Social Media And the SCA

When I joined the SCA (fadó, fadó) I tried to resist joining Facebook. I found loads of information about the SCA online on SCA websites, and so much really useful stuff on Stefan’s Florilegium and a wonderful selection of SCA blogs all over the Known World. There were emails to let me know about events in…

Everything is connected…

I’ve been down the ogham rabbithole – still there in fact -, but I am surfacing just a little to share an amused observation. In the course of my “Are ogham letters named for trees?” research I’ve discovered a side tunnel that joins up to my “tell me about dyeing in Ireland” research that I’m…

Letters from the Trees

I’ve been putting this post of for an age because I’ve been reluctant to find out that a lot of what I thought was true about the subject would turn out to be Victorian fabrication, as this has been a far bigger element in my research in the last few years than I would like….

Some thoughts on Service

It has been on my mind for some time that we are very lucky in the SCA to have so many passionate people who try very hard to make sure we have a great time.  There are so many things that need to be taken care of to make an event even appear on a…

Dyeing, not Dying, at Battle Colours! (part one – the process)

Alice de la Wode, Gytha Ui Bhanain and I live in a small few mile radius of one another. We have similar problems with juggling time, travel and hobby and home commitments with young adults and almost adults at home. We work on meeting up and doing things very much on the fly, not quite…

Glass bead workshop at Yule Ball

This post will be a sort of round up of information to support the hands on workshop experience at Yule Ball this weekend just gone. I want to say thanks to everyone who came along because everyone did a fantastic job and gave me more back than I could have hoped in terms of interest….

Oh the heralds of the Barony at the Court at Crown Tourney..

..were just passing by. (A mangled song from dusty caverns in the very back of my mind, which will now likely earworm me for days. I will spare you all the link to the original) So thing one about me: I don’t like being in the way and I’m not fond of being obvious in…

Méadar an Mháistir (the Master’s Mether)

I had a sekrit project, it’s one of the reasons I went quiet here again despite being back in SCA circles, the other being that I’ve moved out of my old house and am currently in weird limbo waiting to be able to start work on my new home. That’s a story for another day…

Three recipes for Buckthorn Ink and one attempt

The recipe I have attempted is from the Paduan Manuscript via Mary P. Merrifield’s Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting. (1999). I haven’t managed to get a workable-for-me version of the original manuscript source, but the Manuscript Miscellanea 992 contains recipes for all kind of colours, fine inks, and varnishes, gum arabic,…

Tracking down a source for Bluebells used as glue

There have been a few bluebell filled days recently, and yesterday was perhaps the most Bluebells I have ever seen in my life. Oceans of them flowed over the curious landscape of an until yesterday undiscovered-by-me part of Charleville forest, luxuriating in the May sunshine in their hundred of thousands, mellowing under slow wandering clouds…

Mushrooms in The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi

There are times when my job in IT gets …busy.. and I contemplate other things I could be doing. It has become an especially strong feature of pandemic life now that I spend so much of my time in the one place in front of the same screens I worry I am taking root. The…

Buckthorn for inks and pigments

I have been trying for quite some time to find Buckthorn berries in the wild. It’s surprisingly difficult. When I started in the SCA first, or rather, when I decided ink making was for me having found the SCA, I found the Special Collections Conservation Unit of the Preservation Department of Yale University Library’ pamphlet…