The "five questions" meme
(1) You just won a NEH grant that will cover expenses for a European junket. Where will you go, and what will you study?
All the bits and pieces I need to write books/papers: Spain for the Las Huelgas knitted pieces, Switzerland for the Sion purses and the Konstanz rosary, Germany for the Landshut rosary and whatever I can get my hands on backstage at the museums in Köln.... oh, and while I'm at it I'd go to the historical knitting conference this September in the Shetlands. And the knitting resources, including a couple of sets of papers, in Winchester. And if I could wangle a trip to England into somehow becoming accidentally immigrating by the way, I'd be happy ;)
(2) Nuns: Scary or Cool?
Definitely cool. I'm not a cradle Catholic so I never got terrorized by nun teachers nor mis-educated by credulous and sentimental ones. The modern nuns I know are all good people and have their heads more or less screwed on straight (though I know that's not true of all). And I envy the older Orders the chance to participate in a centuries-old way of life. The community of the Holy Cross at Poitiers is over a thousand years old: how cool is that?
(3) How would you complete the following sentence: A house is not a home without _____________ ?
My first instinctive answer would be rugs. The obligatory cute answer: a cat, of course.
(4) What's your favorite West Kingdom event?
For past events, I'd have to say the Perfectly Period Feast. Intense research, wonderfully put into practice, a real effort to create a medieval experience.
Next best would be a special tournament (like La Prova Dura) or Coronation happening somewhere out in the country (away from obtrusive modern stuff) in good weather (not too hot) and where I have good people to camp with. Lots more opportunity to do cool stuff than at a Crown Tournament because everything is focused on pageantry. I haven't been to one that has all these factors yet, alas ;)
(5) Madonna offers you a kilobuck for materials to make her a rosary. What does it look like?
Weasel-answer #1: I don't make rosaries for sale. OTOH, it's not for any reason of principle, so kilobucks would probably convince me to do it ;)
Weasel-answer #2: She wouldn't want the kind of rosary I make, because the way she wears them, she really needs something unbreakable, and beads strung on silk don't qualify. OTOH, that's a weasel answer ;)
Really -- assuming she wants something vaguely historical (because otherwise I'm not the one she'd ask), probably big red coral beads with gold-enameled gauds, which I would probably have to commission because I have only rarely seen anything remotely like the period ones. If she doesn't like the color of red coral, I don't know, because nothing else is as flashy and I'd expect that flashy is what she'd be looking for.
Would it bother me that she'd be wearing it for non-religious and possibly anti-religious reasons? Not really, rosaries are beautiful objects. What use other people put them to is their look-out.