No Alphabet Soup For You!! QRS

Just kidding. I’m not the alphabet soup Nazi. Here’s a big helping for those of you who have been starving for my soup these many months.

Q – Quetzalcoatl

This is a pre-Columbian deity. The name means “feathered serpent.” He was god of various aspects of life in the different cultures of the times. Wind, dawn, merchants, arts and crafts, all seemed to be under his control. I highly encourage you to look up the Wikipedia entry. Fascinating stuff. I happen to really like the name. It’s cool.

R – Reticule

This is a woman’s small drawstring handbag. Lots of them in Regency Romances. Of which I am a huge fan – don’t judge. The name comes from the Latin word “reticulum” which means netted or mesh, as the first ones were made from that material. They were later made of all sorts of beautiful materials and heavily adorned. They were pretty small, but a fashionable gal could pack quite a bit of essential stuff in there: hanky, visiting cards, sewing kit, breath mints, smelling salts, small notebook and pencil. Know what’s in MY purse? And how BIG it is? Maybe that will be my next blog. Too much crap in there to list now…

S – Sackbut

No jokes. This is a real instrument. Same era as the Krumhorn, which I talked about for the letter K. It was a Renaissance trombone with a much softer sound. I went on youtube and found some very pretty Baroque music featuring this instrument. I wonder what the movie “The Music Man” would have been like with medieval instruments….