Monday, monday
Apr. 25th, 2005 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bethlakshmiWell... not a bad weekend. Generally a "average" weekend, which is something I don't really get enough of...
Definitely slick. Perhaps not as amazing as the VDK two-part move of 4 people, for two people with 1/3 an apartment's worth of stuff. But considering we had 10 people, not 40, we were mighty impressive. As Rufinia said - an hour to load, and hour and a half to unpack.
Could, maybe, have had better weather - poured rain for load out. Luckly, rain held off for load in, so we didn't have to tote stuff through the rain twice.
Ended with yummy Polish food, although it took a bit longer to eat than we planned.
Started and finished one project, started another.
It started with the coloring book. The EK scribes are putting together an alphabet coloring book, and they asked me to contribute an Indian letter. So I did G, because I think G is pretty. It's got a bit "Sanskroid" G, ie, a G that is a Roman G, but with styling that makes it blend into a devanagari document. Devanagari being the script most commonly used for Sanskrit. And then it's got the actual Sanskrit characters for the soft and hard G sounds - as those are two different characters.
Project went so fast that it was done in about 2 hours.
Not having had enough of calligraphy, I also started the playing card project. Almost exactly a year ago,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
new_man took me on a trip to New York. In it, we went to the Cloisters, a place he's been infinitely many times, but a first for me. I don't need to tell SCAdians how cool the Cloisters are. They are just phenomenal. On our trip, I saw a few cards from the only complete painted and illuminated set of the era. Then, on a return trip, I found a book - Mirror of the Medieval World - which has a small picture of the cards in it. Sadly, I really want a bigger picture, especially for the face cards.
Of... course, the more I read, the more I realize that the original materials are not something I'm up for just now... pasteboard, tempera - a bit more than I bargained for. So, my attempt is going to be cotton sateen paper, and opaque water colors. But it's something to try... I've gotten 7 cards done - A-4 of the nooses, A-3 of the horns. Another 7 cards are now outlined on my next sheet of paper. Cards do give a nice instant gratification. Obviously the face cards will be harder, but with the number cards, each "doohickey" gives a happy little spark of "yay! I'm done!", and they are very limited in color, just 3 colors per doohickey. No shading - just layout work. The figures are alot more effort, my photo shows that depth is added by shading. I also need to figure out where the gold is applied, and I may need some gold-application help. That is definitely a technique I'd like to get better at.
If I love doing this, I may also attempt a set of Indian cards, they have 8-12 suit decks, with less cards per suit. And, of course, very Indian themes. Sadly, I haven't found any images of a period set, although the suggestion is that card playing came with the Mughals at the end of the SCA period.
new_man helped fix my toilet on Sunday. We went to the Home Depot, and he tolerated me grabbing a bunch more stuff, like lightbulbs, a door-closer, a microwave, fire alarms, etc, etc. When I got to thinking about it, there was a TON of naggling chores that needed doing, that I had let slide for a long time. After much frustration, and the destruction of part of my pipe chase, we did successfully put in a new tower. However, an old valve that hooks toilet to pipe has now given way. Like most of the plumbing, it's a perfectly good valve, but the gasket has probably eroded beyond usefulness. And us using it to shut off water to the toilet has now been the final straw.
Now... I know that, in the end, the toilet will be all good, and that we've done half the work already, and it's no one's fault that the valve broke. But I gotta say - it really sucks when "fixing" makes your toilet less operational than it was before you started. Right now, I have to turn the valve off, as a steady stream of water issues forth from it when it is open. Which means I can't use the upstairs toilet. Thankfully, I have a downstairs toilet.
But... a lot of other obnoxious little chores are done, and the house is much nicer for them:
- new firealarm downstairs (hopefully less false alarms)
- door chimes front and back doors (different chimes for different doors)
- fixed leaky pipe in dance room (it was once a 2nd kitchen)
- new light bulbs over front door, back door, in back 'foyer', over kitchen table, and in bedroom
- front storm door now closes with working door closer.
- found the spiffy hair spray! (OK, not a house-fix)
And more is coming:
- new alarm upstairs
- new cordless phones and answering machine
- new linoleum tiles to replace cracking bathroom tiles
There's yet more on the list, but getting this done makes me pretty happy.
And now... on to work.
Definitely slick. Perhaps not as amazing as the VDK two-part move of 4 people, for two people with 1/3 an apartment's worth of stuff. But considering we had 10 people, not 40, we were mighty impressive. As Rufinia said - an hour to load, and hour and a half to unpack.
Could, maybe, have had better weather - poured rain for load out. Luckly, rain held off for load in, so we didn't have to tote stuff through the rain twice.
Ended with yummy Polish food, although it took a bit longer to eat than we planned.
Started and finished one project, started another.
It started with the coloring book. The EK scribes are putting together an alphabet coloring book, and they asked me to contribute an Indian letter. So I did G, because I think G is pretty. It's got a bit "Sanskroid" G, ie, a G that is a Roman G, but with styling that makes it blend into a devanagari document. Devanagari being the script most commonly used for Sanskrit. And then it's got the actual Sanskrit characters for the soft and hard G sounds - as those are two different characters.
Project went so fast that it was done in about 2 hours.
Not having had enough of calligraphy, I also started the playing card project. Almost exactly a year ago,
new_man took me on a trip to New York. In it, we went to the Cloisters, a place he's been infinitely many times, but a first for me. I don't need to tell SCAdians how cool the Cloisters are. They are just phenomenal. On our trip, I saw a few cards from the only complete painted and illuminated set of the era. Then, on a return trip, I found a book - Mirror of the Medieval World - which has a small picture of the cards in it. Sadly, I really want a bigger picture, especially for the face cards. Of... course, the more I read, the more I realize that the original materials are not something I'm up for just now... pasteboard, tempera - a bit more than I bargained for. So, my attempt is going to be cotton sateen paper, and opaque water colors. But it's something to try... I've gotten 7 cards done - A-4 of the nooses, A-3 of the horns. Another 7 cards are now outlined on my next sheet of paper. Cards do give a nice instant gratification. Obviously the face cards will be harder, but with the number cards, each "doohickey" gives a happy little spark of "yay! I'm done!", and they are very limited in color, just 3 colors per doohickey. No shading - just layout work. The figures are alot more effort, my photo shows that depth is added by shading. I also need to figure out where the gold is applied, and I may need some gold-application help. That is definitely a technique I'd like to get better at.
If I love doing this, I may also attempt a set of Indian cards, they have 8-12 suit decks, with less cards per suit. And, of course, very Indian themes. Sadly, I haven't found any images of a period set, although the suggestion is that card playing came with the Mughals at the end of the SCA period.
new_man helped fix my toilet on Sunday. We went to the Home Depot, and he tolerated me grabbing a bunch more stuff, like lightbulbs, a door-closer, a microwave, fire alarms, etc, etc. When I got to thinking about it, there was a TON of naggling chores that needed doing, that I had let slide for a long time. After much frustration, and the destruction of part of my pipe chase, we did successfully put in a new tower. However, an old valve that hooks toilet to pipe has now given way. Like most of the plumbing, it's a perfectly good valve, but the gasket has probably eroded beyond usefulness. And us using it to shut off water to the toilet has now been the final straw.Now... I know that, in the end, the toilet will be all good, and that we've done half the work already, and it's no one's fault that the valve broke. But I gotta say - it really sucks when "fixing" makes your toilet less operational than it was before you started. Right now, I have to turn the valve off, as a steady stream of water issues forth from it when it is open. Which means I can't use the upstairs toilet. Thankfully, I have a downstairs toilet.
But... a lot of other obnoxious little chores are done, and the house is much nicer for them:
- new firealarm downstairs (hopefully less false alarms)
- door chimes front and back doors (different chimes for different doors)
- fixed leaky pipe in dance room (it was once a 2nd kitchen)
- new light bulbs over front door, back door, in back 'foyer', over kitchen table, and in bedroom
- front storm door now closes with working door closer.
- found the spiffy hair spray! (OK, not a house-fix)
And more is coming:
- new alarm upstairs
- new cordless phones and answering machine
- new linoleum tiles to replace cracking bathroom tiles
There's yet more on the list, but getting this done makes me pretty happy.
And now... on to work.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-25 05:45 pm (UTC)Ah, neat! I look forward to the results...
Sadly, I haven't found any images of a period set, although the suggestion is that card playing came with the Mughals at the end of the SCA period.
Hmm; that's actually slightly surprising. That would imply that India was one of the last places to get cards or card-like-objects. (China tends to do tiles instead, but they're operationally similar.) I'll keep my eye open on that. I'm very curious about the many-suited decks...
no subject
Date: 2005-04-25 10:41 pm (UTC)So far I've stumbled across:
- one site that doesn't footnote or citation quote at all, so not as solid as I'd wish, that suggests no cards before Mughals
- a quote from someone on the SCA_India list that theorizes that the Rom brought card gaming to Europe! But the facts that were listed in the quote don't support the thesis - the author seemed to be spending more time trying to justify the thesis in light of contradictory facts, than looking at facts that support the thesis. And even then, he didn't go all the way back to India, just Persia --> Europe
That inspired me to poke ... India makes a great deal over the "64 arts" that a learned person must know. They are courtly arts, and suggest the idea that a classy person knows all 64 with some degree of proficiency. They are quite wide and varied - you'd probably have to be subsidized by your estate, or be a courtesan to do them all.
Among the 64 is:
... dice gaming, chess, children’s games...
But by the listing, it suggests no clue on card games... if dice are OK, I can't see how cards would be deliberately left out.
Sadly, I haven't found any anal-retentive lists on gaming to support the idea, and of course a negative is nearly impossible to prove...
no subject
Date: 2005-04-26 03:11 am (UTC)Do you know when the list was codified? That would be useful information...
no subject
Date: 2005-04-26 01:25 pm (UTC)Me being near the library and on live journal is a really dangerous thing... usually I confine myself online to what I can remember, but today I'm here with the library at home. :)
Let's see, I pulled my list from Danielou's translation of the Kama Sutra, as it's the only place I've seen the 64 actually listed, rather than referred to. Vatsyayana supposedly lived in the 4th century A.D.
Then... it got stylish to write commentary on verses from earlier centuries... Yashodhara comments on it in the 12th century (and is included in my English translation), all he has to say in the 64 arts area is the art of gaming, game of dice is for amusement or gain - so presumably they play both betting and non-betting games with dice...
The modern commentary also notes a few other places that detail a set of codified arts: the Shukraniti, the Tantras, the Lalitavistara (with 86 arts!) and the Kalavilasa (which also gives value judgements on them). Hmm.... don't have any of those, may have to hunt them down. I believe the Tantras are a big blob of collected writings, not something with a formal outline. So finding 64 arts in there may be hard... but the other three are probably anal-retentive treastises of some sort...
no subject
Date: 2005-04-26 04:09 pm (UTC)Ah. Okay, not so informative, then. Cards didn't hit Europe until the 14th century -- indeed, I tend to think of cards as the definitive Renaissance game phenomenon, as distinguished from the more boardgame-oriented Middle Ages. Even in Persia, I don't think they go more than a couple of hundred years earlier. (Although that's an area I don't know well.)
IIRC, it all descends from the early Chinese tile games (which are really old), but you generally shouldn't expect to see any card references before the Renaissance.
Well, keep your eyes open, and please keep me in the loop -- you've got me curious now...