Thoughts

I'm avoiding working on a scroll - the paper I chose for the thing (Bristol) is very thick so my light-board isn't working well. I'm not an artist, can't draw worth a darn, so need the silly light-board in order to get anything done. But it is so dim on the other side of that Bristol paper that I actually took my glasses off and had my face hovering a few inches above the surface so I could squint enough to see the images shining behind. I have the bottom edge design traced out and am only needing to draft in the left edge patterning and then - OMG - do the text. Which, btw, will be traced with an extra-fine Sharpie pen and not callig'd. This is because I "wrote a cheque from an empty account". I haven't had a chance to practice any calligraphy and being a leftie means that it takes me a bit longer to get up to speed. The two scrolls are due this Saturday morning. I shouldn't have volunteered to do them but I got my time sense confused and thought I had an extra week to get them done after the camping event.

My meal plan was successful as far as the diners went. I was unhappy with the level of disorganization that I had and grateful that I had a 'memos' app on my phone so I could make a list for myself in the middle of the night, that being when solutions to problems seem to become clear and elegant. If I'd waited until morning they'd be lost forever. The biggest difficulty was my own lack of ease in getting things done. This would have been alleviated had I asked for a kitchen helper every day instead of trying to do it all myself and if I'd stored the dry goods in bins sorted by meals. Asking someone to lay out the items in a small 'breakfast' bin while I started the hot water on the stove would be such a step up from my own rooting around in a giant bin pulling out boxes and jars while folks hovered in the public area waiting for their coffee and oatmeal and the unneeded items had to be placed on any convenient surface while I found the breakfast or lunch items.

I learned that my 'food restriction' person had given me, as we suspected, a list of foods that were a blend of dangerous-to-her ones and personal dislikes. As she said on Friday when I mentioned that I might just end up scrambling everyone's eggs on Saturday, " I don't DO scrambled eggs!" I bit back the reactive "Then you can just eat oatmeal if you are lucky, b*tch" thought that immediately crossed my mind. (I was in pain and very cold, it being a little over 40 degrees, so grumpy.) Later in the day she mentioned that she had been through a three-month elimination diet with no appreciable results so I am giving her the benefit of the doubt that she may not actually know what is causing her intestinal discomfort. I imagine it must be quite frustrating to find that some foods create dire effects one day and yet not on different one, with no medical explanation of why or the common factor. Nonetheless, she will not be on my meal plan next year.

Oh, did I mention that I am already planning on doing it again next year? I did enjoy it even through the frustrations of my disorganization. It's been years since I've cooked a meal plan for more than four people. Probably a full decade, actually. And I ended up with 5 more people on it by Friday - the head of a household who'd asked after the plan just 12 hours before I was due to leave home told his shire members that they were on it. Which I learned after they arrived two-by-two from out-of-kingdom. But with the help of a person swinging by the grocery store after their trip to Lowe's, we had plenty for everyone. They loved the chawettes, they loved the lumpia, and they adored the SOS. Which made me giggle - of all things boring SOS seems to be the one that people greet with raised eyebrows and then come back to the kitchen sniffing hopefully for seconds.

It was cold at night. Just barely above freezing. We slept warm though, and shared Bossman's air mattress instead of setting up our normal two beds. I had expected that the arrangement wouldn't work - he normally sleeps catty-corner on the mattress so he can fit. But instead we fitted together just fine. I guess old habits are not ever lost. :) The mattress was difficult for me on the days he wasn't there as I could barely get off of the thing but once he got on site I was fine so long as he was in the bed while I was exiting. I needed that extra firmness to push off from! Before we left home we went to a secondhand store and bought a couple of quilted bedspreads to take with us for the bed. I'd meant to buy only one but there were two that matched and he wanted both of them. So after two thin wool blankets were laid down one quilt (King sized!) followed, then our down comforter, then the other matching quilt. They were large enough that I could tuck the ends and the foot-level bits of the sides under the mattress, which effectively kept the blankets from sliding off the mattress during the night. Those things are not designed for tucking in one's bedding. The plan was to return the quilts to the store as donations, effectively 'renting' them for the duration of the event (a whole $14us!) and keeping us from having to find new storage space for them, but he likes the ugly things so now they are packed into a vacuum-sealed bag and put away on top of the camping gear for next Pennsic.

We had brought a small but powerful propane heater with us. We never needed to use it. We did finally figure out that it was useful on Sunday morning for the gathering area while folks had their breakfast and coffee/tea though. It was nice to have that hot air blowing on us.

The Great Dark Horde camp had six brothers camping in it and eight chagua. We had a couple of Brothers have to cancel plans, durn it. I made twelve new sheet walls for the camp to go with the six I'd already made - there were no more than that there. No one else made or brought any. Luckily for my morale, I had only expected one more wall to show up, as I knew that most of thems who made walls were not going to be able to attend. I just bought more sheets to launder and cut into new walls. Hopefully if I do a set of two sheets every payday we'll have enough by next WoW. Friends of ours who live in Clarksville are going to let us store the household's camping supplies (sheetwalls and poles. Maybe a fire bowl) at their place so we can have them consolidated. Having each of us store and bring a personal set of supplies was good in theory but rotten in practice. Next week, after our Baronial Investiture event is over I shall start painting designs on the walls with the help of some of my khanate members. That will be fun.

My mind is on recipes for Pennsic. Or rather, on changing my view of what is and isn't 'easy' to make for two busy people (or for hosting a small set of friends).

See, after realizing that we were going to have to replace our 35-year-old Coleman camp stove, we dithered a bit and finally, thanks to the Memorial Day sale going on at Bass Pro, plunked down the extra $100 to buy a propane stove-oven rather than just a stove. Yup, I now have a camp oven to mess with. Yes, it is modern and not my beloved Viking-era kitchen stuff but I don't mind at all... I've wanted it for about three years now. Just for the idea of freshly-baked bread and cinnamon rolls to serve my man. Not to mention his idea of the Ultimate Meal - meatloaf. (Yeah, I know.) So those items are easy to consider. But I've 40 years of 'we don't really bake while camping' mindset to overcome, along with my diabetes 'shouldn't eat much grain' daily diet, so what I thought I'd be cooking if I ever got the oven - casseroles, pastries, meat pies - are now not so interesting. And I'm hard-pressed to think of what I should be putting together for this Pennsic, when he's going to be busy as usual and I'm going to be a Deputy Mayor (less busy than as Quartermaster or Head Troll, but more busy than as a general watch stander.)

There is a quick-snack item that I love to make, apple slices rolled up in cinnamon sugar covered croissant wedges, which will be nice to have on hand for guests and quick grabs, and the same concept will work for small meat pies, but beyond that - what is possible? Fast to put together yet not filled with carbs? I am going to have to do some recipe-sleuthing. After all, I must justify to the man that the extra expense and packing hassle is worth it. Although I think meatloaf and cinnamon buns will probably do the trick.

For the past two, maybe three, weeks I've been sewing for my little booth at Holiday Faire. I haven't made enough stock though, not enough to reach my goal even if it all sells. There are a lot of merchants at that event and many of them are selling garb. Oh well - I will make some money and I know that some tired and anxious parents will have clothing for their children that they won't have to try to find the time to make themselves.

But pricing has been a struggle. I know that SCA garb is almost always sold under-price compared to what would be considered normal for Renn Faires or other venues. $15-$20 a tunic/dress is the most I can reasonably charge for the majority of my wares else no one will buy them - not for clothing designed to fit infants to size 8(ish). So I know that this won't be the one-shot effort that I had imagined. I'll have to set up my booth at least once more before spring, and then suck it up and serve ramen for a while so we can afford the new pavilion. Thank goodness them suckers last a long time! I don't believe we'll need another one again. Our enthusiasm for camping is fading as the TV and chair look more and more inviting. "Hotel" events are going to be more our norm.

Just for the fun of it, behind the cut are some of my little outfits. At least, some of the ones I feel fond of. ( SCA clothes for little people )

It was actually a tough weekend. We started with a slow start from our house but settled into a comfortable drive, and stopped at "our" Dairy Queen, which is located about midpoint between our house and the turn off to Interstate 95. And there our day took a downturn since someone decided that keying our truck from the back taillight (I didn't know you could key a taillight) to the front grill would be fun. They had so much fun that they went back to the middle where the passenger doors were and swiped a couple more lines too. But our insurance company has it covered so we'll only have to pay the (minor) deductible and the truck will be repaired. The estimate is for about $1568. I hadn't expected it to be quite that high. It appears that the whole passenger side will have to be sanded and repainted. The work order even calls for removing and cleaning the little metal thingies that say "V8" and stuff like that. You know, "I'm a big important truck" decorations. I knew they'd be removing those bits but didn't expect that they'd be throwing in cleaning and polishing of them.

In the meanwhile we have a 'comparable' replacement vehicle. A Toyota Tundra stretch-cab truck that is bright cherry red. Bossman is in love with the rear camera but I miss our old truck. For one thing, it doesn't require a step stool for me to get into our own truck. This replacement one is lacking step bars. So he gets the truck this week while I get the Soul. I win!

Camping is hard on us. Too hard, I think. I do enjoy myself once we get things set up, and teardown is fairly easy, but it takes a day or two for me to stop aching after we get set up and boy, does the world seem nasty while I'm in pain. I ended up telling the Autocrat, who is a dear friend, that I hated her event. When she asked why I told her it was because we were assigned camping space on a bad slope (we were - I had to crawl up my mattress every hour or so each night) and were surrounded by cars, as if we were camping in a parking lot. That is a problem, and I know that it is one they've been working on correcting, but still - it wasn't why I hated the event. I hated the exhaustion and the pain of setting up and 'getting going'. The cure, of course, is to get back into better shape so it doesn't affect us so badly but even with that, what would make it better would be to actually attend for the length of the event instead of arriving late on Friday afternoon and leaving again before noon on Sunday. Medieval camping is a lot like moving house - and we're just getting too tired to enjoy the experience. (And I was thinking about something while we were packing out. In the 'old days', someone almost always had some sort of music playing loudly during pack out, usually a Celtic band or something not-quite-modern. But we don't do that any longer. I wonder why we lost that?)

I discussed the problem with friends, who suggested trying to switch to an RV or towable camper. That is one possibility although it 'harshes our medieval experience'. We'll have to do something because the other thing that happened over the weekend is that our tent roof ripped at one of the roof ridge grommets and the tent is now dead. It is too old to repair - while I was trying to get comfortable at night I was looking at the roof canvas and cataloguing all the spots where the fabric has worn thin enough to be nearly transparent. It is time to retire the poor thing and this C-shaped rip around the grommet just collapsed any ideas about keeping it. This too, is strange - we're down to a wall tent and a wedge tent. We haven't had so few tents in all the time we've been together.

I've been drifting around the house for the last couple of days, feeling rather lost. I keep getting the nagging "need to get to work" sensation even though I gave up my job on Saturday and no longer am facing monthly deadlines. It feels very odd. I tried to assuage the nagging feeling by going on OSCAR to help with commentary but my timing is poor and others have mostly already written what I would have said. Perhaps later today I will remember that I do have a deadline and get started back on my sewing projects for Holiday Faire. Eeep! And maybe I'll remember that I need to send in my merchant's fees!!!

Our turnover-of-office was fun - my Boss (Triton Herald) gave me a pair of penguin socks. I clutched them to my chest and squeaked, "Dobby is free!" She made me laugh. Poor Bossman missed it though. He was off getting warm outer layers for me and my protégé. Once the sun went down (and why IS it that the Royals always seem to face the populace into the sun?) it got cold fast. I thought I was prepared for it but I was quite mistaken. He also fetched out truck so I wouldn't have to walk from the court area back to our camp. I was embarrassed about that but did appreciate it. I'd been in sufficient physical distress getting to the court area across the rutted campground that I was in tears and near to collapse by the time I got there. He was concerned about me. I hate it when I make him worry. But there was no way to avoid taking the long walk at a near run - Herald's Point closed at 5:00 and we had to get all the important stuff out of it and put somewhere safe while at the same time, court was scheduled to start at 5:00 and we (my protégé and I) had to be there for the turnover ceremony. We were pushing ourselves pretty hard!

I didn't see anything but our camp and Herald's Point - missed visiting camps or going to the merchant's. I didn't see Gwenyth, darn it, or Raimond and Jaelle. But I did get to spend time with others who I usually miss just about as much and that was a pleasant surprise.

My summer sewing project is complete and in the hands of its owner. It nearly wasn't - after I'd overnight-expressed it to his last known address, he told me on Facebook (four days later) that he'd not gone to get it and was already packing. Boy, was I hot! Not even a 'thank you'! I learned of this when he posted on Facebook that he was looking for a piece of luggage to borrow. I asked him if he knew that I hated him right then... Later, he wrote to me to say that the clothes all fit except (go figure) the tunic with the embroidery, whose sleeves are about six inches too long. I have no idea how that happened. He didn't say how he got his clothes and I didn't ask but I'm figuring that one of the other guys in the group, who he was renting a room from, drove all the way down to the new-owner's house to deliver the clothing after he saw my response online. If so, I owe that driver some embroidery or something. Anyway it's done now, and that is all that matters. (And I got over my mad but it will be a long while before I'll be willing to sew for him again without money upfront as a regular commission job. No more 'for free just because I'm nice'.)

Having said that, I'm making a Norman tunic for another member of our re-enactment group- - - for free just because I'm nice. But I absolutely know that this guy will be quick to respond to any messages I send him, and he certainly deserves something that looks good. Heidi/Oda made his hosen for him so all he needs is a split-front tunic and an undertunic to complete his second kit. He's not going to need them soon as he's a new Second Louie in the Marine Corps and is busy with training, then expects to be shipping elsewhere for more training before he gets his real orders. He dropped by on Sunday to pick up his feast gear (I'd knitted cotton bags to store & transport them in so they would be safer as he moves around) and the linen-lined wool hood & mantle that he'd washed and dried... my fault, I've been so busy telling the guys that "this is washable and dryable" when talking about their trous and tunics for the past few years that I'm sure he completely forgot me telling them all that they should either dry clean or just wash & air dry their hoods. It was a long while ago that I'd made them. The wool shrank a bit. Not too badly, but the yarn-woven braid along the edge of the mantle puckered up and the linen lining was, of course, too large for the wool exterior. I was able to 'fix' that by creating a horizontal tuck all the way around the inside bottom of the mantle and hand-stitching it down. He's been instructed to use a steamy-but-cool iron to stretch out the wool braid when he gets a chance. It's not as though he won't have access to an iron on base!

Theoretically right now I'm prepping for the class on Viking-era Norse garb that I'll be teaching this Saturday. You can tell that I'm doing that by the fact that I'm typing an entry in here instead of hunting down my references on the web. I'm building up to it, really. Oh that reminds me - I need to find out if the school has an overhead projector I can use. One thing I'm doing for the class is hand-sewing another pair of Thorsberg trous. I want to have examples people can actually hold and play with during the class. It is giving me something to work on while we're watching TV at night. And now Bossman will have heavy trous for Ymir, something practically jeans-weight and sturdy.

I was thinking about how I could help with our need to purchase a new pavilion before Pennsic next year. The one we want, a 16x16, is between $1300-$1600 depending on which fabric treatment we opt for. Right now, with us looking at needing to buy a new car (mine bit the dust) and renew some dental work, things are looking tight. Money for something like a pavilion is going to be dear. So after some thought I've decided that I will attempt to merchant at a few events - nothing too stressful - and sell things I am comfortable making. I believe my plan at this point is children's garb and (of all things) cooler covers. Ours are made of a heavy upholstery fabric top with a soft skirt underneath. They look a bit like a ladies' boudoir stool, actually, or like a table covered with a cloth & a table carpet. The advantage is that we can get into the cooler without removing the cloth cover so it isn't too much of a modern-item jar when we use them at events. Lauren went with me to JoAnn's Fabric, where there was a very good sale, and I was able to pick up a nice selection of skirting and top fabrics. I also got a good bit of linen/cotton fabrics for kid's clothes. Not a huge amount, but enough to be a starter for the project. I plan on ploughing the profits back into the supply costs while skimming off a little each time. Even if I only earn a small amount, it will help. And of course there will be some parent out there who will be able to dress their kids comfortably and affordably without having to scramble to find the time to sew new stuff. I like that.

Anything left over can go to Gold Key in the spring. Here's our current cooler-cover. I'll be making mix-and-match sets for 'daytrip' sized coolers, and can measure & take orders for the larger ones since those are not so uniform in size and shape.




Countdown: 239 days until I'm done with the (lifesaving) Gleevec and finish with its side effects. I thought I'd put that somewhere so I can recalculate whenever I have bad days - because the number is only going to get smaller.

I'll probably write more about his weekend later but I'm wading through five days of email messages and this is just a quick break. Brought to you by a recent message from one of the guys who was a guest in our living history demo area and who went home with a recipe I gave him for a snack I'd brought to feed the group (I was the cook for the group this time. As pretty much normal.)

So... one of our guest groups told us that they had a guy who only had a Norman kit. We changed our timeline to the early 11th century in order to allow for a Norman to be interacting with Viking Norse. And we set it at a "thynge" in the Isle of Mann, just in case we had any other suprises from either of our two guest groups. In honor of our Norman, I made a little snack from a recipe found in a book I had not actually recorded (Drat. Darn. And I need to remember to go through the various source books and find that stupid provenance). All I had at the top of my entry was "from the Norman section", which leads me to think that it may be in Jaqui Wood's latest book. Wait. I couldn't stand it and I went looking. Yes, It is on page 36 of her "Tasting the Past" book. And I made an error with it as the recipe is supposed to be dated post-Crusade, which takes it out of our era by 40 years.

Anyway.

Everyone who ate it loved it. Except for me, actually. And I ended up sharing the recipe with five people during the event, including one visitor who snuck a bite of it while we conspicuously looked in the other direction, who fished for a piece of paper and a pen to get me to write it down for her. Another woman, a very sweet 18th century reenactor who came to us twice to share her shortbread (yum) did the same... over the last few hours the wonder of its popularity and the rather constant raves about it keep surfacing in my mind.

Take equal parts almonds, pistachios, and (one half) dates. Crush them separately then combine the just-larger-than-meal results. Cut in the same amount of butter as you had of chopped dates, then add enough breadcrumbs to gain a stiff dough. Shape the dough into small balls and if you wish, roll those balls through a bit of fine sugar. Ta-da! Very Expensive (for the times) Norman "powerballs".* Conjectural recipe only, of course.

And apparently very, very popular. I promised the Austlandr that I'd bring it back next year - now what am I going to do, knowing that it was based on later-period wartimes?

*And even more weird for me was that I mis-read the recipe, which had a rather large amount of breadcrumbs in the list of ingredients, and combined everything, including all those crumbs, before adding in the butter. Which was in no way sufficient to bind everything. Neither was doubling the amount of butter, which led to me cussing a moment and folding in two eggs then dumping the whole mess into a shallow baking pan and baking at 325 degrees for 20 minutes until it was just starting to separate from the sides of the pan. It was still moist enough two days later to be chewy but not too sticky. We just cut it into little 'cakes' sort of like Rice Crispy Treats and served it up.

For years I've avoided the grassy/shady area of the site after experiencing the 'too many ticks creepy-crawlies'... I had planned on attending but with the announcement that everything is going to be inside the shady area, I'm kind of (gently) freaking over the idea. Now I want to back out. But yet I don't.

My concern (other than the standard Lyme disease one) is that right now, while I'm taking my meds for the cancer, I'm immune-compromised. Not majorly, mind you, not like folks on IV chemotherapy and such, but still - do I really have the right to put myself at risk? Then again, IS it much of a risk? I know the folks in Caer Mear go in early and do a lot of spraying. I didn't attend 30-year and I feel event-deprived.

Arg!