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First Time Working with Goatskin

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This December I had the chance to make a long-term service principality award for someone with a Slavic persona.  Honestly, I forgot the details so I may be misremembering, but basically I used a page from the Peresopnytsia Gospel as inspiration because it was appropriate for the recipient so if I use the incorrect term for the persona, apologies.   My Laurel, Yrsa Kettilsdottir, and the Principality Scribe, Dáma Maminka the Bohemian, kept poking me about documenting the process so you get a ton of bad photos because I'm not a photographer!    My spouse also got a few sheets of goatskin and I thought I'd use the smallest piece of it for this project.  I think it was about 7" square?  Not very big at all.  I used the flesh side because it's supposed to be smoother, but as you can see from this first picture it had a suede-like texture.     I read online that pumice stone is recommended for smoothing so I grabbed my unused...

Beauty in Simplicity

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  One of these days I'll remember to take photos in good light, but that is not this day.  I really like this one, due in no small part to the simplicity of the design.  I also love how annoyed Goliath looks as he's dying.  Unfortunately, I forgot the blood splatter that was supposed to come out of his neck!

Salon Artificum

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Salon is basically like a school science fair: you get to display and infodump your particular interest(s). Mine was "Anyone Can Scribe, Including You, You Can't Change My Mind." I made a bunch of scribal trading cards of simple, funky, and/or geometric art from across the world before the 17th century.  There were tips for hesitant calligraphers: calligrams/micrography, speech bubbles, invented languages, less than perfect calligraphers, even transliteration. 99% (a few escaped without) had the source on the back, my name, this blog, and a Bob Ross quote and I gave them away at the end of the event. I should have included a caveat that the potential scribe had to be able to hold a pen and perceive 2 dimensional media because one friend challenged me with hand tremors.  I pointed out the  Tremulous Hand of Worcester  and even then WORDSMITHING IS STILL SCRIBAL! ...

Charter Calligraphy

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These are calligraphy for principality charters, which is why there are bits of white-out here and there and some smudges since the digital scribe can easily clean those up.   This one is transliterated from English using phonetic alphabets from Rezansky . 

More Early Scribal

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  This was when I was still forgetting to take photos of the finished product and I wasn't entirely happy with this one because you might not have noticed, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

Plethora of Purses

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I've knitted soooo many purses for largesse, I could probably knit at least a Gunnister (top one) with my eyes closed.  Seriously, I've probably made a couple dozen over the years.       This last one is from a pattern adapted by Dame Christian da Holcomb from extant knitted items.  I took a class from her at an An Tir West War once upon a time, on paternoster beads, of all things (beading and religious stuff are not my bag), but it was still highly enjoyable.   I still wore those beads - roughly carved wooden roses - up until last year when I lent them to a newcomer who fell in love with them as a textured fidget toy.  Since I'd only worn them as an accessory, they found a new home with her.  

First Experience with Cyrillic

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  If you read Russian, please don't point out how I butchered this one.  I know that I lost track of which word or letter I was on more than once.  I cringe looking back since an acquaintance of my spouse who's a professional translator kindly did it for free. I think this one was a baronial Arts & Sciences award?  I don't even have a proper finished photo because of how embarrassed I was over the mistakes even though the recipient can't read it.