starting with the easy ones

Since my C&I depth challenge has been going so well, I've decided to officially do the persona challenge, using the 20+ page worksheet in the main A&S50 yahoogroups files section. I've always had a relatively concrete idea of what my persona is, so when I looked the worksheet over briefly a few months ago, I was a bit startled how many questions I couldn't answer. Some of them are fairly complicated ones, like what coinage was used during my lifetime, but some of them were fairly straightforward -- I realized I'd never chosen my mother's name, or decided whether or not I had siblings.

So I'm going to start with the easy questions, and work from there.

What is your name? Aryanhwy merch Catmael
What does it mean? "Aryanhwy daughter of Catmael"
What year is it? 1040
When were you born? 1013
Are you considered a child, an adult, or elderly? I'm an adult.
What station or class are you of? Upper gentry.
Is this the same as the station or class you were born to? Yes.
Is it likely to change in the future? I don't think so. It might once I become significantly older and infirm.
Are you wealthy, poor? Adequately wealthy, but not terribly well-off.
Is this likely to change? No, (but see previous).
Who is your father? What is his name? Catmael, a minor Welsh lord.
Where was he born? Caermyrdin (modern Carmarthen).
Is he still living? If not, when did he die? If he died, how did that affect you? He is dead. He died shortly after I was married off.
What was/is his social position? Occupation? He was a minor lord.
Did your father help raise you? Not really.
What did you learn from him as a child? That I was expected to do my duty and marry well.
Is your mother still living? If not, when did she die? If she died, how did that affect you? She died when I was very young; I was primarily raised by nurses.
Did she raise you? Until she died, yes.
What did you learn from her as a child? I was too young to remember much other than the impression that well-bred young ladies did embroidery.
Are your parents married? They were when I was born.
Is their marriage happy? I was too young to know.
What did you learn from their marriage? Nothing.
Did you know your grandparents, and what were they like? I did not know any of my grandparents.
Are you still in contact with any of your family? Only my children.
Are/were you married? To whom? I was married to Briafael.
Are/were you happy in your marriage? I wasn't in love, but I was satisfied with the match that I was in.
What is his occupation? He was a minor lord (a younger son).
How does this affect you? It allowed me to maintain a reasonable social standing after his death.
Is this your first spouse? Yes.
Do you have children? Are they related to your current spouse? I have three children, a son Bran, and a twin son and daughter, Ysfael and Yslani. They were all children of Briafael.
Do they still reside with you? Yes.
How many generations of your family are you really aware of? I have a few stories of my father's parents.
Do you have a lover who is not your spouse? Have you ever had one? No.

That seems like a good start...

First item of the persona challenge

I have a persona challenge to learn things that 16th century housewives in Germany/Augsburg would have known.

Right now I'm making an apple drink from a recipe from The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened. It is 17th century but I'm hoping the food habits didn't change too much from the 16th century nor between English food and German food. It feels like such a basic recipe I'm hoping it will be ok.

The recipe is: APPLE DRINK WITH SUGAR, HONEY, &c
A very pleasant drink is made of Apples, thus; Boil sliced Apples in water, to make the water strong of Apples, as when you make to drink it for coolness and pleasure. Sweeten it with Sugar to your tast, such a quantity of sliced Apples, as would make so much water strong enough of Apples; and then bottle it up close for three or four months. There will come a thick mother at the top, which being taken off, all the rest will be very clear, and quick and pleasant to the taste, beyond any Cider. It will be the better to most taste, if you put a very little Rosemary into the liquor, when you boil it, and a little Limon-peel into each bottle, when you bottle it up.

So what I'm doing is coring apples, slicing them thinly, boiling them with water and two twigs of rosemary. Once it's cooled down a bit I'm going to remove the worst of the apple peels and add some water. I'll taste it with some honey and see how much honey I should add. Then I'll pour in the yeast. I'm using a Wyeast Cider 4766 that my husband have bought for me. Once it seems to have fermented enough I'll add some lemon peel and let it steep before I bottle it.

I'll return in a few months and let you know how it tasted.
I tested this recipe on some apple juice without fermenting it and that was very tasty so I'm hoping it will be the same when fermented.

I'm counting this as part of my persona challenge for the A&S50 challenge since I figure something like this would probably have been made by 16th century housewives in germany. :)

My A&S 50 challenge

Hi all!
My name is Malin, or Felicitas in the SCA. I live in the shire of Gotvik in Nordmark.

I have chosen two depth challenges and one persona challenge:
-To recreate 50 autentic natural dyeing recipes. So far I've done 3.
-To help 50 people with 16th century garb. So far I've helped 11 with a couple more talking about it.
-To learn 50 things that my persona would know. I've mostly just thought about this so far but I'm thinking I'll learn to cook a couple of period dishes, learn some appropriate games, learn to write like she would have, read a couple of books that she would have read and so on.

I've written up my first two dye recreations in my blog, so far I haven't had time to sit still and write up the third. It can be read in my blog: http://bippimalin.livejournal.com/tag/a%26s50


Regards,
Malin