Greetings fair readers,

I bring to you today further good tidings upon the virtues of Plantain. I must say that again I have practiced my own medicine. Yesterday while out picking more of these plentiful beneficial "weeds" from the side lawn, I managed to embed a piece of something right directly into my cuticle. Ouch! I couldn't pick it out right away so it got sore. I did remove it but it continued to get sore. So, this would lead me to believe that either the impailer had some type of irritant in it, or that fragments not visible to me are still lodged into the the delicate skin here, at either rate causing the skin to need to push this foreign matter out.

What helps speed this?  Drawing salve. And it's so easy to make!
I put just the direct plantain oil on my finger before bed under a band-aid, since I haven't prepared an ointment from it yet, and the soreness was SIGNIFICANTLY better by morning. :)
This presents the perfect opportunity to share a few notes about the next phase my experiments will be heading in, now that I have completed some balms.

"Once upon a time, a homemade drawing salve formed the cornerstone of a family's first aid chest. Everyone kept drawing salve for use on humans and animals alike. Homemade drawing salve consists of various healing herbs mixed into a beeswax and oil base." --Homemade Drawing Salve

"The purpose of a drawing salve is to rid impurities or small foreign bodies from the skin. Drawing salves are often used to remove splinters, bee stings and the toxins in boils, for example" --eHow

Prepare an infusion of plantain leaves and lavender flowers by placing the clean, dry herbs in a glass jar and filling it with oil. Plantain leaf is the active ingredient in the drawing salve, and lavender is an herbal antiseptic.

The base of your drawing salve can be made from one of two ingredients according to your preference: melted beeswax or melted vegetable shortening. Add 1/2 teaspoon of benzoin to each pint of salve after it has melted. This will act as a natural preservative.

You will blend your oil and base in a separate container. Mix them together well. You'll want the concentration to be about half oil and half wax or shortening. This will allow the salve to set when it cools without being so hard that it is difficult to apply to the skin.

While the salve is still warm and easy to mix you may wish to add a few drops of other beneficial essential oils. After all, this is one of the advantages of preparing your own homemade drawing salve. Add only two to three drops of each oil and mix them well.

After you have put the salve into its final storage container, it will stay fresh for weeks or months. Pay attention to the smell for indications that it has turned rancid. Apply it to the skin as needed by smearing it on the affected area and covering it with a bandage. The salve should work quickly to draw forth the infection, boil or splinter.

In order to submit my Magna Faire project, after talking with Alianore about the project and deciding where I was heading with this, I made the choice to do things in the right order -- not by making something then documenting it, which as Magdalena pointed out can be difficult to get documented properly. I used the documentation to determine what I needed to do with this project in order to really create this as it would have been in Medieval Period, which is really the whole point!  So, I am re-working the oil.

First I picked a nice batch of ribwort from the yard. Next I washed and dried it.

Then I tore it by hand and crushed it to bruise the leaves with a mortar and pestle.
 Then I placed the bruised leaves into a glass jar, NOT pressing them down but just to fill the jar.
(How nice that I picked exactly enough!)
 The last step at this phase is to pour olive oil into the jar, just to cover the leaves. Shake or tap to get the air bubbles out so that all leaves are in all contact with oil. 
 Cap the jar and wait a couple of weeks. You will know it's ready when it smells sort of like pepperoni!

At that point you just strain the oil through a cloth into another vessle, and it's ready for whatever you plan on doing with it next.  And then you will have an herbal infused oilve oil!

The class by William Ismead at Fall Coronation 2011 taught me a simple process to make lip balms. I will be sharing his notes along with my experiment experience with the Barony in a class on Dec 13, so I have practiced said experiment in order to determine the right amount of content per container.

I created some balms last night and here's how it went!

First, you melt the beeswax.

 Next, you pour in the oil and let the mixture warm up, stirring.
 Add in the desired amount of essential oil for scent + flavoring.
*The best oils to use are citrus (lemon, lime, orange, tangerine, grapefruit), peppermint, and we'll see how Clove works out. Not too much or it will numb the lips! ;D

Now, you pour the mixture into the containers. Don't dilly dally around or it will start to cool off and harden in your container! Just re-heat if this occurs.

And that's it! The balms are all done.

I've posted before about the amazing virtues of Aloe Vera. It's the only face cream you ever need unless you like blemishes or skin problems. Just put it on at night, EVERY night, and you'll thank me in a month. Yes, you can use the green or clear "goo" you get at the pharmacy for sunburn for this.


But that's not the reason I'm posting today. I want to talk about the amazing healing properties of fresh aloe vera. I've been practicing my own medicine. I burned my thumb pretty bad on a microwaved frozen lasagna dinner fresh outta the microwave last night. Yeah, I knew better, but I forgot and did it anyway.

Now, normally a burn like this will be blistering up pretty good in the near future. But I decided to act fast. I grabbed an ice cube from the freezer and held it on as long as I could stand it. But I was baking so halfway through the cube was about it. I figured this should help, since applied immediately. Halfway through my baking, my thumb began to feel like it was on fire. A prickly, burning, tingling fire.  Oh no, I thought to myself! That's it, this one's going to be fun tomorrow. I wanted to do something right away for the pain so I went to the bathroom and grabbed the Solarcaine which did help....for about 2 minutes. Keep in mind this is just a pain killer, not an actual treatment.

So what do you treat burns with? Aloe Vera. Right. So I grabbed a chunk off a leaf from one of my plants in the kitchen and squeezed it on, and wrapped a mongo bandaid around it to keep the stuff on there. At this point I just wanted to start healing treatment and let it burn and blister as it would, as I expected already by then. I left the bandage on until bed time when I decided a fresh round would be in order. Much to my surprise, it was already healed....! Just several hours ago it was a red stinging mess.  And now, rubbing it, it barely felt sore along one side, and you certainly couldn't tell it had been burned. Granted, it was only of the first degree, but still.
*They say you should apply it several times a day, and should always cool the wound off before applying it.
*They also say you should not use ice, but cold tap water.

So you tell me, does aloe vera work, or does it work!

• Step 1, come up with some ideas. Look through the Herald's book for some things you might like. You can also look around online at the website.  Names here, armory for devices here.
  I "scanned them into computer" by taking some little phone pics that I put in the computer to work with.
• Have no idea where to start? Chat with your group's Herald first and foremost! They're there to help you with this, after all.
• Step 2, flip through the Heraldic primer to see how your ideas might work up. Think on how to put them together in a way that you find visually appealing.
  I went through several variations as I worked out what I might want.
• Step 3, draw it on paper. See how it looks.
  Or do it digitally in the computer if you can and want; I enjoyed doing mine that way.
• Step 4, Now talk to your local herald or other friends who are interested and able to see what might be right or wrong needing adjusting. Names and Devices must not break certain rules.
  Friends who have gone through the process before, especially those who have previously or are interested in the future in holding the Herald's position are good go-to folks for this in addition of course to your group's own current Herald, never instead of. ;) But it can help your Herald out if you have some ideas thought up and worked out a bit, once you get ready to start moving forward in a submission process.
• You will need to have the right proof for names, and the right emblazon or wording written out for your device.
• Search your device and name online, once you have the wording down, to be sure there are no conflicts.
• When you are ready, fill out the submission papers! Your group's Herald will help you with this. If you want you can print off the submission forms from online.

I learned to play Tarot from Darcy on one of our Medieval game nights. I enjoyed it and wanted a set of my own! I liked how Darcy took a deck and scanned/printed them off to use for class and it helped me think of a way to get my hands on a set for cheap. I just took a book about tarot cards that explains them and portrays one card per sheet of paper, and was in color, and then I cut them out of the book!
Voila!  Well, not quite. I didn't want writing from the book on the back of the cards, plus I wanted them to be stronger like a real deck would be. And what deck doesn't have something on the back so you can tell up from down, and just make them look cooler?

So I made use of the nifty tree paper stamper which I had found and also bought when Adelaide had pointed out the awesome raven one to me at Jo-Ann's.

Today I have taken the plantain herbs I picked, cleaned, and placed into oil, out of their oil. Now the oil is infused with all the wonderful properties of the plant. The benefit of this is not only providing a means through which to use the plant other than edible, but also to preserve it in a way that provides year-round useage.

In Medieval days, we would know through our instincts and basic knowledge of observation that soon now the Winter will be upon us. The days are still mild and fair but this will not last for long. While during the Spring and the Summer and even on into the Fall, fresh plants may be picked and prepared anytime they are needed, this is just not so during the Winter. Some plants are also best used at certain seasonal intervals so preservation is crucial for extending the usage of these, as well.

I should know how messy this will be before beginning; I open the two pint jars and they smell strong, somewhat like pepperoni. So I know it's going as it should, haha.  I pour the jars over into a muslin cloth over a container to catch the oil and gently squeeze all the oil through from the plants. Now I can place this into a nice sealed jar to use!