Dancong Oolong Delights

My next tunic was hand sewn linen, the next after that handsewn wool, and within three years I was making turnshoes.

Now it's 35 years later, I own _sixty_ tents, including six yurts, there's a rack of spears, axes and bows in the corner, and I have outfits enough for a three to five day event for any of the the migration era, early medieval western europe, and as far east as the Pontic Steppe, plus also European high medieval, sixteenth, eighteenth, mid nineteenth century, and late nineteenth century. There's an industrial sewing machine in the upstairs room, and a 10 foot by 4 foot high cabinet behind me with 45 glass fronted drawers full of sewing, leatherworking, embroidery, photography and armouring tools and notions and supplies.

and this mentality was carried by white people everywhere they colonized—seeing any animals thats mildly challenging to humans as something thats degraded, unpersoned and killed off or contained in the deep wilds.

This post made me ponder when this type of mentality was developed in pre-modern Europe, and what where the factors behind its development. Can i ask for your opinion as a medievalist and historian in this subject?

...Well. For starters, the linked post is just, uh. Wrong. On several levels. In several ways. Before I get to its facts, falsehoods, and assumptions, let's start with one of the problems involved in citing it as a source on history: it's written by a retired veterinary nurse. I'm sure that Debbie Graham (retired veterinary nurse) has done many wonderful things in her career. I'm reasonably sure that we'd be in sympathy politically, and would get along if we found ourselves on the same protest line or weekend hike. But uh. As a set of historical claims, this is egregious.

For one thing, it is either disingenuous or breathtakingly stupid to take the wolf as a stand-in for "the environment," full stop. The wolf is the most culturally iconic predator of the western world. At the risk of seeming flippant: the wolf, which lives in a cave and eats 10,000 sheep per year, is an outlier adn should not have been counted. There are good essays about what is going on with the wolf in literature and culture, both in the Middle Ages and beyond, in this book, via @jstor.

Was there hostility toward wolves in the European Middle Ages? Sure. Arnaud, a fourteenth-century French peasant, is famously on record as a heretic because he concluded that wolves were not created by God. (But... everything is created by God, said a presumably very frazzled member of the clergy. That's kind of a big deal.) Arnaud, however, was a shepherd, and he stuck to his story: God was good, wolves did nothing but eat sheep and lie. Evil. Therefore of the devil. QED. Arnaud eventually conceded that the devil could not create things and that even wolves were created by the Almighty.

Anyway. There are just a shocking number of fallacies and errors in that article. It wants to claim that wolves were hunted to near-extinction by the Normans, while also pointing out the ways in which the Normans placed limits on hunting. The article also conflates the rhetorical/literary wolf (enemy of sheep, humans, Good Things Generally) with the actual wolf, and claims that "This twaddle, when babbled from every pulpit, ensured that people believed that stabbing, beating, flaying, burning and poisoning wolves was good." From the bottom of my heart: what the fuck. I know what was "babbled from every pulpit" in medieval England. Greatest hits include:

the Virgin Mary has your back

pray regularly

do not play dice in the cemetery / in church / with money you don't have

be nice to your neighbor

consider that you are, in fact, sinful

do not be too anxious about your soul, though

yay, saints

do not have sex during Lent

...no seriously, we mean it, no sex during Lent

Anyway: there's not some weird pulpit-thumping anti-wolf brigade. The article claims that church and civic law permitted and rewarded killing of wolves. Common law in England? yes. Church law... I have never heard of such a thing, nor can I imagine any document saying "40 days off purgatory if you -- with the right spirit in your heart -- come hear a sermon, donate to the roof repair fund, or kill a wolf." In the immortal words of Benoit Blanc, it makes no damn sense.

The linked article writes of "things called fields, impounded [sic; not actually what that word means] by structures such as fences or hedges." I think the enclosure movement of the 14th-17th centuries (late medieval/early modern) can certainly be viewed as bad for the ecosystem of England. But that's about pasturage, not arable fields. Not coincidentally, it helped to fuel Robin Hood legends. Moreover, one can also find fenced-in fields in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, etc. Fields are not inherently colonialist.

You say you are pondering "when this type of mentality was developed in pre-modern Europe." My answer would be: it wasn't. A recent overview of environmental history in medieval Europe is this, examining sustainable practices and norms:

Also via @jstor, there's the open-access book The Green Middle Ages, which argues that "the green earth was a generally treasured, indispensable and integrated component of life." It makes its argument, in my view, cogently and well. Full book here.

not that you have ever been a good or proper dragon. when you hatched out of your egg, your eggtooth was too smooth. the other dragons were rough with you, put little holes in your wings.

you were not bold. you were odd. you liked rippling water and the shine of chitin when bugs scuttle and of course the movement of the stars. those were all acceptable interests albeit maybe not traditional. perhaps you had inherited these through some great-great-uncle or something. certainly a dragon may be wise, or clever, if they are not bold.

yes, you have been a great deal of a puzzle to the other dragons. your body is smaller and rather more soft than it ought to be. so speed should have been yours, perhaps - your mother said it would be like fighting a shadow. if a dragon is not aggressive, it may instead be cruel, sly; a backstab. but alas your scales - so iridescent that they almost shine like the moon at night, a glow from within - you are not a shadow, you are a beacon like the flash of a knight's blade. your father has said at least you would make a fine egglayer, a nice mate to a good male. a dragon like you may still be a good mother perhaps; and that is a fine thing to be; although of course it would have been better if you'd been a trove-hoarder instead.

what a dragon must not be is kind.

you have watched her now for six moons. what a good and proper dragon would do is to go inside and to snatch her. a very proper dragon would have kidnapped her many times over, but you will be the delight of your brood to princess-snatch even at all. when you catch her in your jaws and bring her home, they will love you, then. they don't think you're capable of it, but you are, because you're a proper dragon. you can show them that. if you go in, now, right now.

you are rather too glossy to hide in the shadows, so instead you have learned how to appear flat and round, a puddle of light. (how your siblings would mock you! a dragon should be matte, to blend with the night). you dapple your flank with mud. you perch in odd angles atop of trees, scuttle like the bugs you love - hither, tither, frantic.

what you must not do is fly with your wings full-out. alight, you will be limned by the moon's corona. you will be a beacon. you must remember this when (not if) you snatch her.

____

you found her because of the lake. this lake in particular was your favorite - nestled deep in the woods, between two mountains. it is very quiet; there is nothing to horde there so no other dragon bothers you. a gentle waterfall spills over into a deep cove, and there are many mossy caves you've spent your afternoons napping in. while it is not proper for a dragon to prefer such things, you like to lay in rolling tenure just under the water. you have become excellent at holding your breath, can do it for hours. it is the easiest way to appear as a patch of sunlight.

she was not sunlight. she was the night's joy. the dark press of water. her face at first concealed by many diaphanous layers. her breathing quick and quiet.

she had pulled them back to drink from her water flask. and there she had been: a princess. your first very-real princess. right there, only the reach of a single talon from you. if you had simply lunged then, you would have been able to take her easily, in one single movement.

but you did not take her.

early June 2026 - this one is for the fiber people! @birchwood-path and all the other inspiring folks making stuff out there!

Spindle-Whorl, terracotta, early bronze age, Kumtepe Turkey

Spindle-Whorl, terracotta, early bronze age, Troy 1 (2920-2550 BCE)

Weaving loom and textile production.

This illustration is currently tripping me out b/c I just saw this post by @aeide and it looks ??? just like this ??? complete with the little weights or whatever at the bottom??????????

Troy and Textile Production in Anatolia

The history of textile production in Anatolia dates back to the Neolithic Age, with the transition to settled life and the start of production, and the domestication of wild sheep and goat, making the procurement of raw materials easier. Textile production does not change much in the Chalcolithic Age. But during the Early Bronze Age, we see an increase in the number and variety of spindle whorls and loom weights in Anatolia and Troy. Among the reasons behind the development are the introduction of plant fibers such as flax in textile production, and the overall rise in production due to an increase in the variety of raw materials available. Spindles and such devices were used to spin fibres into yarn. The spindle was composed of a wooden rod bulging in the middle with pointy heads, and a spindle whorl attached on the end of the rod, providing weight to ensure the yarn is spun properly. The device placed on top of the spindle whorl is called a spinner.

There were two types of looms, the horizontal loom and the vertical loom. Vertical looms were used primarily in Western Anatolia and Greece and the Mediterranean basin in general. A vertical loom makes use of loom weights to maintain the tension on the warp threads to keep them from tangling up. A vast number of loom weights were uncovered at Early Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age layers of Troy, and the 2nd millennium BCE settlements of the islands of Crete and Thera. Such finds demonstrate that production was systemic in the Aegean region during the 2nd millennium BCE. The sheer number of textile tools such as spindle whorls, loom weights, reeds and quills uncovered particularly in the buildings of Troy, attests to the importance of textile production at the time. Textile production was carried out either in a specific room of a house called the "weaving room" or at the settlement structures known as the "workshop building".

And we're done with the stitching on my Goldwork and Silk Betta fish!

Next up will be to paste the back, let it dry, and then get it off the frame to be mounted up. I'll be going with the same frame as my other fish, so you'll be able to see all the dimensions of the padding. Especially with the difference in regular light vs studio lighting.

Child's Pullover (Fair Isle, c. 1913), Shetland Museum & Archives.