Braid from the Skjoldehamn Find on a New Hat (100 Days of A&S, Round 4, Day 58),

The day before yesterday, I couldn’t find my Dublin cap to wear to Coronation. Or the other Dublin cap, or the other one, or the other one. So yesterday, I whipped up a new cap, and made braid ties and a bit of trim for the front using the braid from the Skjoldehamn tunic. This is a very simple braid in three colours, that works best as a fingerloop. I have made it before, to disguise seams where I have added length to the sleeves of undertunics, but somehow forgot to post about it. This is an excellent summary of the find, and pictures of the artifact along with the braid instructions can be found on page 7: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/11552101/skjoldehamn-find-pennsic-expo-conv-svcscom.

I love this picture of me making the braid because, if you look closely, you can see my hands are a blur. Also, my helpful friend Evan is being helpful – he was clearly well-trained by his lady-wife (a mad knitter), as I asked if he could do me a favour and he immediately held up a hand for me to tie string around. The other picture shows the completed cap and the sleeves of my tunic. I’m feeling very rich, with six colours!

 

 

Read Full Post »

Zoroastrianism and the Humours (how to fall far down a research rabbit hole)

I am currently reading a book called “The Underground Girls of Kabul”, which is about the phenomenon of young (and sometimes older) girls dressing and acting as boys or men. The author postulates that this practice may date back to the Sassanid Empire, when Afghanistan, along with several other countries where this phenomenon appears, was Zoroastrian. She mentions that Zoroastrians believed the body was made up of four elements (earth, air, fire, water). Hello! That sounds like humoral theory.

I went off on a bit of a search and found this:  “There is even evidence that Persian-Zoroastrian traditions, which regarded the human body as reflections of earthly elements, might have played a formative role in the Humoral theory (Elgood, 1934, p. 9) (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/humoralism-1).  This article also mentions the important role of Avicenna, the Uzbek Persian physician who refined early humoral theory in his 11th C Canon on Medicine. Avicenna is also said to have been the first to have written down a recipe for plov osh (Uzbek mutton pilaf). Back to that pilaf rabbit hole, which I had been researching a few weeks ago.

Read Full Post »