About Stella

I joined the SCA at the behest of my husband, Camillo da Milano, around 2010, I think.

I live in the Kingdom of Atlantia, the Barony of Sacred Stone, and the Very Best Canton Ever - the legendary Middlegate.

The Old Stella

It was time to pick out a persona. Camillo was very interested in transitional Italian export armor. (I think those are the correct words.) I told him that I’ll find something interesting about where or whenever and asked him for a place and timeframe that he finds inspiring. We ended up with Lombardy in the 1400s. Hence my name. “Stella” is “star” in Latin. “da Lodi” means “from Lodi,” an ancient town outside of Milan that is easy to say and spell. Also, Lodi, California makes some excellent zinfandel. But I can no longer drink alcohol. Bummer. I’m keeping the name.

I was the Middlegate Chronicler for a time.

I was an Event Steward for the annual Middlegate event, which in 2015 was Ge of the Stone. The theme was Marco Polo in the Yuan (Mongol) court in China. Camillo cooked the feast! The food was awesome. Not sure that I’m up for Event Stewarding again, but I can say that I tried it.

I made award scrolls for the Baronial Scriptorium. And all of the pictures of the scrolls I made were lost to a prior website kerfuffle, boo!

I bought a horse bow and was working on my archery skills. I fondly remember archery practices at Christophe of Grey’s house.

I also have ambitious and talented friends and spent a ton of time being a minion.

Our life went sideways in mid-2015 and we went on hiatus from the SCA.

The New But Older Stella

In late 2025, Camillo announced that he was going to the local Art Night. The first thing he learned is that Middlegate as a canton no longer existed!

He had so much fun that he convinced me to go to the next Art Night. And now we’re back!

But … in the last 10 years, we realized that we’re really interested in “early period” stuff. Our personae are from Lombardy, so I looked into what they were doing before the Renaissance. The Lombards once had a kingdom (568-774). They once ruled most of Italy. That was during what I’ve heard called The Age of Migrations. In a nutshell: Rome had always been a little iffy on its northern border. After Rome was sacked in the 400s, the border became quite porous. Things on the steppe were getting wild, driving people west. Other people, like the Lombards, were driven south by goings-on in the general Baltic Sea area. Sounds like an, um, exciting, time to be alive because lots of people moved around at the point of a sword or wielding one.

So now, in our “spare time,” Camillo and I are refreshing our stash of garb so that we can look like Lombards. So far we think that their clothing is pretty similar to what the Norse were wearing at the time, with some Byzantine fashion thrown in. Stay tuned - we’re still researching it. I’m also now very interested in what else was going on in Late Antiquity, after Rome fell and before the familiar medieval territories arose.

I bought a horse. His name is Mikko. He has been informed that he will be modeling fancy historical horse outfits in the future.

I started weaving. (There’s a whole section of this web site about that.)

And Middlegate is back as a canton, hooray!

So … Hi, I’m Stella da Lodi, a Lombard from the 600s (or 1450s).

Thanks for reading this far! If you want to talk about medieval (or ancient or prehistoric even) stuff, come find me! I am a shy introvert by default, but I love a good historical discussion. I will also happily natter on about horses and plants.