Matty Bottles

Hey, it's my birthday! Thanks for all the birthday wishes, everyone!

Now that's interesting. I would have expected linen or hemp hammocks, but not cotton wool. I have a few old blankets that would probably make great hammocks.

Jose Gaspar Was a crooked old tar Never caught by the fuzz because he never was

The idea of the sachet was that if the idea did not survive the first five minutes (meaning I couldn't stand the smell), the satchet could be pitched in the fire without the clothes themselves having to be burned...

Mr. Cross is a delight, and his kit is killer, too. That waist coat of mine always pops open and obscenely reveals my shirt to the world. I won't use that configuration of buttons again.

Thank you for the grease ideas. I have considered a small sachet of food materials to hang around my neck - rancid salt pork and salt beef and fish - but I have resisted storing the more putrid ingredients, or those that have the potential to be putrid over time, with the clothes. I actually washed them a few months ago, because I decided to see if I could replicate the odors I want with clean clothes. So far it seems to be a success. I tried stagnant water once before - I actually went for swim in my shirt and slop house, lightly salted my clothes, and then wrapped them up tightly in a plastic bag. After a week I opened the bag, and my senses so grossly assaulted I left them in the garden to be rained clean. It turns out that the body of water I went swimming in was once the outlet for a gelatin factory, and there was an unusually high level of animal nutrients in the water and a corresponding spike in microorganisms. And could that sentence sound any snottier? Wet wood is a real idea, though. The wood chips themselves have very little smell of their own. I could just wet them and use them to line the base of the scent chamber.

Thanks for the recommendation - I'll check it out. BBC costumes are usually pretty good. I guess they care about history over there.

I'd like to echo a lot of these same sentiments - Greg, you got a lot of us started on the path to documentable accuracy. It's so good to hear from you again.

Extra Old is quite good.

I believe the Gunnister man had a knit drawstring purse. Just a bag, really. A small knitted bag.

So I went as Bane. This is me and Logan, just chilling: What did you guys dress as?

I have found a bunch of Mary Rose-style shoes, generally around $75, and you know what? I think they would work. The wreck of the Belle had at lease one open-sided shoe without the large tongues we associate with the period. If you were doing an early GAoP sailor's impression, I think they would be just fine.

Those are sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers out there, and some guy behind a desk in the midwest who thinks he knows it all thinks it's an insurance scam? Or doesn't think we should maintain a coast guard because $20 of his tax bill supports it? I swear, our civilization is growing more and more uncivilized.