Category: Works in Progress

So it’s been like a month since my last post…

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Oops.

Anyways, the boozes did well at Great Northeastern War. My conditum paradoxum and rose-lavender cordial were paneled and both scored relatively well for my first foray into the guild scene. My mead and cordial both one best in their division. There was only one cordial, but…hey, there were 8 meads. That counts for something.

Nobody showed up to my Roman garb class except for my friend Elinor Strangewayes (see also: woman who makes Roman phallus beads,) but my Varangian Guard class had a good group, even though I didn’t prep a good lecture, we sat there and talked for an hour and I spewed what I could from the top of my head. They loved the extensive biblio I put onto my handout. I think I will be posting that in the future.

The Byzantine garb page is almost finished, I hope to get that up in a day or so. I basically copy-pasta’d my handout, but I’ll also be adding more stuff. Since my persona is 11th Century, I need to focus on finding more information about that more rather than the generic “Throw clavii on a tunica and call it Byzantine” look. At least there’s lots of fun vocabulary to learn, right? @_@

I am also going to be playing with some Norman garb for upcoming events this fall and winter. The boyfriend is Norman, and technically so is half of my persona, so I get to wear Western European garb for the first time. Ever. I don’t count my Viking, that’s Northern. 😛

Oh, and a gallery, must put up a gallery!

 

Compleat Anachronist!

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever wanted some of my blatherings in printed form to have and to hold forever?

Well soon you CAN! I contacted Compleat Anachronist, the SCA-wide A&S publication that comes out quarterly. http://www.sca.org/ca/index.html It covers all kinds of awesome topics for SCAdians that want to up their game, and for me, the issue will be on…surprise, Roman and Byzantine clothing. I am making it as comprehensive as possible, however, so everything a SCAdian needs to know about dressing in bed sheets is covered. 😉

Oh yeah, I’ll get that stuff up soon on Byzantine dress. I swears.

 

Please help my IndieGogo Campaign!

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

I normally wouldn’t post such things here, but, as some of you know, I am a published author, and I used a Kickstarter 2 years ago to get my book off of the ground. This year, I am using Indiegogo, which is another platform, to crowdfund my endeavors.

This isn’t just about my book this time. My sewing room is in major needs of upgrades since I basically live off of my sewing in the summer months because during the semesters, I don’t have time for a full-time job if I intend to stay a full-time student. I make basic garb over the summer by commission for people who are going to Pennsic and the like. Good linen garb, and I occasionally take more involved work on. This is not my career, this is not what I intend to do for the rest of my life, but it does help me pay the bills. If anyone is interested in what I do, feel free to email me at syrakousina@gmail.com.

Here is the link to my IndieGogo. If you cannot contribute, please pass it along! The more exposure, the better.

Thanks everyone!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-support-angband/x/1583287

IN VINO VERITAS IV

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Bottling and infusing the wine today! Excited! Pictures to follow in tonight’s post.

In the end, I will have the following:
2 gallons of “Ancient White” Muscat wine.
1 gallon of Conditum Paradoxum (spiced wine from Apicius.)
1 gallon of Rhosatum (rose wine from Pliny the Elder.)
1 gallon of Retsina (resined wine.)

I’ve found a couple different redactions of the Conditum Paradoxum. I have one written down in my brewing journal (this is a must-have for anyone who brews as much as I do. I conjure up recipes and write them in, and track my progress on existing projects) but I found a different approach online I may go with instead. The basis of the drink is that you take a base wine, Apicius doesn’t say what color though both reds and whites were widely consumed by the Romans, and you make a must of honey, saffron, mastic, bay leaf, black pepper and dates. I don’t have any mastic, so I’m subbing in cinnamon. Plus, with my Retsina, I didn’t want to overdo it with that flavor. I *DO* have plenty of pine resin to work with, so that is still an option.

The rhosatum is getting treated exactly as Pliny says: put rose petals in a bag, put it in the must, close the sucker up and then let it sit for 3 months. I’m assuming he means fresh petals, and I’m using dried, so I’m going to be monitoring the color of the liquor and making sure nothing goes funky in there. If I stop the infusion early, I stop it early. No big.

The Retsina doesn’t have a clear cut recipe. I’m more or less trying to re-create a flavor profile than an actual recipe. Originally, Greek and Roman wines got the resin flavor from the use of pine resin as a sealant on the amphorae. Being that I don’t have an amphora, (I’ve looked, they’re expensive to get made) I’m cheating and tossing an ounce of resin in the wine and letting it age a month. If this works out, I’ll bottle the wine and seal the top of the bottles with resin like wax as a nice touch.

I’m going to let the wines bottle age a minimum of 3 months, so my first bottles should be ready by Pennsic War, at least of the Conditum Paradoxum (which I plan to panel with hot seawater to dilute it with!)

More updates today as it comes, live, from Black Dolphin Brewing!

 

Welcome to the new blog!

~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

Same as the old blog…kinda.

All the content is the same, but I’ve moved it from Blog.com to WordPress.com for several reasons.

1: WordPress has more to work with.
2: Blog.com gets practically no search engine exposure, no matter how much you SEO the thing.
3: Blog.com has NO customer service. None. No technical support, and they barely update their own sites. I purchased a domain through them for my author blog, now at http://ofsummerandwinter.wordpress.com, and I accidentally let it expire. When I renewed it, the domain did not get re-attached to my blog. So, after trying to fix this, I contacted their tech support, and got no answer. For weeks now. I sent them a tweet . I posted on their Facebook. Nothing. They provide no emails for anything, and come to find out, my domain is locked, and registered to a company in Germany, and I cannot unlock it to transfer it. So I’m out $18, and relatively pissed that neither of my sites were getting traffic anyway.
4: Ads. Ugh.

Therefore, I am now on WordPress. I have no idea why I even bothered with Blog.com other than to try something new. Please stay away from them. WordPress is the superior platform for these types of sites.

Spring break, spring stress, oh look, new shiny!

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

I just got back from a few days down in the lush green tropical homeland of Florida to return to the cloudy, 30* maritime climate of the Arctic. Okay, so RI isn’t the Arctic, but that gosh darn groundhog LIED.

Hit the Bay Area Renaissance Festival in my new totally inaccurate but blasty-blast to wear Gahwazee outfit, complete with tassel bra goodness. Hey, it’s a fair! I can wear what I want! Next on the hit list is my mom.

The family that garbs together, stays together.

The outfit was pretty easy, I used a Simplicity pattern and just sorta…zoomed it up myself. The gomlek (undertunic) I whipped up with my imagination, using the funky selvages to my advantage, the bra is one of my old ones I bled all over trying to glue and handsew trim onto, and the skirt is just your run of the mill tiered broomstick or belly dance skirt. I believe it’s an 8 yard. I went with this look because Florida is hot when Rhode Island is not, therefore, I can have some fun. If it was going to be a cooler weekend, my actual SCA period Turkish would have been in order, but at least I got compliments on my…rack. The underbust Turkish coat is documentable to the 18th Century, when fashionable Turkish women were attempting to emulate the shapes of the Western women, notably the garish French. The tassels and the way I did the gomlek? Erm…not so much. That’s just for boogying at the festival. This will get some Pennsic wear, but probably with the neckline of the gomlek close.

Pre-Renaissance Festival filth. Kinda cursing myself over using the antique sari on the bottom.

Aside from that, I got to hit a couple of spring training baseball games, and sat at the kitchen table working on my undergrad thesis. The fun, let me tell you…No, I’ll tell you it’s most definitely not fun and I’m regretting going back to school at 28 (now 30) to get my bachelors when it should have been done 10 years ago. Life has a way of getting in the way. The thesis is The Varangian Guard, and their recruitment and downfall due to the First through Fourth Crusades. It sounds cooler than it is. In the immortal words of the old knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “You chose…poorly.”

The Varangian Guard don’t get a lot of press, surprisingly, so it’s been a bit of a witchhunt. I’ve done some preliminary research for my book, Of Summer and Winter (shameless, I know) but I wanted to further myself as an academic, and at least have some really real for real research knowledge to back up my fiction.

In other news, I received my East Kingdom Artisanal Exchange Swap III gift this week! I was so excited when I opened this, aside from feeling like a total slacker for not having mine done yet.

It’s a lovely red coral and bronze necklace and fibulae set, using both Byzantine and Western Roman design features in the necklace. I CAN NOT wait to wear this. I feel like I need new garb just to do it! (I’ve been wanting a dark blue peplos…;) )

No cell phone pic can do this justice.

In Vino Veritas Part III, and Artisanal Swapage.

~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

Racked the wine to the secondary today. It’s fermenting like a madwoman. I probably could have let it go longer, but the boy needed the larger carboy for his beer that he’s working on today. Either way, I plan to leave it in this carboy now for at least a month before the clarifying process. I picked up another 1 gallon jug today as well, now I have 2, which will be important for when I do my separate infusions of the rose and resin. As of this point, I’m not thinking they will be ready for paneling at War of the Roses (Memorial Day weekend) so at the earliest I should have a drinkable product by Pennsic, and especially good next year, as I intend to age as much as possible. It is wine after all. Though the Romans did drink a lot of young wine. Mostly because it was the primary beverage of choice, and though there were period winos (Pliny most certainly one of them) that did enjoy ages wines, there is no harm in younger beverages.

I also signed up for the Nobelese Largesse swap today via Facebook. It’s a Knowne-World wide artisanal swap that requires documentation. I cannot post what I am doing or who I have or pictures until the gift is sent for obvious reasons, but I am looking forward to participating in this one. 🙂

I am also involved in the East Kingdom Artisanal Swap for my second round. That gift has been finalized, and I am working on getting everything together to complete it. My previous swap gift went to Konstantia Kaloethina in Calontir, the founder of the NL swap, and I made for her a Byzantine Superhumeral out of shot purple silk, with some amethyst and pearl beadwork. I left it plain since we had discussed prior to me even having her as a swap recipient that she wanted one to adorn with her award medallions, but did not know how to sew one for herself.

Konstantia's Superhumeral

I received in the swap a lovely wooden chest with my arms on it, and a couple of brass and bronze medallions from Sir Yessunge Altan, I was blown away.

Wooden Chest from Sir Yessunge.Medallions that came in the box.

You can see the type of work that goes into these swaps, this is why I’m so excited for NL, being limited to 40 participants, and worldwide. I do love a challenge!

In Vino Veritas, Part II.

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

The wine kit was put to primary fermentation today! I will secondary in a week, then let it sit a month before conditioning, and splitting it into the different jugs for the Roman infusions.

 Cloudy…I assume it’s going to clarify during the process.

I’m also starting to play with gin. Gin is actually a period beverage, well, it wasn’t CALLED gin, but juniper infused spirits go pretty far back, I believe the 11th Century. Let’s face it, gin is an acquired taste. My acquisition came and went after a long night of drinking that got capped with a G&T, so, I got revisited by the gin first. ~_~ This infusion is peppermint and roses. It took VERY fast, like, overnight fast, and I already strained it and started a new batch.

In Vino Veritas. Part I.

~ Angela ~ 4 Comments

I will be VERY popular during the apocalypse. Homebrewers will be the richest, between selling booze for drinking and selling it for medicinal and antiseptic purpose.

But yes, welcome to Black Dolphin Brewing! Where my boyfriend and I make all sorts of delectable draughts of doom. (I love alliteration.) Since this blog is still rather new, I’m not going to backtrack to explain all that I have done so far. But, I am a member of the Smokingbridge Guild of Libation Brewers locally, and part of the entire East Kingdom Brewer’s Guild as well. I have yet to be paneled, but we’re working on that. WITH ROMAN WINE.

Of course it would be Roman, it’s what I do.

The Romans adored sweet white wines, contrary to the heavy reds that you often think of, Pliny the Elder gives us great insight as to how the Romans enjoyed their wines, from white grapes to heavy spices. Natural History can be quite a ponderous tome for those that don’t find him all that appealing, but, for a reference into how Romans viewed their natural world, it’s an invaluable tool for research. A free, solid translation of it is available online at the Perseus project through Tufts University here.

Pliny the Elder wrote during the Flavian Dynasty, and N.H. is dedicated to the Emperor Vespasian. Pliny is the reason why we have plinean eruptions, for the poor fella was killed indirectly from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Most likely of a heart attack, as he was quite old. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, watched on from another boat as his uncle returned to help refugees escape the nasty pyroclastic flow. It is from these men we have the best eyewitness account of the eruption. The Younger wrote Epistles, which is a series of letters between him and the Emperor Domitian regarding his governance of an eastern province. They are absolutely boring, BUT, they give a remarkable insight into the inner workings of Roman goverment in the 1st Century. But, I digress…

I will be re-creating two styles of wine to start. Since this is my first wine, I will be making a moscato from a kit. The muscat grape is very ancient, and was cultivated throughout the region. It’s not one of my particularly favorite flavors (I’m a chardonnay and sauv blanc kinda lady, here. HEY, at least it’s not white zin?) The kit will be ready for me at my friendly local brewstore tonight. (Check out Basement Brewhaus in Providence. Cool, helpful people.)

I plan to follow the kit through the primary fermentation, then split off two smaller batches for secondary in which one will be resined with pine sap (yum?) and the other with roses. Pliny mentions both at Plin. Nat. 14.24-25 and Plin. Nat. 19.19 respectively.

Pliny devotes most of Book 14 to wines and wine making. There is also calidum, the hot spiced wine drunk year round, and diluted with water, usually seawater of some sort. Pliny gives a whole chapter on salted wines. Those Romans and their wacky tastebuds…

Pictures will be coming forthwith once the fermentation process begins.

When you wish you’re Jeannie…

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Garb does not blink into existence, but oh, how I wish it did.

I have a backlog of commissions right now because schoolwork is taking precedence right now in my life. I’m toward the end of my degree, and the classes are railing into me, this includes a capstone major paper on The Varangian Guard.

I haven’t really made myself any new “nice” garb in a while, because I don’t particularly have the time. My Viking dress was finished a year ago, and since I’ve made the switch to Byzantine persona full-time, I figured I needed more stuff. Well…I picked up some gorgeous jewel-toned linen and some trims at Birka for this project, and figured, “Oh I have PLENTY of time before I have to teach my class at Ice Weasel.”

Yeah no. A couple blizzards and the inability to get anywhere slowed me down greatly on the sewing front, because I couldn’t get to the laundromat or Joann’s for much needed supplies. This is annoying, but nothing life-threatening. So, as it stands, the gorgeous linen I have is still unwashed and shall remain that way until I have ample time to make myself this new tunica and dalmatica. Until then, I have older stuff I can bring to Ice Weasel I can use for the sake of the class. I would love to get my beaded dalmatica to a wearable state, so that’s an option, but…it’s Ice Weasel. Snow, ice, weasels. Okay, not actual weasels, but the climate and the fact I’d like to be outside supporting my lord in his first heavy tournament (I brought a newb into the society, teehee.) is more important than wrecking new, or nice expensive, garb. Plus, he’s been on my ASS to finish his Norman riding tunic, so that’s the project this week. I will post pics when it’s done.

Until then, here’s pics of my fabric and trim that will some day become my next tunica and dalmatica. Complete with antique silk saris I pillaged for trim.

Mint green for the tunica, dusty rose for the dalmatica.

 Some old, moth-eaten saris I’ll be cutting trim from. I’ll probably use the pink for the dalmatica, and save the red for a hand-sewn tunica I have planned for the summer.