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 :-)

AROW24

 AROW is the Abbey Reenactors-Only Weekend and usually occurs on the May Day long weekend.  Aside from a chance to camp and socialise, it's invaluable as a practice set-up for the Abbey Festival (10,000 people a day!) and to test that all the new gear and ideas that emerged over the summer period actually work...

Sam got to test out her new tent:

Nat got to set up her new Scribe's display:

I got to test out the cardwoven fence and the new sign:

We set the new Kids' Tent up and it was very well received :-)

Our first-aiders had an inservice with the new kit.

We all had a play with the flint and steel, and the kids made tiny fires (in the fire tray...)

Rob set up his axe-throwing target and some lovely viking lasses joined our girls throwing for most of the afternoon :-)

We had some rather charming visitors when it came time to pack down and head home :-)

Working towards AROW24

 Reenactment is one of those hobbies where there's a constant flow of things to do, whether it's upgrading current gear, or stumbling across something cool while researching and then making/doing/learning that.

The first upgrade was the kids' cups - what they has was adequate and reasonably in keeping with the period, but  I wanted to make them something better:

and because the entire family's neurodivergent in a variety of forms ("neurospicy!) I made them some in-keeping-with-the period fidget toys - metal rings and bone bead paternosters.

I came across a clay frypan in an op-shop and bought it on spec that it would be reasonably period; dug around a bit online and found it'd pass, and then learnt to cook with pottery gear as it was a lot more typical than iron pots and pans (which were rare/valued highly enough that women willed them to their daughters in some cases!)

We made up a fire-starting kit because someone at the previous show wanted to know how it was done, and the whole group is now reasonably proficient with flint and steel.

I came a cross a reference to sprang weaving and so of course had to give it a go - I can't do anything fancy, but I can make bags :-)

We put together a sunshade for the public to use, because quite often events are hot - even in winter!  We had a member of the public go down in our encampment with heat exhaustion at the previous Abbey - there's a false sense of security that because its winter there won't be a problem, but between the heat and the lack of humidity and the preference for people to dress up in costume for the event (and some of the costumes the public come in put a lot of reenactor efforts to shame - they're magnificent!) it's very easy to overheat (jumping ahead to Abbey24, it rained constantly and the sunshade was used as a rain shelter, but at least it was used).

Nat's getting a Scribe's desk display ready for Abbey24, so Rob built her a lectern to put her parchment on.

...and the blasted finials on top of the tents occasionally need re-gilding...

And we'll test out all the new stuff at AROW!

Post-event tweaking

 After an event there's always *that* discussion - what worked, what didn't, what needs fixing/mending, what we should get for the next show or do for the next show.

The first thing on the list (once all the washing up and washing had been taken care of) was a cordon to go around the pavilion to replace the borrowed wicker fence - we never realised we needed a fence until we were offered use of that one at Abbey 23, and of course then we figured we should really get our own :-)  Unlike some groups we don't fence off the entire encampment but there are some places we don't want people wandering through, either because it's dangerous (the kitchen and the wood-chopping area) or because there's a chance things may get accidentally broken (the pavilion, where we have a lot of glass and ceramic pieces, and inside most of the tents (similar reason).  99.9% of the people who visit our display are wonderful and interested and careful, but one gets a little scarred by the few thoughtless ones - the woman with a horde of sticky-fingered, toffee-apple-coated children who stood and watched as they wiped their hands on my wall hangings, the old dears deep in discussion as to whether the item they were attempting to bed was a plastic or bone needle (bone, took a couple of hours to make, and I intervened before they snapped it...), the parents who put my loom weights around their child's neck and walked out of the display and feigned surprise when asked that they return it, the children who came into the kids' play area and belted the carved and painted toy animals so hard the legs broke off, the chap who got into my bed (between the sheets) with his boots on because he "didn't realise I slept there", the other chap who opened the trunk next to my bed (where I keep my personal/modern stuff and which now has a lock on it) and wittily announced that he didn't know they wore jeans and joggers in Medieval Times...  All reenactors have similar (and sometimes more harrowing) tales so we use cordons and polite little 'keep out' signs.

I decided I didn't want something as substantial as a wicker fence - hard to pack and transport to events - so tablet-wove a 14 metre tape and sewed little felt flags on it, then painted up some little wooden stakes to support it and it's done its job very nicely ever since :-)

Another issue was the group's sign - evidently people had trouble seeing it, and in a way I sympathised as it was perhaps a little small, and may have got lost from view with the pavilion as a background - bling against bling, so to speak ;-)  I made another, larger, fancier (!) one out of canvas and that seems to have solved that problem :-)

I'd been toying with the idea of using QR codes to allow people to find out more about what they were looking at (explanations, documentation, references and so on) but didn't get them done for Abbey23 - producing the QR codes themselves was quite simple, but writing the pages they led to took a lot longer than I'd thought... so I got stuck into that so I could try it out for Abbey24.  The codes needed to be sufficiently unobtrusive that they didn't detract from the medieval vibe of the event, but obvious enough people would use them; and the web pages they led to needed to be fairly simple and quick to download onto a phone because the internet coverage around the Abbey area is not fantastic - and the event gets 10,000 visitors a day, plus reenactors, plus stallholders, plus staff.  I settled on using Blogger pages (see the link to the Oltramar Encampment Tour in the right-hand column).

We've ended up with a QR code disc for every tent and also for Nat's scribe display and the spices display.

I resurrected the tiny 2 metre square tent that'd been Nat's before I made her her current (3x3) one and fitted it out to be the kids' tent - they need somewhere not only to store their toys and to play in, but also a space to retreat to that's their space - an event with 10,000 people a day can be quite daunting even for adults.

I think the worse thing about looking at photos of an event is that you realise that things like hangings and blankets are getting shabby and need replacing, trunks need repainting or covering, tentage needs cleaning... and there's always just a bit more embroidery/sewing/painting/etcetera than there is time for >.< and so things get triaged to get done before the next event, or pushed back to be done afterwards. 

2023 - The Gathering of the Clan

 After Abbey22 I was very excited to hear that my third daughter (plus husband and 3 kids) was intending to return to Australia after 10 years overseas... and wanted to resume reenacting with us :-)  Needless to say this resulted in a flurry of activity and Making Stuff ;-)  We'd need a bigger kitchen tent, somewhere for all the kids (5 grandkids, and all reenactors!), they'd need a tent to sleep in, costumes, shoes, rugs, hangings... and they were planning on returning about 6 weeks before Abbey23.

I made more toys and the like to go into the toy basket, but the highlight was a 1:10 scale model of one of the tents that they could set up from scratch, more or less, like the big ones.

I also put together a lantern (the goatskin came from an old drum) with a tiny olive oil lamp in it, painted myself a cup, and embroidered a cushion cover for the Idiot Box (so called because it took 8 hours to make the box and only about 10 days to paint it because I was hyper and obsessing LOL)

AROW (in May) let us test out the kids' tent - reenactorlings need their own area - and the new bigger kitchen;

and I made the kids some period-ish plates.

I think Abbey23 was a bit of a culture shock, especially for the kids, but they all managed and had a great time :-)

(photo courtesy of traceydee photography)

The Great Plague

2020 started with a horror bushfire season and the Abbey Museum ran a fund-raiser for the local firefighters; a couple of us attended to provide colour and storytelling ;-) and little realised that it'd be our last public show for ages :-(  A couple of months after that covid hit the world, and we all know how that went...

 I guess the good thing about enforced inactivity is that one gets a lot done...

I wrote a book for one daughter (birthday present)

And make a coverlet for one of the others (also a birthday present).

 I spent a lot of time sorting through all of our reenactment gear and fixing and decorating things; 2021 came around and I made myself some little earrings; dyed up some silk yarn and tablet-wove a belt, then carved the fittings out of pearl shell,

and embroidered a collar (also with the silk yarn).

The plague had died down enough we were able to attend AROW, which was wonderful after such a long break; I made another trunk,  and a tent for a friend... 

and started embroidering (with more of that silk yarn...) an antependium.

We were all rather crushed when a lockdown happened 3 days before the 2021 Abbey Medieval Festival :-( but figured that we'd have some really fine stuff to show off for Abbey 22 so just kept going ;-)

2022 saw me bite off nearly more than I could chew and start weaving a kilim in very fine yarn, which I tinkered with for the first 6 months of the year and only *just* got finished in time for Abbey22; I finished the Antependium in March, then made a jewelled processional cross:

The kilim took quite a lot of my time but I finished in in June, 

and along the way also made a bell-tower and huge tapered candles for the chapel tent.

Abbey Festival 2022 was the first big show we'd had in ages and all the little bits and pieces I'd been making finally all came together and it was wonderful! 

It's been another long time...

 I really am terribly slack with this whole blogging thing...  The group's grown and developed considerably since 2015 (and that one little post in 2017).  Lemme trawl through phot albums and see if I can get up to date...

BEFORE THE PLAGUE:

Ellie brought her magnificent bed to History Alive 2017 (June) and Jan Hollingsworth took a fantastic photo of it -

I carved a little saint statue and made a wayside shrine for the Abbey Festival (July 2017)

The group travelled down to the St Ives Medieval Fair (Sydney) in September 2017

2018 saw me moving house, replacing a couple of leaky tent roofs, and making some textile-related toys...

We 'did' History Alive, the Abbey festival, and the Queensland Living History Federation Conference; a dear friend of mine went overseas and I ended up with her beautiful carved sella curulis (which I then painted ;-) )...

... and made a few pretties to zhuzh up my tent a bit, including a new pole for the lamps to hang off, a hanging based on a piece of Almoravid brocade, and some pearl-shell-spangled red silk curtains with goldwork and gemstone beads (to go behind the triptych).

2019 was a bit of a meh year - we went to the Abbey reenactors' Only Weekend (AROW and History Alive, but then my friend Rob had health issues and we decided to give the Abbey festival a miss.  Even so, there were trunks and tent poles to paint,

pretties to acquire and tweak (the jug was originally white, the condiments dish un-patterned, and the Stinky Kitty a most distressing grey colour thanks to a faux bronze 'patina'...

...and of course more textile stuff - another hanging for the tent, a strip of tablet weaving for my latest gown...

... and then came the Great Plague >.<