Happy Black Friday!
I did not go shopping today. I did have to get up kind of early though and if my purpose for getting up early was to go shopping then I would have given up and gone back to bed. Because I slipped getting into the shower and have a small bruise on the inside of my thigh. I bumped my elbow getting into the car and my hubby threw my lemonade bottle in the recycle bin so there were no extra bottles to take along. I was kind of grumpy on the two plus hour car ride because we were ten minutes late getting out the door and this was one day I really didn’t want to be late.
But we got where we were going and parked the car and filled the meter and walked through the gate and we had two minutes to spare. We met Freida and were greeted by Wim and Hanna and taken into sub basement number two. But it was a long ride so we went back up to use the bathrooms before officially starting.
So first we did introductions. Hi. I’m Jonalee and I first got interested like back in 2003 when I requested detailed photos and Wim sent them to me. My goal is to create a shrine of my own.
Hanna is doing her thesis on the flowers and the part making them plays in prayer. She has read my entire website and considers me the go-to person! She then looked up all the books on my bibliography and will send me ones I don’t have. (My bibliography includes every single book and article on the flowers even if I have never seen it. This can be helpful to others doing research on the same topic.)
Freida is an incredibly crafty person who has made flowers in many forms and went to a class in Austria with a friend of hers from Minneapolis. She has also been a textiles curator and had to rush home and finish her 18th century ball gown for the period ball tomorrow night.
So we were all on the same page and our interests in the flowers were pretty much all from the perspective of making them, who made them, where, when, why, and documenting the existing remains of flowers.
They have three of the shrines in various stages of disassembly. We were both allowed to take pictures for personal use only (as the waiver did not show up in time we almost weren’t even allowed to take pictures). They have all been restored in the past I think. But I clicked away, my husband clicked away. Mom was taking pictures of people taking pictures. It was fun. We chatted the whole time, we exchanged information. I will probably end up going to Hanna’s graduation at the rate we were going. She did her senior thesis on the Fleur which is like so up my alley. And I have to send some pictures of Herentels to Freida because she wasn’t clear on what I meant when I said those flowers were distinctly different from the rest of the ones I’ve seen.
And I’ve seen them all now except St. Lenaards and we plan to do those tomorrow.
We also stopped at Martinus on the way back because it was only 16 minutes away and see the skull reliquary. Dated from 1601 to 1700 the flowers are all glass and metal. Some fabric around the skulls themselves but narry a silk flower I sight. I will have to find out why because I’ve seen other late flowers and they are an explosion of color and very realistic looking.
I am told there are no flowers in Cologne but we may go there anyway to see the Ursula shrine.
My work here is nearly complete. I did not plan for this to happen today and it really was thrown together at the last minute because I was so very close and my timing was incredible to boot. I am one very lucky little monster. Probably because today is the 28th and all the best big stuff happens on the 28th.
And there it is.
o get it to a nice warm temperature, strain it through cloth one last time and then give it a hot water bath to seal it up nice and proper. And when the juice is bottled it is the most lovely clear ruby color! Pure cherry juice is, well, almost the exact same color of fresh blood. And as far as the shrines go I think the size of a cherry pit, as it correlates to a grape in relation to the flowers and other items around it, is just about perfect.
