Writing

 It took a bit of practice and finally some courage to start writing text again. Below are some pictures of how my bastarde evolved in the past 8 years or so, some practice pieces finding the right pen nib and getting closer to the style used in the book. Looking closely at the pages already written, there are differences in style there too of course, and I may tweak it a bit more as I get going again. For now, I think I got pretty close to what I was doing before, allthough it still seems as though the pen I used was slightly wider (see the first couple of lines on the new page).

Existing page of the book

Recent bastarda practice piece

Practice piece for writing in the book again

The first writing in the book again. The first 5 lines were already there, and you can see the difference if you know, but I think it is not too obvious.

Page two and other progress

 So, what did we get done this week:

- Bertrik made a great many new shells of fresh paint in different colors.

- we realised that in some years page two had some decoration between the columns, but not in others. We got together one afternoon and evening, and Bertrik gilded all the hearts, and I did the penwork. All years are done now! I'm adding some pictures showing the practice pieces, order of drawing the little flower and the result on the pages.

- worked on the texts, there is a document with the correct number of words for every year now, Bertrik is doing a final check.

- did some greenwork on pages with leaves. Comparing with the penwork I did on the middle columns for page 2, I think in the future I will draw the little green leaves with pen first, and then fill them in with paint, not the other way around...

- did some checks with different nibs. I couldn't figure out why the writing with my Mitchell nr 5 didn't look right, until I checked it by daylight, and it turns out that I was using a nr 4. Well, that cleared up that mystery...

Back

 After a long long break we have dusted off the pages of the History Book and decided to ignore the mockery of the young adults who were not even born when we started this project and have a go at it again (I won't use the word finish!). We're actually pretty pleased with how it looks and pleasantly surprised at how far we got before life and other projects took precedence.

Key info for getting back to work:

Words per year: 675

Nib to use: Mitchell nr 5 pen

Order of work: 

1. 1. gilding
2. 2. writing
3. 3. gild capitals
4. 4. paint colors
5. 5. whitework/greenwork
6. 6. penwork

Text to be found in google docs but also on wiki.

Parchment and pounce

We've been visiting and getting together with scribal friends, and have gathered lots of knew knowledge, materials and inspiration. Real life gets in the way of really doing justice to all of it, but last week we got together and worked on some of the parchment that Bridget and Aelitha gave us, with the pounce Genevieve told us about, made from cuttlefishbone. I had fun going into the petstore near work and buying two pieces of it; the package had the name in english, which made life easy.

Bertrik took a nice picture of the cuttlefishbone, and the test piece of parchment, which clearly shows the difference the pounce made. We ground up most of the first piece, so now we have these pretty wooden boxes with ready made pounce for whenever we get around to working on parchment again.

Notes about cutting quills

These are the notes I made a year ago when we cut quills with Cait. We're doing a big gathering in the fall, and we want to get the kids writing with quills. This means we want something like 30 quills, so we need to get practicing! We're hoping that this will be enough practice to feel confident of getting a reasonable result in the future.I had scanned the notes, but not saved them in the first 5 logical places where I started looking tonight, so now I'm behind the computer instead of working on feathers...

Cutting quills

Cait came over to visit, and showed us how to cut quills. She helped us both cut one on our own, and now we're all excited to work with them!

Even though one of the lessons we learned is that we don't have the right knives, we both managed to cut a workable quill, which we didn't succeed in when we tried on our own a while ago. And using the quill is amazing, it feels much nicer on the paper, and just works better shaping letters.

The only trouble is, now I can't go back to writing with cheap and simple metal nibs... We'll just have to find some swan roosting spots and go hunting for feathers in June (something else we learned from Cait: swans drop the right kind of feathers in June, and geesefeathers you have to pluck from the bird).

So in between bouts of flue and practicing bagpipes, I used the quill we cut together to write the numbers on our wooden 'Shut the box' cards, and then I actually cut another slightly narrower quill on my own to work on a piece of music that Mariken asked me to write the words for.

As you can see below, there's still some experimenting to do (how not to start with big blobs of ink that spread all over for instance, and how to shave off bits of quill, without shaving off bits of thumb :)), but overall, I'm extremely pleased. We're set for proper medieval calligraphy, and best of all, it's so much more enjoyable to practice! So, three cheers for Cait!

We also visited the Zaanse Schans and Verfmolen de Kat to look at pigments, and had a very good (and very cold) time there. Soon we'll get around to making paint with some of the pigments we bought, and update some of the color discussions...

Slowly but surely

After a bit of a break for vacation and planning an event, we got back to work in the past few weeks. Bertrik is close to finishing the main gold work on all pages, and the first ever booklet of gold leaf as well!


Simeon came and helped last week, painting red and blue leaves. I worked some more on blackwork/green leaves.

Tonight, I was getting bored with the fiddly green stuff, so I practiced calligraphy for a bit, and did some whitework. Laura and Mariken have set a high standard on the pages they've done, and I've never been happy with the stuff I did, so I want to practice before I work on the book again.

To finish the night with a good feeling, we'll have a look at all the pages and see what we finished but didn't mark in the tabel of work. It's nice to look through and see lots of pages that are 'almost' or at least partly done. Almost no empty pages anymore :)