Aranwen has picked up one more activity, too!  For the blog I will make a post about this to mention it here too.  Yes, I have started attending the singing night. Just 3 nights ago but already the parts of the tunes that I am singing are stuck in my head. Now I can't wait to get back to it Thursday. I know I will be doing better at it now that I have a feel for the music after the first night. I listened to the recording today so I could go over the music here at home. Repetition forms muscle memory, after all!  This I know from all the piano lessons I've had in my life........ and from Master Gareth teaching me about this being true for the recorder, as well! ;)

Oh!  One more exciting note to blog about while I'm here. I'm excited to say that at Gulf Wars this year, I will be teaching along with Magdalena! We will be covering History of Herbals, followed by putting together your own herbal/field guide. Mistress Marsali has offered to demonstrate how to soft bind your own field guide which will be especially helpful to wrap this up, so to speak!

If you've seen any of my Identification Project notes, then you may have an idea of where I am going with what I have to offer on that class. ;)  It is always fun to share what you have learned with others.

I guess I should have posted about this already, but I took my A&S project "Plantain Oil" to its second event - Midwinter A&S, last month. I had worked on some things to improve it since Magna Faire. I realized several more things I should work on, in preparation for its next event. There were some things which I had wanted to do yet didn't have time! But, I will have these things all done before Gulf Wars. :)

YIKES - Gulf Wars is almost here!!!!!

So after that, hopefully I will feel well prepared to do any further work to the entry and then take it on to... gulp... Kingdom A&S!  Well, that is the goal, anyway. :)

I hate that I missed out on the distillation class at Gulf Wars last year. I've been waiting until this year (almost here!!!!) to get the chance again. Well as luck would have it I found myself with something to distill so I had to grab a crash course courtesy of Google. Yes, I could have just frozen the rose petals and tried it later, but what fun would that be? It seemed like the most interesting thing to do with the petals so I went for it.

So I set up a kitchen-equipment method and tried it. But then I read that roses are hard to distill due to the heat damaging the delicate oil, plus you would need a TON of petals to actually extract an amount of any significance, I decided to go with a rose water instead. It's actually quite easy to do and I'm sure I'll be scooping up petals by the handfuls this summer from the front yard to continue making rosewater! The main difference is I added some water so that the petals would not be burned. The result is of course that there is water mixed in with the oil.


There isn't too terribly much of the liquid, as I just used the roses I had on hand.  And these were the last of the batch that Master Garreth gave out to all of the ladies on Valentine's day (wasn't that sweet!). 


As I was pouring out the liquid, I noticed a lovely reddish pink tint in the bottom of the pan and just knew I couldn't let that lump of petals go to the trash can. What else could I do with them?  Well, Google my friend once again helped me out. I could not really do a dye without some alum. But I sure could make Rose Beads! In fact, due to the heat and the liquid, the process is already underway quite nicely, from the sounds of it.

So yes, I took the lump and threw it in the blender. It smells like potpourri and it looks like a smoothie! Flower blend, anyone? No? Okay then, on with the next step. It has to hang out like this for 3 days so I'll have to revisit this topic later.