Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

If you read my blogpost about the big old flamberge Two–handed sword I recently bought you know I was very satisfied with it! It got me thinking about another sword. So I have been keeping an eye on swords and watching the prices. I found a super deal on another two hander called “The William Wallace Sword” and the price was only 38 dollars plus 12.50 shipping for a grand total of about 50 dollars. I couldn’t resist this sword. It is going to be a perfect match for my flamberge. I am going to mount it on the wall on the other side of the window. When it comes in I will post my thoughts and comments about it and take some pictures for you.

I have bought a lot of things from amazon.com and I have been tremendously happy with everything. It seemed like a risk to buy a sword through a website, because I couldn’t actually see it or heft it but so far so good! This next sword will probably be pretty nice too. If you want to look at it, here it is: William Wallace Sword…#1 Medieval Sword

The whole world is going through quite a real estate bubble. It’s painful and a big shakeout is happening. And this has affected the high end market too. Specifically, even castles are prone to market forces. I have been browsing around looking at all the various castles for sale (there are quite a few of them!) and here is what I consider to be a gem at a great price:

This is Stratford Castle in South Africa

The asking price is 365k and if you want the accoutrements inside like Persian rugs, suits of armor etc. that will cost you another 100k. And if you want the adjacent 9 hole golf course that will cost you another 135k.  Seems like a real bargain to me! I mean seriously, a beautiful medieval castle with the extras for a total of 600k? Nice Where did I put my checkbook? You can learn more and see more pics of it here 

Just for fun I opened up google earth to see if I could find this castle and though it doesn’t seem to be notated on either google earth or google maps I managed to find a satellite view of what I believe is the castle. It’s not far from Camelot Country Club! Fitting, but I don’t think king Arthur ever played golf!

Browsing around the countryside in Google Earth was quite an experience. This whole area of South Africa is quite beautiful and there are lots of pictures of various landmarks in the area. If you have google earth here are the coordinates:

 latitude:29°45′35.85″S
 longitude  30°45′59.57″E

Have fun but you better not buy it! I have my eyes on this castle. I am just waiting for the price to come down a little bit, err…. well a lot.

I tout a lot of basics when it comes to mead. It really is quite a simple thing to make and you need practically nothing but honey, water and yeast to get a decent batch of mead. The yeast does all the work and all you have to do is wait! But you don’t necessarily have to take my word for it. Here is an email I received from a web visitor who tried my fast, easy and cheap mead making recipe:

” Will,
After reading your page I was inspired to try making mead. It looked so simple. Besides the store bought mead that we can buy around Minneapolis doesn’t even taste like mead.

I just have to say that I used your suggested method of making mead and was shocked. I made sure I bought only things available in my local Cub super market and I created 3 one gallon batches, one with vanilla, one with mint and one with pomegranate juice. I substituted apple juice for some of the water also.
The result after 6 months was 3 batches of clear mead that tasted great. I did add a few tablespoons of honey into each bottle at the end to give it a little raw sweetness. The taste is very similar to the mead sold at a local fair for $5 a 6 ounce glass, where my mead only cost me about 50 cents for the same glass full.

My friends that are “Mead Masters” are amazed that I got the results I did without any boiling, chemicals, carboys, airlocks or expensive yeasts. In fact one friend was so impressed that he gave me a five gallon carboy and airlock so I can use the recipe on a larger scale. ” -Jim (Dragonmyst)

If you want to give mead a try without buying all kinds of equipment you might want to try my fast easy mead making method.

I have iTunes, well probably everybody does. It is quite remarkable but I am not a collector of music. Not much anyway so I rarely use my iTunes on my computer. But talking to someone they told me about all the free radio stations that are on iTunes including a wide variety of classical music. I was stunned! Nice!

I cranked open my iTunes and browsed through the free classical music stations and there are quite a few of them. Anyway, I found a station that I really love and listen to while I am working. It is the Baroque music channel. It’s called “All Baroque Musick”. They also have a couple of channels that play all classical, Spanish, and Flamenco Guitar - which I also love!

If you are an audiophile then you are no doubt familiar with iTunes and if you are a classical music buff you are no doubt familiar with baroque music. But if this is kind of new to you let me give you a bit of an overview.

Baroque Music is music from roughly the period from about 1600 to 1750 which puts it after the Renaissance and just before the more modern Classical Music Period. It has a lot of wonderful music that is light and happy and a lot of music that is played on the harpsichord. Some of the major composers of the Baroque era include Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Vivaldi.

If you are interested in listening to some music that has a real medieval and middle ages feel to it yet is quite beautiful I recommend you crank up your iTunes, go to radio stations and then select Classical - and click on All Baroque Musick. I love it and you might too.

If you don’t have iTunes you can get it for free here: Download iTunes8

I found a nice spot for the two hander -in this nice space between two windows. I mounted the sword, its sheath and because I have a kriss dagger with the same wavy blade I mounted that too, with its sheath.

It seems pretty nice but the wall paper is definitely a little bit too busy and the vertical stripes distract from the vertical sword and dagger. A  plain colored wall would have been better. 

Anyway, I wanted to talk about the little kriss dagger. I love the curves of the blade and the look, weight, and feel of it. And thinking about it I thought it would be fun to carve myself a mini dagger in the same style. So I did! It is a little less than half the size of the original dagger and it took me about six hours of work to carve and assemble the dagger then carve the sheath. My hands were sore when I was done but it came out pretty good! I think I might mount it on the wall right alongside the real kriss dagger.