Vigil Planning - Thyra

I'm pretty good at keeping secrets.  Keeping a secret from someone you see multiple times a week while also trying to prep for said secret...yeah  Now that's a challenge.

Disclaimer:  I met Thyra in college and have been lucky enough to have her put up with my terrible sense of humor and shenanigans for YEARS.  That includes Household, wedding, and general life shenanigans as well.  I am unashamed in how much I'm a fan of her and my ridiculous desire for her to have nice things.

For those of you who may not know, I spent 15 years working on and throwing LARP feasts, being kitchen help, and generally cooking for large groups of people.  I've been in only one SCA kitchen since I've been an active member.  When I was asked if I wanted to be "food boss" for the vigil, I was very excited.

Some food was farmed out to some amazing people whom I'm very grateful for.  The rest was either bought or made by myself and my husband Sergei.  I wanted to do a mix of medieval and modern food to appeal to more people.  I have a limited amount of medieval cook books so I flipped through and tried to pick out some favorites.  I'm going to talk about the medieval recipes below:


Elizabethan Lemon Cookies ( A Feast of Ice and Fire-, p166; adapted from Lucanyos Cookbook 1690)

Yes these are out of period.  Yes this is from a Game of Thrones cookbook.  No, I don't care since these are always delicious.  I have a tremendous respect for the ladies that worked on this book (who I hear rumor are local to Carolingia) and it's a personal favorite book.  It's enough of a favorite that I made an entire LARP feast using recipes from this book (including the rattlesnake recipe).

Another reason for using this recipe is it fits my idea of Thyra in a proper tea party.  Moire was already making scones so I thought this would fit.  Bonus, the naked lemons I had left over were used to make lemon curd for her scones.  Win-win!

This cookie is a weird one to work with as it doesn't really form a dough so much as a sugar lemon crumble,  Milk was added to the dough so it hold together a bit better.  They are light, lemony, and have just enough crisp at the edge to play nicely with the soft center.


Norwegian Pasties:(Pleyn Delit, 4)
Pre-made pie crust was used due to time constraints.  These hand pies were beef with pine nuts and Jack cheese.  I omitted the currant due to their use in the Ember Day Tarts and the ginger due to an allergy.  The pasties got an egg white wash on the crust to give them a more golden appearance.

My thoughts - the beef could have seen seasoned more and would have benefited from the homemade dough.  They were still tasty and I might have the leftovers for dinner on Monday. :)


Hirchones: (Pleyn Delit, 138)

Sausage hedgehogs!  The translation of this recipe went in a different direction than the original text in a variety of ways that I didn't feel bad throwing their seasoning "suggestion"  o just using ginger out the window.  Pork, especially ground pork, is very mild.  In the immortal words of my grandmother : "No one likes stingy cookies" (referring to underfilled/underspiced cookies).  Well the same goes for meat.  The spices should enhance and complement the flavor of the meat.  I used a bit of pepper, salt, more ginger than the recipe called for, a bit of garlic powder, and pinch of parsley mixed with the garlic powder.  The flavor of the meat was still mild, but you could tell there was some depth in there.

Sliced almonds were lightly toasted in a pan with sugar before being stuck into the oblong "hedgies".

Totally hedgehogs....

Tarts in Ymber Day: (Pleyn Delit, 3)

Also know as Ember Day Tarts.  This food is a bit of an inside joke.  I've made these tarts at least twice for LARPing for about 60-100 people each time.  Yes they are tasty, but they are pain to make.   Thyra made a huge grin right at me when I groaned when that got added to her "in Case of Peerage" letter.  *shakes fist in culinary rage*

Both Sergei and I leave out the saffron when making these because 1) we never have it in the house and 2) it's expensive for LARP food.  Due to time constraints, a pre-made pie crust was used.  I also substituted the individual spices listed her for my pre-mix stash of Pouder Douce that I had prepared from a variant of this recipe.  Just a pinch or two is more than enough.  In true Italian cooking fashion, the eyeball test was used to increase parsley and currants as necessary for the batches.  I also use sweet onions vs white onions as I think they play better with the savory aspects of the other ingredients.

As much as I might complain about these tarts, they're really delicious.

Ember Day Tarts:  my sworn nemesis.

Vigil Book - Kennimathor

I was asked by the talented crew putting together the vigil book for Kennimathor Geirrson to help with the illuminations.  Ken (like Matthias) is of the knightly lineage of Earl Seannan an Chasur so this post has a few familiar heraldic beasties.

Edward and Colin (the knights of Matthias and Ken respectively) had the same team create their vigil books, so both books followed the same format: (1) what I call the "preamble" praising the one called to vigil, (2) the recipient's heraldic charge with a shield, chain, helm, and mantle, (3) the knightly lineage, (4) family/household heraldry.  I tried to keep that the same for Matthias and Kennimathor as well.

I lovingly refer to this as the "project of the secret court name person, by the people with secret court names".  Thyra gets a pass on that since her name can be spelled with a "thorn" instead of a "th".

Vigil Book for Njal "Kennimathor Geirrson" Virtanen

Leather journal by Johannes Mikkinen (called Jenson)

Calligraphy by Thyra Eiriksdottir

Illumination by me - AEsa feilinn Jossursdottir (called Feilinn)

Gouache and ink on hot press paper.

Close up of the front cover of the book by Jenson.

Thyra's calligraphy and text based off Njal's Saga.

Heraldry of Njal Virtanen, called Kennimathor.

I'm very proud of the heraldry for this page for a few reasons.  When I was originally looking at the exemplars from Colin's book and period sources, having the acanthus leaves and helm on a shield for a viking persona...just didn't fit right.  Thyra suggested using the Sutton Hoo helmet for the helm and my husband, Sergei, suggested Odin's ravens as supporters instead of the leaves.   I'll nit-pick about the ravens not quiiiite being even, but considering I was now drawing into the bound book instead of the unbound pages I'm not going to complain too much.  The aesthetics were right on the mark and considering a new helm in the style of the Sutton Hoo helm was part of Ken's vigil regalia made me flail like a fan-girl.

Bonus - heraldry with straight lines!  *scribal swoon of joy*

Knightly lineage.

Gryff's stags continue to haunt me as the most difficult of the lineage shields.  The stag on the left says "Look at me, for I am refined and elegant!!!"  The stag on the right (much like the right stag in Matthias' book) says "Derp" to me. *sigh*

My favorite of the bunch continues to be Gregor's lion.  Despite all the fussy elements (claws and fluff), my brain has an easier time making it look correct for some reason.  Pigs are hard to draw (Colin), but then again so are greyhounds with a border of fleur de lys (Edward from Matthias' book).  Both of these venerable gentleman get the squinty-eye of hard to draw heraldry honorable mention.

Heraldry for the Household of Lochleven.

I had a great time with this book and both Thyra and Jenson were a joy to collaborate with.  Congrats, Ken!

Pelican Regalia - Marguerite

This is a Pelican Veil for Countess Marguerite. 

It was decided to do something for her Indian persona (Megha) and allows her to have something light wight, wearable indoors, and can be taken to Pennsic.  The pelican design is from a period appropriate source found by one of the greater members of the Indian persona community  in the SCA and done as wood block prints. 

The blocks were carved by Sir Zhigmun Czypsser.  The veil was hemmed and stamped by various ladies of the Worshipful Company of Their Majesties' Underwear (many of whom are part of Marguerite's household and sister household).

Green silk with white acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium.

Center of the veil.

Thyra in progress of stamping!

Adding a pelican border to the hemmed sides.

Pelican placement was planned ahead of time

Once one side was done, the other side was done to mirror it.

Vigil Planning for Matthias - Part 2

Now that we had decided on the vigil garb, it was time to look for inspiration for the detail pieces - particularly the embroidery portion of the outfit.

Thyra and I sat down and looked for inspiration.  Off the bat, we decided that a group of people learning how to do German Brickwork stitch was not going to happen (because we like our friends and want to stay friends with them).

We stumbled upon this lady's blog in searching for inspiration: http://medievalartcraft.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html  There are lovely examples of her inspiration of polychrome tiles from a church in Burgendy.  More google searching led to information of this being a thing in various portions of Europe.


In Slovinia - http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Slovakia/West/Bratislavsky/Bratislava/photo1450819.htm

In France - http://www.france-voyage.com/travel-photos/photos-brou-royal-monastery-2112.htm.  We also liked this from Kathy's blog - http://medievalartcraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/brick-stitch-pattern-20.html

In Germany (out of period restoration) - http://jsah.ucpress.edu/content/7/4/466. You need a subscription for the article, but a google search of the church will yield some nice pictures.

In Vienna - http://www.stephanskirche.at/. St Stephan's Cathedral roof is wonderful.

St Stephan's Cathedral.  Vienna, Austria

We did some initial sketching before deciding on a modified version of Kathy Storm's blog and embroidery pattern especially since we found examples of tiny M's in some of the brick work roofs.

Feilinn and Thyra get sketchy and toy with different ideas for trim!  You can see we started off with a comet theme since no one wanted to embroider unicorns.

With the planning done, it was off to the Worshipful Company for figuring out how to do this and get it sewn.  Marieta worked with Thyra to do the layout of the design with a pattern website I found (https://www.stitchfiddle.com/en),  There was much hand waving and magic (and swearing and throwing things I imagine) and *poof* we had silk, a pattern traced out, thread from Akaterine, and it was off to the races with our embroidery kits.  14 kits in all done by 13 people. It was decided to do a backstitch for the embroidery since there were so many pieces.  Three strings of silk floss were used.

Here is my work for one of the sleeves of the purple silk over tunic.

One done.  You can see the pattern traced out on the plastic medium as a guide.

Two of four done for the sleeve.

All four done.  My husband's truck keys inadvertently provided for scale.

Vigil Planning for Matthias - Part 1

It's been a good year for Darostur (my household) so far.  One peer elevation, and two elevations for members of Edward's personal household in which Darostur helped with.  Well, let's not stop there! I had gotten word this was on the horizon like eight months or so ago.  As as Vice President of the Matthias Fan Club, I may have done a dance when I got the official confirmation he was going to be elevated to the Chivalry.

The big trick with organizing this thing was timing.  First it was Pennsic, then OMG NOT PENNSIC, the maybe GNEW, then sometime "hand wave"....nope definitely GNEW.  Since we had gotten the heads up well in advance, my personal mission start working early and not get sucked into the false sense of security that we had so much time...we'll get to it.  (like most people do every year for Pennsic prep)

I have the benefit of working with Thyra so we could chat during lunch about evil plans and logistics.  The first order of business was working out vigil garb.  Since Thyra knows everyone, she put out some feelers for suggestions on garb in the 14th C time frame for German/Austrian clothing.

Thyra's thoughts on the matter were discussed on our seeeecret Facebook page entitled "Dance Garb" because no one would think Thyra talking about dance garb would be anything other than what it was.. Oh ho!  Not the case!  See below for her thoughts on garbing Matthias.

Thyra:

-Targeting early 14th C Austrian
-From one source: "To a large extent 14thC is pan European so sources like fashion in the age of the black prince or woven into the earth are great."
-Related to that, fitted cotes are lovely, but we have to work off of measurements and I don't want it to look ill-fitted.
-Contrary to that, 14th C German/Austrian pictures show either plate armor + cloak (not an option) or loose tunics. Plus side, we know he likes wearing loose tunics.

- Here's a source that looks promising:
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/5709/20826/

We decided that the kneeling guy was going to be our go-to inspiration for the garb portion of "Dance Garb".  And so it begins.....