kvistfritt kvastskaft
Dec. 4th, 2012 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaIt has been a musical few days it seems.
Sunday morning we were up very early to head into town, in medieval costumes, to help other local SCA members entertain the people who were standing in line waiting to purchase their tickets for the Hobbit. Tickets were to go on sale at 09:00, so the theater asked us to arrive at 08:30. The line wasn't hugely long, but some of the people in it had waited for hours to be certain they got their tickets to attend the primer.
Luckily it wasn't all that cold, about -7 C, but there was a wind. I dressed in a heavy wool tunic with linen underdress over wool tights and nålbinded knee-warmers, leather boots with thick nålbinded, a heavy wool cloak and hood, and still with the wind was starting to notice the cold. Luckily, the local knight showed up just then, and he had a really heavy cloak lined with fake fur, which he let me borrow, and I was fine for the rest of the demo.
After the demo we had time to hurry home, change clothes and have a quick lunch (and cook food for dinner) before heading back into town for a choir performance. The performance seemed to go well. We recognized one of the guys in the audience from our nyckleharpa class, and he said that we sounded fine.
After the performance we had time to head home and grab his violin before heading to Folk Music, followed by folk dance. This is the first time in a few weeks we actually had time/energy to make it to the music session, and it was a joy to be able to sit there and work on my sewing while the musicians made beautiful music. It was also nice to get back to work on my long-neglected fur lined hood--at this point I need only sew on the pieces of the ruff for the hem and attach the wool over hood to the fur.
While sewing the hood I started wondering if I wanted to embroider the hood, but realized that I actually had no idea if there were embroidered hoods in period, let alone what sorts of decorations were used. Sure, I have seen lots of people at events with embroidery on their hoods (and own one myself that I embroidered years ago, but I have never done any research on the subject, and didn't know if the others based theirs on period examples, or just thought it would be a good idea because they could.
Since I was at the Folk Music session and didn't have a computer I posted a quick note to the SCA-Authentic list asking if anyone knew of examples of embroidered hoods in period, and mentioning that I had considered doing something in silver and or white to make the hood in progress more visible during the walk to school. I commented then that I was asking before looking on line myself in part as a reminder to me to look it up later, but also in hopes that someone would have a favorite link they could share to get me started. Only two people replied, and they both replied only to the thought about making the embroidery reflective (one thought I should forget about making the hood visible and just wear a safety vest, the other thought I could button on reflective strips and take it off for events), so when I did a brief search I replied to share the few links I did find.
So far all I have found is late medieval examples, so I have no idea if they did embroidery on hoods in the early middle ages.
After folk music we had the final Folk dance session of the year. This meant that the musicians stayed and we had live music to dance to, and no lessons, just dancing. That, of course, made for a very fun dance session. Sadly, the dancing itself ended after only one hour. Happily, the reason it ended was so that we could sing holiday songs and eat the food that people had brought to share. Since singing and dancing are two of my favourite things I really enjoyed the evening.
Monday morning I made time to practice the nyckleharpa, for the first time since class last Monday (life has been busy!), and Monday lunch I went for a walk in the forest here by the house (I worked from home that day), exploring a new trail, now that we have had enough cold days in a row for the ground, swampy from rains all autumn, to freeze solid and get covered with a dusting of snow. I live in a beautiful area, with far more trees than people in the neighbourhood!
This morning I had planed to walk to Uni, but woke up feeling a bit out of sorts. (Probably related to the fact that an old friend, who has been battling with depression for a couple of years now, has decided that I no longer count among his friends because I am not willing to listen to his complaints about how terrible life is and how nothing ever goes well for him. I miss the companionship and comradeship we used to share, but that has been absent for a while now, replaced only with his need to vent about the drama in his world, and my instance that there are more positive ways he could be viewing the world--a conversation that was repeated all too often, and always led to disagreement.) Since it was the first cold morning of the winter (-20 C, or -4 F) I put on my heavy winter boots and added my down coat over my normal wool coat.
I don't have the fur hood done yet, so I just pulled up the hood of the down over my wool hat, and headed out the door. I didn't get very far before getting annoyed about the fact that the hood on that coat hangs down too far--I could see the ground right in front of my feet, but to see any distance in front of me I needed to tilt my head way up and back to see under the brim of the hood. Add to that the combined weight of my work computer and food for the day in my backpack with my out of sorts mood, and I decided to turn around and head home after only 0.5 km of walking.
I was half tempted to spend another day working from home, but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lord_kjar had his work car at home and needed to drive to work anyway, so I rode in with him and spent the day at the office. I am glad that I did, because it let me use the microscope and I had a fun day doing research and by the end of the day was back to my normal, happy self.
After work I met up withlord_kjar for dinner before choir. We went to the local pizza joint and bought him a pizza. I consulted the menu and talked with the guy behind the counter, and determined that they didn't have any toppings I would eat (their vegetarian options are things like mushrooms and olives, both of which I intensely dislike, and pineapple, which I only like raw and never cooked), so I ate the rest of the food I had brought from home, and nibbled on some of his pizza crust for good measure.
Choir tonight was fun. During our warm up exercises they introduced me to a new one, which is surprisingly difficult to pronounce: "kvistfritt kvastskaft", which means "knot-free broomstick". I rather like it. The rest of the evening was spent preparing for next Sunday's performance. We decided that the one medieval style song requires the boys wear cloaks. We have cloaks enough for all three boys in the house, but the dress code for the performance is black, blue, white, and silver, and while two of our cloaks are blue, the third is green. Therefore we have asked on the Shire forum to see if anyone has a blue or black one we can borrow for the performance.
We have three days left to finish the bookshelf in progress before the housewarming party, wish us luck...
Sunday morning we were up very early to head into town, in medieval costumes, to help other local SCA members entertain the people who were standing in line waiting to purchase their tickets for the Hobbit. Tickets were to go on sale at 09:00, so the theater asked us to arrive at 08:30. The line wasn't hugely long, but some of the people in it had waited for hours to be certain they got their tickets to attend the primer.
Luckily it wasn't all that cold, about -7 C, but there was a wind. I dressed in a heavy wool tunic with linen underdress over wool tights and nålbinded knee-warmers, leather boots with thick nålbinded, a heavy wool cloak and hood, and still with the wind was starting to notice the cold. Luckily, the local knight showed up just then, and he had a really heavy cloak lined with fake fur, which he let me borrow, and I was fine for the rest of the demo.
After the demo we had time to hurry home, change clothes and have a quick lunch (and cook food for dinner) before heading back into town for a choir performance. The performance seemed to go well. We recognized one of the guys in the audience from our nyckleharpa class, and he said that we sounded fine.
After the performance we had time to head home and grab his violin before heading to Folk Music, followed by folk dance. This is the first time in a few weeks we actually had time/energy to make it to the music session, and it was a joy to be able to sit there and work on my sewing while the musicians made beautiful music. It was also nice to get back to work on my long-neglected fur lined hood--at this point I need only sew on the pieces of the ruff for the hem and attach the wool over hood to the fur.
While sewing the hood I started wondering if I wanted to embroider the hood, but realized that I actually had no idea if there were embroidered hoods in period, let alone what sorts of decorations were used. Sure, I have seen lots of people at events with embroidery on their hoods (and own one myself that I embroidered years ago, but I have never done any research on the subject, and didn't know if the others based theirs on period examples, or just thought it would be a good idea because they could.
Since I was at the Folk Music session and didn't have a computer I posted a quick note to the SCA-Authentic list asking if anyone knew of examples of embroidered hoods in period, and mentioning that I had considered doing something in silver and or white to make the hood in progress more visible during the walk to school. I commented then that I was asking before looking on line myself in part as a reminder to me to look it up later, but also in hopes that someone would have a favorite link they could share to get me started. Only two people replied, and they both replied only to the thought about making the embroidery reflective (one thought I should forget about making the hood visible and just wear a safety vest, the other thought I could button on reflective strips and take it off for events), so when I did a brief search I replied to share the few links I did find.
So far all I have found is late medieval examples, so I have no idea if they did embroidery on hoods in the early middle ages.
After folk music we had the final Folk dance session of the year. This meant that the musicians stayed and we had live music to dance to, and no lessons, just dancing. That, of course, made for a very fun dance session. Sadly, the dancing itself ended after only one hour. Happily, the reason it ended was so that we could sing holiday songs and eat the food that people had brought to share. Since singing and dancing are two of my favourite things I really enjoyed the evening.
Monday morning I made time to practice the nyckleharpa, for the first time since class last Monday (life has been busy!), and Monday lunch I went for a walk in the forest here by the house (I worked from home that day), exploring a new trail, now that we have had enough cold days in a row for the ground, swampy from rains all autumn, to freeze solid and get covered with a dusting of snow. I live in a beautiful area, with far more trees than people in the neighbourhood!
This morning I had planed to walk to Uni, but woke up feeling a bit out of sorts. (Probably related to the fact that an old friend, who has been battling with depression for a couple of years now, has decided that I no longer count among his friends because I am not willing to listen to his complaints about how terrible life is and how nothing ever goes well for him. I miss the companionship and comradeship we used to share, but that has been absent for a while now, replaced only with his need to vent about the drama in his world, and my instance that there are more positive ways he could be viewing the world--a conversation that was repeated all too often, and always led to disagreement.) Since it was the first cold morning of the winter (-20 C, or -4 F) I put on my heavy winter boots and added my down coat over my normal wool coat.
I don't have the fur hood done yet, so I just pulled up the hood of the down over my wool hat, and headed out the door. I didn't get very far before getting annoyed about the fact that the hood on that coat hangs down too far--I could see the ground right in front of my feet, but to see any distance in front of me I needed to tilt my head way up and back to see under the brim of the hood. Add to that the combined weight of my work computer and food for the day in my backpack with my out of sorts mood, and I decided to turn around and head home after only 0.5 km of walking.
I was half tempted to spend another day working from home, but
lord_kjar had his work car at home and needed to drive to work anyway, so I rode in with him and spent the day at the office. I am glad that I did, because it let me use the microscope and I had a fun day doing research and by the end of the day was back to my normal, happy self.After work I met up with
lord_kjar for dinner before choir. We went to the local pizza joint and bought him a pizza. I consulted the menu and talked with the guy behind the counter, and determined that they didn't have any toppings I would eat (their vegetarian options are things like mushrooms and olives, both of which I intensely dislike, and pineapple, which I only like raw and never cooked), so I ate the rest of the food I had brought from home, and nibbled on some of his pizza crust for good measure. Choir tonight was fun. During our warm up exercises they introduced me to a new one, which is surprisingly difficult to pronounce: "kvistfritt kvastskaft", which means "knot-free broomstick". I rather like it. The rest of the evening was spent preparing for next Sunday's performance. We decided that the one medieval style song requires the boys wear cloaks. We have cloaks enough for all three boys in the house, but the dress code for the performance is black, blue, white, and silver, and while two of our cloaks are blue, the third is green. Therefore we have asked on the Shire forum to see if anyone has a blue or black one we can borrow for the performance.
We have three days left to finish the bookshelf in progress before the housewarming party, wish us luck...