A new candlestick :-) OR 'fake it 'til you make it' OR 'It's only dodgy if it doesn't *look* period...'

 I wasn't terribly happy with the brass candlestick I've had since 2015 for my altar table - it was adequate but not terribly period and the more I updated other things in my display, the more it seemed lacking.  Hunting around online and rummaging through op-shops were equally fruitless - it looked like unless I wanted to shell out a phenomenal amount of money for the Real Thing, I was going to have to make it myself...

Casting brass is a bit beyond me - I could carve a wax image and then shell out another phenomenal amount of money for someone to cast it for me, or I could use the grey between the ears and do a bit of research and see what other forms of candlestick were around in the place and period I'm reenacting, that might be a bit more within my means and capabilities.

It turns out that a ceramic one, Persian-style, would fit the bill; again, I don't have a potter's wheel or kiln but I *have* worked with clay (a bit) and figured that as the piece only needs to hold an unlit candle and get looked at (and look reasonably legitimate...) I should be able to manage.  I have a bee in my bonnet about making replicas - to me, they need to be exact copies of the original and I know I'm not going to get it exact and it'll bug me forever, so I prefer taking a couple of examples and making something in-between.  I ended up choosing two fairly basic and simple candlesticks as models; one from 12th-13th century Persian which had interesting (and decidedly do-able) crenelations around the top, and one from Iran (same period) which had a much simpler top (where the candle goes).

 

I've worked with air-dry clay before - it's an interesting mixture of  papier-mâché, clay, and some kind of polymer that (like the Force) binds it all together.  I find that it's a lot harder that real clay to join bits together (scoring and wetting it don't really do much) and the surface tends to dry out and crack a little within half an hour so Much Planning must occur before the packet is even opened; however, the end result is pretty sturdy and so it's fit for this purpose.

Having worked out roughly how big I wanted the candlestick, I rolled out the air-dry clay on a board and started stamping out the circles in the crenelation before I noticed that the clay I was stamping out was sticking to the board... and so, it turned out, was the rest of it >.<  Scrape up clay into lump, say rude words, massage clay, spread out paper, roll clay out again and do the stamping; I figured if it stuck to the paper then I could peel/wash it off later.  It actually worked quite well and the paper enabled me to use sticky tape when I shaped the flat bit into a cylinder for the body of the candlestick 😊  I cut out a bit of paper roughly the size of the opening of the cylinder and used it as a template to make the top, and made a ring to hold the candle, and let everything dry.

It shrunk a bit, of course... which I hadn't taken into consideration, and the 'join' at the back now didn't... and the damn top was too big... but fortunately the clay is easy to sand so I reshaped things and tidied up the crenelations (which had little paper fibres or something hairy sticking out of them 😬) and fit it together and glued it with Shoe Glue.  It did look a little dog's-breakfast-y so I rummaged around in the workshop and found a venerable half-used bag of Spak-filla (plastering compound) and did some serious patching, and in the end I was pretty happy that it looked acceptable.  The original pieces I was using as models had a bit of engraving on them and I cowardly decided to go with the easier version: just a couple of rings around the body and a bit of accentuation around the crenelations - I have a tiny screwdriver sharpened up as a chisel for this sort of thing 😉.

I let it dry overnight (I need to mention here that I live in Australia and at the moment our days are getting up to 34º-37º and overnight it's about 28º - that's about 82ºF for my American friends) and then the next day set about 'glazing' it.

The glaze is acrylic varnish tinted with acrylic paint, and I've used the method before reasonably successfully on other projects; the varnish is milky in its liquid form (dries clear) and that makes getting the colour right a bit difficult - at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it LOL; it bugs me that I didn't get it quite blue enough, but the turquoise is quite acceptable, really...  I painted a layer on, then poured (gently, carefully) - and then spent the next 10 minutes wiping drips off the bottom and patching bits that were still white (although you do see that in extant pieces).

(The piece is sitting on the varnish can, on a cake-cooling rack, above an aluminium baking dish, on a very dilapidated but much-loved Lazy Susan (turntable).

 

Clean up, wash brushes, let dry, time for coffee and lunch.

While I was waiting for it to dry I realised that the candle I'd used with the old brass candlestick was too thick to use with this one, so set about remaking it - made a mould by rolling up a sheet of plastic (it had been an old folder cover) and wrapping it in tape so it didn't unroll, ran a wick (cotton cord) through it (anchored at the top with blu-tack, covered in more tape, just in case) and a bamboo skewer at the base, and then suspended it over the sink by every damn S-hook I could find in the kitchen so I could pour the melted wax into it; meanwhile I pulled the old candle apart and melted it on the stove - it was quite easy to pull apart because back in 2015 I'd had the good sense to make a Very Period dipped candle 😉.

 

The candle worked out okay (a bit of trimming and tidying up here and there) although I royally cocked up the base measurement and had to shave it severely before it'd fit in the candlestick... but in the end I'm pretty happy with the result and it looks a lot better than the old brass one 😊.

(At the time of the photo the candle was not exactly straight, thanks to poor workmanship and summer heat, but I've fixed that... I think...).

Arty-Farty

 I thought I'd also post up some pics of our 'pretty' stuff, showcasing our artwork and so forth :-)

...And now I just need to keep on top of it and *keep posting* 😅

Happy New Year... I discovered Instagram... 😬

 Once again I have been remiss in making regular posts (read: slack, life got in the way, and Christmas >.<).  I ended up (finally) making an Instagram account (mimka369) which of course I then flooded with reenactment stuff rather than personal stuff LOL, as I was inspired to make up pithy, *square* little pics describing the irks and quirks of our hobby... which I'll now share here (occasionally... when I remember to >.<)

The 'Tips'n'Tricks' ones are directed probably more towards reenactors, as most of my friends/followers indulge in the same hobby I do, but I guess they'll let non-reenactors see that it's not all glamour LOL

 

 

There's also a collection of 'Arty-Farty' offerings, but I'll make that the next post ;-)

History Alive at Abbeystowe, 2024

 Rob and I are getting a little old and creaky, so (as with at the Abbey Festival) we went up a week early and set up (the organisers of the show are marvellous people and very accommodating) - this way the (adult) kids can help us load up 2 utes and 2 trailers the Saturday before the show, then come up with us on the Sunday and set up the shells of the tent and lift anything heavy out of the trailers for us; then Rob and I pootle around for a couple of days setting the rest of the encampment up and the rest of the group arrives later in the week and set up the insides of their tents (rugs, wall hangings, beds etcetera).

September here is usually still fairly cool (12º-26ºC on average) but we had an unseasonal heatwave and the Monday after we set up the tents got to 37º! and all we could do was sit in the shade and drink water and grumble about the bloody weather LOL, although we did make friends with the birds - poor little sods were wandering around with their beaks open so I filled a bowl with water and put it out for them and it was very well received :-)  We spent the next couple of days setting up small things, testing out new lamps, being amazed that the tents hardly moved when the wind picked up to about 30kph with 50 kph gusts (but I think we will eventually get some storm ropes in the kit).

I fully intended to take a lot of photos of the encampment this time, and I did take quite a few before the event but once the public arrived I was too busy running workshops and it completely slipped my mind (again >.<)... so these are of the 'quiet' time before the show :-)

 

Abbeystowe gets some spectacular dawns; I'm not usually an early riser except when we're camping - I think the 5 minute walk to the toilets might have something to do with it - usually I'd go back to bed but after that walk I'm quite awake LOL (which is not a bad thing on event days when the public will be arriving in a couple of hours and the encampment is a mess).

The first tent to get sorted out was, of course, the kitchen tent - the centre of all activity and source of coffee ;-)  A kitchen tent per se is not strictly period (although we can document most of the contents); one of our older tent roofs became leaky and while this isn't a problem with a grass floor, water dripping onto rugs and feather beds and small children was an issue so the roof was replaced.  We didn't want to throw out the leaky roof, and I think that in the period we're reenacting a tent roof, however old, would have been re-purposed because fabric was hellishly expensive... so I cut a smoke-hole in the top (modelled on innumerable huts, hovels, and long-house structures), made nice new walls for the new tent roof and kept the old (slightly scungey) ones for the kitchen tent, carved poles for it and we now have a 6m x 3m area for cooking and being warm :-)

 

The fire tray that sits in the centre of it isn't historically accurate either - it's what we call 'in keeping with the period', something that'll not look out of place and disturb the 'medieval ambience' or something like that; none of the places we do events like having their grassed areas marked up by fires, so we all have our fires about 40cm about the ground and the style and method of fireplace varies from encampment to encampment.

However, we can cook when it's raining, and thee tent is roughly divided in half by the fireplace - a cooking area on one side and a sitting are on the other, which of a night gets lined with blankets so the children can bed down; this allows their parents a bit of time off to go and visit other encampments and have a drink or two while knowing that their small folk are warm and supervised :-)

Setting up any of the tents takes a while - there's a lot of small bits and pieces that make the encampment look lived-in and 'real' - I don't really go with the minimalist approach favoured by some of a tent, a rug, a bed, a table and a jug and please-believe-I'm-living-here-for-a-few-days LOL... but it does take time to set up, and we do have rather a lot of tents:

From the left: (hardly visible but there) the sunshade we put up for the public to use, Sam's tent (5 people), Ellie's tent (4 people), my tent (2), the kitchen, a woodchopping area, Nat's tent (1 person), the kids' tent (sort of a playroom) and the pavilion.

(Gratuitous early morning misty pic)

 

The event was lovely - Festival, in comparison, is bustle-y and hectic, which you'd expect with 10,000 people on the ground each day - but HA was, as people kept commenting, 'cruise-y' and there was time to chat with people and it didn't matter much if workshops did go over time because we ended up chatting about other techniques and there was a general feeling of relaxation :-)  Some of the patrons had come to HA because they'd been to Festival and loved it, others were completely new to the whole historical re-enactment thing and were enjoying the experience immensely, and the general consensus seems to have been that everyone had a great time :-)

Footnote - the stuffed cabbage went over very well and every scrap was eaten and could I make 2 next time - and it's been christened 'ogre-head'; and Lyra loved her sewing box and spent the weekend embroidering a Thing for a young friend of hers ;-).

For reasons explained about I don't have any pics of the actual event, so may I direct you to the History Alive facebook page.

After Abbey, and preparing for HA

 Packing the encampment down after the Abbey Festival was slower than usual because it was muddy and raining and we couldn't just dump gear next to whichever vehicle it travelled in (in preparation for it actually being loaded, in a somewhat tetris-like fashion) so it was well after dark by the time our entourage (2 utes with trailers, 2 cars with trailers and a wee small Mazda) got to my youngest daughter's place so we could hang nearly 100m of wet tent walls in her boat shed (and even then the damn things got a bit of mildew) and each took roofs home with us and spread them out.  Everything else got unpacked the following day - it was damp but not terrible - and then the massive washing and washing-up operation began...  The tentage (with the exception of the kitchen tent which is so smoked nothing would grow on it) got sprayed with a clove oil mix - it kills the mildew spores but doesn't get rid of the black spots (unlike bleach which gets rid on the black spots but doesn't necessarily kill the spores, and damages the cotton canvas into the bargain >.<) and once everything had been washed and dried and put away we were back to making things for the next show - History Alive, which was taking place about 2 months after the Abbey Festival.

September can be quite windy here, and our encampment was to be was on the 'open' side of the Abbeystowe field (we're usually nestled next to virgin bushland with tall trees, which really cuts down the wind problem), so there was a brief discussion about whether we needed to make up storm ropes for all the tents or not but in the end and mainly because of the expense) we decided we'd make do with the 40-odd metres we had on hand and keep an eye on the weather; I must note that about 8 years ago we were camped on that side of the field and after a rather windy night where the tent was 'breathing' like a huge beast we emerged to find one of the smaller Viking tents had been picked up and blown over a 1.5m fence into the the cow paddock...  

 

A friend of mine was running a workshop on medieval dental hygiene and one of the recipes called for rosemary charcoal, so I cooked her up some rosemary twigs in my charcloth pot and they turned out quite well :-)

I think it took about 20 minutes to go from bare twigs to smoking to smoke-dying-down then vanishing (at which point a coin covered the hole in the tin to stop any oxygen getting in) and after the tin cooled I took the lid off and voila - little charcoal sticks :-)  Evidently quite a few recipes for dentifrice/tooth powder call for some sort of charcoal, because it's slightly abrasive.

The kitchen burns kit (first aid) which lived in a plastic lunchbox in a basket with a whole lot of other modern stuff (flyspray, mozzie coils, surface spray, plastic zip-lock bags etc.) had to be found another home because the basket was getting over-full; I did up a little bentwood box for it so it could sit out in the open and not look out of place (and most importantly still be accessible); I cannot recommend the Soov spray highly enough - it has a bit of anaesthetic (lignocaine) in it and not only works well on burns but helps chafing as well ;-)

 

My second-oldest granddaughter was having a birthday around about the time we'd be doing History Alive, and she'd recently developed a passion for crochet and embroidery, so I did her up a sewing box with assorted bits and pieces...  As they grow up, the kids are finding the toys in the Kids' Tent a bit 'young' for them and so need other things to do over the reenactment weekend; I dyed up some yarn, grandpa and I spent some quality time with a plank and his thicknesser machine and made some tablet-weaving cards, and I carved her a little shuttle and a lucet (yes, I know they're not historically accurate, but the cord they produce seems to be and now she can make her own damn shoelaces ;-) )

About a week before we left for the show I came across a 14th century recipe for stuffed cabbage ('cabodge y-farcyd', from Richard III's The Forme of Cury) which seemed likely to have been appropriate for our period; I made a test one (with considerably less spicing than the original recipe called for because I wanted the kids to enjoy it) and it wasn't too bad, if a little bland; so i did up a mix of the filling with a little more flavouring and froze it - working with mincemeat in a camping environment, in a 30ºC kitchen, can be a recipe for all sorts of problems...

The recipe basically calls for a hollowed out head of cabbage, stuffed with a mixture of mince meat (ground beef, I think the Americans cal it), eggs, breadcrumbs, rice, salt'n'pepper, and assorted spices.  I left the onion out because a couple of our folk don't handle it well and substituted a bit of aji-no-moto.  Stuff the cabbage with the meat mix, whack a couple of leaves over the hole and tie the entire thing up in cheesecloth and boil for a couple of hours (for 500g mince).  The cabbage loses a lot of its flavour and oddly enough doesn't flavour the mince - I find it watery and a bit ick but evidently it went well wrapped around the chipolata sausages we served as well.

Preparations complete, we were ready for History Alive at Abbeystowe :-)

Abbey Festival 2024

 The BIG show for the year!  10,000 people a day (and the online tickets sold out inside of 36 hours!).  They tried something new this year - a 'Family Fun Day' on the Friday (as well as the usual event which runs on the Saturday and Sunday) which ran for about 4 hours and was for folk who found the main event daunting or difficult to get around - families with young children, disabled folk, neurodivergent folk who don't handle crowds well.  It was a good (part) day and was well-received by the attendees and most of the re-enactors :-) and after our visitors had left we finished setting up for the main event on the weekend.

I'm not usually an early riser, but make an exception at events, usually because the toilets are sufficiently far away from my nice warm bed that by the time I get back I'm no longer sleepy and so I arc up the fire and make myself a coffee... the kitchen first thing in the morning is my Happy Place :-)  I have it down to a fine art LOL - put about a cup and a half of water into my tiny little copper pot, light a Flaming Cupcake (a sort of a candle made of sawdust and wax with a bit of rope in it as a wick) under it with a couple of pinecones on top and some kindling, and once it's caught add a couple of small bits of hardwood - and I have boiling water inside of about 5 minutes :-)

We set up early this time - the kids helped us load on the previous Saturday and we set up the tent shells on the Sunday and then Rob and I stayed over (the kids rejoined us later in the week before the event) and it rained and rained... by the second day the doorway into the kitchen was so boggy I had to skin a couple of firewood logs and use the bark as a door mat LOL.

People still came though, and seemed to have a fantastic time :-) even though the site got muddier and boggier - lots of comments about how 'authentic' the weather was LOL.  All the bits and pieces we'd made over the past year or so came together and I must admit I was pretty proud of our encampment :-)

The Pavilion (a.k.a. dining room) and the Wayside Chapel:

All our stripey-roofed tents:

The Grumpy Old People's tent (Rob and I):

My spices display in the kitchen tent:

Needless to say it's not really the done thing to run around with a camera/phone/modern item while the public are there because it spoils the whole feel of the event (evidently... something about immersion... don't get me started...), so a lot of the photos I have of the event are yoinked off facebook because they're by the very talented official event photographers... credits for them appear as a watermark on the photo :-)

The kids playing tavli:

One of my textile workshops (I did 6 over the weekend...):

A really nice photo of my tent - please excuse the loom on the altar LOL, I was setting up for a workshop...

Nat's new wall hanging:

Lyra playing with the mini-tent:

On the Sunday afternoon after everyone had left, the lovely people from the Birds of Prey group let us hold their eagle and take photos :-)  Such a big bird was remarkably light weight - I guess they'd have to be or they wouldn't fly LOL.

We started packing down on the Sunday after the public had left, but did most of it the following day - an encampment that takes a good couple of days to set up isn't going to come down overnight ;-)

Did I mention how muddy it was?

The Lead-up to Abbey Festival 2024

 AROW got us back into the swing of things again, from refreshing our memories as to how tents go up and furniture goes together (better to stuff about at AROW than when setting up for a major show LOL), and once we were home again (and everything was washed and mended and so forth) the push was on to have gear finished and the encampment looking as speccy as possible.

I'll note here that we do have a lot of gear, even for 12 people; but we're portraying travelling nobles and there's plenty of indication that some of them travelled with even more gear than we do (!), and considerably more frequently.  I think part of it is also that Rob and I have been doing this for 30-odd years and found fairly early on that medieval-style camping can be bloody inefficient if you don't bring the right gear; for a long time I tended to bring spares of a lot of things (blankets, belts, clothing, bowls, cups, spoons, etc.), because there was always someone who'd 'forgotten' theirs and needed to borrow... then I watched them pack down their rather minimalist encampment and head home in the space of a couple of hours, while we were taking half the damn day and I decided that I needed to triage the packing list and just bring what we needed - and felt rather selfish and un-caring of my fellow man but got over it.

By and large we had pretty much everything we needed for Festival, but I had to make a pair of tongs for the charcoal brick which needed lighting in the fire (as opposed to the usual sort, which we ran out of and couldn't find, which light with a lighter); a spectacular throw rug appeared so Sam swapped out a drab wall hanging for it; and I discovered my straw broom (essential encampment kit when I'm holding workshops in my tent and expect people to sit on the floor) had been disintegrated by borers - I initially bought another one, then decided to pull the old one apart and remake it and didn't botch it too badly... and it's quite an advantage to have one living in my tent and the other in the kitchen ;-)

We put the finishing touched to Nat's Scribe display and uploaded pictures to the Blogger site so people could scan a QR cade and then find out more about all the bits and pieces;

and I made my eldest grand-daughter a limp-bound book of medieval fairytales and stories so she had something to read at events as she's getting s little old for more of the toys in the Kids' tent ;-)

A few adjustments to clothing, preparation of a menu for the event to feed 12 people (and then buying it) and we were pretty much ready to go :-)