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... 

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!

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 :)

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.

St Francis Day

It's been a few weeks already, but today I'm getting around to posting these pictures from St Francis day. We took group pictures in our new matching kirtles :) Laura made the smocked aprons to finish off our far-too-spiffy kitchen garb.

Flip de Beer in de middeleeuwen

Dit weekend mocht Flip de Beer mee naar de middeleeuwen. Hij kreeg een echte tuniek aan en mocht meedoen met de kinderen: koekjes bakken, dansen en op schoot bij het verhalen vertellen. En natuurlijk op de foto in middeleeuwse kleren!

Polderslot Zomerevent

We just returned from the Polderslot zomerevent, where we had a lovely time! So first of all, my compliments and thanks for a well thought out event to the event stewards: Mariken van Oostbroek, Hadewiich van Eerbeke and Helena van Aemstelredamme!

Saturday was filled with activities for teams with members of all ages around the theme of protecting ourselves against a witch. After a lovely breakfast, Lady Hilde told a story about mysterious "witte wieven" who live in the neighbourhood, and when she was finished, a real witch was seen through the windows. Then started our mission to turn the witch into a regular woman again, and the first thing to do was to gather pouches of herbs for the drink we would make her. This turned into a running game for the children, picking up the pouches without getting caught by Lord Boudewijn, who had stolen them.

Afterward, everyone gathered by the table, which was filled with materials to make painted amulets, charms, pouches of herbs, and calligraphed and illuminated charms against witches. Some of the adults continued painting long after the children had run off to the playground, but all during the afternoon people returned to make a new item of finish something. Everything that was made contributed to the teams total points.

In the afternoon, all the children helped to make the drink to turn the witch back into a normal person. The children (and their audience) also had wonderful fun when they got to fight His Highness Thorvaldr and Sir Dietrich with boffer weapons after the 'grown up' fighting was done. After that, everyone went off to hunt for the witch, who was succesfully unbewitched...

Finally, the meal was a feast for the eyes as well as the tongue, since it was all made up of colorfull dishes: meatballs gilded in green with a quail's egg in the middle, drumsticks with purple wine sauce decorated with white and pink sugared aniseeds to name just two. Well done to the cooks! During the feast, the final entries for the competition were made: Lady Hilde sang a lovely song, Boris read a poem about a knight, a damsel and a dragon that was a very clever play on rhyme, and I played my fiddle between courses.

All in all, an event that was filled with high points and activities, but also with a very relaxed atmosphere. I'm event steward for our next event: St Francis day Fair, on 3-5 October. This event will be a hard act to follow, but it has also inspired me to try to make the next one just as enjoyable!

Polderslot Zomerevent

Jasper guarding daddy's armor while enjoying his raisins...

Winterevent - januari 2008
Alas, no pictures of this last event, but it was still a lot of fun! For the first time in too long I did some singing and some illumination, and now I'm all inspired!

True to type, I'm also quickly distracted by other fun projects, so right now I'm working on a better way of sharing some of my medieval recipes. Who knows, I may post a link in a few days.

En wat kleine vikingen in november!

Doh, afbeeldingen niet gedraaid. Nou ja, kantel je beeldscherm maar even, of je hoofd, want het is tijd om te gaan koken...

Nibelungen 2007

This past weekend we went to Nibelungen war, and here's some pictures!

Drachenwald Summer Coronation

Here are some pictures of the Drachenwald Coronation that we attended this weekend. A wonderful event, and what a beautiful site!

Sadly, you can tell from these pictures I am not much of a photographer...