Illumination and upcomings

I've been busy, okay? Busy doing embroidery mostly. Busy learning illumination. Busy doing the Golden Seamstress competition, busy getting ready to autocrat our summer Palio event. Busy fixing a sewage break that flooded our basement, busy helping my mother with an injury, busy with friends, trying to write and parenting my 5 year old in the midst of it all.
And that's just 2017, guys.

Included here are pictures of some recent illuminations I did, recreating an E from the Worms Bible, a salamander from a beastiary, and a moth from a 16th century music book. I have links to the actual documents but I am le tired and on mah phone so it will have to wait until later. These are done in goauche, which, after a frustrating few days of learning, is becoming my favorite medium.
My goal is to make blanks for my barony to use for tourneys and order awards. Fingers crossed, but our herald implied I was good enough to start passing blanks along to him. So that's cool.

Upcoming blog posts will include:

Princess Honig's Viking coat and dress for Birka
Golden Seamstress and learning how to document stuff for A&S
My entirely handsewn 13th century dress based off the Maciejowski Bible
Autocratting
Joining House Strangewayes
Planning for Pennsic War.

Alms Pouch

Between working on my Mother's elevation to the Order of the Pelican, summer events, "real life" and now my 'Seeeecret Project', I'm kind of kaput.

But the Secret Project is finished and I wanted to talk about it.
It's an aumônière.
And it's pretty and I wanted to talk about it.

The majority of my project came from having attended a lovely class at Pennsic War and then further, looking for way too long at THIS PAGE and looking around the internet to confirm that the page I read (which is so comprehensive) seemed legit. (It did. That page and it's sources are astonishing.)

Here we go for picture time!

August 26th, I was already underway. I decided to do Panel One of my father's cockatoo, Nikolai. This is Nikolai, being his cute, ridiculous self.

                                   

But I chose to do him in this style, of an Owl, from THIS bestiary from the mid 1200s. Since the alms pouches are from the mid 1300s, I figured I could pull this guy's style out and onto my pouch. I got rid of the other birds to put the focus on Nikolai. I eventually changed the flora too, to better suit the flow of the piece. My goal, so far, with my medieval pieces, is to be tasteful. Not everything made in the medieval ages was tasteful, so I often tone things down or ramp them up a little to try and keep things sensible to modern tastes. There's no point in making someone something super authentic that took you loads and loads of time if they're not ever going to wear or use it because it's tacky as all hell. (If you're commissioned, of course it's up to the two of you. But so far, everything I've made have been surprise gifts.)

So as you see, I kept on trucking through...

And trucking through... trying to add texture to the feathers...

Gideon convinced me that my initial sketch wasn't right. Nikolai had to be smiling in the embroidery, because of how he is a very happy bird. So, despite even MORE anachronism, Nikolai is unnaturally smiling.

I ended up doing detached buttonhole for his breast feathers. They might not be quite appropriate for this time of piece, however, the texture looked right for the fluffy front feathers. 

See? I like how his shoulder came out too. 

Added the slight color that would peek out by his crest. I did a (pretty crappy job of) underside couching the gold thread behind him. But it came out alright in the end. So I say let bygones be bygones.

Then began the back panel, which was a bear.

I wanted to couch the entire back panel in black and then couch the banner over that. However, my deadline was looming (End of October) and I found myself about halfway through cursing myself for that. It wasn't working and it looked horrible.

I ended up appliqueing the scroll onto black linen and embroidering my father's motto from there. I'd already started to discover the horrible truth when you're a beginner and you take on a huge project for the first time.
You learn as you go. Suddenly you learn a new technique or stitch or - WORSE, discover that you've been doing it sorta wrong the whole time. It may still look good, but you realize that one stitch may have been more appropriate than another and so forth.
And then there's the point where you just need to finish the damn bag.

Sewing the compass stars (part of my father's device) and then placing them around the scroll... not exactly perfect, but it's the back of the bag, you know? I know I found speech bubbles like this in some manuscripts and other embroidery pieces, but the source escapes me for right now. I'll add it later.

Then there was the actual creation and lining of the bag, in which I realized that my linen was a bit too heavy for this sort of thing, but, again, at this point in the project, I had maybe a week or two left before I would see my father and I really really wanted this to be done. 

In comes the trim. Which I wove myself, some years earlier. My mother is primarily a tablet weaver and as such, I picked it up as a child. I never got proficient at using the cards, but I had made this trim for myself ages and ages ago. Then I realized that it was 1) very small 2) I had no idea at the time what to even do with trim, 3) It looks like a road. I had essentially woven myself a road. What??

So the trim was finished, placed in a bag and never used. And as I started to finish my pouch I lamented and said to myself, "Oh my Lord, what, will I have to weave myself a whole new border?" when I remembered that I had this stupid little piece in a bag. And I dug out old boxes and, actually, found it lickety split. 

And so a lot of sewing began. And it came together. I learned so much my head spun. One or two things are glaringly obvious. One, being that I didn't have a chance to fingerloop braid the hanging rope. I have a good friend who teaches it to everyone around her but we weren't able to meet up before my deadline - wanting her to teach me, I decided to just braid myself a strand for the meantime. I still intend to learn from her and replace the strand once I have. Second, the tassels should have a special knot-topper-thing that I'm still learning about. Third, it should be bigger, probably. 

While the pouch is definitely NOT perfect, it is finished. And in my book, that's totally a win. I learned buckets more than I thought I would (mainly things like if I'm going to put 150+ hours onto a project, maybe I ought to spring the money for silk, instead of DMC cotton. But whatever.)

I'll be shortening and adding proper links to sources for my actual Arts and Sciences display for our local event, 'A Market Day at Birka' this year. 

Garbing the Gideon.

I'm not going to go into the description of what the Society for Creative Anachronism is or why I do it on here right now. Honestly, I've done the explanation enough that sometimes I wanna just get down to the barebones of the story without the preamble.
This is why I will never be Chatelaine. (ha ha)

[Note: I love newbies. I love questions. But I wanna get to the gist of my post, rather than the lengthy preamble. I'll write the preamble some other time and put a link to it in post-production. Okay?]

To say that I like sewing is a vast vast overstatement. I like parts of sewing. I hate other parts. I have thrown tantrums over sewing that make children quake in fear and take fervent notes on my technique. This being said, I do, typically, enjoy making my son garb. Because he is small. And clothing him takes maybe a yard and a half now. It's really a horse of a different color than making garb for myself, which is yards and yards more work. And fabric. And fabric ain't cheap, yo!

Some observations I've made in making Gideon garb:

-- I've decided that I love making buttons and not button holes.

--Sometimes taking a tailoring shortcut makes a whole lot of sense. This kid is growing ALL the TIME. His belly changes shape drastically post-meal times! Tailoring something to his precise shape is not only ridiculous but almost impossible.
--Barring super rich kids, the kind of outfits children would have worn were pretty bland. And I'm not fully convinced the super rich kids wore mini versions of the grownups either. Regardless, it is totally more fun to make little grownup outfits for kiddos.
--He loves getting fancy.
--It is great, amazing practice. A third of the work, a great looking kid and loads of mental practice? I'm game.

Right now I'm concentrating on late 1300s France. It's kind of my jam. I've also done a bit of garb making for Viking era and some Anglo-Saxon stuff for Gideon and my husband because they look amazing in it.

 (photo by my Mom)

I remember, where I was in the Society, growing up, I did not always have amazing garb. But I was definitely adequately garbed. Typically speaking kids who had really fancy garb were under some sort of painful threat of death to not mess up the garb (or so it seemed to me). I never found amazingly dressed kids where I played. When I saw them in A&S classes or court, they often looked mildly miserable. Or they were teaching the class with a mother breathing down their necks. That happened a lot too. I can only think of a very few kids that I saw navigate both circles of badly-garbed hooligan and a Laurel's fantasy. And of course, there were circles in between.

(photo by friend Willie (Willy?))

I have a whole train of thought in my head about why people play in the SCA, and people who live and breathe the SCA, and people who take it so seriously that everyone else around them feels utterly inadequate.
But that's not this post.

Gideon likes being fancy. He likes having big sweeping sleeves, bells off his belt, a huge hat on his head and people talking to him and approaching him about how handsome he looks.

Remembering that kids will be kids, I don't go over the top with his clothes. No silk for outdoors or really ever. No ornamentation that'll hurt or get snagged on something. Always have a T-tunic at the ready for when you KNOW a mess is going to happen. (See: the actually FUN children's activities).
I use girl's cotton leggings/tights for his legs. It's easier than a whole other slew of options.
I definitely want to make him braies and hose eventually though. As an experiment.

Right now, Gideon is young enough that he doesn't need modern flashy stuff on his garb to be enticed to wear it, though I can see the appeal of lining a kid's tunic with Spiderman. So for now, I try to look authentic for him.

I mean, my garb chest is still horrendous. But my kid looks amazing.

Although sometimes you need to just make the kid a Chiton and say to heck with it. 

 (photo by my Mom)

Seriously.

That moment your draft on Blogger's mobile app is interrupted and you lose soooo much of a post it seems moot to even try and pick it back up again.

Smile!

I had a great experience at my local Joann Fabrics today. Not only did I get a great deal but one woman at the counter remembered that I make costumes and the other woman (my favorite), chatted with me and remembered that I'm the kind of customer she can joke with. Which is great.
My local Joann's seems to collect two kinds of employees. Older, wisened Yankee ladies who know their stuff, are often single moms or divorcees and then there are youngish punk women who knit or sew goth costumes or who knows what. Make jewelry? But they are amazingly competent and funny.

As I left with my mother, bag with my treasure of linen-cotton blend under one arm, I couldn't help but smile. Not just a little shy smile but a huge, teeth showing smile of just pure glee. I almost tried to hide it, a flash of fear that someone would think I was up to no good or that my smile would in someway affect them. But then I double checked myself that no, no, I was okay to smile. I was okay to grin and that anyone who told me otherwise could stuff it. It felt good to smile like that.
The other week I was walking into Market Basket with Gideon when an older woman told me it was good to see someone smiling that day. I said thanks but was momentarily caught off guard.

You hear quite often how, apparently, a common catcall to women is "You'd be a whole lot prettier if you smiled!" or something to that effect. And how it's important to remember that people's emotions are their own and that telling someone they are ugly for not smiling as they simply walk down the street is pretty dumb.
But rarely do I see people just simply smile as they walk around in New England. Here I am though, doing it quite a lot.

I realized, in the days that followed, that I do smile a lot when I'm out and about. Mostly because Gideon is funny and that I feel it is better to engage people with a smile rather than a curt nod. But I think it also has something to do with who I am and how I do things. I should be a happier person. I am happiest when I am happy around other people, being that giddy, bouncing friend. I haven't been that in a while and I'd like to be that again. Who I am is not all dark sarcasm and pessimism. I am not a victim of circumstance. I can change the things around me and shape my own world.

I can smile for no reason. Or I can smile for lots of reasons. It doesn't matter to anyone else. I don't need a case of evidence to justify how I feel. I can just smile.

As I close, I am reminded of a favorite quote from "Much Ado about Nothing", in which Conrade speaks to Don John about his public behavior...

| Much Ado About Nothing | Act 1, Scene 3 

Enter DON JOHN and CONRADE

CONRADE
What the good-year, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad?

DON JOHN
There is no measure in the occasion that breeds;
therefore the sadness is without limit.

CONRADE
You should hear reason.

DON JOHN
And when I have heard it, what blessing brings it?

CONRADE
If not a present remedy, at least a patient
sufferance.

DON JOHN
I wonder that thou, being, as thou sayest thou art,
born under Saturn, goest about to apply a moral
medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide
what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile
at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait
for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and
tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and
claw no man in his humour.

CONRADE
Yea, but you must not make the full show of this
till you may do it without controlment. You have of
late stood out against your brother, and he hath
ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is
impossible you should take true root but by the
fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful
that you frame the season for your own harvest.

DON JOHN
I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in
his grace, and it better fits my blood to be
disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob
love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to
be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied
but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with
a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I
have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my
mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do
my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and
seek not to alter me.

CONRADE
Can you make no use of your discontent?

DON JOHN
I make all use of it, for I use it only.

------

I want a shirt with the line "I am a plain-dealing villain" on it.

Happy Birthday Gideon.

Gideon you are 3 years old. You are willing, capable and smart. You are a lover rather than a fighter, despite your desire to always be right. You are reading and learning and loving your family. You are brave when you know I am there for you; and hesitant when alone, but that won't last for much longer because you are my outgoing Gryffindor child.

You want to learn everything around you and you love your Uncles Chris and Ben so much it makes my heart burst. You hang on to people who speak kindly and straightforwardly to you. You don't take kindly to people who lie or joke with you like you don't understand. You know what is real and what isn't and distrust adults who joke around otherwise. And everytime you get grumpy at an adult who doesn't take your personhood/space into account I want to burst with pride (and then I tell the adult to cut it out, if you haven't beaten me to it.)

Thank you for helping out at SCA events by fetching and standing in line. For remembering what Viking-era dress brooches look like. For wanting to talk to the King of the East and ask him why the East Tyger is blue. For wanting to already be on the list field, dressed to the nines.

Thank you for loving me. For telling me things like I'm "lovely" or "pretty" or "special" to make me feel better or just because. Thank you for climbing into bed and saying "Mommy can I snuggle you?" Thank you for showing affection because we show affection. You are so exactly our son that is mindblowing how we were without you. You are a Fable. You were born to it and it belongs to you just as much, if not more, than it belongs to us.

Thank you for always trying to clarify "who is the boss of me?" And making your father and I define over and over again what our roles as parents are. We sometimes forget.

Happy 3rd Birthday Gideon. I cannot even imagine what the next year will bring us. What we'll do. What we'll make. What we'll create. I've got some ideas. And I bet you do too.

Love, Mommy

I did a thing.

Maybe it's not a good idea, but I trusted the people I asked and talked to and handed out no condemnation for not contributing. But I pretty much crowdsourced my son's birthday present(s).

Gymnastics lessons and a kitchen set.

We could probably afford one of these on it's own, but 2 would be right out. Being so close to Christmas Gideon really wasn't wanting for too much. He's just started growing into the clothes we bought last growth spurt and we try to keep the toys on the down low.
Except the kitchen set. Gideon is such an immersive player that I knew he would benefit from the kitchen set. We couldn't swing that for Christmas and we saved it for his birthday as it were.

Here's the thing. I really dislike kid toys. I think they're cheap and well meaning but ultimately something that will be a nuisance and a stressor. We flood kids with toys these days. It's no wonder they have a problem taking care of their toys or cleaning up after them when they have so many! It is hard to manage it all. They're emotional balls of learning and wiring and we just throw piles and piles of stuff at them!! Loud stuff, colorful stuff!
I am still going through childhood toys of mine. Things that I'm emotionally too attached to to give to Gideon but that I certainly don't play with right now. That I leave in a box or on a shelf. It's not right. It weighs me down and prevents me from being who I need to be in the present.

So I asked people to contribute instead to these big presents for Gideon and that we'd pick up the rest if we fell short of the goal. (The goal, all said and done was about $230.) And it worked great. People gave and Gideon was so so blessed by the outpouring from family that came about. We had wanted to do a big party at his Grandparents' place, but they had some stuff come up and were unable to host. So we shrunk the invite list to the essentials (aka how many people we can fit in the house at one time) and had a swell time kicking around balloons and eating cake.

Planning things for a little one doesn't have to be this huge horrible emotional tangle. Sometimes it can even go smoothly.