Arts Blog

I'm changing this blog to be my Arts blog, at least until I can get a website up and running.

My latest project? recreating folio 196 recto of the Luttrell Psalter Facsimile. I've attached two pictures. The first picture is of my attempt at recreating. The second pic is from the original page in the facsimile. The colors are off because of the lighting for taking both pics. If we ever get a sunny day again, I will take the pictures again.

Last Saturday, Demi and I went to St. Eligius's A&S Tourney in Dragonship Haven. It was a nice little event. We really enjoyed ourselves. :-) And it was a great event for getting our feet wet with doing A&S competitions. And winning Baron's Choice for the above artwork, was just the icing on my cake! Totally took me by surprise!!!!!!!!!!!! I was over the moon. :-) And I won a lovely set of handmade feast gear. :-) Gotta love that! Of course, my documentation was a bit lacking, but I know where to improve for my next comp. :-)

Scibal Life.......

Sometimes, as much as I love it, Spring just sucks. Laura no like headaches. Spring brings lots of weather changes = Laura gets lots of headaches. Not fun. So, I kept putting off working on two scrolls. You know how you tell yourself, it's okay, you have lots of time to finish those scrolls. Then came the email. Basically, it was a communication mix-up from last Fall, so in addition to the two scrolls I needed to finish for Last Court at Coronation, I was scrambling to make a County scroll that needed to be finished and put in the mail on Friday to go to Ealdormere. Okay, I can do it. I'll be scribing for HOURS every day Monday - Friday. But wait, I'm babysitting the wonder twins on Tuesday. Okay, I still can get them done. No problem. Till a mild case of food poisoning happened Tuesday night. And I was totally useless most of Wednesday. Well, then the panic set in. :-P I don't know how I did it, but I did it. I finished Caoilfhionn's scroll. Then completed Jocea's scroll's illumination. Ran off to the post office and mailed that scroll. Back home again to work on D.'s scroll. Finished it 5 minutes before Eilis and Maggie arrived Friday evening. Whewwwwwwwww. If you want to see the latest scrolls I've been working on, just click here:http://signet.eastkingdom.org/roster.php?scribe=88They're not exactly in order but the first 12 are all from June 2006 till current. I must say that I've been pretty happy with my scrolls lately. I see where I need improvement and I really need to work on my callig. Ugh. I can't believe I just said that. Calligraphy drives me crazy. But what's one more thing that drives me crazy?

So, with the crazy last week or so, I didn't get any of the projects that I wanted to do by Coronation done. I have two sock monkeys to make. Some favors to sew. A surprise for Jana and the Yooka-fans. I'm hoping to get that all done this week, plus a scroll and maybe some sewing for me. New garb. Yay!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Heather, Maggie, Joe and Jenness all stayed with us for the weekend. Being silly and having a good time. Went to Coronation on Saturday. Watched Lucan and Yana last court. I was so happy to see so many friends receive special awards. :-) So there I was sitting in court, crocheting away and when they started calling up a group of people. After about the tenth name I started to notice a pattern. What is it? What ties all these people together? Hey! They're calling up the scribes. I wonder what's up? I put down my crocheting, turn to Heather and tell her to put her sewing down that she's about to be called into Court. Sure enough, Eilis of Eisental is called up seconds later. Before long, my name and Li. After a nice speech, it was announced that the scribes of this reign were all receiving the Queen's Honour of Distinction. WOW!!!!! We were all given nifty tokens. :-) I was just tickled! :-) It was also fabulous to see Demi's face when she was called into Court with Dugan and another gentle to receive the Burdened Tyger. Eilis made Demi's scroll. :-) And it looked fabulous! After Lucan and Yana stepped down we headed outside for a group picture. While outside I took a ton of pictures! You can see them here:http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=fu3sm1j.79iw79fv&x=0&y=-lcjbxaThere is also some before Court pictures. The church was wayyyyyyyyy too dark to get any pictures and the one time I tried to change the settings on my camera it look a flash picture! Yikes, bad Clodagh, breaking the law! Anyhow I just love the random outside pictures of the crowd, looking through all the faces and catching the different expressions.

Saturday night was a let's get quietly drunk and watch funny stuff. okay, so maybe we weren't so quiet. And we found a new comedian to watch for, Rodney Carrington. okay, so he's not a new comedian, but he's new to us. Loved him! I so need to get his DVD and a cd or two. :-) I think the trip to North Carolina next month will include some of our favorite comedians on CD. :-)

Sunday, after some tearful hugs (all weekend we were fighting off tears), Jenness, Jacquie and I headed out to Affordable Fabrics. Jenness bought 50+ yards of fabric, I bought around 30. lol I plan on doing a lot of sewing in the next few months! :-) New garb for Pennsic - most of it out of linen. Gotta love that!Enough rambling from one person for one day. I need to get this day in action. I have lots of housewifey duties to fulfill (and none of them are done in bed!). Shopping, laundry, etc. Oh joy!

Here it is,....

So this is a picture of the pendant and earrings that I made with PMC yesterday. They look better in person. I did a quatrefoil (four petal flower) for the pendant. :-) Here is one website that sells PMC and talks about it. I have a list of websites from Elspeth, but they're tucked away right now. The "clay is made up of 90% silver powder and 10% water and organic binder. When it's fired it shrinks by about 10-12%. It think my pendant is about 1 1/4 long and 3/4 inch wide. It kinda looks like hammered silver. Gina made this cool lotus flower. Actually everyone's stuff came out really cool. And because it's clay, you create using anything you would with clay. Leave an impression from a shell, or use a rubber stamp or cookies cutters, or a knife, the possibilities are endless.

Enough of my rambling. Chris is sick so we're staying home from the regional fighter practice today. I think I will work on my messy office and try to do some more re-organizing and possibly even work ona scroll! :-)

April Fool's Day

Aly from last weekend in her new Burgundian garb. She got lots of compliments on her dress, hat and shoes! I'm a very proud momma!

So, this past week I was useless. Had a combo PMS headache and the weather pressure headache for days. One day it was a migraine. Not fun. Seems to be a lot better now. Especially since I have two scrolls to get done for Coronation, plus one for Balfar's Challenge. And I want to start on my Luttrell project and do some sewing before Balfar's. And start the spring cleaning. And clean my office. And the list goes on and on.

Had a blast yesterday, though! Avelina hosted a jewelry workshop at Wishford Hall. :-) I tried my hand at lamp glass beading. Very hard on my shoulder. Fun to watch though. And I made a pendant and two earrings out of PMC. Otherwise known as precious Metal Clay. It's so cool. Looks like you're working with clay, feels like clay. Then you let it dry out and it turns creamy white. Then it's fired on this special kiln at 1300+ degrees. When it's done, it looks like a piece of fired clay/ceramic. Then you take a file and/or steel wool and sand off the composite stuff and what's left behind is the silver that was in the clay. It's sooooo cool! I wish that I had taken pics of each step. I definitely will the next time I do it! I'll try to post pics later. Something is wrong the confuser right now. :-)

Crazy Week

Last weekend we pretty much had a laid back weekend. It didn't start off that way, though. Nope. Had to go get Aly from school in the snow storm. Normally it's a 50 minute drive each way. It took me 1 1/2 hours to get there and 3 1/2 hours to get home. So many accidents! And most of them caused by people braking too much and sliding off the road. Ugh.

Saturday I puttered around the house until Aelfgifa/Shiro/Andrea popped by fora visit. She oohed and aahed over the Luttrell. Showed me her new book (which I've decided that I need to get!). And told me about Affordable Fabrics in Rocky Hill. With $2 a yard linen. Yes. linen. Wow! Guess where I went on Monday???? Yes and I bought 30 yards of linen. All but one of them was 100% linen. The other one was 98%. Love it! I was going to make myself some new garb for this weekend. But couldn't. You'll read why in a little while.

Sunday I picked up Miss Frances and we went to see the Easter Bunny! Who was 40 minutes late. Ugh. Thank goodness we weren't the only ones in line, plus there was Bella the Balloon Lady. I took her home in the afternoon after we had lunch. :-) She's so much fun. I was supposed to babysit her on Tuesday, but got sick. :-( Hopefully, we can get together again maybe next weekend.

So, Aly is home this week from school and has a project to make a Burgundian outfit. She has made a pair of leather shoes. We shopped for the material to make the garb. She had a pattern. Unfortunately the pattern was crap. So, I spent the last two days helping her make her new garb. The only good thing that came from the pattern was the hat. Tonight she needs to get jenness to serge the veils for her and she'll be done. I'll post a picture of her after this weekend. She looks fabulous! And because Aly's garb took so long to make, I didn't get new garb made for myself. Oh well.

Today we have a ton of things to do! Including, clean up from the sewing, finish laundry, pack for the laundry, do some errands, etc. etc. Crazy life!

I'm off to shower and get this day going.......................................

Change of Plans

Man, I've been having a case of the winter blahs/cabin fever. I want to apologize to all my friends for not writing at all and/or rarely. Ive even been bad about not returning emails. During the week I've not been doing much of anything, then our weekends are SUPER full. So, we've declared the 17th and 18th a free weekend. We're working the little things around the house, but we're not leaving the house. No travelling to New Jersey, or elsewhere. We've even canceled our get together for this weekend. Well, except for those individuals who want to come over for the afternoon to look at the Luttrell facsimile. :-D (remember to bring your own drool bib!)

This past weekend was Ian (aka Max)'s Bar Mitzvah. Barbara and Bruce put on quite the wonderful shindig. We had so much fun! And Ian's friends are so polite and charming!

Well, I need to finish uploading some pictures, then it's back to working a scroll. I'm in a mood to paint! Waiting to hear back about possibly getting some new assigments. :-D

March 17th.......

After looking at the next three months, I realized that I have only 3 free weekends. Out of 14 weekends. How did that happen? It's wild. Crazy. So with the one free weekend in March what am I doing? Inviting my friends to join me for a day of fun. :-) Laid back, easy, fun day.

And just what will be happening on this day? I'm bringing out my Luttrell Psalter facsimile for the scribes (anyone else who wants to look at it!) to oooh-and-ahhh over. (Please bring your own drool bibs!) Hoping to have a bit of a discussion of period manuscripts and available facsimiles. But that's not all folks - we're also having a Pampered Chef party by Demi. So, we all know what that means - LAVA CAKE!!! Plus other yummy goodies. Oh and some nice stuff to drink. :-D Gotta have some yummy drinks for the evening!If you're interested in coming and hanging out for the day, just drop me a line - LadyClodagh AT comcast DOT net and I'll send you info. Stuff like my address, etc. And knowing us, there will probably be some some people working on crafty stuff, so bring your latest project to work on/show off! *********************************************************************

So, having this get together means I definitely need to get the kitchen and sitting room re-done before March 17th! I work so much better with deadlines! :-)

Now if only I could get this messy office cleaned up! lol

We're Going Green

I can't believe that I am doing this. I really can't. I'm going to paint my kitchen and sitting room green. I figure if I can't live with it, then in a year or so I'll paint it. My kitchen colors are blue and yellow. Yellow and blue. Not green. Nor pink, orange or purple. *sigh* I'm willing to give it a try.

So this week, I've got to bust my butt and finish a scroll, deliver it to TRM and work on the kitchen. That means removing everything from the walls, filling holes, sanding, cleaning the walls. Even going to try my hand at priming certain areas of the walls. Then, lots of blue tape and painting the walls. Much to my husband's chagrin. He is THE PAINTER. No one else can come close to his level of excellence. But his back hurts too much to do the painting. And if the kitchen goes well, I'll do the sitting room next.

Speaking of the husband, he's at el doctoro to talk about his back. He wants to try physio before going back to the surgeon. Keep fingers crossed that the physio works!

I better go do the callig on this scroll. Then it's doing the gilding. Tomorrow I paint. :-)