First of all, to everyone who came to Gulf Wars North, especially those who helped out with food prep or clean up - Thank You! Special kudos to
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ego_id_non_feci for all her work!
Friday night
fencingkitty and
kumakun were still packing when
ego_id_non_feci and
iarroganti arrived. Noting his tragic lack of linen clothing,
kumakun and I began working on a new pair of pants lateish in the evening. He was doing all of the pinning and sewing, I was just providing technical support, so I whipped out a shirt for him in between giving directions. We were up entirely too late getting it done, but the shirt was finished and the pants were at the hand sewing and buttons phase by the time
fencingkitty and
kumakun went to bed. I stayed up a bit later yet, prepping fabric for Sunday's dye-fest and baking bread to send as provisions to Gulf Wars South.
Saturday morning began entirely too early, but as soon as I was up we were off and running! Sol was our first arrival and right away pitched in to help with cooking, but she was very quickly followed by many others and the house was very soon filled with people and crafting on all floors. I am happy to say that the Home for Wayward Girls was able to provide all the materials and facilities the various crafters and cooks requested, save a flour sifter, but a suitable substitute was procured even for that. The crafts of the day included sewing, embroidery, knitting, research, martial arts of various sorts, fletching, armoring, cooking, and more.
iarroganti and
lrdfaelan brought me a fun mid-cooking surprise - they went out for some party supplies and came back with a great stuffed froggie! :)
The food supply could only have been called abundant all throughout the day. There were snacks and goodies available all day and at dinner time the kitchen was nearly completely covered in food! I sampled a little bit of everything and was just sorry I didn't have the capacity for more! I particularly liked the BBQ turkey
damej brought and the lamb nuggets we made, even though they were nearly the death of
relativelylucid and
ego_id_non_feci who were unfortunate enough to inhale my pepper powder.
arebekah, although she knows me to have a high tolerance for hot foods, failed to read the ingredients on the spice jar I identified as being my "hot pepper powder" and so applied it liberally to the meat, unintentionally unleashing a chemical weapon against the other fine ladies. Other than that incident and some minor messes, dinner went well. Afterwards, we indulged in fruity drinks, including margaritas, pear martinis, cosmos, and more. I failed to remember to bring out the Goldschlager, but we did enjoy some tasty Jello shots (thanks
teffan!) and passed around shots of a Tobermory 10 year Scotch that Robert the Stout brought to share. I didn't take photos during the party because I was so busy with infrastructure procurement/cooking/research assistance/socialization, but I could not resist this one of my dear little apprentice working on his linen shirt.
Tasty linen!
Late in the night, after some of us had partially recovered from dinner, we capped off the over indulgence with a sundae bar. I think the party finally shut down around 4AM, but I stayed awake another hour, again prepping for the dyeing day on Sunday.
Today a smaller group of ladies assembled at the Home for Wayward Girls to work on dyeing while others went to the Stock Pavilion for practice. We got a slightly late start, in part due to the evils of Daylight Savings Time, but
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ego_id_non_feci,
dread_ex,
arebekah, Alissende, and I were productive enough over the course of the day to make up for it. Because the various dye shop orders were delayed, we decided to forgo working with the limited amounts of madder and cochineal that we had on hand and instead worked with onion skins and birch bark dyes. I DID receive my 50 pound bag of alum, however, so if we decided we wanted to pickle kids instead of just boiling them, that is an option. ;)
Dyeing uses a lot of alum as a mordant, but I generally would not have purchased quite this quantity, except that I found it at a food supply warehouse so inexpensively that, even after paying for shipping, it still was a quarter of the price as I would have paid for the stuff from a dye supply store.
Sadly, the birch bark dye was largely a failure, yielding only a tannish color, but perhaps the dyestuffs were of poor quality since I had skinned a downed and partially decomposed log for the bark. I'll have to try again with fresher ingredients sometime, but it can be difficult, since it is the inner skin that produces the dye, so the dyestuffs cannot be harvested from living trees. If anyone is cutting down a birch tree, let me know...
The onion skin dyeing went much better, producing a range of yellows and greens. We discovered through this process that the three-kindergartner pot is probably iron, not whatever metal the merchant told us, since the test samples from the red onions skins turned green, not red. Post-washing, the dyed fabrics turned green-gold, so any true greens will need additional iron assist, but a mordant may not be strictly necessary with this pot. Photos of the results will be forthcoming, as soon as the washing is done. The first finished samples washed up beautifully though - that particular batch of heavy, loose weave linen was just scrumptious. Tragically, I only have 10 yards or so left at this point...
Here are some preliminary pictures of the dyeing process:
Smile and say "Mordant!"
Mmmm... A beer, linen, and goose-shit green dye, what more do you need?
At Gulf Wars North, we even had a green lawn!
Special thanks to Alissende and
goldfrog for the loan of their turkey fryers - I really need to get me one of those. More fire is always fun and these worked perfectly well, even with the ginormous pot.
So, now that everyone has gone, I did some cleaning, passed out for awhile, will do some more cleaning (but much of it will wait until tomorrow), and then be off to sleep for a week, I think. (My body feels like I really went to a War, at least!) I had a great time this weekend - thank you to all of you who came and made it so enjoyable!
creative
sore
productive
satisfied
excited
giddy
tired