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.

Cool video about how to make hand cream according to a 15th century Italian recipe

 This is really interesting, informative, and - which is otherwise often the case with youtube videos - not in any way too long.
I might try it.

New Regency underwear, and revisting a very old gown

 Since I took in my old c. 1805 stays from 2006 two years ago when I lost so much weight I didn't have any that fit me now that I have regained some of that weight. I have a pair of transitional stays that I cobbled together for my riding habit, but there were several problems with them - they were really just a wearable mock-up - so I thought that I'd make a new pair. 

My first pair actually also was a a wearable mock.up in a way: they were made from an old cotton damask table cloth and sewn on machine. My new ones are hand sewn from cotton broadcloth and instead of hemp cord, which was a bit thick compared to the preserved ones that I've seen it has cotton yarn in the channels. I am re-using my old busk.
But I used exactly the same me-made pattern as in 2006, only adding gores in front at the bottom.

I also made a new shift. The old one is still going strong, but I had tentatively planned to visit an empire event in Lucca in June and tehn you need more than one shift. Considering the current pandemic state I find it unlikely that it will happen next year, not for me with my compromised immune system, but one can never have too many shifts.

Old stays (and shift). I have bigger boobs now.

As I was already dressed in my underwear I decided to take some more photos. This is the first time I've worn my first Regency gown (link at the top with more info about it) since the early 2000s. It could be a little tighter at the "waist" and I desperately need to iron both the skirt and the frills.

These are taken as a part of an Instagram challenge where the thee for today is "Be more Jane". Since I don't really know waht Jane austen did except write I thought that housekeeping tasks like taking inventory of things in your cupboard might be a thing.

I am wearing the apron that belongs to my folk costume, and of course a cap. But no shoes - bad Eva! ;)

The cupboard is also 1910s-1920s Jugend inspired, I'm in a 1970s flat, and the cream and green jars are 1930s. But I like the photos.

In Sweden it was common among the lower classes in towns to wear a hard cap called bindmössa, today mostly associated with folk costumes (link to my folk costume) with modern clothing, so I took tow such photos too. And it is not only the gown that needs ironing, but the apron too. The cap would probably have been in a lighter colour at this time.

Medieval eating and serving utensils - thrift store edition

Unlike when I started playing in the SCA, an later in the Swedish group Nordrike, in the 1990s (and now I am back again in the SCA), you can nowadays get replicas of virtually any type of plate, glass, pot, dish etc that you want, from different centuries and localities. 

But that was not the case when I started, and I am conditioned by my early experience into looking for suitable things at thrift stores. Everything in these photos is from thrift stores. Most of it, including the table cloth, from Mölndals secondhand. The glasses are painted by me, inspired by Italian 14th century glasses - I have a blog post about them with sources and close-ups here. 

We're a family of five, so of course we need more stuff than one person. I am also fond of cooking in camp, which means that you need bowls for preparation and serving. My pots and pans are not in this photo, they're in the basement. 

The wooden plates I've had since we were only a family of four, probably 20 years now. Two of the dark ones are broken, but luckily I still have five left. I have also broken two of the matching glasses, so I will have to paint more.

Photos from slightly different angles:

I have replicas too, glass, and some pottery, and my beloved cooking pot from Krohns Krukmakeri. But lots of stuff is just things that look medieval (or renaissance) enough. 

The Water Elf photos

Hubby took lots of photos, and I am very happy with almost all of them. Since I don't want to bore you I won't post ALL. Just too many ;)

The cloak that I am wearing in some of the photos is my husband's wool cloak that I made over a decade ago. The belt is a piece of trim, that I beaded last week. And the gown is actually a 1930s gown from rayon satin, that I also made, and beaded. I made it with the photoshoot in mind, but I thought that it would be nice to make something that you can use for other purposes too. And this satin just screamed to me that it needed to be a gown with the skirt cut on the bias.

I felt like a very pretty water elf - and with the sword, like the Lady of the Lake.

This is how the gown looks when not used in a fantasy setting:

And in this video, which I haev shown on the blog's facebook page, you can see why I love a bias cut gown - the way the fabric moves is amazing. Also, the gown has no zipper or buttons, the bias makes it elastic enough to get into anyway.

Going fantasy again: wire crowns

 So, I continue with my fantasy costuming. This flare of interest in fantasy outfits comes from when I "needed" a fire themed crown for an Elf king in August. So I thought: why not try making oen from aluminum wire and glass beads, the latter I have more than enough of.

So I made this crown:

And, which is not uncommon, I got really inspired and ordered lots more wire in different colours.

And I made a earth element/forest crown:

Both these have braided wire as foundation, but for the water crown I used another technique, that I have use previously for circlets to wear with veils - though that was more than 15 years ago.

Here you have two rings of thicker wire, and use thinner wire to weave beads between the two thicker ones. The aluminum wire is a little soft and bendy for this, but it is okay, especially if you add other things to teh circlet, as I did.

Finished:

I am working on an Air crown too, but got sidetracked by making a water gown, so that I could have a photoshoot last weekend, when Rickard and I had rented a cabin by a lake.It is easier to take water themed photos with a lake at hand ;)

This is the beginning of the air crown - I am working with clear, and iridescent glass beads to get a light and airy feeling.

Wanna hear me talk? About cotton?

 Tonight at 7 pm EST (European Summer Time) I am giving a lecture on Cotton in the Middle ages as part of Virtual FrockCon - if you're at all interested in historical costume, which I assume that you are since you are here, you really should check out Frock Con, there's lots of interesting stuff.

Anyway, my class is here, on facebook live . It's my first time using facebook live, so let's just hope all goes well.