Maiden's Heart

Some pictures of my beautiful scroll, and me getting it in court. My thanks to those who helped create it.

In other news...

While I'm on the topic of yesterday and surprises...

HOLY COW THEY GAVE ME A MAIDEN'S HEART!!!

O.o

Deer.  in a. headlight....

Kingdom A&S

My experiment in action. The white lump is the saltpetre
dissolving in my old tin plate.

Well as it turns out, yesterday's Kingdom A&S event was full of very pleasant surprises.

Many people have been asking about my experiment, and to see the associated documentation paper.  I've uploaded the paper into my Google Documents Academia.edu so if you click this link, you should be able to access it to read.  I will also post the link to FB and Twitter.

I've been in the SCA for years now, but I've never even considered trying to find a project that would be worth entering in anything.  Yesterday was the first time I've ever entered such a competition.  I didn't know how it would go..whether I would just get frustrated.  I'm not that great at handling criticism.

Imagine my surprise that my project turned out as well as it seemingly did.  Based on the chat I had with different folks on site, they all seemed really impressed with my simple little experiment.  I even received an honourable mention during court for it... for beginner ingenuity I suppose?  Either way, was I ever broadsided.  :-)  So thank you all, for that kind of support.  I hope it doesn't go to my head now!

If you know me, you'll know that I'm not really the arts and crafts type, even for the SCA.  I never really did it as a child, and I don't tend to do things like that as an adult either.  I'm terrible at fine arts and painting, I'm a lousy craftsman at best and I'm very inexperienced with tools.

Really, I've discovered my talent lies almost exclusively in the realm of the intangible.  Nothing I work on has a tangible equivalent.  It's usually some sort of administrative work, maybe the odd turn at drama or singing, and so forth.

I decided a while back that if I was going to "cave" in to some peer pressure (you know who you are...) that I was going to do a project my way--focused on the intangible.  I loathed the idea of doing something that had been done a hundred times before.  And since I'm lousy with handiwork... it had to be something off-beat.

That in mind, I conducted a kitchen chemistry experiment to better learn how saltpetre (potassium nitrate) could be used to chill water enough that beverages could be cooled in containers immersed in the pool of nitrate solution.  This technique was apparently discovered in the 13th century by the Arabs (who else?!).  It arrived in Europe in the early 16th century.

In my opinion, the experiment was simplicity itself--grade 10 chemistry stuff.  But I guess it is a unique enough study that the A&S forum was impressed.   I'm extremely pleased.  I can't wait to get the comments back now.  I'm sure there will be my share of things in there that will make me frown--but hopefully all involving things I could objectively point out about the work myself.

Ultimately, I'd really like to know what people thought was unique about my approach--putting the S for science, back into A&S.  I wanted to do something different.  I think I achieved that.

Tonight my cold has kicked into high gear and I'm mostly bed ridden.  I tried not to spread too many germs...!   Sorry if you picked some up.  Please feel free to send me hate mail and toilet paper our house if you wish.  I understand.

Did I set a benchmark now?  What will I look at next?  Have I inspired anyone else to think about doing a pure-science approach to A&S?  I really hope so.

My "Book Nook" column

For the last year or so I have been contributing to the Chronicle, the quarterly newsletter of my barony.  I have been writing book reviews on some of the medieval history books I have in my library.

I thought it would be useful to post the link to the latest issues online (PDF) so anyone out there interested can take a look.

http://www.skraelingalthing.com/site/chronicle.html

If you've been reading the Nook and you have some suggestions on a book or comments on my column (including improvements) please consider contacting me.

Now:  a special shout out to the editor of the Chronicle who recieved a William Blackfox nomination for layout and design.  :-)  (A shameless plug: I'm married to him).

May your own library grow and your book shelves remain dustless.  :-)

Twitter!

Yes, I have moved to the land of Twitterdom.  But now, what do I say?

Follow me at @AvelynSmash. 

First A&S submission!

An illustration of a beverage cooling system
based on saltpetre (1550).

Good evening readers,

I must report that even as an adult, peer pressure sometimes gets to the best of us.  I was cajoled swayed into writing a report from an informal A&S chemistry experiment I conducted in 2009.  Actually, this experiment was my first real attempt to do something that would qualify as "A&S" with intent.  I like to think I might be one of the few who enjoy putting a real "S" in A&S.

Anyway, I had notes from that experiment and photos of the process on file, so I dug them out this year and completed the project in time to submit it for Kingdom A&S this year.  I wouldn't really have put in the time or energy to do so except that for the first time in my memory, the event is happening in our Barony. 

The experiment uses saltpetre to explore if chilling salts could be used to keep drinks cold at an SCA event or campsite.  I'm selfishly motivated... I like cold drinks on hot days, without a lot of work involved.  The abstract of my paper is below.  I hope it is well recieved by the judges and at least thought of as somewhat interesting.  The nice thing about this experiment is that it's really just a baseline... there are lots of way I can expand on it.

So... I'm giving myself a little high-five tonight for my first effort.  :-)




ABSTRACT:

When dissolved in water, the crystalline powder saltpetre causes a chemical reaction that greatly reduces the temperature of the solution.  When a vessel containing a beverage is immersed in a basin of the cooled water, the effect spreads enough to chill the beverage.  This discovery was used in ancient Asia, and was adopted in Europe by the sixteenth century.  In my experiment, I wished to revive this technique and discover whether it could be applied practically in an SCA camp environment as a period method to chill beverages without the use of ice or modern refrigeration.  The results from the experiment proved that the technique is sound, and it does chill the basin and the beverage well.  However, it is sadly not cost effective or practical to use this method “in the field” unless an inexpensive and accessible source of industrial saltpetre can be found.

Current research areas: Norse culture

Apart from my primary 14th century English persona, I have also adopted a secondary persona.  This is the persona that I use while fighting in the SCA.  Norse/Viking culture has always fascinated me, and I've discovered that I'm a complete sponge when it comes to learning about it.  I'd say a good third of my book collection is about Norse culture right now.

As an aside, I also find it completely useful that I enjoy fighting with my axe so much.  Works out well.  ;-)

Naturally I'm throwing myself in head first to developing a persona basis for my fighting self the same way I'm tackling writing a back-story for my English persona.  Based on readings to date, what I've gravitated towards is Hiberno-Norse culture around the second invasion of Dublin in the 10th century.  In other words, Irish-Norse culture and the history of how Scandinavian territorial movement happened across the Irish sea near the end of the Viking age in Europe. 

I really wanted to find a new twist to the usual Danelaw-type Norse culture in the British Isles, and stretch beyond typical Norse personas.  I think it's kind of neat to study a time when the lines between all the various cultural roots of the region were really blurry:  Celtic, English/Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Frank, Welsh...I could go on.

Anyway, simply to say that this aspect is probably my second area of research at the moment.  Along the same lines, I'm also really keen to explore new finds demonstrating the possible existence of women warriors in East England.  I'm trying to get my hands on the paper.  How neat would that be if they could definitively say that Norse culture, which often eschewed cross-gender behaviour, would actually have accepted female warriors (beyond those necessarily defending home)?  I have seen in various sources a large difference of opinion as to whether or not women could have existed in such a role at the time.  Doubt of course cast by such strong figures as the Valkyries for one.  The fact that some sagas showing women taking on very active roles in domestic conflict for another.  And the fact that the sagas show a role of women to be spurring/guilt-tripping their menfolk into violence for revenge and for the sake of honour.  

Yet, there seems to be little sourced information demonstrating that the warrior was an acceptable and common profession for women...if profession is the right word?  Running the family household would surely take the cake as the primary profession for women of course.  How many women would have actually had the opportunity to consider alternative paths?  Mind you, besides the Valkyrie there is at least one other Norse goddess who chose to walk a non-traditional path (Skaði: Prose Edda).   Perhaps it's not as foreign a concept as previously thought?  Hmmm...

I'm rambling...  :-)

Current research areas: England

Since my persona is based in fourteenth century England, that's where I've been focusing most of my research/reading lately.  It's one of my favourite moments in time...so much change, so much adversity that our ancestors had to overcome.  Character building, I think, towards the empire that Great Britain would eventually become.

My persona research has led me to find out some really interesting things about England from that time period.  But I think the highlight of my journey was my visit to my namesake's hamlet, Wexcombe, in Wiltshire.  The history of this little settlement (it's hardly a village) goes back, as far as I can tell, to the ninth or tenth century.  There has been a manorial estate in the hamlet as early as the Norman Conquest, sometimes in the hand of the Crown and sometimes not.

I was able to visit on my honeymoon to the UK.  I also visited the nearby area, including the old Wilton Mill, one of the last working windmills in the UK, and the village of Great Bedwyn.  It was a bit thrilling for a geeky SCAdian like me.  Not many people get to see where their persona may have walked--if not fictional, of course.  :-)

I plan to collect all my little research tidbits into a woven background "story" for my persona, as a means to help me "feel" her and what her life would have been like.  This is my A&S 50 project...to gather 50 points of interest for my persona.  I hope to have an informal paper on it, mostly for my own reference.  So far the "work" is coming along well. 

First post on Blogger

Well I have once again caved to peer pressure and created a mirror blog to my LiveJournal.  This one I am hoping to have focus on research and projects that I'm working on for the SCA.  In this sense, I'm hoping it will truly be a "log" book of all my findings.  The LJ version just tends to be theraputic random ramblings.

I don't actually know if anyone out there will read this or find any of it useful, but if so please drop me a line so I can hear about it.  I love shared adventures in medieval discovery!

Just as a disclaimer... I'm only an amateur at this so please don't rely on anything here as actually accurate.  I encourage you to visit my sources for yourself.

Good hunting,

A.