Copy and paste
Mar. 9th, 2026 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseWe have a thing going on in the SCA at the moment called "100 Days A Scribe". It started in one of the transatlantic kingdoms (I can't remember which one - may have been Ealdormere, not sure), but it rapidly became worldwide, and it has its own dedicated Discord server. The idea is that you do some kind of scribal activity - whether actual calligraphy/illumination, research, making your own scribal materials, wordsmithing for a scroll, basically anything that falls under scribal - on each of 100 days throughout this year, which don't have to be consecutive (although I have managed consecutive so far, which is why I'm sitting at the top of the leaderboard along with a couple of other folks). We've got one person who's doing it solely at weekends, and that, obviously, is going to work. They'll get their 100 days in this year.
Now I am finding this extremely helpful, because, you see, I started copying a ridiculously ornate twelfth-century capital B. (I picked a B because I generally like to start scrolls off with the phrase "Be it known...", which covers all contingencies.) I mean, there's knotwork on the knotwork. It's so intricate I can't even look at the thing for more than about 10-15 minutes without boggling. I must have been crazy to pick that one; and, fairly naturally, I rapidly got very bored with it. But the scribal challenge is forcing me to do a few minutes on the wretched thing every day, and, as is the nature of these things, the end is now in sight. I've very nearly finished copying it.
I am doing this on 5 mm squared paper, the original intention being to trace it from there onto perg. That is clearly not going to happen. While you can easily trace a simple design through perg (I do believe the stuff contains actual magic, since you can still trace through it even when it's 230 gsm), there is no way you can trace something as intricate as this B. So plan B (appropriately) is that I stick it to the perg, hide the join with a very slightly raised gesso border, and paint it.
I have no gesso. I don't need a vast amount, so I'm not spending £20 on a big tub of the stuff. I'm going to make my own. I researched online yesterday (that was my scribal session for the day) and looked at a number of different recipes for it; and it turns out I can make a decent one that will do what I need it to do by dint of making a very small amount of starch paste (I have both potato starch and cornflour in the house, and it doesn't really matter which I use) and mixing that with a little titanium white acrylic paint, of which I have plenty. Indeed, I can make the paste, use that to stick the B to the perg, then add the paint to what is left to make the gesso. I think 2.5 ml of starch should be plenty. This is going to be one heck of a scroll blank.
And in other news, the party got collectively knighted yesterday (for disposing of a doppelganger which had infiltrated into the royal court and was therefore a serious threat), which meant they all had to choose heraldry and mottos. I had a vast amount of fun with Darg, as usual. Darg decided that his motto was going to be "I bash evil things", which is very typical of Darg - concrete and to the point. (It wouldn't occur to him to say he fought evil. Evil, as a concept, is too abstract for Darg. It's not something you can whack with a greatsword; you have to whack whoever is doing the evil.) The heralds pointed out that this was awkward to translate into "the old language" (naturally represented by Latin), and suggested using "smite" rather than "bash".
Darg didn't mind whether it was "bash", "smite", or indeed "wallop", but he did not want his motto translated into a language nobody could understand. He pointed out that it wasn't fair to expect evil creatures to go and learn Traditional Heraldic or whatever the language was called. He wanted them to be able to read the motto so they knew exactly what to expect. To this end, he was very happy for the heralds to put several translations under the motto, in languages such as Orcish, Goblin, Giant, Abyssal, and Infernal, to ensure that it could be read as far as possible.
There was only so much Darg-logic the heralds were capable of handling before their brains broke. They hastily agreed to leave the motto in Common (using "smite")...
Now I am finding this extremely helpful, because, you see, I started copying a ridiculously ornate twelfth-century capital B. (I picked a B because I generally like to start scrolls off with the phrase "Be it known...", which covers all contingencies.) I mean, there's knotwork on the knotwork. It's so intricate I can't even look at the thing for more than about 10-15 minutes without boggling. I must have been crazy to pick that one; and, fairly naturally, I rapidly got very bored with it. But the scribal challenge is forcing me to do a few minutes on the wretched thing every day, and, as is the nature of these things, the end is now in sight. I've very nearly finished copying it.
I am doing this on 5 mm squared paper, the original intention being to trace it from there onto perg. That is clearly not going to happen. While you can easily trace a simple design through perg (I do believe the stuff contains actual magic, since you can still trace through it even when it's 230 gsm), there is no way you can trace something as intricate as this B. So plan B (appropriately) is that I stick it to the perg, hide the join with a very slightly raised gesso border, and paint it.
I have no gesso. I don't need a vast amount, so I'm not spending £20 on a big tub of the stuff. I'm going to make my own. I researched online yesterday (that was my scribal session for the day) and looked at a number of different recipes for it; and it turns out I can make a decent one that will do what I need it to do by dint of making a very small amount of starch paste (I have both potato starch and cornflour in the house, and it doesn't really matter which I use) and mixing that with a little titanium white acrylic paint, of which I have plenty. Indeed, I can make the paste, use that to stick the B to the perg, then add the paint to what is left to make the gesso. I think 2.5 ml of starch should be plenty. This is going to be one heck of a scroll blank.
And in other news, the party got collectively knighted yesterday (for disposing of a doppelganger which had infiltrated into the royal court and was therefore a serious threat), which meant they all had to choose heraldry and mottos. I had a vast amount of fun with Darg, as usual. Darg decided that his motto was going to be "I bash evil things", which is very typical of Darg - concrete and to the point. (It wouldn't occur to him to say he fought evil. Evil, as a concept, is too abstract for Darg. It's not something you can whack with a greatsword; you have to whack whoever is doing the evil.) The heralds pointed out that this was awkward to translate into "the old language" (naturally represented by Latin), and suggested using "smite" rather than "bash".
Darg didn't mind whether it was "bash", "smite", or indeed "wallop", but he did not want his motto translated into a language nobody could understand. He pointed out that it wasn't fair to expect evil creatures to go and learn Traditional Heraldic or whatever the language was called. He wanted them to be able to read the motto so they knew exactly what to expect. To this end, he was very happy for the heralds to put several translations under the motto, in languages such as Orcish, Goblin, Giant, Abyssal, and Infernal, to ensure that it could be read as far as possible.
There was only so much Darg-logic the heralds were capable of handling before their brains broke. They hastily agreed to leave the motto in Common (using "smite")...
