Medieval limp bookbinding

My wedding was very DIY. We designed all the stationary and made the RSVPs ourselves. The RSVP paper was the type made to look like parchment, so I decided I wanted to use it for an illumination project (no point buying the good stuff as a beginner). I enjoy bestiaries and decided that would be a good project which would use all or most of the paper. (For those who don't know, a bestiary is a medieval catalogue of animals. They include ones we now know to be mythical and each entry typically has some sort of moral lesson.)
I'll go into the contents in a later post once I have some pages completed; for now I want to focus on the actual book itself. I decided to make one of my own and stumbled upon this [sadly dead] blog with lots of A&S tips on a variety subjects. The link will take you to her posts on bookbinding.
The style is called "limp binding" because the spine of the book isn't stiff. I've never done bookbinding before and this seemed like an easy place to start (plus we have some scrap leather lying around). I'm not going to go into how it's made or what materials you need because she does such a fantastic job of it.

The one thing she doesn't give is an idea of how far apart the holes need to be. I had found a written how-to which said half an inch from the edges was a good place for the end holes, so that's what I did. The next set in I did an inch away because that roughly seemed to be what she did for her book.

Horizontally, I ended up placing them way too far apart. I only have two signatures of four sheets each in my book and put them about half a centimeter apart. I could probably slip an entire third packet between them, so a quarter of a centimeter apart seems like a good place to start if you make your own.

The flap on mine looks completely different because I only trimmed off the part of my scrap that went beyond overlapping the front cover. It already had an appealing shape, so I decided to keep it.

It's no masterpiece, but it was a fun, worthwhile project. It was really quite easy and only took a single evening to make, so anyone doing an A&S 50 Challenge which could count this, I recommend it.

Heraldic, Scribal, and Dance Symposium 2012

This is a fun event which I attended last year. It's nothing but classes- lectures, discussions, participatory how-tos... It's fantastic for anyone interested in these three broad subjects from the novice to the expert. Even if you're not particularly interested in them, you can take useful classes like Awards and Sumptuary Laws of Calontir, wherein you learn which pointy hats are what rank and how to address them, who wears what color belt, and what each award is for. Last year I taught a participatory class on how to debke. This year I decided to do something related to my persona, so if you're in the neighborhood, why not attend:

 Tamga: The Pre-Heraldic Tradition of Eurasian Nomads

Eurasian nomads used abstract rune-like symbols called tamga in ways much like later standard European heraldry. Some of those funky abstract symbols in Polish heraldry may be later adaptations of them. Basic information about tamga and the particulars of the Sarmatian style will be presented with a Q&A following. 

I'm planning on about 30 minutes of lecture. I'll go over some basic information about tamgas, then switch tracks and discuss the Sarmatian style (like the blurb says). I'll have a Power Point with lots of pictures and provide a handout as well. I'm hoping I can intrigue the audience enough to provoke discussion about how tamga are like Western heraldry and how they differ, and if I'm lucky some discussion on the possible modified tamga in Polish heraldry.
The event takes place in Bellewode (Kirksville, MO) on March 31.

P.S. I haven't gotten my tamga submission together yet, though the incoming new rules seem like they might make it easier to register one. Gathering the materials and writing a convincing academic-sounding argument will take time that I, at the moment, do not have in excess.

*Debke can't without a doubt be traced back to the SCA's period, though there are snippets [that I can't re-find the citations for, grrrr] of information describing a dance that could be debke or proto-debke. It's a least closer to period than belly dance, which is extremely popular in the SCA...but that's a topic for another day.

Ask the Readers: New Year's Day

Post idea stolen from Juturna, who posts questions for writers to think about.
A fun thing to do to develop your persona is to think about what they may have been doing at a given time of year. Would your persona have done anything to celebrate the arrival of a new year? Winter is about to hit full force- what sort of preparations would they be making? What would they do to pass the time indoors?

I have no idea if Sarmatians had any sort of  celebration this time of year. Holidays falling around cross-quarter days, solstices, and equinoxes were definitely tied to agriculture (when to harvest, when to plant...). It's possible they could also be tied to calving and breeding, which would be the more prominent interest of the Sarmatians given their nomadic lifestyle, but I don't recall that being mentioned in my Archaeoastronomy class.
The steppes of Eurasia would have gotten pretty cold in winter. I imagine fur-lined kurtas, pants, and caps would be made and mended right about now if they weren't already, as well as any repairs to the covering of the wagons they lived in. I'm not sure what they would have done to pass the time.