Outlaws of Avalon

Camelot’s heroes & Sherwood’s most wanted walk into a Renaissance Faire. Will Scarlet finds the Interwebz.

[blumineck]

Archery x flower arranging

This was actually really fun!

Anyway, don’t forget I’m still raising money to test a bunch of things in a suit of armour:

The Bluminarmour Project

Blumineck is trying to fun a video series doing fun and serious historical and fantasy testing in fitted plate armour.

[plus-size-aesthetics]

[spore-carrier]

medieval troubadour gets isekaied into early 1970s england but ends up blending in perfectly with the local prog rock scene

[animentality]

[hussar-fucker-deactivated202512]

The Hungering Blade That Can Never Be Sheathed has been added to Righteous Knight Of Justice’s inventory

[that-house]

I’m sure that’s fine

[tiktoks-for-dead-pope]

[depsidase]

[fullslack-deactivated20260525]

Peruvian whistling vessels simulating animal calls (some of the oldest found date to c. 500–300 BCE)

[ymutate]

Rachel Clearfield (British Artist, born 1946)

"The Stream", 1996.

Oil on Canvas, 24 × 20 inches.

Private Collection.

[grundoonmgnx]

Lindsay Merrill (American b. 1987), Untitled, 2026

Oil on canvas, 41 ⅞ x 55 ⅞ in

[the-sacred-now]

https://lindsaymerrill.com/EXPO-Chicago-Enari-Gallery

[rohirric-hunter]

We laugh at how The Art of War is basically just, "An army can't fight if the soldiers aren't eating," but I'm reading this document about conservation of ancient yew trees and it legitimately says, "You should never fill the center of a hollow yew with concrete," so I think that probably making blatantly obvious statements is just the bane of being a specialist in anything

[v-spicata]

Ah yeah, that's actually not so bizarre when you know the reasons behind it. Still extremely wrong but understandable at least.

So yew trees are weird. They are extremely long lived with basically no known upper limit to their age. They do this by simply being extremely good at not dying like other trees do.

When a normal tree gets to an old age what usually happens is a fungus gets into their heartwood and takes hold. Their internal, dead wood rots away and they hollow out, lose structural support and collapse. Depending on the species this process can take decades or a good few centuries or so.

While yew trees do hollow out in this way they simply keep going afterwards. A ring shaped yew tree with most of its trunk missing is actually just middle aged and the most ancient yews get even weirder than that.

Wikipedia has this image of a Scottish yew where the start of this hollowing process can be seen. To be clear - for most tree species this would already have been fatal.

The thing is seeing a very old yew in this condition looks wrong to a tree surgeon, it's like the tree is constantly on the verge of death. So, if it's a well loved tree you try and do what you can to stop it from falling apart entirely.

A hundred years ago people tried all sorts of things like chaining up branches and also, yes, plugging the hollowed trunk with concrete. We know better nowadays.

Funnily enough there are even yews that survived this treatment and are still alive today.

This is a picture of the Tisbury yew in 1998 from the Ancient Yew Group, barely a minute ago from the tree's perspective.

Yews are fascinating plants with roots in European culture as ancient as the trees themselves. A few individual specimen trees are even estimated to be around five thousand years old - literally prehistoric in age.

Oh also they do weird things with sex as well sometimes. One of the oldest UK trees, the Fortingall yew appears to partially be turning from male to female on one side. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of it in the next few centuries of its life.

Sorry if this is all stuff you already know, I couldn't resist a chance to infodump about one of my favourite species.

[gacougnol]

HERBERT MATTER Femme à l'arc, 1932

[morhath]

I hate when king arthur has all these fussy little steps in the instructions and you're like "no way do these fussy little steps matter" but you try it and they do. they matter so much.

[bookaddict7342]

I thought you meant Camelot quests and I was like "that's fair, 'never pick a four leaf clover on the last Wednesday of the month' IS a fussy little step that shouldn't matter" but then I was like "wait isn't that also a flour company"

[morhath]

nooo I am not a beleaguered knight of the round table I am making elaborate focaccia 😭

[outlawsofavalon]

[blumineck]

Disclaimer: I don’t know for sure if this technique was done historically, but I’m willing to bet I’m not the first person to have ever tried it and found that it works. Do with that what you will!

More archery nonsense, as always, can be found on Patreon

[saprophilous]

Piece I drew a while ago for Roberto Molinari’s original work. Inks on paper then digitally colored.

[deathtofun]

I told a guy his total was 13.21 and he said “wish it were that year, could actually get some good music on the radio”

[regularlesbian]

breaking news from the AP, our boys on the front have just sacked constantinople. take that, heretics. coming up next are the soothing lute dirges of bing crosby