A busy week and some nearly finished medieval costume!

A very busy week this week – the reason that I am posting so late is that I have been frantically trying to finish Stefon’s new outfit for the coming show at  Tewkesbury this weekend. As you may remember I made him a black velvet bag for Christmas and promised him an outfit to go with it. It is nearly done – have just about finished the hat tonight , finished most of the gown last night just need to sew on buttons and fur in the next couple of days and it will be done.

I have made him a houpplande style gown and a chaperon hat. There are many different versions of these outfits which are 15th century costumes but these pics gives you a rough idea of the style.

Houppelande man's gown

Chaperon hat

You will see pics of the real thing on Stefon in a couple of weeks – fingers crossed that I finish everything on time!

The week started very well with my birthday and went out for a lovely meal at one of my favourite restaurants and then came back and sat outside in the garden round the fire pit which was lovely. The kids had bought me a very nice cake in the shape of a champagne bottle.

Stefon and I out for birthday meal .....

 

With the lovely kids!

My lovely cake!

Most of my presents I will get at  Tewkesbury as I have asked for some more medieval stuff from the market and Ellie has organised me a day out which we will be doing later in the summer but I did get a very useful wind up torch which also doubles as a charger for my mobile phone – very useful for someone who spends as much time in a field as I do!

This past weekend we went to my good friend Maggie’s for a bbq to celebrate my birthday and her birthday which was recently. We had a fab evening – apologies cos the pics are a bit dark – in true British tradition it was a bit of a rainy do!

Out on Maggie's patio

Ellie looking very glam at the BBQ

Maggie has recently had an extension to her house to give her an extra bedroom,  garden room / lounge and an upstairs craft room/ studio . It is a lovely space and I am very envious. Here is the view from the room.

View from Maggie's room

 

She is due to start a part time degree in Creative Practice in Sept and now has a lovely space in which to be creative!

Downstairs in the garden room she has put the most wonderful light – it was very interesting to see the reaction of the women at the party who all commented on how beautiful it was and what wonderful shadows it threw.

Maggie’s husband Peter doesn’t really like the light as it is not very ‘functional’ and does not give off much direct light for tasks. He did get agreement on this – from a couple of the men!

Maggie's light

 

Here is the light – what do you think?

I am very much looking forward to this weekend as it is mine and Stefon’s first anniversary. Not only do we have a lovely event to go to – Tewkesbury is the biggest and best event of the year- but also we get to celebrate a fab year together – he is as always wonderful, gorgeous, supportive, caring  and a joy to be with!

This will be my last post for a couple of weeks – after Tewkesbury we are off to stay with my sister then to another medieval event in Berkeley in Gloucestershire then we fly off to sunny Spain to see Granny for a week. Will have lots of pics to post when I get back!

More Tatton pics – this time with stitching!

Stefon took far more pics that I did did at Tatton including ones of our visit to the Old Hall with lots of lovely textiles and as I have just come back from his house with a disc of these I thought I would share some more with you. There are also some more pics of the armour and battle.

Stitching first! The Old Hall was occupied continuously from the 15th Century so the display reflect this as various rooms are decorated in period style. Upstairs all the earlier rooms have been restored and this room is typical of the Jacobean period complete with reproduction crewel work bed curtains.

Crewel bed hangings

 

Detail of the hangings

 

This is a typical tree of life design and is beautifully worked. The volunteer looking after the room didn’t know anything about crewel work so I was telling him about various aspects of the design – hopefully he found it useful!

Downstairs there were Victorian rooms with some beautiful whitework laid out on one of the beds.

Whitework garments and pillow covers

 

I find it incredible that such fine work was done on everyday garments – one of the items on display was a child’s pinafore which had obviously been well used judging by the stains on it!

Whitework detail on the nightgown

 

We also watched the firearms and cannon display by The Company of Ordnance, there are usually these weapons on the battlefield but we are the other side of the field from them for safety reasons during the battle so it is nice to see them close up.

This is Bucket lighting the cannon – pity we don’t have sound cos it’s very loud! Bucket is a very talented embroiderer as well as making things go bang – you can just see the blue bag hanging from his belt with a heraldic horse on it.

Bucket making the cannon go BOOM!

Esme, one the kids, was taking pics on the Sun so we got some really good photos. Here is one of the guys all ready for battle.

All ready for battle

Ellie and I on the battlefield

 

Keith after the battle

 I think this is a great shot – very atmospheric!

One of the battle flags

There are very few pics of me on the battlefield where you can see my face – usually it is a rear view shot but here I am with Stefon, Nick and Paul at the end of the battle.

The battlefield - I am at the rear in my blue dress

And finally a pic that sums up what I love about reenactment – sitting round the camp fire late at night just mellowing!

The campfire

 Hope you all have a good week!

Art Show

Yesterday we went to Ellie’s college for the Fashion Show and Art, Textiles and Graphics Shows. Ellie has just finished her A levels – she did Art, Medieval History and Classics so now eagerly awaits her results in August!

The standard of work was fantastic – much of it at the same standard as the degree shows I have been to at the University here – there are some very talented kids out there!

These pics are of two of Ellie’s final pieces – they do not photograph that well being 3D pieces but hopefully you can get a flavour of what she has done.

Seven Deadly Sins

This is a collage piece with images representing the seven deadly sins – there are matchboxes on the piece for each sin with small artifacts in that represent lust, gluttony, envy etc.

The history of film

This piece has lots of tiny slides that she has decorated and themed to represent important  moments in film history. They are difficult to see but she has lots of lovely detail – my favourite is the ‘Saving Private Ryan’ one which has a surround made of film wrapped with barbed wire.

The following are some pics of other students’ work from Textiles and Graphics. Well done to all of you and every success for your future careers!

3D Textile development piece

Fabulous machine stitching on an evening dress

Corsets were very popular - this is a really pretty one

A development piece with machine stitching and applique

A beautiful development piece with a variety of textures

Development work on soft toys

Hugo the mouse

The last two pics are work from Ellie’s incredibly talented friend Sarah who quite rightly was awarded best in show for her work making toys for seriously and terminally ill children. Not only did she make the toys but extra clothes for them and little books with illustrated stories about them – wonderful stuff. She is going on to University to do a degree in illustration and I am sure she will be very successful. Her work reminded me very much of one of my favourite blogs,  Little Cotton Rabbits.

Am having a quiet weekend after a very busy week which will be nice – have done no stitching this week due to late nights for various reasons so am looking forward to getting back to normal next week!

Tatton Hall and a birthday

We always really look forward to June as we have two family birthdays – Jake’s first followed by one of our favourite events then my birthday at the end of June.

Jake was fifteen last week – luckily the scanner is not connected to this PC since I had my switch round so he is spared the embarrassment of a baby photo ( he was very cute!) but here he is looking very grown up with some of his pressies.

My very lovely (and very tall!) son

We went to Tatton Hall near Manchester this last weekend – this is a really good venue for an event,  there is a very nice 15th C Old Hall and we camp near a copse of trees in the deer park with beautiful views of the parkland. It is also the nearest event we do which is a bonus!

It was a little bit wet on Sat and for our pack up – tent hanging in the garage drying again – but not too bad and it stayed fine for the battle both days. Here are the boys in our camp all ready for battle on the Sat.

The boys from OFK and Team Falchion ready for battle

This is a pic of me in my peasant’s outfit with Stefon.

Me and Stefon ready for battle

These are our friends Stan, Denise and Carl from Companions of the Crow looking very scary.

The Crows

Lady Bardolph was again looking very lovely in a cream and blue outfit.

Lord and Lady Bardolph

Me and the kids stayed over till Monday and had a nice evening on Sun relaxing in the camp, playing cards and watching the sun go down…

Kids mellowing in the tent

Another brill weekend!

A lovely weekend

This weekend we were camping again but here in Yorkshire. Some friends, Jane and Patch, who live locally have a beautiful barn conversion which used to be an old mill complete with large mill pond – see pic below.

The mill pond

They host a little gathering every year where we all go and camp, bbq, have a bit of a sing song round the campfire etc. in the field attached to their house. This year we were entertained as well by friends who have band called Stringfellows.

Stringfellows band

Ellie and Jake chilling out to the band

 We had a really lovely time and it was nice to catch up with a  few people I have not seen recently.

Our little weekend away tent

Last year I downsized a bit and bought a smaller tent that I could take more easily on the train – the pic above shows us in it this weekend. It is a Vango 500 and is a great tent for a couple of nights away with plenty of space for sleeping, kit storage and cooking if the weather is not good. It has its first outing in on a clifftop in Cornwall last year when we did the Tintagel event and survived a very windy pitching and a few heavy rainstorms which is a very good test of any tent.

We still have the very large tunnel tent (nicknamed the aircraft hangar) which I will use again when I get a car, two small two man tents (one of which is Ellie’s) and a medieval tent. I love tents – could quite happily own loads and loads and love spending time when camping going round and looking at other people’s tents!

The weather was fab – apart from a short but heavy shower about 10pm Sat night there was sunshine all round. It has been really hot today as well so after we got home and cleaned, sorted and re-packed the tent ready for the event next weekend (hurrah more camping!!!) I did a bit of a garden tidy up.

I have also finally put together the new bike I bought myself a while ago – it was a winter sale bargain but it has been in its box waiting to be fettled. Being a well trained girlie I was able to put it together with a bit of help from Ellie keeping it steady as I sorted the brake calipers. Just need to get a new bike pump and I can be off!

My new pink bike!

Had another bbq for tea tonight – must be the 7th one so far which is a bit of a record for this time of year – weather has just been so nice we need to make the most of it and I love cooking outdoors.

Have had a busy week costume making – have completed a new peasant dress for Ellie and three pairs of brais (trousers) for Jake and two of the boys in the group. Am off tomorrow to a goldwork day workshop at my Embroiderers’ Guild so am really looking forward to that. Will post some pics of what I do later.

Saturday was my very last day of teaching for this year and Ellie has now finished all her A level exams so we are looking forward to a very mellow summer of camping, stitching and generally chilling out. Life is very good!!!

Sunny weather!

It has cooled down a bit in the last few days sadly but we have been having some really fab weather here recently! Apologies for the lack of posts but what with work and general busyness have not had time to do much. However today was the last teaching session of the year so apart from the huge piles of marking I have to do things will be a little quieter from now till Sept!

We had a wonderful show at Ashby de La Zouche Castle the last May Bank Holiday. Traditionally this is a very wet event which we packed lots of warm gear for but it was so sunny that lots of us got burnt on the Sunday (it was actually a little bit warm for being in armour but can’t complain!). A brill weekend and I have some pics to share with you of the event.

Our little medieval tent in the evening sunshine

Jake relaxing in the evening

Round the fire with our lovely friend Keith

Our headress display

I finally managed to give the girls their scissor keeps which they were all very pleased with – this is a pic of them displaying their gifts!

The scissor keeps with their owners

Over the years I have made them various blackwork and needlepoint gifts for them and Tracy and Bev had some of theirs with them so I got a chance to take some pics as pre-blogging I didn’t keep a record of my stitching.

Decorated initial in needlepoint as a pin box made for Tracy in one of her earlier medieval roles

Bev's pin box - a decorated M

 

Bev also had the blackwork pin box I had made for her as the start of the set – last year I made needlebooks – of which there are pictures in the Finishes 2007 link above if you are interested. Bev’s motif is an oak leaf so I have used this or acorns in all her gifts.

Bev's blackwork pin box

We have had wonderful weather here at home – last weekend was gorgeous which was lucky as I have had miles of hedges to cut and lawn and general garden stuff to do. We had 3 barbecues in four days which was lovely and ate outside for all our other meals as well – it was fab!

Stefon in charge of the barbie!

Jake waiting for his sausages to be cooked

Ellie revising in the sun

There now follows a whole string of event and holiday weekends, only got a couple where we are not busy between now and September so lets hope for more lovely weather! Are off camping at a friends’ place this weekend so more prawns on the barbie and beers in the cooler – it is a very nice life indeed!!!

Project Nepal Update

A couple of weeks ago I went to the official dedication of the new building that we built at the scout campsite as part of the Project Nepal experience. It was really lovely to see everyone again and I will post some further pics of the building on my Project Nepal web page. The main structure is finished but it still needs work on the interior and landscaping.

This is a pic of me next to the stone in the building that I carved my initials on. You can’t see them but they are there honest!

 

My bit of the wall!

We had a lovely evening with a fab meal and talk by Doug Scott, the mountaineer who set up Community Action Nepal the charity we worked with , who showed us some of his pics of mountains. We also saw the videos that were made of both the build in the UK – over the 12 months of the project- and the build in Nepal – over the 2 weeks we were in the village. That was just brilliant to see and brought back so many memories. It was a very emotional moment. I am very glad that I was able to go given all that happened last summer and it was such an amazing experience. It was so good in so many ways – re-affirming my faith in myself and my restored health, the fact that I managed all the very hard physical work given the state of my mobility a few years ago, and just brilliant fun as well.

There is another project planned which will start later this year – I would love to be involved in some way but don’t know if I would be able to go to Nepal with them again. Lots of things are still very up in the air with job and future plans so can’t really make any definite arrangements for Oct 2010 at this point but hopefully I can help with the project anyway.

As well as the success of the project in terms of the building we did there were some lovely outcomes that no-one expected. We were saying at the evening that there definitely must have been something in the water out there in Nepal as three romances came out of the project  , two between project participants and one between one of the project members and one of the Nepalese team who looked after us out there. Kim went back to Nepal in Feb and married Bijou and she is now waiting for his visa to be sorted so he can come to the UK.

There were also two weddings, one just before and one soon after (and that couple now have a baby on the way!) and two engagements – mine and Stefon’s and Andrew (my stone team partner) and Susan.

I think that the reason why all of this happened is that when you are halfway round the world away from all the people you love you realise what is important in your life and what you want to hang on to. It is lovely that there was so much happiness from the project.

Things have been busy at work but my full time students have finished – they bought me some lovely presents which was very kind of them.

They know me very well and bought me some very nice wine and the most enormous glasses to drink it from.

The box with the very large glasses!

The very lovely red wine

We are away this weekend at Ashby de La Zouche Castle with the re-enactment group – I am nearly done with the packing for this and we will be there till Monday evening. Hopefully we will have some good weather as it has rained really badly most of the week here!

Hope you all have a fun Bank Holiday!

Cosmeston part 3 – the one with armour!

The battles at this event took place on Sunday and Monday and were fairly small by event standards as this is not a large venue – only probably about 100 people on the battlefield including some very fine archers who did a great job of firing at the English. We were on the Welsh side and Ellie and I water carried on the Sunday (she did that alone on Monday while I packed up the tent so that we could get the early train home!).

Before the battle - lining up with the flags

This picture shows the Welsh troops just before the battle began – our lot are at the back of that somewhere!

Lots of pointy sticks!

Since it was not a recreation of a particular battle but a scripted event there were lots of different weapons – these are pikes on the left with a bardiche (large silver blade) on the right of the picture with some swords in the background.

Stefon fighting

And here is Stefon fighting …..

Stefon winning

and Stefon’s opponent on the ground! (There he will be very happy that his victories have been made public!)

So lots of shiny armour everywhere and as it was one of the very first events of the season there were lots of people with very new kit. This man Gaius ,of the Medieval Combat Society , was camped opposite us and he kindly let me take some pics of his very new and very shiny armour!

Look at the detail on that!

 These are his shiny new arms …..

More shiny things!

and shiny new legs!

It was great to catch up with all our friends, have a drink or two and in Stefon’s case hit them over the head with his sword. Here he is with Richard who he had some good fights with on Sunday.

Stefon and Richard after the battle on Sunday

Richard was there with his partner, my good friend Kat who is the very talented costume and headdress maker that I have mentioned in earlier posts. They were out for the day with Isabella their daughter who has just turned 1 years old. Look at this for an adorable re-enactment family!

Edward and Lady Joan aka Kat and Richard

Cosmeston – Part 2

The main events of the weekend took place on  Sunday and Monday  with a mix of fight displays, archery, manorial court and a battle each day – Welsh against English of course!

We were camped in an ordinary tent in the field out of the way of the public but there was a large display of tents in the Living History section where the rest of Team Falchion were.

This pic shows us in camp ready to have lunch on Sunday.

The Falchion camp

I am in the middle of this pic in a blue dress and pale blue coif (headgear) and my daughter Ellie and son Jake are next to me in dark cloaks.

I did spend part of the day dressed as a lady but it was a bit cold! Here I am in my gold dress.

Lady Elizabeth de Strelley

We took a wander round the Living History camp and came across the Knights of Longshanks who had a lovely display of weaving of all different forms. One of the group – Alice Fitton – was creating a sampler of tablet weaving patterns as shown in the pics below.

Alice with her sampler

A close up of the sampler

This is what I love about re-enactment. As well as the general fun and the  beer tent and the friends there are so many people who are into all of the stuff that I am and I am constantly meeting people who are interested in stitching and costume. I could have stayed talking to Alice for ages but the rest of the family were getting a bit bored!

The day ended with a beautiful sunny evening. Thanks to Shirley , our camp cook,  for an excellent beef and ale stew and then Darryl ,the group’s minstrel,  did a bit of musical improvisation with the kids round the campfire before we all headed off for the beer barn again! It’s a hard life …….

Smoke gets in your eyes .... Darryl with his lute and Ellie on tambourine

Jake trying out the lute

Cosmeston weekend part 1

I have so many pics that I want to post from our recent event at Cosmeston Medieval Village in South Wales that I have split it into a few posts. Apologies for not posting these sooner – we did not get back till 11pm on Bank Holiday Monday evening and what with working all week and being away at Stefon’s all weekend have had no time at all.

We had really good weather all weekend – it rained a bit when we arrived on Fri while we were pitching the tent (typical!) but then was really nice Sat and Sun with cooler weather on Monday.

Saturday we did not have a show so went for a walk on the beach – walked about 3 miles on an amazing rocky beach at Lavernock Point then ended up at a very nice pub for lunch.

Here are me and the kids in a very album cover type shot.

Us at Lavernock Point

Got back to camp about 4pm and then had a bit of a do in the evening to celebrate our engagement – just drinks in camp with some friends and then into the beer tent (or beer barn in this case as the Tithe Barn in the village is used for events!) for a few more ciders and some mead. Ellie was able to buy her first pint at an event!

Us at Cosmeston - engagement do number 2!

Darryl, Shirley and Darren at the beer barn!

I have included some pics of the village so that you can see what it is like – it is a wonderful place – a recreation of a 14th century village that died out in the plague. For a re-enactor this is heaven – authentic dark, smoky cottages, chickens running around, pigs in the piggery and lots of mud when it rains. It has an amazing atmosphere and I love going there.

Part of the village with the archers' encampment

Close up of one of the village houses

Inside one of the cottages

A weaving loom inside one of the cottages

Close up of the weaving

The Cosmeston pigs asleep - they are huge!

Will post some more pics of the actual event later in the week.