of working-man styles--? but the sort of faffing involved is something that many modern people find vexing (ask anyone who's worn a great kilt to Pennsic).   

I was inspired in my morning blog-reading[2] by a post where the author makes watercolor sketches of her planned outfits--not fashion-sketch style, but each piece individually next to each other.  To me, this is a brilliant way to think through an outfit as a whole, and how it will work together, and I'd like to try it.  Watercolors per se are probably a terrible idea for me, but I have a lot of colored pencils.  I am not sure my sketching ability is up to snuff, but let us find out.   

[1] I also had a bad dream where I was running around an event or fighter practice or something with a pourpoint in my hands that I was frantically trying to fit to someone, or anyone, and it kept getting more ragged and more flat and less-padded and embarrassing to acknowledge as my work, and and and.  Fuck you very much, brain.

[2] this is what my generation does instead of reading the paper in bed, y'all

Get Your Glad Rags On

SHINY!

It's funny, I've made rather a lot of clothes for myself over the years, but the only fancy frocks have been late-period Italianate stuff--the quattrocento PURPLE!~ gamurra I made for Kamilla's Laureling, and the bronze-and-green Bronzino-ish sixteenth-century job I made for Kasia's Laureling.  I don't actually have anything north of really nice wool in my own chosen time period.  It is really time to correct that.

As previously noted, I have some heavenly blue silk for the underdress, and some cream-and-gold silk brocade for the overdress (which has just arrived safely, after hurricane delays[1]).  The pattern I used for my new pink linen dress this summer is close enough for jazz, and I can get help tweaking it further this weekend.  However!  I want to actually plan this out for a change, instead of just plowing forward, getting halfway through, and going "...oooer hadn't thought of that, herp derp".

Some topics currently in my thoughts:

• Will I ever want to wear the blue dress by itself, i.e. without the (or an) overgown? 
• this informs its closures and, potentially, ornamentation
• presently thinking: no
• Elbow or full sleeves for the overgown?
• presently thinking: elbow, so one can see the blue underneath
• Embellishments for the overgown?
• pearls, gems, etc.  There's some evidence for that which we saw in the Opus Anglicanum exhibit, though that might have been associated with the embroideries, not underlying brocade patterns?
• presently thinking: research it more
• How to close the overgown?  Lacing, fabric buttons, metal buttons?
• presently thinking: buttons, inclining towards fabric
• ugh ugh ugh
• Line both, neither, or either dress?
• To be 100% accurate, the overgown and probably the underdress too would be fur-lined.  Not doin' that.
• presently thinking: neither.  That much silk is going to be sweltering enough as it is, thanks.
• How much matching up of the brocade do I need to do?
• presently thinking: across center front and center back; and keep directionality on the gores; everything else is probably gravy
• Tippets, Y/N?
• presently thinking: research it more
• Include machine stitching or do it all by hand?   *record scratch*
• oooeee.  This enters the misty land of "done" vs "best".  I have clear delineations in other projects--if I'm making something for display, I'll hand-sew it all; if I just need basic clothes to cover one's fleshy bits, I'm fine to machine-stitch where possible--but this is neither the one nor the other. 
• presently thinking: do it by hand.  But this could change if I suddenly grow a deadline.

And then there's the general need to up my accessories game: hair, veil, possibly belt, etc.  (Though I'm suddenly feeling that in a lot of images of super-fancy ladies, they aren't wearing belts?  Let's check that.)  And oh god my purse needs replacing, my current one being a "temporary kludge" enacted over ten years ago. 

I haven't lost sight of my main objective, i.e. getting the pourpoint out the door; indeed the left sleeve is now attached and has all its buttons, as well as a whole! three! buttonholes! *sob*; but I can work in parallel, and if I don't get moving on this now it'll never happen.


[1] Please donate if you can:
Hispanic Federation for Puerto Rico's recovery from Hurricane Maria
Global Giving's fund for Texas's recovery from Hurricane Harvey

Secret Project REVEALED: A Laurel's Hood

we did a thing!

At last it can be told!  The item I alluded to in earlier posts, that I spent a chunk of this spring on, was presented to its recipient yesterday, so now I can tell you all about it.  

The request was for a 14th-century hood as part of Laurel regalia (in place of a cloak) for Stephan of Silverforge, which would be executed as a team effort between myself and my ronin-sister Ceinwen. We had a pretty free hand, modulo the information that he'd probably rather not something in traditional Laurel green, and that he likes wearing hoods in the wacky late-14th century "chaperon" style (this is where you put the face opening of the hood on top of your head like a hat, drape the mantle along your shoulder, and wrap the liripipe around your temples).  

Design Stage (March-early April)

BNF 1586, folio 56r

Since Stephan's arms are blue and silver/white, we figured to make the hood blue wool with a silver silk lining.  We then went all over the map with decorative design choices...fortunately, in an effort of self-preservation, backing away from the full-on goldwork and needle-painting idea before it got too entrenched in our brains...and agreed on a simple vinework pattern in a band along the lower edge of the hood as one often sees in manuscripts of the era. 

one of the Comminges laurel
wreaths

Ceinwen's initial design sketch

For the wreaths themselves, well, now you know why I was so damn excited about finding those images of the St. Bernard de Comminges cope at the embroidery schola; at last we had solid documentation for 14th-century laurel wreaths!  Woo!  So Ceinwen took those photos and sketched them into a workable design.  The plan was that I'd make the hood, send it to her, and she'd fiddle the design size/orientation to work on the final size and angles of the hood's mantel.  We also considered adding stars and/or swords (elements from Stephan's arms) directly onto the rest of the hood, either as appliquè or as metal "spangles", but that was, as they say, a stretch goal. 

The other major design element, in light of the recipient's chaperon-style tendencies, was to cut the hood's liripipe as laurel leaves, so it would form an actual laurel wreath when he wrapped it around his head.  I'd never made a liripipe before, so why start with something boring and normal? 

Fabric-wise, I had ten yards of a handsome navy twill that I was hoping to use, but twill wasn't going to be a great choice for a cut liripipe unless we lined and/or finished every. single. stupid. leaf; and bugger that for a game of soldiers (and, at that, I'm not sure it was Done).  So, I ordered Wm. Booth's navy blue broadcloth, which, although rather a darker blue than we wanted, was perfect in the weight & behavior department.  I got some silvery-blue silk from the Garment District for the lining, and Ceinwen picked up an exquisite heavy navy blue silk for the embroidered band, and off we went[2]. 

warning: math ahead

Construction Stage (late April-early May)
I based the hood on D10597 of the Greenland finds, which was pretty exact to the proportions Stephan's lady had sent me from one of his current hoods.  I spent an uncomfortable couple of hours with math and many pencil marks converting the 2mm:1cm scale in "Medieval Garments Reconstructed" into Imperial measurements, but got there eventually.   The rest seemed pretty unremarkable--I made a muslin; tested it and it seemed OK; cut out hood & lining; sewed it all up[1], and did a bit of decorative top-stitching with a pale green silk; patted self smugly on the back; and then tried it on my dashing consort.

Whereupon I found the front was horribly, horribly poochy under the neck.  

This was my own stupid fault.  I tried to cut the front part in one to the same size as the pattern, without including the front gore, and it did not work at all.  THE PATTERN EXISTS FOR A REASON, IDIOT.  And them medievals don't shove in gores because they love doing extra seam work. 

After a requisite amount of self-flagellation, I calculated the gore size appropriate to the pattern, cut one out of muslin, opened the front seam sobbing at the destruction of my painstaking handiwork, and pinned the gore in.  It worked with only a little frobbing, thankfully, so I cut out fashion fabric & lining versions and got them sewn in.  (You still see some wrinkles; there will always be a little bit of that, unless you're doing a button-up hood that can be perfectly fitted to the wearer.)

So, the liripipe.  Some of the Greenland hoods, including D10597 have them (though they're all plain).  In most cases they're separate strips that attach to the back of the head, but in D10597's case there's a couple-inch liripipe "stub" on the back of the hood's body that the main liripipe strip is attached to; and since that would make my life considerably easier in any case, I cut the hood out that way, and left the stub open while I figured out how to attack the problem.  

tools of the trade

When you really suck at
drawing, grids help.

I started by looking at what remnants we have.  There are various scrap finds in London that are dagged; it's not clear whether they were liripipes or what, but some certainly could have been (Fig. 180 in Textiles and Clothing is a line drawing of a figure in Cambridge MS 61 f.1v, who's wearing a hood with a dagged liripipe), and the scale of fragment No. 248[3] seemed about right, so I started with its basic dimensions and worked to turn the basic diagonal "slit" dagges into laurel leaves.  (We do have a remnant of what appears to be an oak-leaf dagge, so a botanical motif is not far off.)   

I tried sketching laurel leaves after the embroidery I'd found, but this was working out poorly for me, so I got an actual bay laurel leaf out of the kitchen and traced around it.  Happily, this turned out to be exactly the right proportion for my liripipe!  I made a five-leaf-long repeat of the pattern (which is exactly one sheet of graph paper, imagine that) and cut out a test piece to see how it did. 

Answer: pretty well, actually.  

Proof-of-concept

Emboldened by this success, I cut out the full length of liripipe (which worked out to about 40", as I recall).  Now, I'm not sure this is how it would have been done in period; I'm guessing a plain, thin, straight liripipe would have been all-in-one, but I haven't worked the math as to whether a more wasteful cut like this mightn't have been done in sections.  But I had the fabric, and this is not a poor man's hood, so let's be extravagant.  I cut it out and attached it tightly to the hood "stub", completing this phase of the project (though I was silly and finished the bottom hem of the hood, so we had to cut that open subsequently to attach the embroidery strip, bah).  I boxed it up and sent it along to Ceinwen.

Embroidery Stage (May-early July)

My first wreath.  About 15 hours'
work I think? I'm not very fast.

All I can say about this is, I do not look forward to my turn in the barrel for having to design an embroidery strip to hang neatly and evenly on a three-dimensional conical object, and Ceinwen did an amazing job making that happen (but I'll let her tell you about her process in her blog) (AHEM).  When the design was complete and the goldwork vines established, I went down to Ceinwen's and we did a marathon sweatshop to get the wreaths embroidered.  

Unfortunately we ran out of time, so couldn't add pearls or bezants or bells (yes. there are hoods with bells all over them.), but we got the job done on time for transport to the event.  We figure to steal it back later and fully execute our vision.  Especially the pearls.

As yet, no photos have emerged from the event, but I'll add action shots as they become available.


[1] yes, of course it's all hand-sewn
[2] this is somewhat compressed.  We had a lot of ordering of swatches and mailing them back and forth in here.
[3] acc. no. BC72 <3110/1> but it's not in the MoL's online collection nor can I find an image online because why would we want that

Various Devils In Details

Nothing to see here, move along

I spent most of the last while working on [REDACTED], and after some few setbacks and, ahem, learning experiences, it's done and I'm tolerably pleased with the result.  Don't worry, I took a bunch of photos and you'll get to hear all about it later, if without the piquancy of my in-the-moment emo.

I have now turned my attention to the linen kirtle I cut out last summer and, like an idiot, was trying to finish at Pennsic, which I want to have done for Quest (which is Memorial Day weekend).  And now that I've hauled it out and started really looking at it instead of just robotically executing "here are the pieces, sew the thing", I have a couple of concerns.  The minor one is easily resolved, at least once there's someone over who can pin me in: the front neckline is wayyyyyy too high.  Like, almost no drop from the shoulder.  I'm not sure how that happened, but it did; but I don't want to try and amend it freehand, but I can assemble the rest of the thing, leave the neckline unfinished, and then have someone mark it on me.  (The back, at least, seems to be in the right place, so I can even close it up to the shoulder seams.)

Somewhat more concerning is that the center fronts are quite curved.  Now, this is perfectly normal for my 14th century stuff; but my understanding of the 16th century is that we're all about the straight lines because we have support happening inside the garment layers[1] and that's going to force your shaping so your pieces can be more cookie-cutter.  Certainly all the example pieces and published patterns have straight fronts, so I think this is Not Right, particularly for a working-class dress.  On the gripping hand, what I need is a passable light linen dress comfortable for the Cambodian summers we've been suffering, so a) does it really matter for this garment since it's not a show piece and b) do I have time to get consultation/help with amending it and c) is it even something that can be amended at this point?  

Um?

It is possible that the answer to all three of those questions is a big whompin' No.  

But to keep my options open as long as possible, I'm going to finish the skirt and attach it (I'm OK with where the bottom of the bodice is hitting) and by that time I'll have a sense of whether I'll be able to tap someone to have a look at it (the usual sewing night this week is prorogued for a birthday celebration).  Or I can start training the dashing consort on how to pin someone in--though when I consider how long it took me to get the knack of it, this may not be helpful for the current undertaking.

Other minor nits that have occurred to me:

• I had originally planned to bind the neckline with a contrasting linen, but I'm not sure whether this would be appropriate for a working-class under-dress.  On the other hand, I'm mostly going to wear it alone, so a wee bit of ornamentation would not go amiss.  I can't find period guidance either way.
• do I need a strengthening strip around the skirt waist like we do for cartridge pleating (I think maybe not, because again, working class basic?); 
• a facing for the center front to strengthen the lacing holes would be smart[2]; 
• the Tudor Tailor says to self-bind the armholes, rather than other finishing techniques, and I'm wondering why; 
• I really need to make a shift with a more U-shaped neckline for this late period stuff and also maybe my shifts should be a little longer (a lot of them are barely knee-length)

Of course, after all this, it'll probably be one of the years where Quest is 40 degrees at night and pleasant during the day.  So I'm hedging my bets by finishing the refurbs on at least one pair of my consort's wool Venetians, too.

The Trello board I mentioned in my last post continues to work well; so well, in fact, that it was proposed to me that I could teach a class in Agile Project Management Techniques As Applied to Your A&S Work.  Do we think this would be a useful / valuable thing?  Would it play in Peoria?

In other news, I am engaged in a Kafkaesque struggle to understand what the East Kingdom actually expects of you reporting-wise after you have held an event.  The only thing I've learned is that 1) everyone has a different idea--and I asked some experts, I can tell you--and thus 2) no one really knows for sure.  So I have started to document what I've found, because this is silly.  (I still, after two weeks, do not have an answer of where I'm supposed to send our duly-collected waivers--you know, the ones you're supposed to turn in within ten days.)  Hey, guys?  This kind of disorganization is why more people don't throw events.

[1] or under, for later and fancy rich people
[2] this is, in fact, what suddenly caused me to go HEY FRONT NOT STRAIGHT WHYYYY

I Aten't Ded

Hey kids, let's put on a picnic!

Wow, it's been awhile, hasn't it?

I haven't been idle these past four weeks; quite the opposite[1].  It is usually a hand-waving and slightly contemptible excuse to say "wah too busy to blog/time track/update my projects", but truthfully I have a certain methodology for posting, and the pattern of my recent activities has prorogued that.  

So, what've I been up to?

The first weekend, I went to an embroidery academy way out in Pennsylvania, that I had agreed to teach at.  It's a full weekend thing, with everyone crashing in the camp's bunkrooms[2], which gives a lot more scope for more in-depth and hands-on classes.  I learned Bayeux stitch, and I started a canvas-work Elizabethan floral slip (which class incidentally also had hands-on instruction in prick-and-pounce for tracing your pattern; something I'm happy to have in my toolkit).  They also had a lovely touch of everyone bringing relevant books and pooling them into a library/research space; and I encountered a new book unfamiliar to me, which may have the only artistic representation I have ever seen of a laurel wreath in the high medieval era.  That is, you see laurel trees in manuscripts, e.g. the Tacuinum Sanitatis; but, unlike grapevines, oak branches, acanthus, etc. you never (hardly ever) see laurel used as borders the way we like to use them for Laurel regalia in the SCA.  

Also includes neat animal pictures!
NB: This is not Notre-Dame in Paris, but in a town
in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

For the Pel-Laurels out there

 



















So a great event, though exhausting, and I recommend future iterations to all my embroidery peeps.

I spent the following weekend creating our Household Great Wardrobe Account; a spreadsheet of all our clothes (not accessories yet, but I'll get to it), the current state of each...including fit...and any repairs needed.  I then used that information to build a Trello board of sewing tasks.  I can unpack this more in another post if there seems interested; but briefly, each "card" on the board represents a piece of work to be done, whether large or small, but each an individual task, whether it's a mending job or for new construction.  E.g., for the work still remaining on the pourpoint, one card is "rip out the lower sleeves" and another is "cut out new lower sleeves" and yet a third is "quilt new lower sleeves".  I've also color-tagged them by project, and where applicable, included due dates, so I can prioritize.  The idea here is that I can come home from work, and even if I'm awfully fried and have no reasoning capability left--which is regrettably common right now--, just pick one discrete task to work on.  So far, this is working tolerably well.  For instance, I don't think I would have finished the little Bayeux stitch project and gotten it onto its final destination without this; it would have been yet another half-finished blorp taking up space in my project basket.

PSA: it's a royal pain to
appliqué something onto
an already-made book
cover

There's a collaborative project I'm engaged in and have spent a deal of time on, but it is S3KR1T so you won't hear about it until later.   

Last weekend, my college BFF came to visit, and we Marched for Science and had great conversations and stuff.  She is also in the Arts Scene, but in a different kingdom and as a performance artist (you could say that she wrote the book on commedia dell'arte) (that should be a link to Compleat Anachronist #173, but someone at Milpitas has not updated the page in a year, ahem), so it was really interesting to compare notes about How Things Work for each of us.  

And, oh yes, my honorable colleague and I put on an event this weekend!  We've been trying for years--and I use that word quite literally--to drum up a small event within the boundaries of the subway system. This is a difficult thing, because space in NYC is so outrageously expensive, even for non-profits, so we thought hmm, what about in a public park, since a parks permit is only $25?  The problem here, and why it took years, is that the people in charge of permits make the Keystone Kops look like NASA.  I will not weary you with our series of disappointments--other than mentioning that last year, we had the permit in hand and everything was going swimmingly until three weeks before the event, when they suddenly called us up to say oh, oops, they double-booked the permit, so ours was revoked.  >:-/    BUT!  This year it finally worked!  The weather cooperated, we had about 26 people, and there was live music and dancing and hanging out and lots of food.  Also, we weirded the day for many of the good people of Brooklyn.

In addition to being co-event-steward, however, I was seized with the compulsion to have my contribution to the potluck be something defensibly medieval.  Thus, for the past two-three weeks, I have been mumbling over medieval pie recipes and foisting test versions on unwary passers-by.  

So, pies are A Thing in medieval cookery; indeed even hand-pies (in the general vein of the Cornish pasty) were known to exist; but the pies we have recipes for are, chiefly, items for lordly tables, and super-fussy and in many cases not very convenient to eat, particularly at a picnic.  I also wanted to have a broad spectrum of choices for different dietary restrictions.  So, I made one of the classic stalwarts, the Tart in Ymbre Day from Forme of Cury (this is from the court of Richard II, about 1390):

Tart in ymbre day. Take and perboile oynouns & erbis & presse out þe water & hewe hem smale. Take grene chese [brede AB] & bray it in a morter, and temper it vp with ayren. Do þerto butter, saffroun & salt, & raisons corauns, & a litel sugur with powdour douce, & bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.

A lot of people interpret "erbis" as "herbs", which I think isn't right; there's no reason to parboil herbs. "erbe" in French refers to grasses and leafy ground plants, so I think it's much more likely to refer to Dark Leafy Green Veg, which you might indeed want to parboil.   So I parboiled yellow onions & kale, squeezed the water out as best I could, and blitzed them in the food processor because I was on the clock; added queso fresco & butter, and rubbed them in with my hands as you do with fat in a pie crust; and stirred in eggs, currants, and the spices as noted.  

Now, on my test run, I turned them into little empanada-sized hand pies and it worked well; but on the production run, it was too liquid and this wasn't working at all, so I just tipped it into a regular pie crust and called it a day.  

A meat pie was trickier; a lot of the recipes are less filling-ish as we know them, and I didn't see them working in this context.  So I decided to go off the reservation a little, and work from rissole recipes instead.  Rissoles are little filled dough/pastry pockets--think of them in the pierogi or ravioli line--which were deep-fried; but there is one reference to baking them instead, so that was good enough for me.  

I started with Scully's redaction of Chiquart's meat rissoles:

Again, rissoles: and to give understanding to him who will make them, according to the quantity of them which he will make let him take a quantity of fresh pork and cut up into fair and clean pieces and put to cook, and salt therein; and when his meat is cooked let him draw it out onto fair and clean tables and remove the skin and all the bones, and then chop it very small. And arrange that you have figs, prunes, dates, pine nuts, and candied raisins; remove the stems from the raisins, and the shells from the pine nuts, and all other things which are not clean; and then wash all this very well one or two or three times in good white wine and then put them to drain on fair and clean boards; and then cut the figs and prunes and dates all into small dice and mix them with your filling. And then arrange that you have the best cheese which can be made, and then take a great quantity of parsley which should have the leaves taken off the stems, and wash it very well and chop it very well in with your cheese; and then mix this very well with your filling, and eggs also; and take your spices: white ginger, grains of paradise--and not too much, saffron, and a great deal of sugar according to the quantity which you are making. And then deliver your filling to your pastry-cook, and let him be prepared to make his fair leaves of pastry to make gold-colored crusts(?); and when they are made, let him bring them to you and you should have fair white pork lard to fry them; and when they are fried, you should have gold leaf: for each gold-colored crust(?) which there is, have one little leaf of gold to put on top. And when this comes to the sideboard arrange them on fair serving dishes and then throw sugar on top.  [tr. Elizabeth Cook]

...which redaction started with ground pork, for convenience, and I really think that's the wrong way to go about it; but I made it up and it worked well enough, but it was reeeeeeeally sweet.  This is no doubt because Chiquart, as the master chef of the Duke of Savoy, was making expensive and very very fancy food, and sugar is a great expression of wealth; but it was not at all picnic food.  So I took it down several levels of society, and went with our friend the Menagier de Paris:

RISSOLES ON A MEAT DAY are seasonable from St. Remy's Day (October 1). Take a pork thigh, and remove all the fat so that none is left, then put the lean meat in a pot with plenty of salt: and when it is almost cooked, take it out and have hard-cooked eggs, and chop the whites and yolks, and elsewhere chop up your meat very small, then mix eggs and meat together, and sprinkle powdered spices on it, then put in pastry and fry in its own grease. And note that this is a proper stuffing for pig; and any time the cooks shop at the butcher's for pig-stuffing : but always, when stuffing pigs, it is good to add old good cheese.  [tr. Janet Hinson]

It occurred to me to use beef instead of pork for a public contribution, because more people have pork restrictions than not; so I went to get a braising cut of beef to cook in the same way, but had an idiot braino and got an eye of round instead, which is All Wrong.  So I ended up having to use ground beef instead, grumble.  But it's simple; I browned the beef, mixed in chopped hard-boiled eggs, spiced it, and filled my wee pies.  The first round was really too bland, so I lashed in the long pepper with a will, and I think the production round went well.  

I had meant to make the Menagier's fruit versions as well--

Item, on ordinary days, they can be made of figs, grapes, chopped apples and shelled nuts to mimic pignon nuts, and powdered spices: and the dough should be very well saffroned, then fry them in oil. If you need a liaison, starch binds and so does rice.  [tr. Janet Hinson]

...and I did make a test run of those, which were quite nice--very like mince pie, actually; but for the production run I was entirely out of spoons and could no more that night.  Well, there was plenty of food, anyways. 

A word on crust: we don't have much in the way of actual medieval pie crust recipes, because as you see in Chiquart's version, the pastry cook was a completely different person (and different guild maybe?) and if any of them recorded their work, it hasn't survived.  It's likely that many crusts were just flour and water (no fat), as we see later and all the way into the 19th century, and were acting as tough containers rather than foodstuffs themselves. But we do have some recipes for tarts anyways which include butter, eggs, sugar, and other ingredients.  In this case, I just made my standard pie crust recipe.   If you want to know more, someone's broken out a whole bunch of references according to type.

So. Yes.  Some things happened.  And now, the summer sewing season.  *flail*



[1] well, I admit I spent three days just playing Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood right after the pourpoint test launch.

[2] AHAHAHAHAHA I GOT THE TOP BUNK THIS TIME

Much Brain, Little Progress

YASSSS GOLD CHARLIE IN PERSON

It's been awhile.   Part of this has been The Holidays, part of it two lurgies (the second one culminating in a mondo sinus infection that I'm still taking antibiotics for), part of it was, well, okay, *humblebrag* a trip to Germany where I got to see Gold Charlie (!!!1!), along with many other of our favorite hits.  But to be entirely candid, my absence of either writing or, y'know, actual productivity has been the socio-political situation of the nation.  I spend a lot of my time in states of rage or despair or both, and when I try to muster my forces to do something artistic or creative I am swamped with feelings of "what does this matter when the world is on fire?".  I am working to retool my brain in this, because a) I have made commitments to people, b) mental health requires both downtime and creative time, and c) fuck these assholes[1] I'm gonna make things[2].   

I did make some small progress on the pourpoint over the hols; I bowed 500 grams of cotton, which took two movies[3] to do (including rest breaks, which there were many of).  I've ordered proper linen and silk sewing thread for the quilting work. And, I've re-stretched my base linen on the frame, but without setting it up completely, so the cats can't use it as a hammock; so all I have to do is pop the top part onto the standing part, and go.  (Goal is to make the setup and takedown easy enough that I can get a reasonable amount done in an evening.)

This is the photo from the exhibition catalogue;
the buttons in question are the three at center top.
You can't see in this shot, but they have shanks that
are about the same as the ones below them.

My trip as relating to the Pourpoint Commission:  Well, I got to see Gold Charlie, obvs.  It being in a special exhibition, of course I couldn't take photos (I snuck the one up top, as you do), but to be honest, the way he was on display meant that there wasn't a lot to see that I didn't already know, either from books or from standing on the shoulders of giants.  Now, had we been able to see his inside... But it was still a highlight and I got all giddy.  More immediately useful, however, was a display in the same case, of various buttons and belt bits dug up in Prague.  These included some flat metal button forms which, the label text contended, were the same as the flat buttons on Gold Charlie (fabric-covered, obviously).  Pressing my nose to the glass, I think they have the right of it.  So I need to find a source to approximate those.  (They didn't specify anything regarding the round buttons on his top part, but they also look to have a firm base, so I assume those are probably metal as well.)  I did also buy the enormous companion book to the exhibition, which is entirely auf Deutsch; from what I puzzle out on Gold Charlie's entry, they only mention the use of linen thread, which seems off to me; from all I've observed, the medievals seem to prefer like thread to like fabric--as previously noted, the Black Prince's jupon[4], silk velvet, uses silk thread for quilting.  (Red Charlie has silk thread on his outer, silk layer, and linen thread on his linen inner layer.) What I figure to do is use linen thread on the linen test unit, and silk thread on the final project.  

Editorial and possibly too-judgy note: I do not for the life of me see how anyone can look at Gold Charlie and think those quilting lines are an after-market conservation add.  Maybe it depends on how he'd been displayed in the past; I dunno.

Passementerie crown from a
reliquary of Kunegunde; 14th
century.  Super nifty. Again,
photo from catalogue

But! This was only a fraction of my adventures.  We went to Bamberg Cathedral and the Diocesan Museum there, where lives the Star Mantle of Henry II (and several other big muckin' embroidered things attributed to him and Kunegunde), and the entire burial suit of an 11th-century bishop--none of which you can take photos of, I may add; I bought the book but it's not super great for pictures.   The Germanisches Nationalmuseum has, of course, a hojillion other medieval stuffs, even if a bunch of them are not on display at any given time; but my old buddy the heraldic embroidered pouch was out and I got many, many photos of him.  (Including the details of how his tablet-woven edges work, woo hoo.)  I feel like I could give a paper just on his construction details (though I may need help from the more expert tablet weavers for specifics of the pattern because I'm not very good at this game yet).  And there's a bunch of stuff in the Imperial Castle Museum in Nuremberg--most of it not textile or costume related, it's true, but good general aesthetic (lots of arms & armor, too, for the people into that stuff).  And we day-tripped to Munich and went to the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, which has TWO WHOLE ROOMS of nothing but medieval textiles.  I am a failure at getting details of these, because with a few exceptions there were no labels next to the pieces, just on giant unwieldly cards in pockets at the corner of the room (and entirely in German); and very little of this stuff is in their online collection. -_-  But I got many photos and we can always cross-reference with the book which they had in the room but not in the gift shop, wtf you guys.   

Kinda small but
click through, you'll
see what I mean

I also saw a lot of art in various media that was capturing the 14th century beau ideal; particularly the Schöner Brunnen in Nuremberg's town square, which is actually original--something I didn't realize at first, because it's in such perfect condition, especially when you consider that most of Nuremberg was completely pulverized in WWII.  But it's covered with Important Figures in a range of outfits--the nine worthies are in high fashion, prophets and philosophers are in more modest clothing, etc.   And here's a thing, my Gothic peeps: all the high-fashion gents, not just here but all over, have the big plaque-like hip belt we're used to seeing; but many of them also have a similar but smaller belt around the wasped portion of the waist.  It seems to be entirely decorative, not functional--pouches and daggers and things are always hanging off the hip belt--but it's all over the place.  (And it's definitely a belt; I got a photo of a St. George in the round that shows its buckle and strap in back.)  Thoughts?

Anyways, getting back on the wagon: today I need to sketch out some ideas for [REDACTED], which is a team project with a longer fuse, but we want to get our designs settled & approved so we can appropriately source materials and plan out the work.  After that, I'm going to crack the whip and get quiltin'.  I want to have the final of the pourpoint commission done for Mudthaw, which is March 25th.  This was a lot more plausible before I lost most of January to being sick; but if I could do the 19th Century Project in two months, by the Lord Harry[5] I can do this.  

Current music: Pink Floyd, "On the Turning Away"

[1] Seriously: Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, was insinuating that the pussyhats were mass-produced in overseas sweatshops.  Because dead white guys can't understand that we create things.
[2] I was away during the Pussyhat Project, to my sorrow, but I have procured two different yarns--one acid green, one flesh-and-dark-green, to make brain hats for the March for Science on Earth Day.  
[3] Ladyhawke and Watership Down, if you really wanna work out the exact times
[4] What should we label this?  Heraldic Eddie?   Just plain ol' Eddie, since there's only one of him?
[5] I am trying to become less potty-mouthed, and find interesting oaths to use instead.