Thursday 10 November 2011

The Story of the Pig Skin

It's been a long time since my last post o.O... sorry i haven't written anything in a while - been busy with uni.  Anyways, you're probably wondering what I've been up to recently.

Let's see - a few weeks ago, I was in town looking to see if any butchers sold rabbit skins.  None of them did sadly, but one butcher said "we don't have rabbit skins, but we do have pig skins".  Ok, fair enough I thought and came back the next day to buy loads off him for a pound!  Feeling rather chuffed and impressed with myself, I took the raw skin to Gavin's house.  It was all fine, up until the point 4 days later when the smell got so bad that his mum ended up putting it in another 3rd bag and a plastic container!

So we ditched that skin and on our return from his house back to Lancaster, we bought some more since, after a few giggles with the head of our re-enactment society Dan, we decided to accept the challenge and make authentic raw hide with the skin.

First, we tried using powdered garden lime mixed with warm water which ... turned the piece of skin into bleached skin, putrid water and cement... rest assured, we quickly threw the entire experiment out... the bucket also.

The second plan that evening was to attempt to bake it dry.  After many pointless questions from my flatmates as to what we were doing (several often repeated questions), we started baking it on a low temperature pre-warning my flatmates that the only "downside" would be that the room would smell of bacon ... not really much of a downside if i'm honest, but we thought we'd tell them.  So Gavin and I sat in the kitchen waiting for it to dry out and they randomly wander in about an hour into the process demanding to know why i used one of their fancy knives.  Gavin and I had been really hygenic about the whole pig skin thing I'd like to point out here and now and had done all our washing up already.  I pointed to one of the knives draining on the side - "this one?" I asked.  "Yeah!" they moaned.  "It's not her knife and I can prove it" I said.  Realising how foolish they'd been they stated "I mean we're not accusing you or anything" (Which they just did)  Too late - I'd already pulled the knife apart - handle from blade and simply replied "It's not her knife".  Not wanting to accept defeat, they moaned and questioned us on how long it was going to take again complaining about how it made them "feel sick" - a phrase I've heard far too often about EVERYTHING with those two.  It makes no difference anymore.  I did the universal "wanna go for a walk after this?" to Gavin after they'd left the room who understood completly that this meant "I'm really angry, annoyed and frustrated right now - wanna go out so I can vent some anger with you in private?"  The two of us went on a VERY long walk!

Rest assured, recently, they went home for study week and on the weekend, Gavin and I finally managed to finish the raw hide properly without being rushed - it was finally a success!! ^_^*

No comments:

Post a Comment