May 2023: Busy Start to Busy Summer
My May goals were:
Finish the Blue Gonete (its new name) and document the process.
Begin construction on the saya verdugado.
Get back to reading Jews, Food, and Spain finally.
My view from breakfast the morning of Crown Tourney. Site was quiet, largely still asleep, but it was peaceful and beautiful.
May was both a challenging and incredibly exciting month. It started out with Crown Tourney, in which I got to watch a dear friend fight, go camping for the first time in ages, have some fantastic tacos, and watch someone I respect greatly become Princess. There were arts and sciences of incredible breadth and quality to be seen, and I got to snuggle not one, but TWO corgis AND a tiny kitten. An incredibly excellent weekend. On the way down and back, I did put some time in on Jews, Food, and Spain, and I came home with what will be my next reading book: Holy Feast and Holy Fast, which explores the relationship between women and food from a religious context. It’s not Spain specific, but according to Bea, it is an excellent resource.
I thought all of this would give me the energy I needed to power through my gonete. And then I got home and realized my gonete had a couple of major flaws. First and most concerning is the closures. The hooks and eyes are secure, but the gonetes in depictions have a flat front with no visible opening. Mine had noticeable gaps between each set of hooks and eyes where the fabric was pulled away. This was somewhat remedied by adding additional points of attachment between the hooks and eyes, and making sure those points went through all three layers of fabric. However, there was still minor gapping and it was enough that I was incredibly discouraged. My first conclusion in this case was that the garment could not be smooth fronted AND supportive AND have a non-visible closure and that one of those would have to give. Adding one extra inch of ease to the garment would accomplish the smooth front with a non-visible closure and while it would not be as supportive as I would like, it would still offer some support. Unfortunately, this conclusion would require I entirely remake the garment to add that ease. I will admit, this proved a stumbling block and stopped me in my tracks while I decided how I wanted to proceed.
The aforementioned TINY kitten.
During a sewing day later in the month, another possible solution presented itself. While I am not entirely as educated on the history of this as I would like, braids made of horsehair were often used to stiffen garments in period. Adding a modern synthetic version to the opening edges of the gonete could add the additional stability needed to make that smooth fronted internal closure and still have the garment be supportive. It also might solve the much smaller but equally annoying problem of the front corners flipping up. I ordered some on Amazon, and decided to remove the hooks and eyes to attempt to apply the horsehair to the inside layer of the garment as a test case. I still have not ruled out making a third version of this garment, and I confess I have not even gotten to the sleeves.
I also had a major attack of life this month. Without going into too much detail, work got incredibly stressful, and it sapped all my creativity. This took the wind out of my sails for the verdugado. No work was accomplished on that this month.
BUT! All was not lost. At that same sewing day, after I took a brave step to try to remedy some of the work situation, I was feeling much better and had the energy to try a few things. First, Bea helped me with an aljubba, a Moorish outer tunic that I plan to wear for Novice in a couple of weeks. This garment is loose and flowy and made out of a gorgeous dark teal linen and I cannot wait to wear it in person. I also have some white linen pants I bought to wear with it and I expect this outfit will prove incredibly comfortable. It will someday need a qamis with fitted sleeves so that they can be shown off underneath the voluminous sleeves of the aljubba, but that’s a project for another month. I currently own a fitted sleeve smock with some blackwork on the cuffs that will suit just fine.
Also that same sewing day, I also made what I am affectionately calling my Lounging Pillow. This is a long rectangular pillow to drape over the back of my SCA chair so I can lounge which ever direction I please without having to re-arrange myself. Two out of two housecats recommend this product.
I had two classes in the works this month. First, for Novice, I am running a class called “A Novice’s Guide to Arts and Sciences,” as an introduction to key A&S concepts and terms. I’m going to bring some examples of different forms of A&S as a bit of a show and tell for attendees to see during the class, and will leave that display up throughout the day. This idea gave me a lot of motivation to flesh out my class for Summer University (happening the week after Novice). Her Majesty Yasamine had asked me to do a class on persona development and was able to get the slide deck for that done this month. My major goal for that class is to show how persona development can be an active part of SCA participation, and not just a story you write about a character online. Were I giving that class in person instead of online, I would bring many of the same example items to show off how each of them relates to actively portraying my persona at events as well. The handout for that will be my first order of business for June.
Spices getting set up in their bottles for display.
Additionally for Novice, I am sponsoring the Spice Road prize for populace choice winner. I’ll be giving out a small vial of Duke’s Powder along with a mug to the winner. In doing this though, I ended up with 11 extra little glass bottles that needed a purpose. Thankfully, when I had submitted my Trade Route to Table project, some of the feedback I got was that the judges would have liked to see some more period appropriate containers. I had just used the modern containers I used for the spices themselves in my actual home and so there was a definite element of the mundane to the display. These bottles allowed me to decant small amounts of the whole spices themselves and better label them for their origin. I do plan to add labels to the map part someday too. These bottles are going to be visual only- to avoid inevitable spills and having to constantly refresh stale spices, I glued the lids shut to the bottles. Hopefully this will mean a nice evergreen display option for future use. I do need to find a safe way of transporting them though.
In doing the spice project above, I did also finally figure out a use for the turned wood container pictured on the left hand side of the photo above. This is now the home to my event sewing kit. It includes a variety of needles, a pair of snips, some beeswax, a measuring tape, and a small pin cushion made from excess fabric scraps. I love that this has a lid that seals relatively tightly and can’t wait to bring it to Novice with me.
I finally had the set up to make some progress on my commonplace book. I got a new fountain pen a little while ago and worked on practicing with it before diving into the writing of the book. My approach to the book is to fill out all the Spanish language quotes, then prioritize an author from each language so I cover all of them in the book itself. I think the notebook I purchased will be too small for the whole sample I created and I frankly have no interest in learning how to book bind so I can make myself a large enough one. All that said, I still love the project and am very excited to see it grow even more.
My almodrote documentation for Pentathlon is effectively done. I added in some more of the information I gathered from the spice trade project but I am satisfied with both that recipe and the documentation for that piece- so, time to celebrate FIRST PENTATHLON ITEM COMPLETED. Having three in the works at once has been kind of a lot and I notice that maintaining momentum on all three is challenging. I want to wrap up the commonplace book and gonete over the summer so I can then sequentially approach completing the quiver and the chopines. However, I think all around I am happy with my progress and think completion by March of 2024 is a very real possibility.
One other thing I did this month that I’m really happy with is rearranging my Research and Documentation section of my website. I decided it would be best to split it into a section on my projects and one on my classes. I think it cleans things up a little bit, helps people find things a little more easily, and makes it so fewer older projects and classes get lost in one long list.
For June, I plan to take it a little easier and really put all the energy I do have (regardless of how much) into wrapping up my two in progress Pentathlon pieces. So that means my goals are":
Finish my What’s and Why’s of Persona Development class materials and present the class
Finally complete the gonete and decide whether a third iteration is necessary at this point.
Complete the commonplace book.
