All hail the new Heirs to the Lion Throne. All hail Christian and Helene! Not a lot of photos have come through, yet, since people are just getting home today (Monday) so I’ll have more next week. Already shared some on the Facebook group, plus the video from finals! That was Ataias up against Christian! Kinda frustrating that pix aren’t showing up, yet….. Oh, sheesh, now that this is ready to go out here they come! Ack!
Heads up! Potluck date for September is going to be 9/22! Forgot about Shrewsbury and Anja will be in Philomath on the 15th at the demo.
Finishing up a busy week of summer with labor day “ate” most of us, and everyone that I’ve heard from is still trying to catch their breath! Some planning is going on for Shrewsbury, the German Renn Clothing workshop and all. The sauerkraut
has gone into the fridge, and we have some embroidery and bone carving this week. Herbs workshop was productive.
All meetings on time this week. We might have a Cheese Night on Thursday.
- 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 Potluck – 9/22, 10/20, 11/17, 12/15
- Winter Feast Date is 2/16/20, Theme German Renaissance
Here is the direct Portfolio link which has all the past Project Day reports and various projects, original here: https://housecapuchin.wordpress.com/portfolio/ and new one here: https://housecapuchin2.wordpress.com/portfolio/ and number three is here: https://housecapuchin3.wordpress.com/portfolio/
Barbara Millard –Posted on Facebok on 8/28/19 – Used with permission
I shared this story in the SCA humour page…but thought it would fit here. My first event…Clinton War 1995. I am wandering around kind of lost, and found out they were having an auction of items abandoned on site more than 2 years before. So I went to watch. This amazingly handsome man wearing the most amazing green velvet Elizabethan costume is trying to 
figure out what this THING is that he has to sell. So after a few minutes of dithering with many shouted suggestions from the audience, he decided it was a nightcap for a two headed giant. And Baron Gerhard Kendall wore a large woman’s bra on his head…and sold it for 20 bucks…and I fell in love with the SCA.
The AnTir CultureWiki page about him. – http://antir.sca.wiki/index.php?title=Gerhard_Kendal_of_Westmoreland
Some interesting comments about the things we make in the SCA and how they don’t have to be perfect, after all. These are collected on Facebook and we have permission to quote.
Katerina Blakelock – “Handmade is the best. I received an inkle woven belt once and thought it was the BEST THING EVER. Fast forward several years after I learned how to weave and it’s only at that point that I realized this was someone’s beginner piece because the tension was off and the selvages were wonky. I still love it and use it even though I can now make something that is technically superior because handmade is just that cool.”
Andi Murdock – “I always have the sense that in the SCA we (or at least, I) tend to put a greater burden of quality on our works than what period examples display. Not every embroiderer in period was a master, nor was every item crafted to exacting standards.”
Early Week – …flew past. Anja was continuing to work on the Mamluk-era design pouch, but also did a few small motifs. Anja also realized that the basket with the puppets disappeared and we can’t figure where! The runes sat on her worktable all week…. …and the puppets appeared late on Sunday. They were sitting in plain sight!
Cookery – The sauerkraut was bubbling away and we set it down on the concrete so’s to not let it get too hot, since it actually got pretty warm in Waldport. We were supposed to do a trial run on seedcakes on Tuesday, but the plans fell through, so that will be this coming week.
Sewing – Started the week with the sewing pouch and playing with some new tools. By Sunday the embroidery for a bob, a pincushion and a zipper pull were done, the pouch embroidery had 4 of 6 steps done and two spool pouches were started. Also, on Saturday, got a picture of Sioned in the bib Anja was embroidering in July.
Loren started on the bone pieces for the sewing kit on Saturday and finished a fid on Monday.
Anja got one spool pouch finished Sunday evening.
Sundials, etc. –
Mostly was the bone things for
the sewing kit.
Herb Bunch – How did we get no pictures? Herbs Workshop went pretty well in the morning. We worked on vetiver and dragon’s blood and discussed both. We also pulled some of the new sandalwood and burned it, plus burning some of the vetiver root. We were coughing on the dusts that things made, but had fun. We got some put by for later use and packaged some.
Project Day – Anja embroidered all afternoon, except for a short while to prep string for some marlinspike. Loren started the set of bone needle, fid and njalbinden needle. Late in the day a friend stopped by that we haven’t seen for several years (she’s been living in Indiana) and we talked sauerkraut and told her about making it. Anja finished the spool pouch embroidery in the evening. (Pix above)
September Crown
Saturday
Sunday – Victory to Duke Christian Bane inspired by Duchess Helene d’Anjou! Huzzah!
Music – Minnesang – Neidhart : Meie din liechter schin
Lyrics – German (Middle High German) from – https://lyricstranslate.com/en/meie-din-liehter-schin-maien-dein-heller-schein.html
meie, din liehter schin
…and a link to a page with an English translation of the lyrics and some photos of pages of the book that this comes from! – https://alegarsan.com/2015/05/14/meie-din-liechter-schin/
Links
Video – Modern History: A Funny Thing About Medieval Hoods
- How Black Pepper Won Europe From a Better Pepper – https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-black-pepper-won-europe-from-a-better-pepper
- Ten Fabulous Medieval Book Titles – http://www.medievalists.net/2019/08/ten-fabulous-medieval-book-titles/
- The Saga of Jón the Playmate: A ‘Cannibalistic’ Story – http://www.medievalists.net/2019/08/saga-jon-the-playmate/
- Fragment of medieval erotic poetry discovered – http://www.medievalists.net/2019/07/fragment-of-medieval-erotic-poetry-discovered/
- Medieval Manuscripts: The Black Hours – http://www.medievalists.net/2019/08/medieval-manuscripts-the-black-hours/
- 10 Videos about Anglo-Saxon England – http://www.medievalists.net/2019/08/10-videos-about-anglo-saxon-england/
- Building the Middle Ages one LEGO Brick at a time – http://www.medievalists.net/2019/07/building-the-middle-ages-one-lego-brick-at-a-time/
- Historical Presents: Fake History, Material Culture and Collective Misremembering (video) – http://www.medievalists.net/2019/08/historical-presents-fake-history-material-culture-and-collective-misremembering/
- Berengario da Carpi and the Renaissance of Brain Anatomy – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6381050/
- https://tavolamediterranea.com/2019/08/30/baking-with-the-romans-the-key-ingredients-poppy-seed-fennel-and-parsley/?fbclid=IwAR3e9W4A8R2qCIrduj5mHiSkLz7ydln-wvUy_biNZGzSS8-NvJpBufv2994
Funnies
Loren, Anja, Stella (v), Gogor (v), Sasha (v)
Largesse Item Count – (includes gifts, prizes, auction items, etc.)
- ASXLVII = 24
- ASXLVIII = 88
- ASXLIX = 794
- ASL = 2138
- ASLI = 731
- ASLII = 304
- ASLIII – 146
- ASLIV – 145 plus 2 puppets, 20 powder fort packets, 3 snip sheathes, 8 tiny bobs, 25 pouches for block-printing, 1 medium pouch, 8 bookmarkers, 2 in-process kisslock pouches, 18 unfinished pincushions, 1 sewing kit (except for bone needle), varnished stuff (124)
Total as a Household = 3974 handed off
In ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
Page Created 8/26/19 & published 9/2/19 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 9/2/19
Yet another crazy week for those of us in this tourist town. Mostly we’re all keeping in touch by Facebook and e-mail, even if we’re less that 3 blocks away! It was nice to see everyone last weekend, too!
…and you find some really weird things on Facebook… A discussion went off of a funny picture from a Late German Renn Book in the Elizabethan Costuming group. If you pop it open to full
When the news came in this morning about Sir Dublin, we all broke down and cried. We’re aging as a group and the legends die. There’s some memory stuff below.
Another legend has left the castle. 
Not as much got done this week, as usual for August. It’s really the busiest time of the summer for Loren and Anja. Between customers and mundane things that they’re making for their shop they have really limited time for working on anything else. We heard from Gogor, Amor and Gudrun this week, plus got to see Estella for a few minutes.
Rommelpots… a discussion of those started off the week, along with the desserts for Winter Feast, once Anja was back, at least. Embroidery and antler carving went on and then we finished up with a lot of Herbs. Lots of links this week, too.
Monday started very early, but very quietly. Emma had gone home Sunday night so it was just Alys and me. We had coffee and talked books until about 9am, then had some scrambled eggs with onions…and then talked it over and went back to bed! Both of us were still really tired from the demo.
So we headed across the Coast Range in utterly beautiful weather, commenting as the passing landmarks brought things up, and discussing business things and books and SCA and books and food and books, and maybe some books. 🙂 Mapleton actually surprised me. I didn’t think we’d been on the road that long. Gulls were flying along the river.
The first was just south of the Sea Lion Caves. Alys got a good pic of the seastack there. We also stopped at Bob Creek. She braved the ankle-turning beach cobbles to go down to the sand and get her toes wet. (I didn’t.) There was an oriental family, tourists and speaking little english, with a little girl who were playing, taking selfies and having the most marvelous time. 🙂
…an idea started to get tossed around last week, when we found a picture of an Italian wedding cookie table. It’s worked its way around to putting all the desserts onto one table in the pattern of a german eagle and a set of boxes so folks can fill a box to take home. No one is unstuffed by the time we get around to the last part of our feasts, so this would make something pretty and sobtelty-ish and make it easy to not have that part of the feast be 99% left over.
Anent Rommelpots – Just ‘cuz
It feels as though it was a very short week, even though this is coming out a couple of days late. I didn’t get home from Adiantum until Monday night and was tired enough that I didn’t finish this report until late Tuesday. I still have three blog posts to go and 6 page updates, including the monthly post for House Capuchin that’s already over a week late!
Early Week – We had some cleanup from the potluck. Nothing too awful, at least. Packages *finally* went out on Monday. Dehydrator was running on watermelon as an experiment, hoping to make melon tea, which was known in the Orient at least, in period. Mostly as bitter melon, a medicinal. That got finished and we were supposed to taste the sauerkraut on Sunday, but that didn’t happen until Tuesday, so that’ll be in next week’s.
We had a nice drive through to Eugene. Oregon’s coast is spectacular, no matter what, and it was perfect weather, driving through the sun-gold of a late summer evening. We chatted all the way through, in a very desultory fashion, since it had already been a long day. There was a surprising amount of traffic, but only one bumper-hugger on the whole trip.
After we turned at Mapleton we started seriously discussing a new class idea that I have, for ideas for getting people to tell stories in a non-US, non-English way, giving them a setting and flavor that isn’t Disney or Hollywood, or even standard fairy-tale. While we were talking first Jupiter was visible, and then Scorpio (where he’s located at the moment) then Saturn and the Sagittarius Teapot. Both reflected in Triangle Lake, just a glimpse, but how beautiful!
So Sunday started for me with coffee so I could get my eyes open. I had been up and down all night (common when away from home and before an event) and we had to get up too early, by my usual clock. We had scrambled eggs with onions and cheese and toast for breakfast and after I was ready I had a chance to look at some of Alys stock. She runs a book company called Book Universe and this bibliophile was in hog heaven. 🙂
I finally got too warm and went to sit out front on the porch until it was time to go. Antonia stopped to pick Emma up, since there are only two seats in Alys’ van. The sky was a soft blue and the sun pouring through the leaves of the maples on the far side of the street was a beautiful green and gold. It was a nice cool morning with the feeling that “fry” was going to be the temp in the afternoon, but we were going to be in an air-conditioned space.
So we headed over and offloaded and I went on into the hall to try to figure out where we were to set up. The group had discovered that instead of being assigned the 6 banquet tables that we have had for the last 6 years and that they had planned our display around, they’d given us 3 round tables and not even the big ones, but the smaller “personal” tables that hold 6 people each. Thankfully, Alys and Antonia knew where enough bodies were buried to sort it out and they put us where the floral group had been holding their classes.
We had flower arrangements on one side, robotics on another and behind and the main model railroad group right across from us, but we were on a main walkway between the doors for our room and the cross-route for the bathrooms and the doors out to the rides.
We had people doing wire-wrappeing, inkle, sprang and card weaving, spinning, njalbinden and embroidery and folks displaying scribal arts, hats, armor, painted silk and wood and literature.
I spent the day talking to folks about the medieval balls project and my blackwork embroidery. One very little person who had strayed along the table from her parents who were paying rapt attention in Dad’s case to the spinning, and in Mom’s case to Norse wire-weaving got to play with the balls, testing the contents of the tins of filling and seeing how far should could throw each ball down the walkway. 🙂 She did put them back. Very good manners for a little mite. I had one 9-year-old boy who really preferred the balls to the model trains and I actually got to start him on sewing one. A template and several sets of pre-cut tops and bottoms went home with his mom. Lots of folks who have done blackwork stopped and we had some really intense chats and I got to show a lot of other folks the basics. By 5pm I was getting hoarse! …and we kept going until packing up at 6pm, but also talking to some last folks up until 8pm.
We all shared around what we brought, although I couldn’t eat the delicious-smelling meat pies (pepper, drattit). There were blueberry tarts, cheese, boiled eggs, pickles and I passed around my rolls and cheese. One lady went out in the late afternoon and got bags of chips (I had fritos) and bottles of water to keep us all going.
I got a little while over in the flower displays and got some pictures. There was one involving yellow peppers, broccoli and brussels sprouts…. The one that made me smile the most was a “junior” display (by a 10-year-old girl) that was a pottery container shaped like a hen and her chicks, containing a plant of…. hen and chicks!
We were headed out the door by 8 and went to the Glenwood restaurant. I had a delicious and filling dinner of a “Columbia” burger, which was an 1/2 pound beef patty (muhgawd, but I was hungry) strips of bacon, a fried egg and cheese on the type of egg roll that Loren is making. It came with a lovely green salad, which pickled beets and garbanzo beans added, since I wanted it dry and no croutons. Just yummy! The four of us left from the demo sat and ate and chatted and did handwork (grin) until it suddenly occurred to us that the restaurant had closed at 9 and here it was going on 10, but the server assured us that it was ok. He’d been doing his clean-up and there were two other people there, plus his brother who was doing his university homework where he could access the restaurant’s wifi. Besides we’d all been talking SCA and geeking out about various things over the antipasto plate that we’d ordered instead of sweet desserts.
We’re all slightly crazy in Waldport. It’s tourist season, so Anja, Sasha, Susanne, Sabrina, Loren and most of the other members are up to their eyes in alligators and it’s really hard to do much else!
We’ve been pretty busy this week. A lot of stitchery, some cookery, some herbs, some cleaning of tools and containers… but it culminated in a really good herbs workshop and then a visit from a grandbaby. Certainly a period thing to have a grandbaby…. 🙂 That meant that a few things like the birth sampler and the embroidered bib went out, along with a batch of more mundane goodies. …and the sewing kit is nearing completion as I’m writing. Hopefully that
A post in the Shire of Briaroak’s Facebook group referred to their fight practice as, “Meet and Beat”!
Some stories should be told, although I feared that by the telling of this one that I would be considered braggartly. It was then pointed out to me that in order to brag, the story must relate that I had performed incredible deeds. In truth, I merely fought on my knees for a few passes, produced no victory for my Queen, and got gutted by a spearman. But the way I remember it was so much more:
Although time has worn some of the details from this day, it is still a battle worth describing. At Gulf Wars the Might of the Midrealm held the gate fast from the approaching Ansteorran army. Alas, there was a mighty press, and many were laid low. As this was combat mock, the marshals called a hold, and those who had been vanquished retired from the field. So many had been defeated that, upon their removal, there was a twelve foot gap between the opposing armies. Unoccupied save by a lone spearman, who had lost her both her legs and her spear in the press. The Ansteorran Army was six feet in front of her, her Midrealm brothers almost a spear length to her rear.
From atop the gate, where He had full view of the battle, the King of Ansteorra looked down upon this spearman, who was soon to be crushed beneath the shields of his army.
As this was combat mock, a hold was called to clear the pile of dead. So many had been defeated that there was a twelve foot gap between the opposing armies. Unoccupied, save by a lone dagger-wielding spearman, on her knees, with her spear supine only two feet to her left.
From atop the gate, where he had thought to witness the crush of this woman, the King of Ansteorra called down, “My lady, would you like to yield?”
“Lady,” he said, in a way that showed he truly did not understand what could inspire a minion of House Stahlgeist, “You’ve got balls of brass!”
This moment has not been hazed by the time since it was said. She still recalls the feeling of invulnerability that came over her as the Love Of Her Life stepped over her left shoulder, and began wrecking havoc on the opposing forces with his own nine foot spear, his very leg acting as a shield for her body. Although swept up by the grace of his love, she quickly regained her composure as a soldier, and proceeded to use her spear to knock down the weapons of the enemy, while her husband sent a score or more of fighters back to the waterbearers. Oddly, it seemed that the Ansteorran spears were much more interested in killing off this harmless, legged spearman, and continued to focus their efforts on her, as her husband reduced their numbers.
As all stories must end, a spear finally forced its way to her gut, and she died, happily, between the legs of the man she loves. Her brethren pulled her body backwards, behind the line of battle, and she gladly got up off her knees and went for a drink. But from that day until this one, when she feels outnumbered, overwhelmed, and outfought, she can still hear his voice, from behind her, stepping up to act as her shield in the midst of battle, calling out: “I’ve got you covered, My Love!” And she knows that victory is always close at hand.
Early Week – The organizing last week helped. Anja managed to get 1/2 a dozen small projects finished in two days, now that all the materials were actually findable. Some garden things kept going on, especially when it rained on Tuesday.
For all the insanity of a holiday, this week we actually accomplished a lot!
House Capuchin 3 