Tag: medieval

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.

 

Teaching at Great Northeastern War and other fun publication opportunities.

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

The semester is over. YAY!

The summer means I work…work…work…(with that said, if you are reading this and you need garb, please send me an email!) And because I wasn’t able to work all last semester, and I was planning to study abroad this summer but the trip was cancelled…My heart and my wallet were not really prepped for Pennsic. Right now, there is only a slim chance I will make it for war week, but with the dates being so much earlier this year, and the fact that I am working on applying to grad schools and taking the GRE (EEP!) I think it’s more advantageous that I take a year off from the Big One, focus on real life (boooo…) and…GET TO PLAY AT LOCAL EVENTS I HAVEN’T PLAYED AT BEFORE!
 Such as: Great Northeastern War in Maine! YAY! It’s always a week or two before Pennsic, which makes it hellish to do both, so I’ve always skipped GNEW for Pennsic. This year, I don’t have to!

I will be teaching my Roman Dress class at GNEW, and my new Varangian Guard class, which is a history lecture, not anything about fancy garb. I will try to include what I do know about what was worn, but that’s not the focus of the class. I had contemplated doing the Byzantine Garb class as well, but I think 3 classes would be overkill for a weekend event. Even though I’ve taught 3 classes in one day at Pennsic (and lost my voice in the process) I’d much rather be able to do other things at GNEW such as um, fight, than teach all day.

I will be at War of the Roses this weekend in NY, but I am not teaching. I’m planning on relaxing the best I can during a soggy weekend.

I am also planning on writing a Compleat Anachronist this summer, as well as some articles for the East Kingdom A&S e-zine, Ars Scientia Orientalis. I need to get my work out there. So even though Pennsic isn’t an option, that doesn’t mean my life with the society ends. I merely look at it as 2 weeks I get to spend quietly with my boyfriend, who is unfortunately set to deploy in October, and work on documentation and publications. 🙂

Happy summer, and safe Memorial Day weekend!

My name is Angela…

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

… some people call me Anna. I have an unhealthy obsession with Ancient Rome and Byzantium. I spend time I need to be doing Latin homework cutting intricate felt appliques for a tunic for one of my best friends fighting in Crown, and not even for me as consort. I’m perfectly okay with this. My boyfriend, some Norman guy, spent his day pounding out fake coins and brewing beer. Welcome to the SCA, make sure your tray tables are in their upright and locked position, because its going to be a wild ride.

Half of an Order of the Tyger’s Combattant medallion.

IN VINO VERITAS V. “HAAAAAAAAAADRIAN!”

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

That is probably the worst movie/history pun crossover in the entire internets. Anyways, we have wine!

First you gotta sanitize those bottles. We may be making Roman wine, but we don’t need Roman germs.

I use C-Brite sanitizer.

Then you make your boyfriend put the carboy on the counter for you.

It’s so clear, you can see from here to Guinness. BRILLIANT!

Once you siphen into the bottling bucket (best money ever spent, ever deal with bottling out of a carboy? Ung.) separate off the small batches of infused wines. Here is the Retsina with pieces of pine resin in the bottom, and the Rhosatum, with dried roses in a bag infusing in the pickle jar. These should be bottled by the end of the month. Pliny says to leave the roses in there for 3 months, but I’m assuming he meant fresh. I’m using dried, so I’d rather monitor what this is going to do and the flavor I’m going to get before creating a mess.

Retsina (resin) and Rhosatum (rose) wines.

I also separated my portion off for the Conditum Paradoxum, the spiced wine from Apicius. After gathering my ingredients, it all went into the pot for an hour on low heat to steep. The pine resin melted fast, which got me worried, but it was fine.

 

You can see the odd mix of ingredients here: dates, melting resin, bay leaf, saffron, black pepper, honey, and I threw in a cinnamon stick for fun and profit. And my stove is filthy. Welcome to brewing.

Once that was infused with the rest of the wine, it was strained and bottled. Here is the Conditum in the bottles next to the unaltered muscat wine I made.

Conditum on the left, plain wine on the right. You can see how the spices clouded the wine.

So, being the brave soul I am, I tried the Conditum in the period style, using warm saltwater to dilute it, as the straight liquor is extremely sweet.

The dilution cleared the wine, and brought out the infused flavors.

From Familia Annae to yours, EU!

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.