So, one of the best benefits of friends who have produced daughters is the opportunity to make extra-cute items. It's not age-appropriate yet, but I could not resist making a little dolly for Miss M. I tried to document it, but while I can find references to little Norse children "playing house," I have not found a mention or example of a dolly. Oh well, you can't play house without a baby, so here she is: She's linen, stuffed with linen scarp, wool hair, linen embroidered features, linen tunic and dress, wool shawl, leather shoes, all items handsewn. There's a tin annular brooch and metal button "brooches." I made her to be one of the "awake on one side/sleepy on the other" dollies, with the little coif to cover the side not in use. This was actually a little ironic, since zarhooie was also working on a project for me that she just gave me at Border Down's Yuletide. Here's Miss M's dolly and Gelgeis chilling out on the couch. She has a linen under tunic, linen tunic, wool coat, wool braids, "amber" and glass necklaces, a handwoven tabletwoven belt, leather shoes, and a bag with a sewing kit and money purse filled with "gold" coins. Hee. So cute! Hurray for geeky dollies!

So, in commenting in a friend's journal, I shared my favorite use for my dorkPhone and I got to wondering in what interesting uses you, my most creative friends, use your own dorkPhone (or similar smartphone, if you are deprived ;p).

My best use? When something at home breaks that I can't take with me to the hardware store, I photograph it. It's so much easier to tell the Menards guy "I need to fix THIS" than to try to explain or describe the problem or part. Household parts with names/numbers (like printer cartridges, furnace filters, etc) are all recorded in a notes document. :) No extra runs to the hardware store!

So, on the SCA Laurel list, someone accidentally misspoke and referenced a Gokstad ship burial fibers book. She quickly corrected herself, but not before I, and apparently an appreciable number of the other Laurels, mentally set aside a sizable chunk of money for this previously-unheard-of but instantly desirable tome. *sigh* Book lust thwarted.

There really is just too much over Pennsic to do more than summarize the best parts of it.

We arrived very late on Friday night. It was dark and cold and wet. I made the executive decision that I would rather pay for a hotel room than try to set up in that. Hurray for one last night in a real bed!

I took two classes from Ragnveig Snorradottir - Viking Domestic Architecture and Denmark before Jellinge - they were both wonderful and I can highly recommend her as a teacher if you ever get out to Pennsic.

My classes were a smashing success! I had about 35-40 in my Pictish World class. The real winner was the Beautiful Rolled Hems class, though! I literally had eighty or more people show up! When I did the "magic" part of the stitch, the class went wild. The last row actually stood up and applauded... and the class next door came over to find out what the hell was going on. *grin* Since it was such a fast class, though, I snuck in a second class on whipcording for those that wanted to stay. (Spread the disease, spread the disease!) Even better, for the rest of the event,  I had random people scurry up to me to show me their just-completed projects. :) Happiness.

Revelation: People are willing to pay a reasonable amount for extensive handouts, provided they are quality handouts. Resolution: Must revise handouts so the Pictish World can have a freebie basic handout and an optional for-sale nice, fat illustrated packet . Nummy.

I finally got to meet judithsewstoo  in person. We geeked, the apprenti and I took her class, she gave me some tasty silk string and I gave her some feedback on her class.

Tuesday rocked. Waterbearing, classes, hanging out with the apprenti, fun in camp, the Northshield party, and a tipsy stumble home under starry skies. Splendid.

Apparently, I can corrupt people by osmosis - I got one of the Greyfox boys to start handsewing a linen tunic in camp. :) For some crazy reason, he wanted more than 3 shirts and asked for help picking out fabric, which I did... He looked disappointed that he would need to wash and dry it before he could do anything with it, but I then helpfully offered that I could show him how to cut it out of a piece of washed and dried linen that I just happened to have on site... I explained the stitches and the construction steps and offered to help him sew it, but by then he wanted to do it all himself. Hurray!

Further geeky fun - Bardic Bread around the fire and the "Greyfox A&S Pavilion" on our porch. :) It was too cold Wednesday night toget the bread to rise, but I baked over the fire on Thursday and Friday nights. Friday night I even got to try out a new yeast starter that was sent to me by one of the mercenary households. I only used about half, so now I have a little zoo on my countertop at home.

I took a very interesting and useful class about working on parchment and bought some calligraphy toys. I must talk to Gustov about some of what I learned/remembered.

The courts were full of twelve kinds of goodness. Congrats to everyone, especially our Draco Incarnates Leif and Astrid and to the geek-boys Duncan and Svein! :)

We made good time on the road home, got only moderately lost in Chicago, stayed mostly awake on I-90 (hurray for paying missed tolls online), and my traveling companion and I still liked each other when we got home. :)

Cool purchases: forged nails, pumice stones, soapstone for a viking lamp, jet beads, bone dice with ring-and-dot pips, and a giant silver button.

Best thing I learned: a completely stoopidly easy way of making circle/dot marks like are seen on so many early period artifacts. I can't believe it didn't ever occur to me, it was so obvious... Sometimes it's the simple things...

Best acquisition: A very nice mirror from Northstar Armories. I've wanted a period mirror for a long time but the ones I found were either ugly or not up to my standards in some way. This one is delicious in all ways and has a really spectacularly clear reflective side - most ot the metal mirors are a little on the fun-house mirror side. The mirror is modeled on the Trelan Bahow mirror, which is early even for me, but is essentially the same as those seen on the Pictish Symbol Stones. I found it after I spent my war budget, though, so I was foolishly waffling about it... but then Mr. Svein bought it for me as a War Prezzie. The first thing I did that night was sew a linen baggie to protect it. :)



See info on the mirror here and on general bronze age mirrors here.

Yay, War! Its good to be home, but I already miss it...

Woolen wedding dress

cheerfully stolen from Gwyn.

Real post later, but here is the geeky goodness...




( Authentic Encampment photos )

This is just neat - an artist's code the CIA cannot crack. Kryptos.

So... some of you are onraventhourne's LJ, but I'm posting this anyway because it is made of awesome.

A Silver Hoard created for Estrella A&S

And the delicious documentation.

Nom. NOM. NOM.

Happy Darwin Day to all my geek-peeps! :)

It's a special one - his 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of the Species. Few men have so profoundly affected history, both through his scientific discoveries and the decades of scientific, social, and political fallout...

**************

Generally, I'm a good, scientific geek and dig the whole evolution thing... But if viruses could forget how to do that, it would be really keen. Just saying. :/ Evil, useless little pseudo-living bastards...

I thought this might be of general interest - the Edinburgh University Press has all their online journal content available for free download through the end of February. Happiness.

So sweet!

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/2000-year-old-a.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp

http://decodingtheheavens.com/

For Daye, and all y'all other Snape Freaks.

Sexy Snape

Apparently, the post office attempted a delivery on Saturday, but no-one answered the door, so I had to wait in the agony if anticipation until this morning to go pick up the parcel. As I suspected, it was the Janet Arnold books! The box looked like it had been kicked repeatedly and dropped down a long flight of stairs, but the books are fine. They are now patiently awaiting their owners in my trunk. (OK, so one is on my desk here at work. :P) I snuck a peek, and it is soooo tasty! :) I'm trying to not let it distract me until lunch... Or maybe my morning break...

If you ordered one, I'll have them at the Stock Pavilion or at Boar's Head. :)

Well, I had a full, long weekend.

Thursday after work I drove up to Columbus and picked up newperspectives  at the train station. The evening was reasonably quiet - a quick dinner out, some library appreciation and chatting before she headed to bed. I quickly finished up my classnotes for Clothiers' Seminar and headed to bed myself.

Friday, we got up at a reasonably early hour and drove up to the Cities. Happily, lunchtime occurred right around Osseo and so we made a stop at the Norske Nook. (Nom nom nom). First stop in the Cities proper was IKEA... Gas was super cheap this weekend, but I certainly made up for that in IKEA... The next stop at S.R. Harris hardly helped that either. *sigh* Ah well, I have some lovely stuff and have now almost finished my Holiday shopping. (Granted, there is still afair bit of "assembly" to do on many of the gifts. :P) This was newperspective 's first trip, so it was fun to see her in the new fiber playground. Well, and it was fun not to be the big spender for once. ;) After a long, hard, day of shopping, we retired to the hotel for a beer and a soak in the hot tub, where we were joined by ingusmoen , zarhooie , and mightyjesse .

Saturday was the Clothier's Seminar. The day went pretty quickly - I was teaching during the first period, attended a pattern drafting class in the second period and then quickly ate lunch before being mobbed for linen. I did my major deliveries from the latest order and sold some of the overages to other interested gentles out of my trunk in the parking lot. Hurray for dealing in the parking lot! (And also, thanks to goldfrog  for taking my deliveries out West!) The afternoon was more mixed - he walk through history was fun as usual and I really enjoyed spending time fondlingkatrionans 's NESAT books. The event was over entirely too soon, however. I can always take more classes about string! ;) newperspectives , mightyjesse , teffan , some other lady, and I all went out for dinner at Khan's before returning to the hotel for another hot tub session. 

Sunday was an early morning trip to take newperspectives  to her early morning train, then a little nap before checking out of the hotel. After breakfast, mightyjesse  and I met up with Their Highnesses and did some reign-related shopping at SR Harris. Well, mostly reign related.mightyjesse  and I bought a ton of cheap-o wool in the hopes of dyeing it to a more acceptable color. Their Highnesses, on the other hand, got some truly lovely fabric in Kingdom colors - very, very tasty. The drive home was pretty quick and uneventful.

Fun, educational, and new toys to play with - what more could one ask for in a girls' weekend?

Bright and early on Friday morning, cass_lee  showed up at my house to head to Minot for Crown Tourney. I was even mostly ready, save feeding the birdies and collecting my electronics that had been charging overnight. Sadly, I did NOT have the car packed to the gills with linen - the order never came! I contacted the warehouse today and should have an answer soon. Once hopes they do not simply misplace 500 yards of linen! I managed to be good company for a few hours before getting a little nap. I am not a morning person and early morning car ride = sleepy Eithni. The trip out was essentially unremarkable except for our stop at the Perkins of Fail. We stopped for dinner at Perkins in Jamestown, ND and discovered that their WiFi was defective, their ladies' room had plumbing issues, the waiter had SERIOUS B.O., and the roast beef was an iridescent green. Luckily, cass_lee  noticed before either of us had eaten much. (I'd had one piece, she'd had none.) The manager replaced the roast beef dinners with whatever we wanted - she ordered a pasta bowl, but they were temporarily out of the pot pies that were my second choice, so I ended up with a plate of fried mozzarella sticks for dinner. I figured something deep fried ought to be pretty safe and I'd been craving melty cheesy goodness anyway. We got into Minot around 9:30, got checked into the hotel, and then cass_lee  got ready for bed while I went to investigate whether there was any trouble to be gotten into. Sadly, we were at the Super 8 and most of the other folks were at the Holiday Inn, so there was no trouble to be had. My bedside lamp was bright enough cass_lee  could not sleep with it on, so I couldn't read in bed either, until I remembered that I had downloaded The Complete Works of William Shakespeare onto my dorkPhone. dorkPhone FTW! Somewhere around midnight I turned it off and went to sleep since we had to be up tragically early on Saturday.

Saturday indeed came early, but we had Perkins' muffins for breakfast and then headed out. Sadly, the MapQuest directions cass_lee  had downloaded bore no resemblance to reality and we ended up staring at some residential homes when it told us we were at our destination. dorkPhone again to the rescue! It got us to the site, but we did not immediately recognize it since, for some odd reason, the directions brought us to the back of the building. However, upon checking the name of the site, we quickly were able to recover and get inside. Then there was a flurry of prep work to complete, a run off-site for some essentials, and a quick polish of the crowns, which were in an appalling state. So, when morning court started, I was still in my mundanes, covered in metal polish and tarnish goo. Nummy. Oh well, His Majesty had been a big fat meanie and said I couldn't carry the axe anyway. ;P I quickly got cleaned up, dressed, and was on hand by the time any run-and-fetch-it services were needed, so we were just fine. I don't think I missed more than the Fealties, anyway. After the presentations, I spent a little time schmoozing with folks, delivering the items I had to give/return to folks, and apologizing to the folks who were expecting linen. Luckily, only one person from the West had ordered linen, so I'll send her share via SCA mail at some point (probably Rythym and Bruise) and the rest of the folks will be at or have representatives at Clothiers.

Then I checked in with cass_lee  and when she did not require any immediate assistance, set up my Evil Web. I was gratified to catch my first victi... er... student quite quickly and then spent the rest of the day teaching a series of people how to do whipcording. There were even a few people who asked about it after I had cut down my web and I simply sent home with a kit, but now there is an online tutorial for folks to use, even if they have not gotten an in-person lesson! Squee! Geekage! The rest of the day, except for an unfortunate interlude, was happily spent schmoozing, geeking, and trying to help out.

But, back to the purpose of the day! My attention was not on all of the bouts, especially the early ones or the ones when I had a shiny new student, but I did try to pay attention if Roisin or Stephen were fighting. As we got toward the end, I yielded to more geeky impulses and posted updates on the Northshield and Jara Halls from the dorkPhone. Therefore, I was able to announce the results of the finals before the crowns were on TRH's heads. :) Vivant to TRH Stephen and Ailleanne! It will be a busy year in Jara!

One of my most important tasks of the event was to make a presentation in Court. My lovely and wonderful foster-apprentice mightyjesse  had worked on a few projects for goldfrog  but could not be at the event and could not wait to have them presented. TRM's allowed me into court, giant grin and all, and I explained that as a Laurel, I felt I should teach my apprenti to support the Kingdom with their Arts - whereupon I happily presented goldfrog  with a bar of homemade soap that mightyjesse  made, including a wool baggie to be used as an abrasive scrubby. (The joke here being that goldfrog gets her own weight in soap over the course of a reign and really doesn't need another bar.) goldfrog  was gracious, but suspicious, since she knows that I am full aware of the volume of soap she recieves, so I continued to explain that, while a Queen is rarely stinky, she very often needs to be clothed, and presented the Viking gown I had concealed behind my back under my brat. *grin* The splendidness of mightyjesse 's work was displayed and I explained to the crowd that the dress was handsewn and hand embellished with linen, that that fabric itself was handwoven and the weft handspun. The crowd and HrRM were suitably impressed. :)




There are more photos of the presentation on the Northshield Gallery or at mightyjesse 's entry.

After all the meetings and court, the idea was that I would find some folks to go out to dinner with while feast went on, since I did not get feast. As it was, the couch in the Royalty Room was calling my name and I had a little nappy-nap instead. After feast, we packed up TRM's stuff, Roisin threw some of her stuff into my car, and I took cass_lee  back to the hotel. She was beat, but I, feeling better after my nap, went out to the Holiday Inn to postrevel. I had misunderstood the location of the hotel - I thought I had seen the State Fair Grounds on the way into town, but I had actually seen the State Fair OFFICES, with no Holiday Inn in sight. So I stopped by the site again to get better directions, which were indeed obtained, but then had the everliving crap scared out of me as I tried to leave. You know how when you reach for a door and it suddenly swings open just as your hand should hit it and you are surprised when there is someone there? Now imagine being a little on the tired side and it being a back-lit ingusmoen  on the other side of the door. Yipes! ;) It was funny as soon as my heart stopped going 4,000 beats per minute!

The Postrevel was good. Very good, actually. :) I had brought a bottle of good Scotch, I got to spend casual time with TRM, I got to hang out with a lot of my favorite people (including some I see quite rarely), I got to engage in some truly geeky conversations about the Picts and assorted other research topics, and otherwise had a jolly good time. There was a little bit of mystifying drama at the end of the night too, but overall, the postrevel was, I think, a splendid win. We'll see what comes of the various conversations and contacts, but - if nothing else - I think there will be good fun and geeking as a dividend.

Sunday came altogether too soon, even though I was in bed and sleep at a reasonably respectable hour, cass_lee  wanted to leave early and we did, but we fought snow and wind and other yuck for much of North Dakota. Minnesota was better and by the time we crossed the Wisconsin state border, the weather was downright lovely. The colors of the fall foliage and the nice warm breezes were a welcome change from the sleet and dark we left in Minot. :P

Monday, by some happy accident, I had off from work. I usually do not work Fridays, but my coworker needed this Friday off, so I offered to trade. I got a recovery day, she got her needed day off, we both got a four day weekend - wins all around! I spent the day sleeping in, reading in bed, taking an appallingly long shower, reading in bed, sewing my mom's Christmas present (which took entirely longer than it ought to have, ugh!), catching up on email, watching the Daily Show/Colbert Report, posting here, and soon I'll be to bed for one last round of reading in bed before going to sleep at a decent hour.

A very long, but lovely four days! 

First of all, thanks to all of you who came out to the Griffin's Needle Challenge. It was an amazing time and, while I am still not fully unpacked nor caught up on sleep, I am already looking forward to next year.

I got to site Friday afternoon to do the initial walk-through and plan the precise layout of the hall. I had a general idea of how I wanted things to look, but I could not remember exactly how the electrical outlets were distributed and I wanted to be reasonably equitable in providing juice for the teams. This turned out to be something of an irrelevant point, since 2/3 of the teams did not use sewing machines at all. However, I settled on a giant U across the back of the hall so that each team had access to at least one set of outlets, lots of space, and still could see all of the other teams as they worked. The other end of the hall was divided into thirds: food area, movie area/Eithni's command center, and ironing center. (I had one attendee who didn't like the policy of a separate ironing center so far from where her team was based, but I think that is an important safety consideration and, if the event grows, a good way to avoid circuit overloads and other disasters.) There was a separate air conditioned room for sleeping and a lobby for use as a Troll/commons area. I started unloading my car and setting up the little, light stuff so by 5PM when several set-up helpers showed us, we were able to quickly set up the remaining tables and larger items well before the 6PM opening time for gate. (Thanks to damej, berzerker_prime, shavasue, and others!) It turned out that 6PM was probably a bit early to have gate open as most teams were still on the road and even the local teams were still gathering their stuff to get to site.

I really would have loved to use a site in/closer to Madison, but the demands of the event made that difficult. (Let me know if anyone finds a site with a large cement or hard floor, lots of outlets and sturdy circuits, that allows us to bring in food and is available on weekends for cheap. :P) The two biggest problems with the site were the heat (since there was no AC in most of the site) and the stoopid people who were there for the charity walk. I had been warned by the site people that they had rescheduled the walk to our weekend because it had been flooded out earlier this spring, but they had billed it as a relay walk that would have a steady by modest stream of people just pass by the front door on their route... Not hundreds of people who kept wanting to come into or walk through the building, regardless of the signs telling them not to do so, the dozens of cars parked in the lot we were supposed to have exclusive use of, and the loud, bad band playing into the evening. Frustrating. We eventually just locked the front doors unless there was someone at the gate to monitor the situation since the walkers were apparently illiterate and rude. :P There still were a few that seemed mystified that the doors wouldn't open, no matter how hard they tugged. *headdesk* However, they were locked outside and therefore not our problem.

At 9:45 we had five teams on site, the rules were read and the competition began. A few hours in, the Calontiri team came in, bringing the final total of teams to six. We had, at one point, ten teams signed up but we had lost several to home purchases and assorted other Life., plus one no-show team. I was slightly disappointed in the lower attendance, but as it was pointed out, it is a first time event, so hopefully we will grow next year. This year's teams were: We Have a Notion (men's 15th century English), Mother-Daughter Mayhem (women's 16th c. Italian), Persian Griffins (male AND female 16th c. Persian), Apprenti and Friends (women's 16th c. Russian), The Gilded Lilies of Calontir (boy's 14th c. English), and Equestrians and Company (women's 14th c. French).  (Team names and entries from memory... I'll look it over again to check for accuracy when I've had more sleep.) Some people stayed up the entire night, others took advantage of the sleeping room or simply the floor by their team and passed out for a few hours. I was particularly pleased that of the six teams in attendance, only two used machines for their garb, but the Persian Griffins were making garb for two people with only five team members (Master Gevehard was on their team, so he counted as two team member equivalents and they were not allowed a sixth body) and the Mother-Daughter Mayhem team was just that - only two people and it was the mother's very first event! The other geek-pleasing detail of the event was that the teams all chose wonderful fibers for their projects - I only saw one cotton I wished had been a linen (primarily because the rest of the outfit made such good use of linens, silks and brocades) and a "linen" that I have my doubts about. It seemed that all the teams were having fun, there seemed to be only minimal team friction and I was not aware of any meltdowns. I was something of a failure at taking pictures, but that was in part because I knew shavasue was there and recording it for posterity. I did snap a few with my phone, though, so here is a quick shot of the last few minutes of sewing insanity - note the nifty, nearly-finished outfits and the gigantic mess explosions. :)



I had warned the teams that I was instructing the judges to score pretty conservatively - I dislike competitions where everybody gets all eights, nines, and tens and there are tears if they get anything lower. We set the scale so that a five out of ten was a "B" - something to be happy with and about what we expected to see out of a team competing in that division. A seven was meant to be a "A" and reserved for really excellent work, whereas a 10 was to be reserved only for extremely rocktastic, knock-your-socks-off work. There were six categories in which the teams were scored on a one to ten scale: Documentation, Materials and Methods, Workmanship, Fit, Completeness of Outfit (i.e. how careful were they to plan a full outfit and accessories), and degree of Completion (i.e. how finished were they at Needles Down). The seventh category was Judges discretion - essentially up to ten points the judge could award for whatever reason they thought appropriate. I was happy with the judging - we seemed to hold to that scale well, with most teams scoring a total in the mid thirties to low forties, depending on the division. I don't think we awarded any 10s at all, and even 8s were relatively rare but I was OK with that. I was usually the "mean" judge, scoring about 4 points below the average but there were "nice" judges who scored 4-5 points above the average and we were all pretty internally consistent, so the averages worked out. I did, however, abstain from judging the Apprenti and Friends team. With mightyjesse, jinglymushroom, devikat, ilaifire, lostvirtue, and my mom all on one team, even if I were to remain objective, it would not look good. :P

In the end, each team walked away with an excellent, usually essentially completed, outfit. I was very, very impressed with a lot of the preliminary work done, but a lot of the teams had difficulty expressing their research to the judges, so I think I'll work up some documentation guidelines or examples for next year. I've also decided to eliminate the requirement to have patterns drafted on-site even in the higher divisions - speed drafting is intimidating and I would rather teams come away with a good experience and a beautiful garment that fits well than a needlessly stressful experience and/or a garment that *almost* fits. We Have a Notion were brave and worked on a handsewing project even though most of the team was newer folks and 1/4 of the team did not show up until morning, Mother-Daughter Mayhem had some wonderful research portraits and remained committed to turning out quality garments even when they realized they would need to sacrifice completing the whole project, the Persian Griffins included great details like makeup and armor, the Apprenti and Friends attempted some really ambitious beadwork but was realistic about abandoning it when they needed to move on, The Gilded Lilies of Calontir attempted an interesting hooded jacket that was something very fun and different, and Equestrians and Company completely rocked with the accessories. Choosing winners was hard, but We have a Notion won the Novice division, The Persian Griffins won in the Intermediate division, and Apprenti and Friends won the Pyxis division. Vivant to those teams and all the competitors!

Clean-up went quickly except that, despite serving leftovers from breakfast and lunch for dinner, there was still piles of yummy food to be distributed or disposed of. relativelylucidalways cooks the tastiest things and had worked hard at feeing us yummy, period, low-stain risk items but the attendance was low and apparently seamstresses just don't eat as much as fighter-boys. ;) Thanks again to all of my staff, from set-up to clean-up everything went beautifully! And thanks to all the attendees, both competitors and spectators! I had a blast and I hope you did too!


**********************************************************************************

Notes for next year:
Cooler time of year or site with AC
Schedule further away from Pennsic
Better guidelines of what we want to see for documentation
Consider eliminating the Advanced division
Allowing pre-drafted patterns
Think about alternate time schedules
Masking tape/glow tape for sleeping room
Bring library - Moda, Tudor Tailor, Stepping through time, etc
Bring a comfy chair for ME
Publish suggestions for documentation
Have teams introduce themselves and their projects at the outset
Introduce judges

Please comment with further suggestions, especially if you attended!

Yay! Continuing the foodie theme of the week, I went to Border Skirmish and cooked and taught for most of the day.

I made some of my Pictish Bread as an active part of the A&S display and for my lunch. (OK, lunch for whoever I could convince to eat it. ;P) I had just gotten proficient at the baking over a fire or on hearthstones so today I trialled a new method, cooking on a propane stove with either one of Danr's pans or a cast iron skillet, since I wanted to bake in the NS pavilion but did not want to dig a fire pit in the middle of it. Cooking over the gas fire was a little challenging to start, especially because I wanted a very low flame and the wind kept blowing out my fire, but eventually I got better at it. Still need practice, mind you, but the bread was edible if occasionally "pre-toasted."



However, woman cannot live on bread alone, so I wanted something tasty to put on the bread... I made a "green cheese" - i.e. one made and eaten promptly, not aged. I went to a class on it at War and it really is very easy. You simmer milk, add vinegar/lemonjuice/acid and/or natural enzymes to curdle it, then strain it through some fabric and let it hang to drain. (The cheese is hanging just to the left of the tree trunk, like a particularly tasty linen-wrapped fruit.)



Once drained, you add salt and herbs, spices, or other mix-ins. I had brought some dill to add, but since Her Excellency CAM was there and teaching an herbal class, I asked her is there was anything on site that would be tasty in cheese. She brought me clover, so we had clover cheese, dill cheese and plain cheese (seen below). Sweet Clover, for those of you interested, has a sharp lemony- flavor that is really quite good and livened the cheese nicely.



The texture was interesting - crumbly but light. Since I had only about a quarter cup of cheese and no bread leftover, I'll consider the cooking a win. Round out the day with perfect weather, good folks to visit, two classes taught, pleasant travel companions, children to torture, and a houseguest and you have the makings of a very fine Saturday indeed.

Well, I'm finally back from Pennsic and even starting to unpack. The laundry and the miscellaneous cleanup will take a few more days yet.

The War from my point of view:




Anyway, whining aside, War was pleasant and largely peaceful. I am now coming out of it inspired as I usually do, but rather determined.

Poor froggie is part of a physics experiment and being levitated by magnets!







And levitating water:



And the explanation for the nerds and the just interested