Travelling

Brueghel Fair was a great succes on all fronts except for the number of attendees; but what the company lacked in numbers, it more than made up for in good spirits! I wrote about the event and put up some pictures on the shire blog: http://www.polderslot.info/

The month of October was a travel month for me: first Floris and I went to a small revel in Tretower Court in Wales, and the weekend after that I went to Garden of Earthly Delights with Mariken and Elisabeth.

The trip to Tretower was as much a mini vacation as an event, since we took our time travelling, stopping to have British breakfast and tea, and visit landmarks and breweries. What a wonderful country to travel in! 

The revel itself was a sort of dream come true; years ago, before the site was renovated, we visited it, and the lovely garden that was allready there then, and ever since it has been in my mind as the most perfect kind of location for going back in time. Castles are beautiful locations as well, but this building has the kind of scale and intactness that make bringing it to life much more achievable, and the revel itself proved this. A few of the rooms were furnished as part of the renovations, and so it is now possible to cook in the kitchen and there is a lovely dining hall. 

So we helped Paul, Ann, Thomas and Edith cook dinner in this amazing setting, where just fetching a pitcher of water felt special. I also played bagpipes, we ate in the reconstructed dining hall, and in the evening Ann and I played some dances on recorder and fiddle, we ate some more and I sat and embroidered while others played period card games.  We also had lots of time to talk food and living history with Paul and Ann over Friday night dinner at the pub and breakfast at the B&B, and family matters during the drive, so all in all, it was a perfect trip.

The weekend after, Mariken drove us down to Miltenberg in the middle of far too much traffic, and we played music, embroidered, admired lots of amazing stuff at the fair. We had some surprising moments playing music, when Mistress Judith asked us several times to play a dance more slowly (huh?), and I was actually asked to stand closer to the dancers with the bagpipe because they couldn't hear me (huh!?!?).

Being away from the kids two weeks in a row was a bit much really, especially since the trains didn't run all the way on the way home, and in the end I didn't get home until 20.00... 

Lobsters!

Some time last Summer the rivierkreeften (I'm pretty sure they are not called lobsters in English :)) migrated around Simeons work, and he picked up a bunch that were wandering around the fields, and we ate them in Endehoven. I just found these pictures while cleaning up the mail and decided they were too good not to post, even though it upsets chronological order...
As a bonus I added a picture of our little guy beating up his stuffed rat.

Brueghel Fair preparations

I started this pouch at an embroidery workshop at Double Wars this year, and am now finishing it off with fancy details like the embroidered edge and tassles to prepare one of the activities for Brueghel Fair, which is in a few weeks. We'll have some pouches ready, or people can bring their own to decorate, and we'll make tassles and embroider edges. The kids can make tassels (which is surprisingly fast to do), and do some embroidery if they want. The edge is not difficult to do, but quite slow.

Other prep work: I'm practicing bagpipes and getting together with Marieke to practice fiddle/flute/drum stuff for dancing, we had some lovely roast chicken that might or might not make it onto the menu, I'm scrounching the internet for a Brueghel poster, spinning tops and stilts, Laura is making pouches and pewter feast tokens and other good stuff!

Music folder

After a succesfull bookbinding workshop at our event in January, we are now spending a few of our regular scribal nights making a folder for music and songs.

Tonight, Bertrik has worked 4 fingerlooped braids through the cardboard back for the folder, so that I'll be able to attach seperate sections of music and replace them as our reportoire shifts and expands. Bertrik worked out a slightly complicated way of taking the braid through one layer of cardboard around another, so that it is glued in between the two layers and goes around to keep the two layers together instead of pulling them apart.

Pipers!

It's been almost a year since I posted here, time flies! The most important new thing of the year is: Laura and I took up a dream of years, and started playing bagpipes.
We rented instruments and took a weekend workshop offered by the Dutch society "Draailier en doedelzak". Yes, we have a hurdy gurdy and bagpipe society in this country, how cool is that! and they do a good job, since it is entirely due to their beginner setup with a workshop and the opportunity to rent an instrument (at least for the bagpipe) that we are now well on our way to becoming real pipers :)

Recently, we both acquired a set of pipes of our own, built by Sean Jones:
http://www.jonesinstruments.co.uk/

The instrument we got is the shepherd pipes you can see at the bottom of the page here, and they are lovely (ours are black leather with slightly darker (damson) wood: http://www.jonesinstruments.co.uk/models.htm

In the picture below we are playing the rental pipes at Academia della Danza this spring.

Trip to Rhaglan

Floris and I went to Raglan last week and had an excellent time. I wrote about it on the Polderslot blog, and got so annoyed with uploading pictures that I'm not going to do it again here. You can see the pictures here:

http://www.polderslot.info/index.php/2010/08/a-wonderful-trip-to-wales/

In the past week I've actually made chickpeas and fruit paste like we had at the event, with considerable succes. Also, Laura and I planned out Italian dresses for our next event here, and it turns out that by finishing two unfinished projects and making minor alterations to existing garments, I can make myself a complete 15th century Italian outfit, so that's nice :)

Sonderlinghe lieden

Pinksterzondag waren we met de sonderlinghe lieden in Endehoven. Het was traditioneel Eindhoven weer, zonnig en warm. Helaas hadden koperdieven zich aan het spoor vergrepen, met als gevolg enorm omreizen, en een vrij kort verblijf in het museum. 

We kookten voor de lunch weer eens een nieuwe variant Jacobijnensoep, met gebakken paddestoelen erdoor, en hollandse geitenkaas; een ook dat smaakte prima. Misschien nog extra lekker met een uitje en wat peterselie.

Naderhand bewonderden we het vikingkampje wat op het grasveld naast het ambachtenhuis was verschenen, verrichten chirurgie op Floortje, vlochten en (kaart)weefden en floten wat en trokken vele malen malieen aan en uit bij belangstellende voorbijgangers. Kort, maar krachtig...