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...

I'm going to have to pick another challenge!

When I first signed up for the A&S50 challenge, I was just getting started in calligraphy and illumination. I did the math and if I was to accomplish 50 scrolls by the deadline, I would have to do 8 per year for the next couple of years. That seemed awfully daunting, and I was sure it would be more than enough challenge for me!



That was before I found out just how much fun this was, and started pestering Lady Trinite for backlog assignments, and volunteering for more new assignments, and suddenly it's not even been a year and I've already got way more than 8. This weekend I had two given out in court and also handed over two backlogs. Rather than posting the whole images of them, I'll just post snippets; you can click on the image to get the full picture + discussion/documentation.



And since this makes #8, #9, #10, and #11, I think I'm going to have to find another challenge to do in addition to this one, 'cause I'm going to hit 50 way before the deadline.




-Aryanhwy

#6 and #7

Scroll number 6 in my C&I depth challenge was a Panache scroll for Thomas Flamanc de Kelsale, presented at Kingdom University two weekends ago. When I got the assignment from the signet I was extremely pleased, because it's always so much more fun to do a scroll for someone I know. You can read the full discussion of the text and design here.


Scroll number 7 is a backlog AoA. I wasn't able to find out much information about the recipient, so to come up with design inspiration I created a text and the searched http://www.hmml.org/Vivarium/hmml_collections.htm for all the illuminated "L"s they had, until I found one that I both liked and seemed like something I could manage. I'm quite happy with how this one turned out -- not only am I feeling a lot more comfortable with my whitework, this was my first time seriously trying to mix paints to get different colors. (OK, so this was just blue + white and carmine + white, but the result is much closer to the tones of the original than straight blue and carmine would've been.) You can read the full discussion here.

-Aryanhwy

Another project down

I wove another rigid heddle band for Viceroy Tourney. This piece was given by HE Ursula to Lady Edith, as the Vicereine's Prize. This band was a simple warp faced linen band and I hope Lady Edith finds a great use for it. I'm now up to 14 projects complete.

I will post pictures of this soon.

Cheers,
Jahanara

and it had been going so well

I'd finished all the calligraphy (and there was A LOT), I'd done all the sketching, painted the tree, painted half the arms...and the realized I'd gotten the blazon wrong. *sigh* I'm always extremely worried about fixing errors because I'm afraid that any fix I do is going to need to be fixed itself, so I settled this time for crossing out the wrong word, putting the right one in the margin, and putting a little pointing hand indicating where it's supposed to go. I would've been really happy with this scroll (#5 towards my goal of 50: I'm 1/10 of the way there!) otherwise.

Making good progress

The easiest way for me to keep track of how many scrolls I've done is to be sure to post them all here. :)

This, a Lindquistringes for Maredudd ap Gwilym, is #4 out of my goal of 50, and was completed for Raglan Fair in September.

I'm currently working on #5 and #6 (I hope to finish up at least one of them over the weekend), but both are for Kingdom University, so no pictures for awhile yet! I'm beginning to wonder if I wasn't ambitious enough in my choice of challenge!

-Aryanhwy

some inspiration...

For people who are thinking about to join the A&S 50 challenge - here is a beautiful project and also a great inspiration for people who love tapestries:

> Bomticc Tapestry <

Please check out "Year 1, first panel of the tapestry", "Year 2", "Year 3" - a lovely project :)

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. :)

update for my A&S50 - "Wardrobe" project :)

1.1) blue 12th century dress
I wanted to wear this dress at Fiona's Coronation ceremony (Midsummer Coronation 2008 - completely handsewn :)
1.2) veil for the blue 12th century dress
light yellow - handsewn
1.3) underdress for the blue 12th century dress
natural color - sewn with the sewing machine
1.4) a male loan Tunic
sewn with the sewing machine
~ my complete A&S50 project list ~

3 down, 47 to go

I finished my third scroll for my calligraphy & illumination depth challenge today. All the design elements come from the Visconti Hours, early 15th C Italian. You can read the full details here -- though they're a bit sparse at the moment as I forgot to mark down the folios of some of my exemplars, and so have to go back through the book and find them again.

My next scroll is going to be Welsh in style, and I spent a good part of today browsing digitized manuscripts at the Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wale. Here is a direct link to the manuscripts. I think I'm going to be using the script from the Black Book of Carmarthen and adapting some of the capitals from the De Gray Hours.

-Aryanhwy

Another challenger

Hello, I'm Ellina from Isengau. I got talked into participating in the challenge by AElfwynn, she was just too convincing ;-)
As I want to try out many things the breadth challenge is ideal for me. Currently I have some skills in sewing and a little embroidery skills. I want to expand my embroidery skills and want to learn various outher handicrafts. I also want to learn calligraphy and illumination, make some better garb for me and some garb for my husband. And some other tasks... I'm good at making plans of "stuff I want to do" but I'm not that good at really starting and doing the stuff.

Introduction

Hi I'm Lord Robin Bowman hailing from the shire of Glen Rathlin in the Crown Principality of Insulae Draconis within the Kingdom of Drachenwald.

I'm currently Rockall Herald for Insulae Draconis and trying to improve my Scribal Arts (6 years so far). I'm more a calligrapher than illuminator, yes I'm that weird. I plan to do fifty scrolls for my Depth Challenge so far I've done 11 I think so at least I'm making progress.

I hope that the Challenge will gain some momentum in DW so we can show just how good our artisans are.

Robin

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

New Challenger

Greetings--

As Aryanhwy merch Catmael has already said, she has tasked me, as her student, with completing this challenge. I will be doing the Breadth Challenge. I have seven sets of seven projects, and one more to make 50:

• Write 7 heraldry articles
• Teach 7 classes
• Read 7 things my new persona might have read (1230-1250 Bavarian)--Aryanhwy will supply the list of readings
  
• Analyse 7 period maps
• Make 7 hand-sewn pieces of garb
• Complete 7 illumination projects
• Try to make 7 pigments from period sources
• Develop or find and learn a secretary hand that I can actually write

I expect that lone calligraphy task to be the hardest: I have extreme difficulty with book hands (I can't do them at all), and I don't expect a secretary hand to be that much easier.

--AElfwynn

Greetings!

Over the course of yesterday evening my student, Ælfwynn Leoflæde dohtor, and I managed to talk each other into participating in this challenge. I'm going for depth: My goal is to complete 50 award scrolls (for new awards and for backlog awards) all based on period exemplars and with full documentation of my choices and materials. (Right now many of my materials are not period, I know, but I hope that as I progress in meeting this challenge I will slowly work towards more and more medieval paints/inks/pens, etc.)

I'm going to count towards the challenge two scrolls that I did earlier this year, one in March, an AoA in 15th C Dutch style, and the other in June, a Laurel scroll based on a 15th C manuscript about the Toison d'Or (the pictures haven't yet been added to this page). I'm currently working on another AoA scroll based on images in the Visconti Hours.

-Aryanhwy