Grind that stag!

– a roman skincare routine.

A woman fixing her hair in the mirror, fresco from the Villa of Arianna, 1st century AD

I haven’t posted anything here for more than a year. 2020 was certainly not the year for blogging. But I hope that 2021 will be a better year for blogging, and for that we’re starting with a deap cleaning!

According to the roman poet Ovidius (43BC-17AD), cosmetics can help women to attract men, but I’m pretty sure this routine will work for both men and women, no need to attract anyone with it.

This routine would, according to the source, make the skin appear bright and radiant!

The first step is to strip away the husks and the chaff from some barley. Barley from Libya is the best, but use any kind you can get your hands on. Clean 2 pounds of it.
Then moisten and equal amount of vetch with 10 eggs.
When the barley has dried in a blowing breeze, crush it with a rough millstone turned by a lazy donkey.
Together with the barley, grind up the horns of a lively young stag.
Add 12 narcissus bulbs which you’ve strip off the outer layers and then pulverized on pure marble.
Add nine times as much honey.

If you use this mixture, your skin will be smoother and more radiant than your own mirror!

I’m not sure what you can use as a substitute if you can’t find a lively young stag and grind it’s horns, but maybe the horns of any young animal will work.

(As the roman did, Jo-Ann Shelton, 1988)

Post event thoughts

All this unpacking, laundry, maintenance and packing away things is starting strong emotions in me. It’s making me feel thankful and greatful for the life I’ve found and made for myself in the SCA.

Before I joined in 2010, and even before I got really active in 2012, I had the medieval week in Visby to look forward to. If I was lucky, I got to go to the halfway party and take out one outfit that got to see more than just Visby.

When I got home after The Week, I packed away my stuff and started to long, ache, for the next one. Because that was all I had. I still long for the next one, but nowadays I have more.

In just a few weeks I’ll be going to Aros fencing camp, and in the fall I’ll be visiting Gothenburg, England, Sundsvall and more for events. By the time I’m back in Visby next year I’ll probably have been to about 12 events, some in Sweden and some abroad.

So even though this big, amazing and wonderful week is grand, there is more. Maybe the SCA isn’t for you, maybe it is, but there are more society’s around us with different focus periods and areas. If you want to do more, ask! I don’t know all the different groups, but I’m sure we can find some suggestions if you want to get your stuff out more regularly.

Get me some cold wine!

So, the last few days obsession with finding things and ideas about items I can put my newly registered SCA device on led me back to my general obsession; feast gear.
As maybe some of you know, I’m very fond of buying, having, window shopping for and researching feast gear.  About a year ago I decided to start a project of getting each of my sets of garb matching sets of eating/drinking items such as plates, bowls, cutlery, glasses, pitchers, cups etc. And man, am I loving it!

With that in mind, I went back to Pinterest and added a lot of pretty art and museum items to my board Feast gear. And then I found this…

At the bottom of the pictures I saw this bucket with a pewter pitcher in it. My first reaction was ”HAHA! A wine cooler!”. And then I saw this picture… Which even more obviously had water in it (pointed out by a fellow feast gear nerd). So pitchers in perhaps cold water to cool down white wine?

In the back of my head I also thought it might just be a bucket for dirty things, about to be taken out to be washed. As in the picture bellow.

Long time no see- A&S-challenge

Hello everybody,

it’ been almost two years since my last post here and I have no idea why, since I’ve actually done stuff! But there’s going to change now. I want to step up my garb-game, or actually, my entire persona-game (SCA), so more activity is needed.

To kickstart myself, me and a friend started an Arts&Science-challange for ourselfs. Arts&Science is a term in the SCA covering a whole lot of things. ”SCA Arts & Sciences are all the crafts, skills, and technologies practiced in the time period and cultures that our studies cover. SCA participants research, study, and practice these skills and then share them with others.” Read more here.

So the challenge is to do at least 10 minutes of A&S for a set number of days. This time it’s 30. So far I’ve done 18 of those 30 and it has gone remarkably well! Only one day so far where I was afraid to fail.

Since I’ve only returned to the blog in the middle of the challenge, most information about it is on my facebook page, feel free to have a quick look there as well! I’ll probably update there more and will do a summation here when finished. 

 

Rock, paper, scissor!

Well, OK, no rocks, but otherwise a lot of paper and surely a scissor or two was involved.
Last week I visited The Royal Armoury with a friend and I especially wanted to see the new exhibition Renaissance fashion in paper. 28 life-sized hand-painted paper costumes  with the goal to show off the abundance of the Florentine Renaissance court of the Medici family. The costumes ranges from 15th to 18th century, but the main focus was the 16th century, and I was so so happy! I can’t believe that anyone can make so much beauty with just paper, but obviously, there are people who can.

Because the original outfits have not survived, the artist has based her pieces on portraits and she herself creates the parts that we can’t see; the lower parts of the body and the backsides.

I’m going to share some of my favorites here with you, but I hope you can come to Stockholm and see for yourself! The exhibition is open until 19 March 2017.

Twitching hands

Finally some twitching of inspiration in these resting hands. I really need to get some things done right now in the beginning of the reenacting season! My plan is to, at least, get some small projects done for Double wars, which starts in the end of April. My short list consists of; pink women hosen, a warm underskirt in wool and a linen schleier (a german 16th century veil). That’s a reasonable plan, isn’t it? I should be able to manage that…

Right now I’m working, so I can’t get to it, but what I can do with this twitching hand is to look for more inspiration. Because I really need more of that and more pictures on my Pinterest… So, I’m going through the website where one of my favourite pin comes from! Lots and lots of pretty stuff, so I’m making more pins. Here are some of the best ones.

Golden silk

So, as I’ve said before yellow is a colour that for me makes Viking garb look very authentic. The pictures bellow have been great inspirations for me!

So I bought some yellow wool at medieval week in Visby, and last weekend I spent in Visby at the SCA-event Lucia feast with Styringheim. And from Åsa Vävare I got some wonderful sewing silk!

The colour was hard to catch in picture, but it is a beautiful pale golden yellow that’s going to become a Viking tunic for me! Soon. Maybe.

Blinging up the viking

As I maybe said before I’m developing my viking garb! I recently finished my Sköldhamns hood, which I’m going to show you sometime and I bought some wool in Visby to do a Eura dress! I’m going to do that. Later.

But when we recently bought some linen I also added some dark blue wool to make an apron/fronth cloth for my apron dress. I think a separate apron is a good why to dress up or down your Viking garb. With a beautiful fabric and/or maybe some trim or embroidery, you can make a pretty piece to add to your base garb to make it into a fancier court garb or other occasions when you want to look your best! Other times when you want to work or maybe do some cooking a simple separate linen apron can keep your garb from getting destroyed and you can easily wash it afterwards.

(Pictures from my Pinterest)

But how do I want it to look? The lower left picture made me decide on a dark blue. But how long and how wide do I want to make it? Some have very short ones, others ends before the dress hem under and some ends below the dress hem. I think the long length, as in the lower middle picture, is the prettiest. But I want it to start higher up in the top, evenly with the apron dress, as the dark blue one.
As for the width I think the model that ends under the brooches is the best, that doesn’t sticks out at the sides. And there between the brooches I’m going to add some trims that I have at home, made with tablet weaving, in wool.

So when I’ve put it together, I’ll show it to you!

If you want to read more about Viking female clothing and finds go to this page.

More eduation for the people

So, I have some tips for you interested in the 16th century! This is one of my focus periods and I also have a lot of friends who enjoys big hats, huge bottoms and mayor bling (”Major Bling!”). And of course I want you guys to take part of all the goodness as well!

For all of you there is, free and available for downloading, a book about german 16th century clothing that has been really hard to get now! It’s about clothing and house textiles in Nürnberg, Germany 1500-1650. It’s in german, but full of pretty pictures!

And for all of you Swedish followers, or those who can travel to Sweden for this marvelous occasion , there is the Tudor tailors! The writers of the book Jane Malcom-Davies and Ninya Mikhaila is going to Uppsala, Sweden and is giving lectures and workshops for a whole weekend. 4-6 march 2016, a weekend of ruffs, fabrics, mingling and renaissance food! I’m not sure if I will be able to attend it, but I really think it’s a wicked opportunity for all of us.

The event is in english but the facebook page is in swedish, but that’s what Google translate is for!

Get more information here!

Not the best of writers

So, if you haven’t guessed it yet, I’m Swedish. And therefor I’m pretty lucky when it comes to learning languages, especially English. I’ve studied English since the age of 9, I think. And since then I’ve heard English every day in songs, movies, TV etc. And because of that I have a pretty decent vocabulary and I’m quite confident when writing and speaking.

And still, I make mistakes, and now when I’m getting into some new things with this blog, I’m challenging myself and my use of the English language. So I’m about to do a lot of mistakes, I’m going to do some direct translating that won’t be correct English. Buut I hope you’ll understand me anyhow!

I think this is a good opportunity for my historical re-enactment and how I present it. In SCA we talk a lot of English and when we have contests and presentations in Arts and sciences they’re in English. So doing this blog is a good practise if I want to engage in that kind of things.