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Hello everyone
Hope you are enjoying good weather because we have had a fantastic weekend at Sherwood, didn’t see Robin Hood but Little John was there and there were lots of merry men (and women) there.
The beer tent, the campfire (thanks Kat and Paul) and the excellent weather helped with this as did the brilliant organisation by Plantagenet Events - thanks for everything guys, a very enjoyable event.
As well as the fighting and weapons talks we got a chance to have a couple of walks in the woods, saw the Major Oak (bottom picture ) which is over a thousand years old and lots of other interesting trees.
I also got a chance talk to some people about my embroidery and made a new friend, Seren, who I helped with making a new hat.
This was her first attempt at garment making and she did a brilliant job making this lined coif out of wool and linen which is all hand stitched. She also made a lined bag.
Sadly there are no more events for the next two weekends (how will I survive all that time in a house!) but I have plenty to be doing with making garments.
I am going to be working on a cloak for Luke this week and some helm decorations for other friends.
Take care and thanks for visiting.
Hello there
Hope that you are all enjoying the lovely weather we have been having.
I am hoping that it will last as I am off tomorrow for another event – this time at Sherwood Forest near Nottingham, home of the famed Robin Hood.
The forecast for the weekend is great which is very unusual for a British Bank Holiday so we shall see.
Normally we don’t have many pictures of us at events as we are in kit so my pics are limited to early morning or evening ones.
Luke, one of the members of the group, has been putting together a new website for Swords of Mercia so we have had some official photographers at the last two events and they have very kindly let me share their photos with you.
Thanks to Wendy and Kev for these excellent pictures firstly taken at Bolsover (the top one showing our St George’s Day costumes) and the rest from Rufford last weekend. Second pic is of lovely daughter Ellie and I am in my peasant outfit second from right in the third pic.
Don’t the boys look amazing in their kit?
From left to right Sir William of Ashby, King Edward the 2nd, Sir Roger Mortimer and Sir John Neville aka Luke, Clive, Shane and Mark during the week!
We often get pictures taken by the public, the ‘princesses’ , Ellie and Kerry more than me and at Rufford Ellie was asked to pose by a photographer who then Photoshopped this lovely trinity of pictures.
His name is Stuart Daffin so thanks very much Stuart for your lovely work and letting me share it!
Have a lovely weekend and thanks for visiting.
Hello everyone
I have just got back from a lovely weekend at our first multi - bash event of the season at Rufford Abbey multi period event which meant catching up with some old friends and making some new ones.
The Saturday evening entertainment was a disco in the undercroft (cellars) of the Abbey which meant dancing with lots of re-enactors from Romans to 1940s, it was one of those slightly surreal moments that can only happen in re-enactment.
It has been very cold – we had the most spectacular hail storms on Saturday morning and the nights were really cold.
Ellie had ice on the inside of her tent last night. This bad weather may have contributed to the fact that I have had a very sore throat and lost my voice so huge thanks to my lovely friend Kerry for driving me all the way home tonight rather than me catching the train.
It was a really great display and I have taken some pictures of the Abbey and the encampments below.
I love looking at other group’s displays and this one from Comitatus who cover the late Roman period was amazing – look at those helmets and that dragon flag!
The boys from my group, Swords of Mercia, have been busy buying and making new things and these are Luke’s new gauntlets – he added the studs himself.
While wandering round on Saturday evening taking pictures we met a very lovely lady called Maxine from the Bowden Retinue.
I had stopped by her tent to take a photo of her tablecloth and when she came out she was kind enough to tell me where she got the lace from (it dates from the 1620s) and how she had made the tablecloth and also showed me some more of her embroidery.
I do love chance meetings with people that share my interests!
I also bought some lovely relishes, chilli peanut butter and cheese from my friend Suzi’s stall, she and her husband make the most marvelous things and do mail order – go and look on their website Cowleys Fine Foods.
I am looking forward to next weekend when in will be away at an event in Sherwood Forest, there may be some outlaws lurking in the woods so we will have to be careful!
Thank you very much for visiting.
Hello everyone, I do hope you are all enjoying fine weather, we are having a lovely time – the Spring flowers are blooming, the weather is sunny and finally the re- enactment season has begun.
I am a very, very happy bunny!!
This beautiful pic was taken outside Kerry’s house this morning, her neighbour has the loveliest display of flowers.
Mine are doing very well, surprisingly they have survived the near constant snow since they were planted and I have some daffodils, crocuses and tulips coming out.
We had our first event this weekend, I was only able to join the group for today as I had to work yesterday but we had a really great time.
Yesterday was very hot – when I met up with Ellie and Kerry last night they were quite sunburned (in Derbyshire, in April – it’s a miracle!)
Today was a bit windier but very good and we had a really nice time doing our St George’s Day event.
Here is Kerry in her beautiful dress in the sunlight at the castle and later being scared by the fearsome Dragon Knight – aka Mark in a very impressive helm that the guys had made for the event.
I now have events for the next two weekends so I am really looking forward to lots of fun, catching up with old friends, sitting round the campfire and mellowing. If you want to join us we will be at Rufford Abbey next weekend.
Take care and thanks as always for visiting.
Hello there
Hope you are all well and happy. I have just got back from another weekend in a field and am busy today sorting, washing (and drying!) bits of kit and tents.
We have had a lovely time at the Midlands Living History Festival and as befits a British summer managed to get sunburnt and soaked in the same weekend!Here is a picture of one very soaked and grass-covered medieval boot, off to dry out.
Generally though the weather was very good and we had two BBQs and bacon butties for breakfast in the sun both days – I love camping!
We are nearly at the end of the re-enactment season with only 2 more events to go which makes me very sad. I am seriously considering joining another group as well so I can have more fun in a field next year. I may do a different period so I can do some other types of embroidery!
This event was multi period so we got to watch a brilliant dark age battle on both days with lots of Vikings and Saxons from groups such as Vikings of Middle England. The battle was very good – scary to watch as they fight with no helmets and very little armour unlike our medieval guys. The pic below shows them at an earlier event and is one I ‘borrowed’ from the BBC website.
Unfortunately I have managed to break my camera (I am lethal with cameras!) and my spare one would not work either so I have no other pics to show you. It will have to be taken to the menders this week as I am lost without it.
I have got a couple more from last weekend – taken by my lovely friend Wendy who was being our official photographer for the weekend. This one was taken from the top of Ashby Castle tower and shows the camp with our activities. I am bottom right helping with the knighting of the kids after their sword training.
This is a brilliant shot of the tournament on the Sunday with me in my nun’s costume on the left.The boys’ armour and costumes look great – even in the rain!
I have got a quiet couple of weeks work wise and a weekend at home now so am going to be doing lots of sewing.
Have just made my lovely friend Kerry a chaperon (but forgot to take a picture of it before the camera broke) and have just sent off my Summer Exchange piece so will upload pics of that when it has been delivered.
Still working on a stitched baby gift and might just get around to making that new peasant dress that I have been promising myself for the last few years. I have also treated myself to some Blackbird Designs patterns after seeing so many lovely ones on the Seasonal Exchange blog so am waiting for those to arrive.
The one compensation about Autumn and Winter is lots of time to stitch as I seem to have done so little just recently. Also I am really looking forward to the start of the new term as I will be going to China with work again twice before Christmas – how exciting!
Take care and have a relaxing week whatever you are doing. Thanks for visiting and see you soon.
Hello and hope you are having a lovely time enjoying the sun! Isn’t it wonderful to be warm.
We have a little group on Facebook for posting pics of our medieval encampments in castle grounds called The Castle Camping Club and there are some fab pics there of people’s camps in the most beautiful settings.
This weekend I was at Ashby de la Zouche Castle in Leicestershire with my group, Swords of Mercia, and we had a fantastic time.This is Kerry and I – as usual with our group I was being Sister Margaret and Kerry was playing a peasant rather than a lady.
And here is Mark and one of our new members Trevor early on Saturday morning.
We were joined by some friends from other groups as well, this is Malcolm and Jean, Malcolm was our King (Edward Hammer of Scots) in our last group and this weekend he came with his box of religious relics.
This was my view on the Saturday evening, a beautifully sunny end to the day, we had takeaway as is traditional at Ashby and sat around the campfire – bliss!
I couldn’t take my medieval tent this time so I took my lovely little ‘just for me’ tent , doesn’t it look pretty in the sunshine!
The weather was really lovely (a little damp on Sunday but it dried up in time for us to pack up!) and we had lots of people come to see was lovely.It was the first show we have done just with the new group, the other events have all involved being at larger events where we are doing slots as part of a bigger show and it was brilliant to be doing a successful show with the new format.
Thank you to everyone who came to see us, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
I now have a busy few days at work before heading off again, next weekend is the Midlands Living History Festival - do come along if you are in the area as it will be great fun, I am looking forward to seeing the Vikings – love those axes!”
Thank you for visiting. See you soon.
As well as the lovely battles there is also the market at Tewkesbury which is always the biggest and best re-enactors’ market of the season. My lovely friend Kerry bought me this new bag as a birthday present.It will hang from my belt.
It is from Phil Fraser’s stall - Phil also sells pewter badges and I bought some with my initials on.
I also treated myself to some more pilgrim badges from Lionheart Replicas - these are the Virgin and Child and St Albans badges.
The thing I love about buying things for re-enactment is that you almost always know who has actually made what you have bought. Some things are imported but most of the time you know the person that has made your boots, your sword and your drinking mug etc. In today’s mass market economy that is very special.
Thanks for visiting – see you soon.
Hello there
Have had a brilliant weekend at our biggest event of the year which went ahead thankfully despite some initial uncertainty about whether the site would be ok , a great deal of mud, a very near escape for friends who were on the encampment nearest the river and the sterling efforts of all involved in organising the event. Thank you so much to everyone for what was possibly my best Tewkesbury ever.
I have always wanted to go to one of those festivals where mud is a central feature like Glastonbury and wear festival wellies so this weekend I got my chance. I bought a new pair of wellies on Thurs having only tried one on at the shop and it was not until Friday when we got there that I put both of them on to discover that I had two right feet lol! Had to just go with it as I did not have time to buy any others and managed ok.
Despite some rain most of the weekend was bright and sunny and we had an excellent time. This was my very good friend Kerry’s first time as a water carrier on the battlefield which she loved (despite the very loud cannon!) and it was great to catch up with lots of friends I had not seen since last year.
We went to the Abbey service on Sunday morning which was beautiful, it is a very wonderful place anyway but the service is ‘high church’ with incense and sung gospels, a fab choir and very moving.
Here is me outside the Abbey – I was in peasant dress all this weekend.
The slideshow is of various parts of the Abbey.
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| Free scrapbook personalized with Smilebox |
Hope where you are is not affected by floods – will be back later in the week to share some more Tewkesbury with you and to update you on Ellie’s progress at Powis Castle.
Take care and thanks for visiting.
As promised here are some pics from our weekend away. This was a new show for us as it was the first time that the event had been staged and we had an excellent time. We did some activities for kids – knight’s training and joust and a short tournament. It was my first event with our new group Swords of Mercia and it went very well.
Here is a slideshow of some of the best bits.Thanks for visiting and see you soon.
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| Scrapbooking design created with Smilebox |
We have just got back from Bolsover Castle, our last show with my re-enactment group Order of Fighting Knights. Various members of the group are leaving due to work and other commitments so we are re-forming for next year under a new name – we will now be the Swords of Mercia.
We had a fantastic last weekend – it didn’t rain much which is always a bonus for an English Bank Holiday weekend and the crowd were fabulous and there were so many wonderful comedy moments that none of us could keep a straight face.We had a very nice (if cold!) group BBQ on Sunday night and then sat around the camp fire laughing about the day.
We have been members of the group for the last 10 years and they have been some of the happiest years of my life, they are such a lovely bunch of people and we will always be great friends and keep in touch with the members that have left and I am really excited to be moving on with those that are remaining to do new things.
I realised that though I have posted pics of our camp and the group before I have not really posted many of the castle so went out early this morning before the public arrived to take the pics in this slide show for you.
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The castle is very impressive, it was built in the 1600s as an entertainment venue by Sir Charles and Sir William Cavendish and King Charles the First and his wife Henrietta Maria once visited . That is one of things that most excites me about re-enactment, I have camped in places where so many great people were and significant events took place – I am a very lucky girl!
I also have a couple of nice pics of me and Ellie to show you – I had a friend take some pics with my camera as I rarely get ones of me at an event.This is Kerry, me, Ellie and Tracy in the castle grounds (as you can see it was quite windy!), Kerry and Ellie in the sunshine on Sunday and Ellie in the tent during the head-dress talk today demonstrating how to make braid.
I hope that you have had a very nice weekend wherever you are. I have a busy couple of weeks now preparing for another new beginning with the start of the new term but we are here for the next few weekends so I am also looking forward to getting some serious crafting done!
Thanks as always for visiting.
