Literature. Drinking. 【文飲】

I took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in late September because I thought there was an exhibit on Chinese laquer ware that was going to close soon. I had the year wrong, it's opening and closing in 2017.  Whoops. Instead, I took a stroll through the Chinese collection, on the lookout for drinking cups I could replicate, and took a ton of photos for my friends with research interests.  There was a lot of debate about what exactly this woman is holding happening in the SCA China facebook group , and I happened to be walking past  the statue at the time so I took some video and helped answer the question. I also took a look at the scrolls section since I have friends who do beautiful calligraphy and are always looking for ideas. I came across this beautiful scroll : Which is titled, politely, "Drinking and composing poetry."  Except it isn't.  Here's the title colophon Read right-to-left, these are foot-high characters that read LITERAT...

Pennsic was a whirlwind of activity, and despite me promising to update this blog "real soon I promise" life got in the way. I think this is a good time to take inventory of what I've figured out over the past year or so.  There are a lot of unanswered questions, but I've made a ton of progress nailing down this process. Yeast Cakes I've got a recipe for "exceptional" yeast cakes that worked once, last year. I tried to make it a month ago and it rotted 😑 But hey, it worked once. I also learned that the warning about "don't store this in a sealed container or it'll turn black and get gross" wasn't kidding, since my cakes did just that.  Mr. Jia wasn't joking, apparently. The recipe as I handed it out at Pennsic is posted at the bottom. Brewing I made one rice wine for Pennsic that was delightful.  Sweet, dark, saucy, it was great.  I didn't get to panel it, sadly.  I made one short-wine a while ago ...