I've been doing some 'medieval' things lately. Like dyeing with plants (Tansy - Boerenwormkruid, ground elder - zevenblad and onion peels) with varying success and hand sewing a simple dress from unbleached/undyed linen.

Ground elder was the most disappointing, though I used vinegar as a mordant and perhaps alum would have yielded better results. It sure did for the tansy! My first tansy expeeriment was a failure: just a yellowish sheen over the grey (because natural) linen. It got a bit brighter when confronted with ammonium hydroxide (ammonia) but not much of that brightness was in evidence after drying. The onion peels resulted in a muted brown. If you put that in ammonium hydroxide you get a deep dark green when it is wet, but when it is dry it is hardly noticable.

My second experiment with tansy was much different. I used alum (17 grams) as a mordant (about 80 degrees I think for an hour, au bain marie) and dried tansy flowers for 3 hours (also au bain marie). Then I turned the bright yellow I got into a more orange look by putting the fabrics into water with ammonium hydroxide and let that warm up for about 10 minutes. At this moment it's still all wet so I'll have to wait until the fabric is dry for the final results. This time I used bleached (with bleach and water) linen, a piece of white cotton and the first tansy experiment linen. The last one still looks mostly grey, but the cotton and bleached linen are a brilliant yellow/orange. Yay!

My second try out day at the Bergkamp Sibbe is next week on Sunday (9th of September) and for that I'll be wearing my own hand sewn dress. It was a lot of work, but it was quite soothing work and everytime I finished a part I got a feeling of accomplishment. Even when I'm not accepted as a volunteer for the Sibbe I'll have a nice linen dress which will last me a long time, at least seam-wise.

Last weekend was the Summoning of this year. I had a week full of preparations, mostly sewing decorations for our tent and camp, the week before. And a new bag for our fire-stuff and new bags for the tent poles and pegs because the old plastic ones were showing holes.

We collected most of our stuff on Thursday evening and on Friday morning Matthijs stuffed it all expertly into our car. He still had a clear view of the rear window. While he was stuffing I vacuum cleaned the house and did some last cat-caring.

We arrived at the site at about 12:00, the time our group agreed upon on being there. We set up camp, which took quite a while because we decorated the whole shebang with tarps and flags and stuff. We had the most colorful camp of the whole Vortex. (which isn't much of an accomplishment in itself, but it really did look good). We slowly went Time In and kind of concluded the evening with ritually catching four emotions (pride, arrogance, jealousy and anger) in our newly built emotion-mill to be used in another ritual the next day (which blew up in our faces).

Since my memory is always faulty for events that last more than a day and involve a shortage of sleepingtime I won't go into day to day detail. We (but mostly Sher Ok, Pok, Do and Yam) got into nasty shit with the Sword that has to slay the demon Moxia. Moxia being one of the main plot lines at the moment I was surprised to be involved. I usually "don't do" plot.

This whole Sword thing got extremely nasty when on Sunday night we tried to herd the tainted souls*, that were spinning above the broken altar of the gods, into the master crafted (by Ga Ping) sword. All Sherpa's except for me (I was 'ritualist', i.e. talking, and their Gong, i.e. leader) stood in a line, forming a bridge from the soul-tyfoon to the sword. One by one they fell and then lay dying on the ground as the thousands and thousands of souls found their way into the sword. The last one took the souls of 'my' 7 Sherpa's with it and thus all my people died. Right there and then.
* These souls were so tainted that no god, demon, lich, undead or even the maelstrom would take them... we had accidentally sent some of them to the god Nodens and he was mortally wounded by them. Oops.

And thus much emo-play ensued. I cried my eyes out for nearly an hour, stricken by the loss of all 7 Sherpa's. Cursing the Vortex, asking why etc. etc. Ga Waai (Matthijs) got me back to the camp in the end, the rest of the players that were still awake and alive did not pay much attention. Giving me two nice opportunities. The first one was to try to kill myself, when Ga Waai was fetching something. Alas, Sher Tè got healed... Then she encased Ga Waai in stone with the bracelet she had bought earlier that day and went for the sword that had caused all her pain. She had to encase Ga Ping too, who was guarding the sword. She even got past the group of people discussing the nights events (Ga Ling, Bi Raai, Slang and some Solar dude) before they noticed that she was carrying the cursed sword. She got subdued and holy-bolted to the ground, and healed again.. drat! Her plan had been to hack away at the new altar of the gods with the sword, knowing that this would probably destroy both her and the altar in the process. Out of time it is good that I did not get that far because it was Time Out already and such setting-shattering stuff can not be done after Time Out.

With some precautions all Paja Dahni that were left went to sleep, though not much sleep was to be had with nightmares and the nasty whisperings of the sword. We spent the whole Monday planning a ritual to honor the dead Sherpa's and to let the Vortexians know what kind of sacrifice had been made for 'the greater good'. In that same ritual we tried to imprint onto the sword that it's only goal would be to kill the demon Moxia. With mixed (read: no) success. We did not have much of an audience until the sword started soaring around and fatally wounding people until it was finally 'claimed' by the navigator of Phoenix.

Lots of angry people demanded an explanation from us and in the end Bi Raai promised she would take care of the souls of the sword after it had fulfilled its goal. Or something.. I can't quite remember. Anyway, it is now no longer only our problem, though we probably will stay 'in touch'. And I get to find out what to do with Sher Tè, now that she has such a guilt/grieve issue. However, she had about 4 near death experiences since Sunday night and every time she got put back on her feet again. It must not be her time yet... I do hope that when her time does come, it will come with a bang.

Talk afterwards was good. Packing things up again went smoothly with lots of help and we were home around 20:00 and in bed at 22:30. I've been groggy for two days but today I feel better and we're nearly done clearing away all the stuff again. Moots will be in about 10 weeks with a Paja Dahni meet somewhere before that.

Yay for good weather! Though it got very cold at night and I found out that the fabric of my coat is not as warm as I had imagined. Fortunately I had my sheepskin at hand for extra warmth. Next time I'll put on some extra underclothes. Here's a small gallery with pictures I took of our group on Saturday.

I managed to finish my hat, jewelry and arm warmers and I even made 5 banners to pimp our tent so that it did not look as much like the Ern tent. Everything was finished and gathered on Thursday evening. We crammed everything into the car (Matthijs still surprises me with his tetris skills) on Friday and were at the grounds around 14:00. Our big and colorful tent was already up and ready to be decorated and someone else took care of the groceries so we had an easy time putting up our tent.

We had lots of fun with our strange customs and gave a random player a high status as 'spirit' (which my subgroup worships). I did get a glimpse of the main plotline, but as always it ended up in "let's trash this/that and it'll be fine. Oh.. now we destroyed [something important/your world] oops, sorry." I found out that I need a goal for my character. Nearly everybody else has found a teacher or joined a guild. Since that didn't work for me as Enid (joined the healers guild but was never there for a meeting) I don't really think it's my kind of play. I don't know what is, though. Something to find out before the next one.

Next up is Failsafe for which I also need to deepen out my character. Right now she's a fashion bitch with no skills whatsoever. Perhaps she needs at least some skills to keep her safe and something that keeps her interesting besides being annoying.

Then there's Amersical, with auditions coming Monday. I need to prepare two roles and a song. The song itself I got covered, but now I need to perform it like the character I'm auditioning for and that's hard without exaggerating.

Toilet is still not usable, which may pose a problem this Sunday when Matthijs celebrates his birthday for his whole family. We got the hole in the floor where the old drain used to be only half filled before we ran out of cement. The wiring for the light has been rerouted so that the light switch will be at the expected place instead of on the opposit wall and holes in the walls have been filled. My dad does not have time this week, so perhaps next week we'll start with building the wall and plastering.

So that's life for now.