Attending Drachenwald's Kingdom University this weekend

 So, in this year of no physical events a dedicated group of people in the SCA Kingdom of Drachenwald set about to arrange an online version of the annual Kingdom University event. Making it online made it bigger than physical event in winter could possibly get, and in the end there were 600 participants from all SCA kingdoms and all continents except Antarctica.

And it apparently was just what I needed, even if I am zoomed out and very tired today. It was lovely to put on medieval clothes and to see and talk to people also in medeival (or early modern) clothing.

I arranged a corner in my kitchen (where I have my desk and computer) to have a nice background for the zoom classes and discussions. I think it looks nice, despite being a 1970s flat, with an early 20th century oak cupboard in the background.

Here's me for the opening ceremony and hang out on Friday evening. Early 14th century wool gown.

On Saturday the event started in earnest. For this I wore my c. 1300 Italian cotton gown during the day. 

And I learned so many new things! Many of the classes were recorded and will show up on Drachenwald's youtube channel when edited - there's a bunch of them over there already.

I took the following classes:

Saturday:
"Scappi: An overview of a 16th century Italian cookbook" by Baroness Magdelena Grace Vane. Interesting, and I will have to buy the book. Magdalena has a blog about period cooking too: Magdalena's medieval kitchen

"Medieval make-up and skincare" by Honourable Lady Katherina Mornewegh, baroness of Knight's Crossing. It was super interesting, and this is one of the classes which will be put on youtube as soon as final editing is done.

"From the West to the East - the art of perfumery in ancient Rome" by Dúgū Jìnán. This was really advanced, scholarly stuff, so it took a lot of concentration. But oh so interesting! So interesting in fact that I am seriously considering attending the Kingdom of Northshield's event next weekend: "That's a Beautiful Event - The Perfumery, Beauty Care and Adornment Virtual Symposium" and this from someone who almost never wear either perfume, and rarely make-up.

"Introduction to early Roman and Greek dress"  by Contessa Saxa Amelia Africana. And now I finally have a good way to tie my girdle with a Ionian chiton :)

While doing this I cooked a medieval feast for me, my friend and neighbour Anna, who's part of our isolation bubble, and two of our kids.Though the kids weren't required to join us at the table for the online feast, or wear medieval clothing. Cooking is one of the reasons why I wore my cool, cotton gown, the other being the excellent central heating in Swedish blocks of flats.

To be able to cook while attending classes I "medeivalized" a little more of my kitchen to include my oak table, and hide modern stuff from other class attendees.

Here I have started on the dessert (though the way we serve dessert isn't really a period practice): Hazelnut tarts with rose water. Esau is "helping".

The recipe is from a Swedish book: "Grevarna Brahes Vinterbok", which unfortunately doesn't give the sources for the individual recipes. I am guessign, however, that the original source is the 16th century cookbook of Anna Wecker. I used the modern type pastry from butter and flour for this one, since it was known in the 16th century. For my herb pie I used a hot water and flour dough instead. that's the larger pie pan. In the photo I am mixing roasted and ground hazelnuts, egg, rosewater, cream and sugar.

The herb pie was a take-what-you-have version of an Italian recipe for herb tart from Lombardy. There's egg, mozzarella, cottage cheese, chopped spinach, some parsley and soem rosemary, salt, and pepper and just a very little saffron. Most of my saffron I used for a cabbage and leek soup that started off our feast.

Here you can see the finished pies, plus cabbage, leek and onions for the soup, and the minced meat with poudre fort, salt, pepper and raisins for the meatballs that I also made.

Some feast photos:

Socializing with other feast-eaters on zoom :)
There were recipes if you wanted to make the same feast as others, but I am too tired to think much these days and just made stuff I felt like making.

After the feast there was court, and  here's me and Anna at court.

After court there was a ball, which we didn't attend, but we hung out with friends, old and new, in a zoom break-out room. There was also a bardic cirle that aparently wnt on until the wee hours. I was very, very tired however, after being on my feet cooking AND taking part in classes all day, so by ten we called it a day.

Sunday
On Sunday I actually only took part in one class, except my own, but it was a heavy one: two hours of expert scholarly work on early Tudor female headwear and gowns by Dame Margaret Wolseley: "Which hat should I wear with this gown? Early Tudor fashion advice from dead people".


Then I took a walk outside, I had hardly been outdoors at all on Saturday, before (again) getting into early 14th century Italian and giving my own class: "An introduction to the medieval history of Sub-Saharan Africa"

I talked too much and for too long, as usual, but people were interested and it went well, despite my class notes being in Swedish, since this is a lecture I normally give at work.

Then it was only the bittersweet ending ceremony and a lovely, and incredibly well orgazized event was over.

An exercise in anachronism - a box for my coronet

Since I now have my pretty, pretty coronet, I also want to protect it. The coronet is made in a medieval way, with pieces with hinges. The white enamelled flowers are the pins keeping it together.

coronet from Eva Johanna Arts&Craft

Etsy shop
Facebook page

So when travelling with it on a train or plane the separate pieces will be packed in small velvet pouches to protect them. But when I travel by car, or when I set up my tent and want everything to be pretty around me, I will use this box.

It looks a little bit like boiled leather, which is what mostly have been used in the Middle Ages, or leather combined with wood. But since I don't have easy access to leather or a good workshop for that kind of jobs it is a cardboard box covered with paper clay. Thus an exercise in anachronism. Luckily that is part of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

The inspiration for using paper clay I got from seeing my friend Agnes' amazing notebooks made with paper clay. She is really, really talented in many crafts: she's making amazing cakes, notebooks, fairy houses, posaments (viking style metal wire ornaments) and historical jewellery, and probably much more that I don't know off. You can see, and buy her stuff, in her Etsy store: By Hand and Paw.

To protect the coronet on the inside the whole box was padded with 2 cm thick foam rubber. Using a pair of scissors I hollowed out a groove in the bottom piece for the coronet, before covering it with fabric. The fabric is tacked down with thread in the hollow too. Then I glued the piece to the bottom of the box with PVA glue. The groove is (reasonably) centered, it is the photo that is a taken at an angle.

Then the sides were padded. Because of the angle of the coronet, I had to shave off some of the foam rubber at the top edge. Not so easy to get even with just scissors, but the fabric covers some of the unevenness. This was alos glued to the sides of the box.

Finally I added a smaller circle of foam rubber covered in fabric to the lid.

In the hollow inside the coronet I will probably keep a fabric bag with fake hair, hairnet, ribbons etc.

Pimp my Ikea bed

While the more ambitious of us (or those who have access to a wood working shop, or at least don't live in a flat) make their own beds I decided last year when I started making my painted chests (1 and 2) that I wouldn't make my own bed, but instead buy this cheap bed from Ikea. We bought it just before Double wars last year, and have thus used it twice now.

Here are some photos from my pavillion this year:

In the top photo you see the headboard of the bed, and while not glaringly non-medieval I still wanted to make it fit in more with the rest of the furniture, and with period images of beds.

Especially since a lot of people now have bought the same beds.

So glued some 1mm plywood on to two of the bars, making it look like a whole board there, and stained the whole bed with the same paint as the chests. I also painted our devices and some patterns on the "board" of plywood, and added two wooden knobs that I had painted.

I think it will look really nice when we camp next time.

And the second painted chest is finished

And tonight, the night before I leave for New York and the Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle Ages  conference at Fordham University, I finished my second clothes chest.

The first one had a variety of courtly couples on it (see it here) For this one I decide to keep to one medieval story, the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.

I want to move one of the hinges about one millimetre, but that will have to wait until I get back.

Painting more glasses

Since last weekend I am no more the baroness of Gotvik, and have passed on the glasses and cases that I made to the next baron and baroness. Of course I have replicas of historical glasses, but ever since I first saw them I have been fascinated by painted glasses from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Especially the beaker shaped ones from the High Middle Ages, I wrote about them here, with a few pictures.

Unfortunately I haven't found anyone who makes plain beaker shaped historical glasses, they always have some kind of decoration. I am not sure if I would have dared to harden the paint in the oven with a historical replica either, but probably.

Since I can't have historcial replicas to paint on I have had to make do with a substitute with reasonably the right shape: beer glasses.
The upside to this is that they are very hard to break. And you can get them cheaply from 2nd hand shops.

The motif is my badge, surrounded by flowers, which were taken from the Aldrevandini Beaker in British museum, made in Venice in the 1330s.

The arms of the Aldrevandini family also has antlers, which provided the basic shape for the ones on my glasses, which are my personal badge in the SCA.

In the SCA you can register both your heraldic device/arms and one or more badges. This is based on a period practice: Since arms were hereditary it was  common among the nobility at least in the Later Middle Ages to also have some kind of badge which signified yourself, rather than your family In the SCA arms are personal so the distinction between the two is roughly that my arms say "here's Aleydis" and my badge say "I belong to Aleydis". Badges can be jointly owned too, so that they signify for instance a household, and while my badge technically is registered to me only it can be used by any member of my family/household.

My badge is a deer's antler with a white cinquefoil, that is a flower with five petals, om each tine. The flowers reflect my device, and I got inspired to put them on the tines of the antlers from this Codex Manesse image.

Next step is to make  box for all six glasses that will make it easy to bring them to events.

One clothes' chest is finished

Well, apart from the fact that the pins for the take-apart-hinges are such a close fit to the holes in the hinges that it's hard to put them in even when hinges are not attached to anything, and impossible when screwed in place.
So tomorrow I'm going to go and get some 3 inch nails to use instead. I will also drill two holes in the lid to make it easier ot pick up.
But otherwise it is finished, which is good, since I plan to use it for medieval camping this weekend at Hunehals castle ruin, on their "Medieval day".

The photos aren't as sharp as they ought to be ;)

Then next week I'll start on the next one - I don't want to have my flat filled with pieces of wood and plywood forever :)

A painted chest

So, you don't only need clothes to go to events, at least not to camping events. You also need somewhere to store your clothing. 16 years ago my stepdad and I made nice solid wood chests, without nails. They were, however, both heavy and too large for our storage. We ended up leaving them with friends on Gotland, since at that time we went to Visby medieval week every year, and that was the only place we used. Seemed much smarter to pick them up there instead of lugging them across Sweden every summer.

And then we stopped going. It was so much work, and it's so much easier for us to go to Double Wars, the other great camping event in Sweden. Of course you miss out on the lovely medieval town and all the concerts, lectures and other happenings, but it really was too much work. We may go again, but we haven't done it for six years.

So then our big chests ended up on Gotland, and since I couldn't figure out a way to get them here, and we really didn't have the space anyway, I donated them to people on Gotland.

For Double Wars I used a couple of chests made from wood chip. But one of them is getting old and rickety and they also have this very 19th- 20th century look. So I decided to make two breakdown plywood chests, inspired by the ones made by House Greydragon. My plan was to have them finished when we went to Double Wars, but with the work load that I had in April and May that was impossible. So now I am slowly putting the panels together and painting them. This far I have painted one lid and one large panel.

Thos chest will have motifs from the Grosse Heidelberger Liederhandschrift on all sides, the other one will have other courtly motifs.

Painting another glass, and lots of scrolls

So, it's time for another non-textile post. On Festivalo de Caderas Maja's glass was accidentally smashed to the floor, so I pained a new glass for her:

When I'm not sewing I am usually making scrolls, so I thought that I would share the latest ones:

These I gave out on Festivalo de Caderas in October:

Gotvik's Wayfarer, for those who have moved away and we miss.

St. Egon's Heart, for service. For Cis de Conway and Jacob Gareys.

Scrolls made for the Queen and King and the Princess and Prince of Nordmark to use:

Award of Arms for Aerin of Varovjie. My first on real parchment, and first using uncial script, to match the early period favoured by the recipient.

Blank scroll. I don't know if it has been used.

Award of Arms for Jens Bentsson

Orden den Lindquistringes for Barbara von Krempe

Saladin's Ring, for Alma von Hardewyk

And a mundane one, made for my friends Edward and Suzanne's wedding.

Both boxes are finished

Ten days ago I wrote about a box that I made for the painted glasses that I also made for the barony of Gotvik. Then I didn't have enough plywood to make the second one, but a week ago I got on the tram and bought some more. And now they are both finished:

As you can see I also made small linen napkins to wrap around the glasses, and printed ermine in the corners.