I had the distinct pleasure of being a guest on The Stallion Podcast. While Kolten and I talked about medieval living history, and reenactment as is no surprise, with an entire season off of public events, it was both refreshing and grounding to spend some time interpreting what we do to someone who has no exposure to the hobby again. It is a perishable skill, and sometimes it is easy to forget just how much people on the outside don’t know. Stay humble, keep teaching.
2020. What a year. For many it’s one of the worst years of their lives… the year they lost their homes, or their business, or their family. For many students going into and out of school it was a year of lost opportunity and the loss of traditions afforded to everyone else in their community before them such as proms and graduations and varsity sports championships. People’s weddings were postponed or cancelled. Vacations people had been planning for months or years or a lifetime were waylaid. The world was turned on its ear. I was once told, and it has always resonated with me, enjoying life is about appreciating contrast. Not in a philosophical sense wherein bad must exist to for there to be good or for people to appreciate good, but in an entirely pragmatic sense: good and bad experiences exist and in this context it doesn’t matter so much why. Sometimes we’re out in the daylight, it’s clear and sunny and pleasant. But night always falls (and the night always ends with the rise of the sun.) But even at night stars shine in the sky, the moon reflects our absent sunlight as a reminder of the coming dawn. It is in this mindset we focus today on the stars and the moon and the bright highlights of all the good things which happened around Neep Manor during the long, bitter night of 2020.
So I thought I’d look at the last year in the form of some top lists.
Continue reading “2020 – A Year in Review”
As most of you are aware, as the Turnip of Terror, the turnip has been a central facet of my arms, heraldry, and iconography for this project and for my living history pursuits. I am a self-taught graphic artist doing what I can with access to tools I have no training or true understanding of. Now and then I try to make cosmetic improvements. However, outside of looks, there are also times when further study of the period brings to light possible errors in our kit we have to fix. In this instance, it is my “digital soft kit” which is getting both an aesthetic and an authenticity upgrade.
Continue reading “Heraldry Update!”
The weekend is the time when things feel normal, lately. During the week, working odd remote hours and homeschooling my displaced progeny, Saturday and Sunday have been a respite from the looming threat of civilization wrecking pandemic. Staying inside except to go for a walk is fairly normal Sunday behavior for our household, as the week tends to fill up with appointments and girl scout events and sporting practices etc. We look forward to spending the day together, working on projects around the house, rushing for nothing.
Continue reading “A Tribute: Brig Pilgrim”
While this blog, and my attempts at writing things, is older than a year, WordPress was kind enough to remind me that as of today, it’s been a year since I registered with WordPress. Continue reading “(an important) Anniversary!”
I bought a dagger from Bohemond a while back, which is no longer listed in his store. It’s a nice rondel style blade, unsharpened. It doesn’t have that round point that you’d need for harness fighting, which I prefer. Because it has the actual shape of a rondel instead of the blunted off tip, but has nothing even resembling an edge anywhere, it’s a safe demo tool that can be shared with kids or unintelligent-adults without too much worry of grievous bodily harm.
Continue reading “Dagger Polish”
Good morning!
So, I’m pretty bummed that all my friends are off at the KC Sword Guild Deed of Arms and I have to work. I’ll be out there tomorrow, Saturday, and day trip it on my one day off, but then it’s back on the road 7 am Sunday… so no camping out. Continue reading “Rapa Armorial and Taking Stock”
On the Armour Archive forums, on armoring blogs, in armor care articles and videos there’s a lot of talk about metal armor maintenance, polishing, and metal surface conditioning. When it comes to getting a finish on armor there’s discussions that range from period techniques with pumice or sand and olive oil, to modern abrasive practices. Continue reading “Polishing Experiment”
I recently took a trip to Hawaii, which was a very pleasant place to be in January when it’s in the 70s and 80s on the island, and in the 30s and 40s in Kansas. It was a nice occasion to visit my mother who lives on Oahu, burn some of my accrued annual leave before I hit my use-or-lose mark, and decompress from all the nonsense that daily life tends to lump on your shoulders. Continue reading “Schola Saint George Honolulu”
Service has kind of a bad rap now a days. Perhaps it’s due to the tumultuous period in semi-recent history where various modern cultures took advantage of class disparity… but there was a time when domestic and labor service wasn’t a bad thing on principle. Even in the high middle ages, when there was a hard social difference between the gentry and the common classes, service was a respectable way of life. And not just for the peasants and serfs, if you think about what being noble really means in medieval society it comes down entirely to service. Continue reading “Medieval Service”
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