An historical recreation household centered on the Central Oregon Coast (households are not official groups of the Society for Creative Anachronism and do not represent the views or policies of SCA, Inc. )
All of us are feeling the want of in-person events. Your scribe is finally top-dead-center on classes, but I’m saving links to ones when I have the time to watch. They didn’t record as much for AnTir/West as I’d been hoping. 😦 Still no camera here. I’m still dithering.
These are elephant garlics. They had little corms on them, little bulblets, which I left in the ground. They won’t be garlic bulbs until the summer after next… if we’re still around on this planet…
We had a lot of people for Virtual Project Day this week. Lots of input below.
We’re scattering more of the classes and vids through the newsletter. Makes it easier to read.
Nothing really new this week, and this coming week is more of the same. Loren and Anja are dealing with “tourist season” such as it is, at their shop. Might get a chance for more cookery pix. Anja found another recipe to try. 🙂
All meetings are on hold for the moment, although Project Day and the Monthly Potluck are being held in the Virtual Realm. We’re also doing mini-potlucks, just Anja & Loren and one other “pod” at a time. Let us know if you’re interested!
Herb Bunch – At Ancient Light, Saturdays, 11am-1pm
Sewing Time – At Ancient Light, Saturdays, 3-5pm
Project Day – At Ancient Light, Sundays, Noon to 6pm
Cheese and Wine happens irregularly, usually announced with little notice on our Facebook group.
Next Virtual Potluck – 6/21
Next Winter Feast tentative Date is 2/15/21, Theme ??
Early Week – Once the newsletter was out Anja sorted out embroideries, again. She found the sippy cup insert and got back to work on that and we still trying to work out the pattern for the kiss-lock pouch. Once we have one they’re pretty easy, but until that point….
Estella sent a whole album on Dehydrating Garlic! “It’s easy to grow garlic in tubs, and drying good fresh organic garlic that you grow yourself is very satisfying. If you don’t have a yard, maybe try some herbs, like a good lemon basil plant for your Pho.”
Garlic in old Rubbermaid tubs, guarded by my faithful gargoyle, Igor.
These are elephant garlics. They had little corms on them, little bulblets, which I left in the ground. They won’t be garlic bulbs until the summer after next… if we’re still around on this planet…
Cutting tray liners from wax paper. Parchment paper would probably work better, but wax paper is cheaper. This is so the chopped bits don’t drop through the trays… be careful taking the dried garlic off. If it’s dry enough, they should just “crumple” right off, but sometimes there’s a sticky place and you end up with a bit of wax paper stuck on a garlic chunk.
I like to take my time and slice the garlic instead of chopping it. The knife was made by my friend, Helen, an artist, and I inherited it when she died.
I also inherited this wonderful large food dehydrator from Helen. Four golf-ball sized bulbs dried down to almost a pint. I’m keeping the dried garlic tightly sealed in the freezer.
Ta-dah! My Isolation Island project du jour.
Cookery – Monday evening Anja started the base for the Transylvanian Cherry dish. Loren was working on getting some of the feast gear put away and bone needles. Anja’s embroidery was all very repetitive stuff. Leftovers for supper: dumplings, chicken stew, carrots, mushroom pickle…. Tuesday supper was the bread and cherries dish. We had another serving to put in the fridge, which reappeared on top of rice pudding. The last couple servings of the chicken and leek stew got carrots added and were eaten over cooked rice. Pork patties to be cooked in beef and wine broth got set up along with a set of the dumplings made with parmesan. On Wednesday the last of the cherry stuff got eaten. On Friday the dumplings and meatballs got cooked in the wine/beef broth and sampled. Good! …and the last of the leftovers got eaten, except for pickles that can sit, anyway. …and from Saturday through Monday, dumplings and meatballs were eaten with tomato soup, chicken soup, a basic veg stew and a leek stew!
Cooking A CAPON Dish For A Medieval King – Sweet Measure
Sewing – Anja worked on getting a working pattern together for the new kiss-lock pouches. What she had wasn’t working. A print-lined-with-solid pouch got done right at the end of the week, the “proof” pattern. Another pattern got started on the sampler.
Working out pouch pattern. Lining inside
Working out pouch pattern, Cover Fabric, inside – See the stitching lines?
Sippy cup insert
Embroidery for the SCA Period – Part 9 Long Arm Cross Stitch
Sundials, etc. – Sanding needles
BOne Needles
Wood tray refurbished a couple of weeks back
Herb Bunch – Mostly tending and harvesting this week.
Weird Garlic
The Weird Garlic – One of the garlics that was planted as a tiny clove in the big tub at the south end of the garden suddenly did this. ^^^^^ It had gotten bent, hard right at the point, probably by someone walking by. I’ve never seen one do that, so I asked on some of the gardening groups. It turned out that some garlics make “bulbils” (I’ve always called ’em bulblets…” at the top of the stalk if you don’t cut off the scapes. Never seen one in the middle…. If you plant ’em you get garlics in two years…. honestly, looks to me like a “next summer” thing. Well, we’ll see.
Herbs, Food and Flowers
The north garden
The big planter tub – Chives are blooming, potatos are up, leeks are getting big and there are a couple of roses, now!
Lavendar
Oregano
Nasturtium
Nasturtium
Veg ends for greens
Alliums and greens
Raspberries
Primrose
Crocosmia
Project Day – Anja started with sewing. Loren started with bread. Anja went on to photos of plants and harvesting some feverfew. Then developing pictures. What on earth is going on with that garlic in the gallery above? …. next was lunch and then back to sewing, trying to get the pouch to work right.
Various people participated in the Virtual Project Day. Arlys sent in her Dragon Puppies, Louisa and Isabeau are doing masks. Estella sent a gallery of pix about drying garlic (in Cookery, above.)
Peggy wrote the following, “Still working on the brickwork project, but it is nearing completion (at least the embroidery part). Visited An Tir/West War yesterday…took the Opus Aglicanum (sp?) class and submitted for the war points for that. It was a very interesting class, I learned quite a bit about it.
Turned out that I was the only student at the class, along with the teacher and the host. If I ever get up enough ambition to try Opus Anglicanum it will be a very small piece.☺️
I have some metallic thread that I might try with.”
Sounds like an interesting class!
These are Mistress Arlys’ Dragon Puppies, in Assisi style – “After a night under siege, my ambition was limited to taking Dragon Puppies off the frame, and trimming it so it could be properly framed for hanging.”
Miscellaneous pix
Medieval street food from Das Conzil Von Konstanz (15th century): sellers of pretzels and pies with their portable oven. In the Italian sources, this kind of pie is called pastello, whereas torta is more similar to a stuffed pasta.
Gail Galeana Baldwin – from Largesse Makers – bottle cap pincushions
discovered in a field on 5th July 2009 by a metal detectorist called Terry Herbert. The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found, anywhere in the world. It consists of around 4,000 items which combine to a total of over 5kg of gold, nearly 1 ½ kg of silver and around 3,500 cloisonné garnets.
Remarkably it was buried just below the surface, due to soil erosion over the years, and had been disturbed by ploughing the previous year, scattering it. It was probably buried around 650-675 AD, and lay close to the Roman Road of Watling Street which was still an important route at the time. Excavation at the site confirmed there were no buildings or other evidence for Anglo-Saxon habitation on the site, confirming it had been buried in a relatively remote location (although presumably where it could be found again near the road).
In November 2012 a further 81 pieces of gold and silver items were discovered in the same field when it was ploughed again.
The Hoard comprises primarily war gear which is particularly important as most survivals from the period are church items or female burial pieces, which provides a limited view. This find enables researchers to explore the warrior culture more fully than in the past.
The pieces are removed from weapons rather than representing the main body of the weapon itself (such as the sword blade). There are almost 100 pommel caps for instance and probably helmet fittings. However, swords are the major contributing type of object and it has been suggested that the fittings were taken to depersonalise the original blade. Each object is unique in pattern and probably identified the owner in some way. However, whether these are from a single battle or collected over many years is not clear.
The location of the find is in the Kingdom of Mercia and dates to the seventh century when the kings there were expanding aggressively. The items might represent any of their campaigns against the other kingdoms. One theory is that the burial is a ritual deposit, but it may have been battle loot or a ransom, or just hidden from attackers, or even collected for recycling into new fittings; debate remains keen.
While the quantities are enormous, the quality is also extraordinary indicating that the objects were created for elite warriors. The hoard contains only one written text, a biblical inscription written in Latin and misspelled in two places. It reads: “Rise up, O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face.” (Numbers 10:35). More generally, there are three kinds of decoration: cut and mounted garnets, gold filigree, and animal patterns.
Most of the garnet decoration uses the cloisonné technique, setting thin slices of garnet cut to fit in the pattern made by gold wire Stamped gold foil placed beneath the garnet allowed light to reflect back, enhancing the brilliance and making its colour a darker red. Some pieces are decorated with stylised animals interlaced in the Anglo-Saxon Style II. There are two sources of garnet in the hoard. The very small garnets came from the Czech Republic and the larger cut garnets are from the Indian subcontinent.
Scientific analysis has also revealed that the goldsmiths managed to remove some of the silver from the surface of the items so that the object appears even more golden. The technique is not understood fully but it shows a very sophisticated understanding of materials and technology.
More recently research has identified that approximately a third of the fragments in the Staffordshire Hoard come from a very high-status helmet, and two reconstructions were created over an 18 month period by a team of specialists. The fragments in the Hoard are too fragile to be put back together but the reconstructions have made use of digital technology to capture form and decoration as closely as possible based on the analysis of the fragments.
A silver gilt cheek piece and an animal headed terminal were identified in the initial finds, with another terminal being identified later. The second field survey in 2012 then picked up a second cheek piece. The terminals fitted onto a crest, and were decorated with Style II interlaced animals, including serpents and quadrupeds. Eventually some of the sheet metal fragments, some weighing less than 1g, were reconstructed and a silver band which had encircled the base of the helmet emerged showing kneeling or running spearmen.
None of the iron or leather of the original helmet survives so reconstruction was difficult. However, the crest, cheek pieces and decorative sheets all indicated a crested helmet, similar to the ones found at Sutton Hoo, Wollaston and Coppergate (York). Although so little of the helmet survives, it is considered the finest example of the type so far, with its golden ornamentation reminiscent of late Roman (4th century) helmets. It is also unique in that the grooved channel on the crest indicates it had an actual hair crest on it. The reconstructions have crests of pale horsehair dyed with madder to a vibrant red to match the dominant red and gold colours in the hoard. It has been suggested that the helmet should effectively be considered to represent a crown.
The reconstruction had to work out the substructure of the helmet, and this was done by analogy for other helmets and fittings matched to holes on the fragments where possible. The final product weighed in at around 3kg which is heavy but manageable. It has proved to be well balanced, and the original probably used iron instead of steel for the frame would have reduced the weight by 1 kg, and is the more likely material used in the original.
The two reconstructions are to be displayed at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery at Stoke-on-Trent. – Image: Staffordshire Hoard Helmet reconstruction, Staffordshire Hoard, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery at Stoke-on-Trent
All of us are feeling the want of in-person events. Your scribe is finally top-dead-center on classes, but I’m saving links to ones when I have the time to watch. They didn’t record as much for AnTir/West as I’d been hoping. 😦 Still no camera here. I’m still dithering.
potlucks, just Anja & Loren and one other “pod” at a time. Let us know if you’re interested!
Next Winter Feast tentative Date is 2/15/21, Theme ??
In ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
House Capuchin 3 
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