The Tudor Revolution

So if you are new to my blog, Hello! I took July off to focus on work and realities of covid life. Thanks for hanging in there.  This week we are doing to cover 16th Soccocia and their role toward the origin of pockets. People need a place to carry and keep their small items as they walk around. In the middle ages you might have a pilgrim satchel or a belt pouch. Some women in the middle ages had the brilliant idea to stop wearing their money purses outside of their over gowns and instead would wear them between their kirtle/sottona layer and over gowns. This arrangement still gave you access to the purse, but made it harder for thieves to cut your purse strings and run.  Fast forward to the 16th century and we find the heirs to this practice in socaccia. We have some visual evidence of these in mid to late 16th century art out of Italy. This is a detail of Alessandro Allori's,  Woman at her toilet, ca 1575-78. Currently in Florence, Church of Santa Maria Novella, Gaddi ...

I filmed this months ago while I was recovering from being sick. It has been a fun little editing project even if I left the camera tilted the wrong way. I learned how to correct it with my software but kept cutting off my own head in the process. Thank you to my friends in Ansteorra for this fun distraction.  I hope you are all safe and healthy. I expect us to share lots of stories when we are together again.  Just as a reminder, I am not an official spokes person for the SCA. To locate your local group you can go to  www.sca.org  or try Googling your town and SCA. 

Lets have a chat about playing in the SCA in a modern US economy. In my 20s, I move around a lot. At first it was for college, then after College I followed the man I loved for his career, and then finally I moved for my own career a few times. With everyone safer at home and social distancing it has had me reflecting on what made my different SCA moves successful or not. In this post I'm hoping to share some unsolicited advice from someone who lived in 4 kingdoms over 13 years, and works in the self storage industry today helping hundreds of people move every year.  My first Laurel's Prize Tournament in Ansteorra, 2016 1. Reach Out I am incredibly introverted and reserved so I know how scary this first step can be. Before you start moving, but after you know it is going to happen, look up your new SCA branch and say hello. Most groups will have a page on Facebook or a website where you can start to learn more about that group, when they meet, their own unique culture, etc. The...

As a creative person, I do live in the modern world, and maintaining blogs for multiple time frames is exhausting at best. Going forward the first Monday of the month  will be "Modern Monday" and I will post about a project from after the 16th century.  Our first project is my American Duchess Patreon Cape ca 1910. To help fight the covid 19 boredom the awesome folks at American Duchess made the cape pattern free on their Patreon page (link at bottom). Their Patreon members have access to other awesome patterns so it is worth checking out. I fell in love with this pattern and decided I was going to whip our up to fight the patriarchy  as the pattern is contemporary to the United States Suffragette movement.  I made a mock up after scaling out the pattern to realize while it is a very adjustable pattern, it was scaled for a 38 inch bust and I am a 45 inch. The pattern thankfully is fairly simple to adjust for a larger bust.This is a great example of why we should alwa...