The Sinister Scribe

We made it back (a day early actually) but are all at different stages of getting over the flu. Will write more as soon as I can breathe again.

Until then, have a Happy New Year!

Slowly but surely (and into the wee hours on several mornings) The guilding is largely done. There are still some more holes to be filled as you can see but I DID IT! Whew.

I’ve used about 2 and-a-half “pages” from my gold leaf book. By the time I patch all the little holes, smooth the edges and put on another layer, I might be up to 4.

The last bit went a little faster and smoother, but it is really not something I can do while the kids (or cat) are up and about.

We’re off ot Okieville tomorrow. Nearly packed now. I had aspirations of being all ready to go when DH got home, but that didn’t work. *sigh* I had so hoped the house would be clean when we left too. Oh well.

Have a Happy Holiday Y’all!

My first attempt to guild with real gold leaf has been a total disaster. I can’t get it to stick to the gum arabic or to the instacol. ARRRGGGHHHHHH!!! If things go much worse I will have to start all over again because I ignored my better judgment and started guilding on my inked drawing instead of a test piece. Bad scribe. Baaaaaaaad scribe!

Much Later…

OK. I think I may be getting somewhere. But first let me say that my respect for the mideaval guilder has deepend greatly this evening.

After many little gold (or nearly) blobs on the edge of my perga, I seem to have gotten a tiny feel for this maddening challenging craft. A tiny feel, mind you, but I was able to get it to finally stick. However, those once small-seeming areas to be guilded now seem as vast as the ocean! LOL!

One thing I learned tonight… to paint the gold size a smidge past the edge of the area I wanted to guild. (i.e. onto the inked line) Why? By the time the middle of the sized area is ready for the gold leaf, the edges are dry and the gold leaf won’t stick to them. Maybe there is a trick I don’t know (OK. I’m sure there are several), but that’s what I had to do. Also, the books and websites out there make this seem a helluvalot easier than I found it to be. *sigh* G’Nite!

Ta Daaa!! Major lines have been inked. Gum arabic is soaking. Who know, mebbe I’ll get to the guilding this week too.

I’m not as happy with my execution of the ink outlines. The horses neck doesn’t arch nicely and I kinda wobbled on the knight’s arm. I think I’ll go in and do the line where I should have in the first place and then scrape off the wobbly one. Yeah, I know, I’ll be the only one who can tell the difference. I did notice I forgot a line between the lion’s back legs… part of the bush-thingy behind her. Guess I’d better ink that too.

On other things: The kids and I made DH a Happy Birthday sign for the wall. Sam made a card that had a really cute saying. “No matter how old you are… you’ll always be my dad.” Daaawwwwwww! We got him a pennywhistle as a present. I used the last of a green inkle weaving to make him a cover for it.

The pennywhistle is an Oak brand. I like the sound of it so much better than the Clarke ones Sam and I have. This new one also takes so much less air to get a good tone that I almost can’t play it. LOL! I think I’ll be replacing Sam’s and my pennywhistles in the future!

Used this blend in the pourable lotion yesterday. DH gave the scent a two thumbs up too! It has a clean/fresh scent with a lingering hint of patchouli and I think, lavender. I’ve made another batch of the blend and will let it mature in the bottle to see if/how the scent changes.
As the title suggests, I chose the individual oils for their exzema soothing properties.

• 35 drops Lavender EO
• 15 drops Bergamot EO
• 10 drops Juniperberry EO
• 10 drops Patchouli

The inspiration for this recipe comes from a wonderful and wise herbalist friend. It is the first pourable/pumpable lotion I’ve ever made. With the high water content though, it will be prone to mold. I added a couple of drops of GSE to see if that helps.

In microwave, I heated 1 cup distilled water along with a pinch of borax. (I set mine on hight power for one minute) Then I stirred to dissolve the borax. I added the following to the water/borax:

• 1 T. glycerine
• 1 T. honey
• 1 T. castor
• 2 T. stearic acid
• 4 T. emulsifying wax
• 1/2 c. oil (I used olive)

One more minute in the microwave melted the waxes for me.

I used my stand mixer to whip until creamy and cool. It looked quite runny until it was completely cooled.

Re-did the pouncing on my QPT entry today.

This time I think I got a lot of it too small. LOL! Especially around the horses head. I wonder what a “period pouncing tool” was? I used the point on my compass because it offered the most comfortable grip.

Tonight I “connected the dots” (see picture above) and got the pencil lines drawn in. I am pleased with the outcome. While the pouncing dots helped a lot, a magnifying glass helped even more. Wonder if they used ‘em in period? LOL! Some of those illuminations are quite small!

Next time I might consider pouncing the silhouettes only. The pounced details were sometimes confusing and I had to redo many of them, especially the horses bridle. I had to refer to the original frequently to make sure I got the details close to where they needed to be. After a closer look at the Aberdeen Bestiary pouncing examples, it seems that only the major outlines were pounced. I can see why!
Before we leave for OK, I’m going to try to get the lines inked in. Then the illumination begins when we get back. Woot!

A brief explanation of pouncing… a period technique used to copy images. A blank sheet of vellum would have been placed under the illumination. Then holes were carefully poked along the outlines of the image content. The vellum under the illumination became the template for making another “copy.”

First Picture: Not wanting to “waste” a sheet of perga, I pounced directly onto the printout. Then used powdered graphite (leftover from college mumbledymum years ago) to gently rub over all those little holes. The sheet to the right of the printout shows the results after gently blowing away the excess.

Second Picture:On the perga now… This time I decided to try not rubbing down because I didn’t want to cause too much smudging. This picture shows what I saw BEFORE blowing away the excess. I would show you what it looked like after blowing it away, but a blank sheet is purty boring. Doh!

Third Picture: Second try, same piece of perga. Success! So I believe a bit of rubbing is necessary to get a successful transfer.

You can see around the horse and rider it is pretty clear (dots close together) but around the tiger it is not so clear. I started thinking that the period pounce holes were not so close (not to mention that my hand was getting tired) so I spaced them apart more. I don’t know if it is the spacing or just that there is more stuff in that corner. I think it is enough however to continue with connecting the dots.

Afterthought: the tiny holes really worked better than I expected. I am tempted to redo it with tiny holes all around and the perga template. *sigh* My hand wants to cramp just thinking about it.
Stay Tuned!

Just realized these aren’t on the new blog. I did a third one that, unfortunately, I did not get a picture of. They’re already off to the Crown too. Oh well. A fourth is on my desk, but that will have to wait until after Queen’s Prise Tournament.

OMG! Take a look at this. That is just way too adorable for words. The website has a lot of other neat stuff too.