The Seigne of Urynes- what your urine said about your health in the 16th century, part.1

This is a transcription of the first half of a printed text from 1522. There is a second half that I'll work on later. 

I used this as part of my research into what medieval physicians had as part of their knowledge base for diagnosis and prognosis (understanding what disease and the course it would take).

Cannabis sativa from antiquity to the Middle Ages

I wrote this as a bit of a giggle for my local SCA newsletter. I am not advocating for the use of Cannabis sativa for psychotropic purposes, but I do believe that we should be using the fibre in place of wood. It also makes pretty good shirts.

More mead thoughts

As is usually the case I'm not the first person to have thought about the medieval way of making mead. I came across a great post in a forum recently that really clears up all my questions. This is the kind of mead that I'm going to be making at the end of the week-

Some thoughts on mead and pre-industrial bee keeping

So, in a lot of mead recipes there's the direction to boil the honey with water and skim off the scum, which sterilizes it a bit and removes impurities. With modern beekeeping methods there's very little in the way of impurities, so this always seemed like a slightly redundant step to me. Until two days ago when I had to clean up a mess I let build up in a hive, and I ended up with almost 2kg of honey, and the associated wax... and a bunch of dead bees in it. Pro tip- bees are busy little creatures, and if you leave a bit of extra space on top for any reason they will build right up into it lickety-split.

My Love/Hate Affair with Weaving

This picture (above) is my latest project. I'm trading handwoven fabric for seamstress-ing. I am not very good at sewing, and my daughter will only come to medieval events with me if a) there is archery, and b) she can wear an Italian Ren dress. Archery is easy. We have the supplies and lots of events have the opportunity. However. I cannot sew. Working flat and trying to imagine 3D is pretty much impossible for my brain. If I had a dress dummy I could drape it, but alas. So, enough 18" wide twill to make a Norse apron dress here we go!

I love the repetitive action of weaving. It's very meditative. I find it difficult to weave in the summer, but in the winter I love it. I'm also a total dork, and I like to put on the Lord of the Rings movies (not the Hobbit- those movies were designed to sell video games and toys, especially the first one), and sit there and pretend I'm an elf. I have to say that the new tv series which has been announced is like Schrodinger's Catastrophe... Anyways.

Linden trees are extra-ordinarily useful

This tree is also commonly called basswood and lime wood (possible corruption of the Old English and Proto-Indo-European word lind (flexible). It is not related to citrus trees). The N. American version (Tilia americana) can be found from Mexico to Alaska, and there are two genus in Europe (little leaf- Tilia cordata, and large leaf- Tilia platyphyllos), which can be found in southern Norway and Sweden, down into Italy and as far east as the Black Sea. The little leaf genus is far more widespread, and can be found up into Russia and North-eastern Turkey as well as Spain.

Betony- the 'detoxing cure' of the middle ages

I bought two betony plants from Vesey's last year, and put them in a nice, sunny place in my garden, thinking that herbs like sun. Obviously. Unfortunately, I nearly killed the poor plants through lack of education. Betony is a forest plant that enjoys shade. When I realized that the plants were looking beaten down, and just weren't thriving I finally did the research on them that I should have done in the first place.
Ah, well. They survived.
And this year they're looking extremely perky already, and much more like the illustrations of the plant that I've seen in medieval herbals. The next plan is to be my own guinea pig and make some tea. From everything I've read there doesn't seem to be any toxicity problems, unlike angelica which you apparently really shouldn't eat if you're pregnant because it might possibly cause uterine contractions, so it's not allowed to be in any commercially sold food in Canada... Who knew?

In the SCA my current persona is sort of nebulously Anglo-Saxon/Norse, and about the year 900-ish. Really, I just like the comfy clothing, the bling styles, and the history is interesting. Also, I am very interested in the history of medicine and gardening. It's a fascinating period where information of all kinds was becoming much more freely available through the networks of the monasteries and increasing trade. The Anglo-Saxon (Old English) herbals are an interesting mixture of fact and folklore.

I just hope that this herb tastes better than horehound...


http://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/2011/06/24/beneficent-betony/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stachys_officinalis

More dyeing with weld

It looks like a kid scribbling a sun according to my daughter.

I think that I finally got this one down. Weld is so very easy to work with. It brings on a bright colour even with the high mineral content of the water from my tap. It's given me the confidence to try some of the other, more difficult colours...

And a very apropos colour for the spring solstice that just passed.

Onwards and upwards.

Natural dyes

I've been experimenting with natural dyes this week. I bought a 100% lambswool twill blanket at a thrift store for $6 and made it into a Skjolenham hood and an Anglo-Saxon jacket. Unfortunately, it was beige. I dislike beige. Intensely. So, I thought that I could try re-dyeing it.

That was this week's experiment.

I tried the hood first because it was smaller, and I would be less unhappy if it failed horribly. I used powdered weld extract, and it came out a gorgeous dark spring green. Considering I used weld to colour and alum as a mordant it should have come out yellow. I suspect that the original mordant on the blanket was copper (which turns weld green).

Next was the jacket, and it wasn't as much of a success. I suspect that the larger volume of cloth in my kettle (ie. canning pot) made the movement of both mordant and dye a bit more constricted. As well, I was using ground up madder root, and I possibly didn't let it 'extract itself' long enough before putting in the cloth on the first attempt. So, it came out a bit motley. I washed it thoroughly in the washing machine and tried again. It came out a much more uniform colour. It may have gotten a bit too warm as it has an orange-ish tinge to it, also, the probably use of copper as the first dye mordant would have done that as well. I did find my dye thermometer afterwards, though, which is good. I won't have to guess at any future temperatures for dyeing.

The joys of moving.

With this warm weather my saffron popped up. I hope they can weather this weather and last until fall... *sigh* I've nick-named that grey squirrel that lives in my backyard 'Stew'... Because that's what I'm going to make him into eventually when I snap because he's eating my saffron bulbs and other things that he likes... The chicken wire is slowing him down a bit, thankfully.