My excuse this time...

OK, here is what happened between this blog post and the last one. (Some of it, anyway.)

The second weekend in May was the annual Lithuanian Festival in Catonsville, Maryland, but it was also full of other demands on my time. My dance group was supposed to perform at the Maryland Faerie Festival, quite a bit north of Catonsville, and a couple of friends of mine were moving their stuff from one apartment to another in Hyattsville, near Maryland's border with the District of Columbia. As things worked out, the dance group agreed to perform on Sunday, so I figured that I could go to the Lithuanian Festival on Saturday -- getting out the door earlier than I normally do -- and then see if my friends needed any help when I got back.

As always, I had a great time at the Lithuanian Festival. Someone had brought in his collection of Lithuanian beer cans, and I was amused to see that some of the brands were named in honor of the great victory at the Battle of Zalgiris:

I really enjoyed the tasty potato pancakes fried up as a fundraiser for Malunas, the Baltimore-based Lithuanian dance group.

And finally this year someone was actually doing a marguciai demonstration and selling basic egg-decorating supplies:

When I got home, I called my friends, whom I met in the SCA as Pedro and Devora, and asked them if they still needed help. Pedro answered the phone and said that they were all done moving stuff for the day, but he thanked me for my offer of help just the same.

It was the last time I ever spoke to him.

The following Thursday, Pedro had a massive hemorrhagic stroke. He had brain surgery to try to relieve the pressure on his brain, but to no avail. He passed away on Memorial Day at the age of 42.

I had met Pedro and Devora at my very first SCA event. Later he became my heraldry teacher; I looked up to him as if I was his protege, even though he never became a Pelican (he was the protege of Master Herveus, one of the SCA's top heralds). Still later, as his interests shifted toward his old love of amateur astronomy, he joined my science-writing group and we were once both on the same "trivia night" winning team -- our intellectual strengths and weaknesses complemented each other brilliantly (I didn't know which vegetable symbolized Wales; he didn't know which rock group had Paul Hewson for a lead singer).

Losing Pedro, and knowing that Devora had lost the love of her life, was like a giant punch to the gut in an otherwise good time of my life: I had been working a temporary job at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and cranking out freelance articles on the side. The loss has been hanging over me ever since, whether I'm practicing my heraldry, looking up at the night sky, or catching one of Devora's Facebook posts.

I didn't go to Pennsic War this year, not because of a lack of money, but by a time squeeze -- since Pennsic started earlier than usual, it overlapped the "crunch time" at the end of my Smithsonian contract. I missed Pennsic terribly, of course, but as we say in the SCA, real life always comes first.

So, now that the weather is getting cooler again, I'm trying to get back into the groove. Storvik has a new Baron and Baroness who have a lot of ideas for things to do. The Kingdom of Atlantia's Twelfth Night will take place in Storvik next January, which also happens to be the 10th anniversary of my first-ever SCA event. Anniversaries tend to make me pause and take stock of where I've been and, more importantly, where I still want to go. I may make some posts on this topic in the near future.

In the meantime, I know where I'm going this weekend: to the next Slavic University, again in the Kingdom of Aethelmearc. Woo-hoo!

Finally, congratulations to Lithuania for its election to one of the non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. And for the second half of 2013, Lithuania holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union. Lithuania is truly coming of age as a 21st-century nation!

Drinks & clothing & stuff

Photos are still forthcoming. I actually didn't take many photos at Slavic University because I was busy doing other things. You can go to the photo gallery mentioned at the end of the previous entry if you really are curious. Most of the pictures I've still got on my memory card are of various steps in the process of making five margučiai last month.

Yesterday someone asked me (on my LiveJournal account) whether I'd been able to find any documentation that Lithuanians made and drank krupnikas in period. Krupnikas, of course, is that dense honey liqueur that Sfandra was offering to fellow Slavik University attendees.

I responded with various links that I picked up from various Web searches. To summarize, I found some online claims that Lithuanians invented krupnikas during the SCA period, without any evidence to back it up, and I also found claims that viryta (another variation on the honey-liqueur theme) was dreamed up by Lithuanian-Americans in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

As I told my correspondent, I have a hard time believing that the immigrants of a century ago invented honey liqueur out of the clear blue sky. I suspect it was a recreation of something they had drunk back in their homeland. (And of course, all the recipes for krupnikas and viryta are a little different from each other, because families individualize the stuff the way they do with meatloaf, spaghetti sauce, and whatnot.) Now, there is no guarantee that Lithuanians were drinking that stuff back in the Middle Ages and Renaissance -- a lot of "folk music," "folk dress," "folk dancing," etc. turns out to be way post-period. (Side note: I have no idea whether this honey krupnikas is at all related to Polish raspberry krupnik, which is basically berries marinated in vodka.)

I can't resist delving into all things Lithuanian, so I decided to do a little Web surfing to check out some of the claims in one of the articles. Long story short, I ended up on a Web site with high-resolution scans of the city maps from the multivolume atlas Civitates orbis terrarum, published between 1572 and 1617. It turns out that collaborators Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg included Vilnius in the third volume of the atlas (1581). Here's what their bird's-eye view of Vilnius looked like:

Now, at this point in my research I'm not so worried how the streets were laid out -- I'm much more interested in the people in the foreground. The site "Working-Class Images" has a close-up view of the man and woman in the center of the foreground. At last -- a period idea of what very ordinary people looked like, not just the fancy Elzbieta and Barbora! Something I might actually be able to sew for myself with my limited skills, too.

The map of Riga, Latvia, also published in 1581, has much less detailed images of people -- nothing for the clothier to take note of there. However, the map of Gdansk from the second volume of the atlas (1575) has several women in the foreground. Their gowns look more detailed and seem to have more German influence than their Lithuanian cousins, but again, they look like ordinary folk and not royalty.

I'm really, really glad I found these resources, because even though I can buy a pattern to make a Cranach-style gown, modifying it and encrusting it to look something like this portrait of Barbara Radziwill would be a bit beyond my skill level. Now I can set some realistic garb-creation goals.

Slavic University: A happy experience! (Part One)

Why, yes, I did enjoy Slavic University after all!

I think attendance was about 50 people -- not bad, considering that the kingdoms of Aethelmearc, Atlantia and the East were all holding their Spring Coronation events the same day. (I can't speak for other kingdoms, but I know that Atlantia's Spring Coronation is almost always the first Saturday in April; it was moved back a week in order to avoid conflicting with Easter and Passover.)

Lady Marija Kotok, the autocrat (or event steward, if you prefer) made wonderful site tokens out of amber and leather. They are called znaki. (Literally, the word means "signs" in Polish, according to Google Translate.) I haven't been able to find much listed under that word, because it is so common, but a search for the phrase gromoviti znaci was a bit more enlightening (try it yourself). Here's what was written on the back of our event programs:

These [tokens] have been designed so that you may continue to use them as a period-appropriate piece of your Slavic/Rus garb. Although they show religious symbolism, they are not intended in any way to be religious. Rather like the crosses you see on Templar garb, these represent a period practice of that time.

What is a znaki and how was it important in Slavic culture?

Znaki means a word or symbol, often one associated with power. A talisman or charm. For thousands of years, Slavic people have made talismans. The designs on them were called znaki, which means "charm or symbol." Each of the znaki had special meaning, and since the ancient Slavs had no written alphabet, these symbols were the expression of ideas and the method of communicating magickal desires. During the Middle Ages in times of double-faith, it was common to see many people wearing double znaki. In the case of our tokens, one side bears the symbol of Svarog the ancient pagan sun god, and the other symbol of the new faith. This way they could turn the znaki to present the symbol they wished to be displayed at any given time -- appearing Christian or Pagan as they deemed suitable and/or safe at the moment.

I left home a little later than I had intended, so I missed Sfandra's class on Ukrainian gerdany, or beading. Sadness! (OK, I believe she may teach the class again at Pennsic.) Yes, this is one of those "not-quite-Lithuanian" topics, but a good part of Ukraine was under the influence of Lithuania for a chunk of the SCA time period, and gerdany just looks like something that's fun to do. (Note to self: One of these days I ought to look up the history of Ukraine and Belarus from the Ukrainian and Belarussian points of view.)

So, anyhow, once I arrived around 11 a.m., I busied myself with setting up my books at the library table (where there was already an excellent selection) and my A&S display (the five natural-dyed eggs I'd managed to make before the event). I honestly don't know if anyone noticed my eggs. They probably would have looked much more appealing if I had had the time to shine them up with clear nail polish. (Yeah, that's not a period substance either, but it makes them look purty, and it probably helps to preserve the designs and the shell in the long run.) Around this time I greeted Master Igor and Mistress Fevronia, who are among the former landed baronage of Storvik and still reside in my barony. They were dressed in their full Russian garb and looked great (especially since Master Igor has dropped about 80 pounds recently).

I will write more, I promise!

Starting the colorful journey...

I know it's getting late, but I just wanted to post that I have started to make the natural dyes for this season's margučiai.

My male foodie friend and I have been saving up the outer skins from yellow onions since last summer. Following the directions from this website, I took about three handfuls of the dried skins and crumbled them into a bit more than a cup of water. I brought the mixture to a boil and then let it simmer for a while. Some of the water evaporated, so I added some more. Even so, once I strained the liquid into a clean glass jar, the level seems barely enough to cover an egg. Then again, the level will rise when I put an egg into the jar.

Now I'll add the vinegar and cap the jar, and I'll be ready to start dyeing ... at least with that color. I would also like to experiment with turmeric, spinach, and red cabbage, and maybe even grape juice and beets.