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...

Garden of Earthly Delights

Half april gingen Laura, Bertrik en ikzelf naar de Baronie van Knights Crossing om hun event Garden of Earthly Delights te bezoeken. De locatie -  kasteel Tannenberg - was schitterend, in een gedeeltelijk gerestaureerd kasteel, en we hebben ons prima vermaakt. De nachten brachten we door in een hotel onderaan de berg, en we hebben ons zeer gelukkig geprezen met die keuze. Terwijl de overige eventgangers op een toch wel erg koude, stoffige en tochtige (weliswaar extreem sfeervolle) kasteelvloer sliepen, genoten wij van centrale verwarming, een zacht matras en een eigen douche...

Vrijdagavond hadden we al wat gezien van het event, en ondervonden hoeveel stof er uit de vloer kwam als je er Petit Riens op danst. Zaterdagochtend begonnen we met een rondje rond het kasteel te lopen in de frisse lentezon, te dromen over het winnen van de loterij, en foto's te maken. De rest van de dag vermaakten we ons met alle prachtige arts and sciences die wijzelf en anderen hadden meegenomen om aan te werken, muziek maken en bijkletsen.

Hierbij wat foto's van Bertik.

Background

Here's a picture of the back of the embroidery, and the pictures I based the design on.

Pelican embroidery

Here's some pictures of the pelican in progress and just before I finished it in January. I'm quite pleased with it, the gold rapidly improved from after the first corner where it was a little uneven. I especially like the way the direction of the stitches gives shape and a kind of feathery look to the birds.

The gold couching was very, very, very slow, and pulled the original circular shape into an oval. The brick pattern was a little hard to keep up consistently. In the end I drew lines every 5 mm and skipped one to get 1 cm bricks. Then I looked and skipped 5 mm to the side depending on how the pattern fit the shape. You can see the lines on the bottom picture.

I made a few felt tip drawings to work out the shading (how much blue where). On a next bird I'd like to use a bit more blue.

The first picture with the black outline was the trial piece, and very useful, since I learned to omit the black outline... I also decided not to use a stem stitch, but split stitch on the outside of the design, and practiced the gold couching.

Tent decoration

We're discussing tents and decoration, so here are some pictures of painted tents. One day we'll get our act together and paint our pavillion so we can camp as kings...

More info on painted tents is found on the site of House Greydragon, here: http://www.greydragon.org/pavilions/othertents.html

Embroidery!

I started a roundel with pelican to go on a cloak - to be used in November, which means that I have a serious deadline, and that I won't be able to post this for a while... Possibly this will turn out to be a practice piece if we come to different decisions on the size of the roundel and material to use.

It's been a long time since I did any embroidery, and I've never gotten much beyond small and half researched projects, so I'm a bit daunted. I expect to learn much, and sincerely hope the result will be worthy of its recipient...

For the design of the pelican we looked at the Luttrel psalter and the Pienza cope. All 14th ct Pelicans look like generic birds, with nests on trees...

This site has lots of pictures of medieval pelicans.

Based on these pictures I drew a design. I took two layers of white cotton/linnen mix and stuck them together with vliesofix (iron on fabric glue on a role) and put it in a frame.

I'm not entirely sure yet of the technique to fill in the shapes; some variation of . I'm starting with the outlines in black stem stitch (a double strand of dmc floss).

Questions/learning points I've run into so far:

-what base fabric should I use? If a strengthening layer of fabric is used, how should the layers be attached?

-a stem stitch should go in the right direction through a curve; from left to right along the inside of the curve.

-it's quite hard to do stem stitch on the frame (and I lose the tension); am I doing something wrong?

-looking at outlines; which part of the design should have a black outline and which bits shouldn't.

-should the outlines be done first (like I'm doing now, or is afterwards actually better (this is what Racaire seems te be doing on the wallhanging project)

Fun stuff

I'm off to go to a concert of 14th century music by Ensemble Fortuna, which I'm looking forward to. It takes a while to get there on the train, so I'm taking Anne Hagens book on Anglo Saxon food with me to start preparing for our Anglo Saxon feast at the beginning of next year.

Tabletweaving

I'm learning double face tabletweaving, and am working out plans to make garters. In the pictures are the front and back view of the design.

I put the design in Guntram's Tabletweaving Thingy, which was surprisingly easy!

I'm using DMC Petra cotton no. 5. The band will be 14 tablets wide. Each garter will be made up as follows:

3 cm solid color for attaching the buckle

2 cm solid before the design starts

a set of 3 leaves

2 x 2 picks solid

1 castle

2 x 2 picks solid

a set of 3 leaves

solid color until the total length of the garter is 71 cm

I've calculated the length of the warp for weaving 4 garters at a time, since that lenght will hopefully be managable to set up.

4 x 71 = 284

20 % loss = 57

50 cm

Total lenght 391 cm

Hm, the total length on the sheet I worked it out on comes to 4.40 m, why?

We've decided to switch the weft color, to see the effect and to mark the beginning and end of each garter. If one color weft looks much better than the other we might change our minds about this.

Green Knight at Peace of Lissberg

We made a blitz visit to Peace of Lissberg this weekend, staying at a hotel nearby to avoid the hassle of camping, and going up to the site on Friday night and Saturday. I mostly hung out with the kids and chatted. Lots of old friends were there who we hadn't seen in years, and that alone made the trip (4,5 hours one -way, typically one of those sca undertakings that earn you uncomprehending looks from the people at work when you tell them what you did on the weekend) worth it!

The pictures here are of court, where a Green Knight came and challenged His Majesty. The Green Knight has made appearances in Polderslot in the past, but never before was he so impressive or wellspoken. He complimented Her Majesty as the fairest bloom of summer,and presented her with a flower. He spoke of the might and reputation of the court,and his wish to see it proven on the field. The fall is the season for fighting this man of the woods said, and the place should be neither a land of castles, nor of woods, and thus he named Polderslot as the appropriate place for the challenge fight. We were greatly honored by his choice, and not a little awed, and thus we volunteered immediately to host the fight at our event in november, November Nights. Thus the Green Knight from our past returns on the 20th anniversary of our Shire with his hauberk and spear, and we hope the might and glory of the Kingdom will there be presented to him!

Sonderlinge lieden in augustus

Op 8 en 9 augustus waren we weer in het museum, zondag met z'n viertjes en zaterdag met Boris erbij. Met zo'n kleine bezetting hebben we alles zo simpel mogelijk gedaan. Vooraf leek het ons wat ongezellig, maar uiteindelijk beviel het eigenlijk prima. We hebben rustig aangedaan, maar toch best een boel gedaan. Meegedaan met kinder-doe-activiteiten, en zondag ook zelf krakelingen gebakken op het vuur, Emma heeft geleerd te fingerloopen (supertrots was ik! en tevreden, want het kwartje is gevallen welke variant kinderen het makkelijkst kunnen leren). Floris heeft met emaille en brons geexperimenteerd in de smidse en ik heb een flink stuk geweven. Prima dagen!

Ik had ook allemaal inspiratie voor de volgende keer, die ik hier maar even bewaar: schrijven met ganzeveer van het museum, nog eens koekjes maken of wafels met wafelijzer, poppenkleertjes maken, kaartweefsel opzetten voor de kinderen om te proberen en een afwasteiltje meenemen om te doneren voor het medewerkershok.

Challenge

As part of the A&S 50 challenge I am working on several linnen tunics, getting practice at handsewing and finishing them.

I made two for the children, and that went pretty well, even though they still aren't completely finished. Part of my goals for the challenge is to really finish things, so I guess I'll take these with me on the drive to Italy this summer to finish all the seams.

Right now I'm racing the clock to finish the linnen dress I am making for myself, so I can spend the weekend (with predicted temperatures between 25 and 30 C) in linnen in stead of wool. A good reason to work hard, but so far it's going one step forward, 5 steps back.

I originally cut the linnen a couple of years ago, but only started putting it together this past winter. When I started putting in the sleeves, it turned out that they were too narrow, so I've had to go back and make new ones. Now those are finished, and I started putting them in, and it turns out I've been stupid finishing the seams connecting the middle to the sides. I'll have to put up a diagram to show this, but in the end, the only elegant solution was to take out the two seams at the back that had already been finished, so I can fold them over in the other direction :(

Anyway, I'm getting lots of practice in handsewing and finishing linnen seams...So, fingers crossed I'll be able to post a picture of the three of us in new linnen tunics; sewn together, but not completely finished...

bloemenkransen

Ineens hadden we wat bloesems, dus heb ik alvast wat geexperimenteerd met de bloemenkransen. Werkt prima, met dank aan Marieke voor de tip van het raffiastro.

• Vlecht met 1/3 van een bundeltje raffia een krans, niet te stijf, want dan krijg je de bloemen er niet prettig tussen.
• Meet de omtrek van de krans op het hoofd.
• Bind de uiteinden bij elkaar met een stukje touw.
• Vlecht de bloemen ertussendoor.
• Klaar!

Springtime!

Yesterday we had our first day at the museum again, and it was wonderful. Wonderful weather, everything green and fresh and beautiful. We worked on various projects, chatted, explored the museum with the kids, made music and ate wonderful food made by Gerulf and Hilde.

Here are some pictures of a dish they found in the book Van Soeter Cokene by J.M. van Winter. The dish is from a german cookbook (I need to look up from when), and is called moriljes (a kind of mushroom). A dough is made with white bread and eggs, and then fried around a piece of wood to make a bowl. In the bowl goes a filling of eggs again, and finally the whole thing is dipped in a batter of eggs and fried again and served with mushrooms. All in all, the result tasted good, but had gotten a bit too greasy. Perhaps we will try it again, without the final step of frying it again in batter.

Academia della danza

Last weekend we went to Academia della danza and had a wonderfull time. The site was beautiful and it was great to have an event entirely dedicated to music and dance. My own attention was scattered a bit between playing fiddle and taking care of my five year old travelling companion, but we both still enjoyed ourselves enormously! Here's some pictures of us playing music with Laura for the dancers in the courtyard.