A slothful animal of unusual proportions

0. WASH YOUR GODDAMN HANDS.

We're not working in a lab here, cross-conatamination WILL happen. Your job is to minimize it as much as possible. If you end up in a place where soap hasn't been invented yet, wash your hands in distilled alcohol. Your skin won't thank you, but you can afford all the nice hand creams after you cure the plague and get rich.

Find some Penicillium mushrooms!

Yes, penicilin is produced by mushrooms, though Ascomycotes are usually called moulds, it's a fungus, and it makes me laugh to call it a mushroom. Plus, in the middle ages, mushrooms were known to have medicinal properties, so you'll get a lot farther by calling them mushrooms rather than molds.

First thing you need: mouldy fruit. Oranges, or cantaloupes are preferred.

Here's the thing: mold is everywhere, so getting it will be the easiest part. The tricky part start with identifying the correct mold. You don't want to feed your patients black mold, do you?

So. Leave some fruit out. The more the better, because you want to up your chances. Then let it rot in warm and humid places. After a while, pick any fruit that looks white on the outside and green in the middle:

Not the best picture, but that's what it should look like.

2. Transplanting your (potential) Penicillium mushrooms

Until you get it on a plate it's damn near impossible to tell which mold you got. Get ready for some trial and error because you will have to sift through a lot of unwanted mold. You might want to wear a mask.

First you need something to transplant it onto. Making modern agar plates is probably impossible but thankfully not needed. You just need:

Glass plates (the kind that can be closed, you want to minimize cross contamination)

1-2 cup of Hot water (preferably distilled, ask your alchemist if he can do that)

1 cup whole milk (should be 13g of lactose per cup, if your Penicillium won't grow adjust the water-milk ration in favor of milk)

If available: Instead of milk use corn steep liquor. Unfortunately only available after America was discovered, so YMMW, but Penicillium LOVES this stuff. It will make your life SO much easier if it's available.

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon Yeast extract (get it from a baker)

3-6 teaspoons Gelatin (get it from a butcher)

Disclaimer: The ratio of each of the ingredients will have to be adjusted depending on the purity of the ingredients and on the conventional measuring sizes of the place you end up.

Gently mix it all in and pour out into the plates, let it solidify. If you end up dumped far enough that such refinement isn't possible, make bone broth and strain it through cheesecloth several times to make it as clear as possible, then mix it 5/6 broth and 1/6 milk. Again, if available, use corn steep liquor, but if not milk is fine. Add gelatin (should still be able to get it from the butcher) as needed to solidify it. I'm afraid experimentation will be needed depending on the resources you will be working with.

When you're done, you should have something like this:

Now that you have your plates, run an inoculation loop through a flame to sterilize it.

Something like this. Wave it through the air to cool it so you don't kill your mold, grab it from your fruit and geeeeeently spread it on top of your improvised agar without breaking the surface of the gelatin!

You can see the motions on this one pretty well. Close your plates, stack them about a meter/3ft from the fireplace. Judge for yourself, but ideally somewhere you would consider comfortably warm (20-24°C).

3. Identifying your Penicillium Mushrooms

If all went well, you are going to have something that looks like this:

Well, realistically, it will look something like this:

We're not actually doing it in a lab, after all. But IDEALLY, it will look like the above. It doesn't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to identify Penicillium molds for now.

IDEALLY, on the plate that matches the description of the penicillium mold you'll see an exclusion zone of bacteria around the mold, like the fourth plate in the second row, so you know you have a potential winner, but if you managed to avoid bacterial growth you need to take a few extra steps.

Penicillium molds have characteristic rings of growth, grey-green-white rings. They're easy to differentiate from bacteria because the molds are fuzzy and the bacteria as smooth and slimy. In the above picture, there are four plates that potentially have what we want, and two are less certain than others. Wash out the unwanted ones, make new agar plates, sterilize your inoculation loop and transplant your best candidates. You might need to do this several times.

Two types are confirmed to produce penicilin: P. chrysogenum and P. rubens.

The former is far more widely used today, but since we're sourcing them from literally thin air, we're more likely to get P. rubens, but unless you're a mycologist you probably won't be able to tell the difference. Thankfully you won't need to, because they both produce penicillin. Which brings me to the next step.

4. Confirming it's the penicillin producing mushroom

We're gonna need more agar plates for this one, and believe it or not, you're gonna need to mix blood into your agar. Wash your hands THROUGHLY.

(Theoretically you can get away with just milk, but identifying the correct bacterial colony on white agar is going to be a nightmare, so just add some sheep blood to your agar, conventionally it's about 5% by volume but you might need more to make it)

You need some gram-positive bacteria, preferably of the Bacillota type. Please don't go out and find a patient with fucking botulism or tetanus, you need to live long enough to make the cure. Instead, if you have a vagina, scrape some of the white, mucousy stuff from there and plant it on your plate. If you don't have your own vagina, a borrowed one is fine. Penicilin also works on Treponema pallidum, so if you get a syphilis-affected prostitute that should also work. Just wear gloves.

Ideally you get something like this.

This is actually Lactobacillus brevis, but Lactobacillus colonies all look relatively the same. The important thing is that it's all gram-positive, and will therefore be affected by penicillin.

Take new plates again, plant your Penicillium mold in the middle, and the bacteria all around it, getting as close to the center as possible. You can put down a paper marker for the mold. Wait for about 20 days.

Ideally, on at least one plate, you will get something like this:

This is literally a textbook example of testing antibiotics, but the Zone of Inhibition is what you're looking for. It means the mold is releasing a compound to kill the competing bacteria for resources, in this case, Beta-lactam antibiotic, or penicillin. Make sure to pick the one with the WIDEST ZoI, because that's the one that produces most penicillin.

So now we have the root stock, but our problems have just begun. This is the part where you're absolutely going to need an alchemist's help.

The problem is that a human body is not a petri dish. It's quite a bit larger. And you want the good bacteria destroying stuff without all the nasty contaminants, so you need a SHITLOAD of mold producing a LOT of penicillin, and then you need a way to filter it. You are going to need actual lab equipment for that, or near as they had it.

We've had a family/murder of crows visiting our garden for years now, and this season the chicks are soooo helpless! They just stand around expectantly with their mouths open as the mom crow eats. Which is what inspired this comic! :)

When i started i was going off of diagrams from old websites, and struggled a good bit. I hope this post will help you get started! Feel free to ask questions!

This video shows the very basics (not in english, but quite clear). This video explains how to read patterns before you start doing it backwards, mirrored and upside down (which is what i did!).

Basic tools; the beauty of tablet weaving is that you need minimal supplies to get started.

Cotton yarn (I use 8/4)

Cards (thin cardboard and a hole punch will do)

A chair or door handle, to tie the threads to

A belt, to tie the threads to yourself

A shuttle (you can start with a pencil, old credit card, ruler, your fingers,... i use a bone folder)

Variables to understand before trying to use a pattern

S/Z card slant or threading

The direction the cards face

Forward or backward turns

ABCD or DCBA

This video (mentioned above as well) explains these variables and how to read different patterns you will find. There is no universal way to write a tablet weaving pattern, resulting in different patterns directly opposing one another (& lots of frustration on my end </3).

General tips from me, a novice

Start with a thin band

Start with a simple pattern, where the cards all turn forward for the whole band, like this one

Then move to a pattern that alternates forward and backward turns, this one is simple but very pretty

After that, try a pattern that has you divide the cards into groups, like a ramshorn or dublin dragons

Be sure to use contrasting colours (in hue and/or tone). A black and white filter can help you here

Get some bag clips to prevent tangles (ikea!)

Always turn the edge cards in the same direction. This gives a neater end result. The edges can be the outer two cards, or a group that forms a decorative trim

Personally, i like looping the thread around a door handle instead of tying it, which makes untwisting threads very easy

You can eventually omit the written ABCD on the cards, but it is a good crutch to lean on when learning

I use some scrap wood with bolts that i tie to my belt, making it a little easier to manage tension and move the woven band along as i go

Finding patterns

I use pinterest for the most part. Twisted threads has many patterns, with a built-in program, but the search function is not great.

I made you four pinterest boards; for the sake of simplicity, the patterns are all GTT which means tablets face RIGHT, S/Z refers to the THREADING direction, use ABCD, forward turns the tablets AWAY from yourself (forwards = D over A)

Level one: all forward turns

Level two: alternating forward and backward

Level three: groups of tablets that turn differently

Level four: a fuckton of tablets with complex patterns

This video made me understand double-face weaving, this one is shorter and easier to follow. Double-face is a fun technique but i would reccommend getting good at following a regular pattern first.

My main mistake when i was starting out:

Whether the slant is S or Z, the cards should all face the same way. For some reason, I made the S-cards all face right and the Z-cards left. Simple, repetitive patterns will turn out fine but anything slightly more complex will be distorted, and you will be frustrated:

Your first few projects will likely be messy! Don't be too discouraged. Here's a couple of my firsts:

From a 9th century Irish manuscript, the phrase ‘massive hangover’ (Latheirt) written in the ancient Irish text Ogham. The monk must have been having a very rough day…..

we really, really should. 🚬

another piece for my noir series ;)

This artifact is often described as the Brno puppet or the Brno marionette, because it was discovered in a prehistoric grave that was accidentally unearthed by construction workers in Brno, Czechia (the Czech Republic) back in 1891. The figurine is more than 26,000 years old, and it was crafted from the tusk of a woolly mammoth.

Above: a close-up of the puppet's face

The holes and notches that were carved into the puppet's neck, shoulders, hips, and arm suggest that it was designed with articulated arms and legs. The limbs were likely fastened to the body with strings and small wooden pegs, allowing the figurine to be moved and posed; a rod was also used to connect the head and torso. Researchers estimate that the full-length puppet originally measured about 40cm (almost 16 inches) tall.

Above: the Brno marionette

As this author describes:

Incomplete and badly worn, the puppet survives as just three pieces of mammoth ivory. It has a body on which a belly button, a pelvic bump indicating maleness (not quite a penis) and one nipple are clearly visible, and a head with a distinct face drilled up into where it was originally attached, probably with a rod, to the torso. The left arm survives, as do articulation points for the legs, which, like the right arm, are missing. This is the earliest known puppet from anywhere in the world.

Above: this illustration shows how the figurine's head, arms, and torso may have been articulated

The figurine was buried with the body of a 50-year-old man. The grave also contained a single mammoth tusk, a dozen polished discs made of stone, bone, and ivory, several horse teeth, bones from a woolly rhinoceros, a reindeer antler that was extensively polished at each end, and more than 600 fossilized seashells that were carefully cut and pierced. The shells were found scattered around the man's head, suggesting that they may have been part of an elaborate headdress. An entire mammoth scapula (shoulder-blade) was also positioned on top of the man's body, and his remains were coated in a layer of red ochre.

Above: one of the stone discs from the Brno burial

There are several peculiarities in the burial site itself, including the fact that it appears to be an isolated grave that was positioned far away from any known settlements:

Unlike other known Pavlovian burials, it was not interred in or on the periphery of an occupation site but was apparently positioned alone on the floodplain of a river and away from the main concentration of Pavlovian settlement in Moravia.

The grave did not contain any obvious tools or weapons, which also sets it apart from the other prehistoric burials that have been found throughout the region. An examination of the man's skeleton further suggests that he suffered from chronic periostitis, which is a medical condition that produces inflammation in the membranes around the skeleton, often causing severe pain and mobility issues.

Above: another view of the puppet

The purpose and significance of the Brno puppet remains unclear. This artifact may have been created as a prop, a toy, a ceremonial object, grave goods, or artwork; all of that context has simply been lost. Based on the location of the burial site and the other grave goods that were discovered there, however, many experts believe that this may have been the grave of a shaman or religious specialist:

It can never be proven that the man interred in the Brno burial was a prehistoric shaman, but all the archaeological attributes of his grave strongly suggest that this was his status in life. Firstly, there is the odd, isolated location of his burial, away from any settlement. In some non-Western "traditional" societies today, shamans are still buried far from settlements, because their spirits are believed to be dangerous to the living.

Secondly, and most telling of all, there is the unusual and non-utilitarian nature of the grave goods: the elaborate headdress or necklace, the stone rings, the roundels made from a variety of materials, and the polished piece of reindeer antler. Finally, and perhaps speaking most strongly of shamanism, is the mammoth ivory marionette, which remains one of the most curious artifacts ever discovered from Upper Paleolithic Europe.

Those generalizations about shamanism are kind of problematic, especially when comparing modern and prehistoric cultures, but the archaeological context is still intriguing. Of course, all we can do is speculate — we will never really know the identity of the man who was buried at this site, and the purpose of the puppet will probably remain a mystery.

Sources & More Info:

World Archaeology: Ice Age Art

How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution: The Grave at Brno

Hunters of the Golden Age: The Brno II Upper Paleolithic Burial

The Moravian Museum of Brno: The Paleolithic and Mesolithic Periods of Czech Lands

Prehistoric Art: the Symbolic Journey of Humankind: The Brno II Burial

50 Great Discoveries from Prehistoric Europe: The Brno II Burial: A Shaman's Grave?

Mammoths: The Brno Marionette

The Paleolithic Origins of Human Burial: The First Homo sapiens in Europe