Have now finished our listing of events for this year so please click on the link at the top of the page for what we are doing in 2008. I have included links to the relevant web sites for the events so that you can find out price, time and travel info but if you need to know anything else please leave me a comment and I will get back to you. If you do come to an event please come and say hello – ask for Alison from the Order of Fighting Knights and someone should be able to tell you where we are.
Month: April 2008
Internet crisis!
Apologies for the lack of recent posts but we have had no Internet for the last two weeks! It is amazing how much we have come to rely on it – no-email access (except at work but I am too busy there to write personal stuff) no just being able to look up things when we need it. Technology is so wonderful when it does work but we have really come to rely on it which is quite scary. For most of last week we did not have a computer that worked either which was a big shock to the 13 year old addict! Thankfully that is now semi-sorted as we had a broken monitor so have had to swap the other monitor to this PC.
The re-enactment season has now started – we had a very cold and wet show at Bolsover Castle last Sunday but huge thanks to the 800 odd (mad!) people who donned their wellies and came to see us. I have spent most of this week drying out the kit, the tent, the bedding, the hangings etc. and am now packing everything for this weekend when we shall be in North Wales at the beautiful Boddelwydden Castle near St Asaph. Hurrah for being outdoors and pray for some nice weather this weekend!
Medival costume trauma…and lovely daughter!
I have spent today trying to make a new surcoat ( a kind of tunic with heraldry on worn over armour ) The first problem was that the new sewing maching I bought recently would not start – no power. Never mind thought I – a woman of the new age who needs no man to sort out minor electrical problems – it probably needs a new fuse in the plug. Which it did but that took nearly half an hour of searching for spare fuses (there were none) then looking for electrical items that had a 3 amp fuse in their plugs (finally found old sewing maching with right size). Then when I threaded it (according to the manual!) it would not work!!!!
So after an hour I went back to the old sewing machine (of course then I had to swap fuses again) which has a habit of jamming every half an hour and sounds like a lawnmower (it is not at all well and never has been which is why we bought a new one).
But I did get it finished in the end – in between cooking tea and was very pleased to have finally got it all done. Then as I was taking some pics to post on the blog I realised that it is all wrong – the colours on the heraldry are the wrong way round! Which means it will have to be unpicked and sewn up again – which of course I now have even less time to do than I did before today! See below for evidence of the error.
This is the old surcoat – red on the left , blue on the right with horse (Invicta the Kentish horse) and lots of sword cuts!
And this is the new one with blue on the left and red on the right . I shall just sob quietly into my wine now…..
However lovely daughter Ellen (here she is looking very glam last night as she was off to a party) has volunteered to unpick it so that I can sew it up again later in the week .
On a more positive note my Mum was very pleased with her recent Mother’s Day present – my first finish with lovely Noro wool- the pattern is of my own invention (not vey complex) as it just 10 rows garter stitch then 10 rows of moss stitch but it gives it a lovely texture. Mum lives in Spain but was over for a visit before we went to Barcelona recently – will post pics of that soon.
Stitches of Time 