gurdymonkey | Recent Entries

All quiet on the Asperger's front. There has not been a single message, comment or peep from Daughter-san. Mother's spate of comments on my Facebook wall slowed down to the realm of normalcy after the first 24 hours.

Given the scraps of information I have to go on, I suspect Daughter-san is having trouble getting up the nerve to initiate anything. Life is short, I have plenty of other things to do and other questions to answer for people and all. I dunno, maybe I can just start posting cool-Japanese-reenactor-link-of-the-day topics to my "wall," and see if it elicits comments or questions. Easy enough - I have a crapton of stuff bookmarked and listed on my website's links page (a wealth of stuff that can easily overwhelm because it's all in one place and organized and all.) If she responds (or just reads it and learns something cool), great, if not, others can enjoy them and it takes just as much effort as passing around George Takei-isms or taiko video off Youtube.

In the meantime, I braved the cold (yes, we do occasionally get some and yesterday morning was marked by the tail end of a Pacific storm) to meet James and one of his co-workers at the Rockridge BART fight practices (for non-local SCA folk, this may be the oldest continuously running fight practice, held on Thursday nights in the parking lot of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station on the Oakland-Berkeley border. Said co-worker and sister are involved in something called Dagohir - my understanding is that it's a medieval combat group that uses foam weapons. He and James got to talking one day about what he does and James' former involvement in the SCA and the next thing I knew I got an email asking if I wanted to meet up with them.

So yeah, some standing around in the cold under the elevated tracks, explaining what our game is. Introduced them to Rat, and Oliver came over to chat and the next thing I knew Rat had Sister swinging some rattan. Brother has been given my email addy. They headed back to SF on BART, James and I went to Barclays with the after-practice crowd (I was ready to gnaw off a limb, but couldn't finish the massive burger I ordered).

James' health history means that he can't fight any more. Rat confirmed that one does not have to be an active fighter to become a marshal, so he's clearly toying with the idea of coming back, which would please me no end if he does. It's his fault I do Japanese stuff in the SCA, anyway.

I ended up not cutting out an extremely fiddly bit between the duck's feet as the finished fabric is going to end up being pleated so much it won't be missed.

And on that note, the paint should be dry enough for me to shift to the next section.

EDIT: Both skirt tiers are painted!

First I couldn't find a fine point Sharpie* anywhere in the house, even thought I'd bought a package right before Twelfth Night, dedicated two to the wish-tree/tanzaku box and put the others in my paint box. Then I couldn't find the pair of cuticle scissors I use for stencil cutting - and the last time I used those they went straight back into the paint box specifically so I wouldn't lose them. And I was getting low on masking tape.

Sometimes you just need to get out of the damn house anyway and my wrists were feeling a little twingy from doing eleven yards of hem-stitch between Thursday night and this morning. So I made a run down to the Walgreens at the South Shore center for what I needed, picked up a salad and iced tea at McAwfuls, and found a place to park by the bay over near Ballena Yacht club and eat my lunch and read another chapter of The Great Wave. Stopped to poke my nose in at an estate sale over in the Gold Coast neighborhood on the way home. Nice things, but I don't have the cash or the room for any of it. Came home and fell asleep on the futon downstairs in front of a Jackie Chan movie.

So I'll cut the stencil tomorrow morning when my eyes and hands are fresh and I'm less likely to muck it up.

OK. Panels for the underskirt have been hem stitched along both long sides, which means no raw edges to deal with when it comes time to pleat the tiers together. In a fit of need-to-paint-stuff, I decided it would be cool to have some sort of faux rokechi dyed effect on said underskirt (which means I could wear it by itself as well as with the green overskirt). The fabric is a nice shade of yellow, so any paint effect on it in white will be fairly subtle. I'm kind of liking these, taken from an 8th c. floor covering* in the Tokyo National Museum (scan is from Jodai Gire: 7th and 8th Century Textiles in Japan from the Shoso-in and Horyu-ji by Kaneo Matsumoto).

*Yes, I realize a floor covering is not a skirt, however, there is an extant rokechi dyed skirt in the Secrets of the Silk Road exhibition catalogue from about the same period, found in one of the tombs at Turfan, China. The designs and technique are somewhat similar, even though the skirt construction is completely different from the pleated tiers in the Nuikata reconstruction I'm going with.

Image has been scanned and scan has been printed, stencil blanks have been found, scan and blank have been taped to cutting mat. Now where the HELL is my Sharpie?

Yabane is the name of this arrow-fletch motif. Bid on and won a bolt of wool kimono fabric on eBay. With shipping, it cost me $32. It's a scootch under 15" wide, which is a little on the narrow side for period, but there's enough on the bolt if I decide I want to piece in a little more width in strategic spots. No, the Japanese didn't get into wool until after contact with the West (and most early extant wool garments from the 16th & 17th centuries tend to be jinbaori (battle surcoats).

My sewing motivation has gone out the window. (Reason# 2 why I don't like taking commissions. If I don't feel like sewing, I don't feel like sewing!) Been a little headachy on and off this week and sleeping erratically. This too shall pass. My weekend is more or less wide open, so I hope to work on the Nara bits at that point. The overskirt is about half pleated into the waistband and the fabric for the underskirt has been laundered and cut.

Original poster: "With all respect to Solveig Throndardottir, I do not for one moment believe that all women had names like "little white flower" I am looking for sites that have female or gender nutral names that can be documented."

Me, after Solveig recommended a book in Japanese, of course: "Flower" is a perfectly good name. Even my barbarian friends can usually remember and correctly pronounce "Hana."

That said, Solveig-sensei's book on names has all sorts of names and name elements in it (she said, pulling her copy out from under her desk), including "Wogusome" which dates from the Nara period, refers to feces and includes the notation "This kanji and the reading appearing in the example are definitely vulgar."

Does it help that said name was found by letting my copy of Name Construction in Mediaeval Japan fall open at random?

I was just about to make dinner last night when my cell phone bleeped at me. The ensuing struggle with attempting to text on my little Motorola Dumb Phone resulted in meeting up with James and Sylvia for dinner at Da Nang.

But first, a bit of history. Several years ago, when I was still living over in Oakland with Gaius, James would come out to visit about once a year (usually in conjunction with MacWorld). IIRC, I'd picked him up from the airport and the hour being late-ish and him being hungry, we were going to find a Denny's. We knew it was somewhere up on San Pablo. So it's about 9:30 at night and we're taking San Pablo Avenue north through Berkeley and James is doing his impression of an Airedale (window rolled down and enjoying the night air even though it's January) and suddenly he shouts "DA NANG!" "James, you're too young for those kinds of flashbacks." "No, Da Nang!" (Points at restaurant sign.)

Anyway, it's been a running thing for years and I've been meaning to try the place and the last time Sylvia and Lyman and I tried, there was a huge party in the place so we ended up somewhere else. Last night, I finally got to eat there. The menu is Thai and Vietnamese. The three of us split an appetizer combo of Thai fish cakes, crispy tofu, deep fried sweet potato, spring rolls and shrimp rolls. James had a "bird's nest" of crispy noodles with shrimp and beef and veggies. Sylvia and I had Vietnamese variants on satay. Mine was with beef and peanut sauce, hers with chicken and she opted for peanut/coconut/lemongrass sauce. Everything was tasty, the prices were very reasonable and I'd happily eat there again.

Went back to their apartment with a take-out curry and some Happy Donuts for Lyman and hung out for awhile.

I started my Saturday morning attempting to answer questions on Japanese bathing practices for a would-be writer who popped up on the Tousando about a month ago looking for information on the Sengoku period. I think she lives on the internet, because it seems to be the only place she does her research. I've been name-dropping book titles in the meantime. Anyway, the beauty book reynardine sent me last week was useful for memory jogs on washing with rice bran, ground adzuki beans and so forth. It has an impressive bibliography, but not a damn footnote in the thing and it's impossible to know how old some of these "traditional" treatments are. (The upside: the recipes - if you want to make a rice bran face wash or have a persimmon facial, there are instructions.)

I'd also offered to get another Tousando-ite some tea utensils from Daiso, so I got up, treated myself to a chai from the Beanery and was down the freeway by the time the Daiso in Union City opened. I was able to find him a tea whisk, bamboo scoop, bamboo water dipper, a wire strainer for sifting matcha and a couple of packets of kaishi (napkins) for about $12. Total. I also picked up three more teacups for the HOCM.

I used what was left of my Christmas gift card at Best Buy on a copy of "13 Assassins." I also stopped at TJ Maxx before going home because I discovered that both my favorite pairs of yoga pants (I like them for taiko, among other things) were disintegrating along the crotch seam. Unfortunately, they all seem to come with wide waistbands anymore, but I did find a pair that was the same brand as one of the old ones, so I'll give them a try.

Spent most of the afternoon on the overskirt for the Nara ensemble - light green silk with a sort of tone-on-tone ribbing. I just have to pleat it into a waistband at this point. The yellow linen for the underskirt has been laundered. The reconstructions on the Kyoto Costume Museum website have wide, flat pleats, but the reconstruction in the Nuikata book has a skirt made of two long strips different lengths. The shorter is pleated into the waistband with tiny pleats and the larger is pleated into the bottom of that with tiny pleats. I've got four yards of the yellow - I'm just going to pleat all of that for the underskirt in one big rectangle, rather than doing two tiers no one is going to see. EDIT - or not. I may have to see how much bulk it adds under the overskirt that way.

Sewing breaks ended up as my answering more questions for the writer. Grooming devolved into incense. Thank goodness my Japanese books are on shelves directly behind my desk....

I have to go up to Sacramento tomorrow for my English Civil War group's annual business meeting. Dale wants us to dress in our kit for photos for the website, which reportedly is FINALLY getting a face lift. Then lunch at some local Celtic pub. I am NOT driving all the way to Sacramento in a corset though. Nuh uh.

"Wearing tie-on bibs and chanting "Crab! Crab!" these popular events attract hundreds, each of whom can consume up to two pounds of un-cracked crab per person and are often an organization's biggest fundraiser."

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_19988336/ever-popular-crab-feeds-offer-food-fun-and?source=rss

I want to know how you get a bib on a chanting event.

Current Mood: amused

Found this interesting little film in the Free Movies section of Comcast's On Demand listings this afternoon. The drumming sequences are definitely the best part.

Two week hiatus in taiko classes, laundry, sucky day at work. Happy Folding Laundry Again Day.

http://metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60043275?rpp=60&pg=1&ao=on&ft=*&when=A.D.+500-1000&where=Japan&pos=59
I'm dying to know what color this Nara period textile fragment in the Met collection is. And the description is not exactly helpful. It looks printed though. I may have to steal that design though. I could totally do something with it.

Here's an equally frustrating one from the Kyoto Costume Museum. It came up in a search for Nara textiles, but there's no description!
http://syuweb.kyohaku.go.jp/ibmuseum_public/index.php?app=pict&mode=detail&list_id=199655&parent_data_id=19682&data_id=11226

Same with this one, although it's at least in color. http://syuweb.kyohaku.go.jp/ibmuseum_public/index.php?app=shiryo&mode=detail&list_id=199656&data_id=19685

I did a little hand sewing and got through a couple more Season 4 episodes of Farscape, then met up with the rest of the crew to perform at the J-sei crab feed. The corner they gave us for stage space turned out to be a little bigger than originally announced, so we had a little more room to play. I think it went very well, they seemed to enjoy the performance and now I have to sit on my hands for two Tuesdays in a row before the spring session starts up.

In the meantime, Emily's Dad's video from the Sakura Gakuen gig two weeks ago is up.
I'm in the back row behind Josh (second from right) in this one.

I have a solo in this one.

I'd made plans to meet friends at the Asian Art Museum at 10:30 this morning.

( Read more... )

EDIT: I found the information about the seal carver in one of my emails from the museum:
" Year of the Dragon with Master Seal Maker, Jun Pei Cui
Every Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 am-5:00 pm

Happy Lunar New Year! Put a stamp on the Year of the Dragon with your own customized seal. Also known as a chop, this is a stamp bearing a person's name, and is used in lieu of a signature. Master Seal Maker and author Jun Pei Cui trained at the Guangzhou Painting Institute in China. His experience with photography and painting has honed his eye for composition and detail, evident in all the seals he's designed and carved. Mr. Cui has created seals for artists, poets, collectors, visitors from around the world, and he can create one for you. He's here Saturdays and Sundays at the museum store. Come by, say hi, and watch him work on your seal."

I think there must have been something in the air at taiko last night. We've got a performance Sunday during a fundraiser crab feed at a local community center and Shannon-sensei was told the "stage" would be a section of floor 12' x 8', so we can only have so many drums and bodies in said space. He marked out those dimensions and we practiced all cozy like.

At one point, Shannon-sensei said he should issue clown wigs and red noses to go with our happi because of how much goofiness went on. Josh, Clint, Emily and I were probably the worst perpetrators, but in spite of the kidding around - of which, I admit, there was much - we not only managed to make the arrangements work on the pieces we're doing in the stripped-down for, we ROCKED.

Because of the staging needs of this gig, half of us are playing on "Shinkyoku" and half on "Jisshin." Of necessity, "Jisshin" has solos in it so our less experienced drummers are doing "Shinkyoku." The first time through it was pretty ragged. Gail looked completely lost and there were a couple spots where everyone was coming in at different times. By the third run through, though, Dave had figured out "Ignore 'em all, play like you own it," which gave everyone someone confident AND loud to latch onto and it was sounding much more solid.

I had a brain fart during "Shinkyoku" on the first time through, but got myself together and hammered through my solo anyway. Da Boys were their usual powerhouse finish, Little Emily always looks amazing and Other Emily was playing harder than I've ever heard her from my side of the o-daiko.

And all this accomplished with the sort of goofballery I cannot possibly imagine flying at some taiko dojos.

May try to post a photo tomorrow. Simple garment but may I just say I hate working with "Asian brocades." This stuff ended up in my collection somewhere along the way so it got used, but it loves to fray along cut edges and I can't imagine trying to run this shit up on a sewing machine it's so slick. That said, the pattern was a nice abstract repeat that looks about right for the period, and it's a good, bright red that will look great with the bottle green stuff I'm using for the uwaginu.I used some of the small-repeat dragon and medallion stuff earmarked for Tarting Up Shoes to make the collar. There still should be enough for the shoe project.

Finally busted out the new tayaki iron. Krusteaz Belgian Waffle mix works just fine, but even the small batch instructions made more batter than I needed, so that's in a plastic container in the fridge to be used for the next time - which could conceivably be as soon as tomorrow's breakfast. Red bean filling is traditional, but I put a dollop of sweet potato butter from the roadside produce joint on I-80 in Dixon and it was excellent. (The stand inside the mall in San Francisco's Japantown does them with red bean paste, chocolate or banana, but really, you could put just about anything you liked inside.)

Wikipedia says tayaki are only about 100 years old, which doesn't surprise me, really. Most recipes involving the use of eggs and sugar tend to date to after contact with Europe. Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan includes a section on a "Namban Cookbook," which includes various sugary sweets. The frequent instruction "heat from above and below" should tell you that the Japanese didn't bake before the barbarians introduced the concept of cake and biscuits. So yeah, total novelty treat and not period, but hey.

Anyway, it's the first time I've ever used a waffle iron of any kind. (My mother didn't do pancakes or waffles. She just didn't. Not surprisingly, this means I don't make them for myself either. Usually.) It was surprisingly easy: grease the mold - I used a nonstick spray: fill one side of the mold about 3/4 of the way, add the fruit butter, then cover the filling with more batter, close the iron (the handle has a square ring on it to clamp the handles shut with) and lay it directly on the burner, wait until it smells like cooked waffle and turn the iron over. You do have to be careful about not overfilling the iron and you do have to pay attention with your nose to cooking time, but it wasn't difficult.

EDIT: Well that answers that question. The iron is specifically designed for filled waffles. If you attempt unfilled waffles, the dimensions of the fish body are such that the batter in the middle does not cook all the way through. Tasted all right with an application of butter and maple syrup, but the last bit of batter was sacrificed on a fish that got burned in an attempt to cook the body more thoroughly....

My good intention for the week was to start cutting out and sewing the Nara stuff, but the weather has been gorgeous all week and I couldn't bear being stuck inside and yesterday was Setsubun and I ended up doing laundry and eating eggs instead of consuming the auspicious sushi while facing the optimum direction.

So I slept in a little bit, then ran some errands at Target, picked up a nice bento at Yaoya-san in El Cerrito and drove all the way up the hill to see if I could find Tilden Park from Moeser Lane. I knew (and was proved correct) that Inspiration Point would be mobbed on a nice day, and my route up through the Berkeley Hills was clogged with bicyclists, so I found a picnic area that was completely deserted, made my best guess at which way was north-northwest, and sat down to eat my sushi and read a chapter of Selling Songs And Smiles.

Came home, watched an episode of Farscape - I'm not quite midway through Season 3 and loving it. It was always on Friday nights, and they kept moving it around, so I was never able to keep up with it when it was on.

Fired off a bunch of messages to various and sundry persons regarding permission to use their Twelfth Night photos on my website and/or the West Kingdom History Site. The latter will keep Hirsch happy. It will also document the fact that the West made a Laurel for Bein' All Japanese In Your SCA. I am SO using

bovil's "class picture" shot. (He said I could.) It says so much about what my peerage consists of: The Tousando and Moe's Books.

I also sent Hirsch a copy of the fealty oath translation for the History site. I'll probably also put it up on my site someplace. You never know when someone might need it.

Ahhhhhhhh! I have come up with a satisfactory way to deal with the We-Must-Do-Art-Competitions thang in a manner that points no fingers, harshes no one's wa, and makes me feel good. Posted the following to the kingdom and principality e-lists this morning:

A challenge!

The Arts and Sciences are not just about competitions. They're about doing what
you love and sharing what you know.

Are you going to Estrella War? Are you an artisan? Do you have a skill to teach
or knowledge to impart?

I just sent off class descriptions to the Estrella Collegium - I misremembered
the deadline for the gate book, but they will still be published online and
posted on-site. You can too.
http://estrellawar.org/Activities/ArtsandSciences/CollegiumClasses

If, like me, you believe that your art is not about scores and points, there is
an Artisan's Display on Sunday of the war:
http://estrellawar.org/Activities/ArtsandSciences/ArtisanShowcase

If competition IS your thing, there are three categories to participate in:
http://estrellawar.org/Activities/ArtsandSciences/ArtsAndSciencesCompetition

The Known World knows the West's might upon the battlefield. I challenge you to
help me show them our might in the Arts and Sciences.

Saionji Shonagon
Defender of the West for Bein' All Arty In Their Wars

*I've offered the Estrella Collegium taiko and the tea class I did at Kingdom Collegium.

********************

Dear Buddha. I want a pony and a shime-daiko. Please keep the plastic rocket as they don't hold up when one hits them with sticks.

Taiko was laid back last night, well, for taiko. We unpacked Shannon-sensei's truck, deconstructed Sunday's gig (all good, positive feedback), and played around with some stripped down versions of the same pieces to do at a senior center crab feed in two weeks because we'll only have room for five drums on-stage. Shannon-sensei wants to keep my o-daiko solo, which means I won't play on "Shinkyoku," though I did stand in for Bob (dealing with a bad head cold) on shime-daiko so we could experiment with close-quarters staging. Tracy and I managed not to bean each other. Whether Bob's Flailomatic style will work in the same case is anyone's guess.

Starts at the second to last line of this page on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14821388@N08/sets/72157628919639045/?page=6 and the first three lines of http://www.flickr.com/photos/14821388@N08/sets/72157628919639045/?page=7

Baron Joel (unnoticed by me at the time) was stationed up front with a long lens and got some nice shots.

I don't think I got that gene, really.

( Read more... )
Ooh, another link on Shoso-in artifacts. Those shoes have to be a reconstruction, I think? (It's in Polish, but the listing of Shoso-in artifacts is in English.)
http://www.japonia.org.pl/?q=ja/node/64

The Shoso-in has a website! Must explore this further when I have time. http://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/

Ooh, found the Textiles section! http://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/shosoinPublic/result.do

EDIT: I find it worked best to have two tabs on my browser open: one in the original Japanese, one through Google Translate. For some reason, the thumbnails on the artifacts will not open from the translated pages.

SHOES! OMG!!! Look at the details:
http://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/shosoinPublic/detail.do?treasureId=0000010548&idx=44&mode=part
http://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/shosoinPublic/detail.do?treasureId=0000010549&idx=45&mode=part
http://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/shosoinPublic/detail.do?treasureId=0000010550&idx=46&mode=part
http://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/shosoinPublic/detail.do?treasureId=0000010551&idx=47&mode=part

Recogize this? It's the panel recreated in the dyeing video.
http://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/shosoinPublic/detail.do?treasureId=0000020735&idx=51&mode=part

PAYDIRT! I think this is a haishi. Google Translate is rendering the name as "hampi". The reconstruction in the Nuikata book doesn't have the contrasting sleeves, but it may be a later style. There are similarities....
http://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/shosoinPublic/detail.do?treasureId=0000017556&idx=96&mode=part

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gurdymonkey

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Contemplations of a Closet Curmudgeon

Recent Entries

State of the autism spectrum 2 and other stuff

Stencil!!!!

Don't ignore the signs.

Nara madness continues

Yabane!!!!

Oh Yes, I did.

Weekendy stuff

Badly written sentence of the week

The Drummer

Because I can't even hammer on an o-daiko tonight.

I hate black and white photos sometimes.

Taikotaikotaiko

Year of the Dragon

Something in the air

Haishi is done!

I Can Haz Fish Waffles

Playin' a little hooky

Back in my happy place.

Yet more Twelfth Night Photos

I don't normally obsess over shoes......