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…

I’m not lost…

I’ve just been diverting some blogging attention across to a new group, Cuallacht Ruaimeoirí Lídiach aka the Lídian Dyers Association (so named after Lydia or Lidia, The Woman of Purple) – SCA Dyers of Lough Devnaree. (lidiandyers.org) I’ve been doing a lot more dyeing and colour research recently and we have been building such an…

Dye Hard with a vengeance

There has been a lot of dyeing in my past couple of weeks. I have an awesome partner in Crime these days – the freshly minted LADY Katie of Dun in Mara who has been coming along to my workshops, having a blast and doing a *stellar* job documenting the stuff we’ve been trying out….

Venetian Treacle – (Not what it says on the tin)

Watching Netflix recently I was reminded recently of a great project a former member – Lady Cassandra della Corona of Dun in Mara – worked on previously,  recreating a plague doctor mask.  I knew that the established story about plague doctor masks was that they contained various medical and strongly scented herbs as well as…

It’s madder we’re getting

As part of an event I ran last weekend (more on that later) there was a workshop, a great madder experiment if you will, where people who wanted to participate brought tap water from different areas and we messed about a bit with the PH of some more tap water and threw in a pond…

Pottery in CLommacnoise

I finally got around to trying a pottery workshop in Clomnacnoise Pottery, near Athlone, the second workshop the very excellent Lady Gytha organised. I had an absolute blast and loved it every bit as much as I thought I would. I have always enjoyed the idea of clay, the mesmerizing way it changes beneath your…

Dyeing, not Dying, at Battle Colours! (part Two – what was in the box?)

I brought along my box of dyestuff to let people have a look at some options and to pick what they wanted to try working with on the day – I posted this picture as I was gathering everything together before the event so it serves as a useful jumping off point to discuss the…

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…

glimpses of the Book of Hours of Marguerite d’Orléans

I adore this particular Book of Hours so very much. I think it’s my favourite and I intend to spend a lot of time trying to get the style right to make future scrolls, so I might get a bit boring about it. I’ll try not to. The Book of Hours of Marguerite d’Orléans is…

The Meditteranean DYE it

I’m doing a workshop on natural dyes at an event my new Tuatha (roughly equivalent to a Village) is running at the end of the month. I’ve been refreshing my knowledge, doing a bit of online shopping and spending a couple of evenings doing some new research with my laptop while the TV is on…