Copenhagen – costume old and new

April 23, 2015May 15, 2015 stitchesoftime1 Comment

As re-enactors we spend a lot of time trying to be as authentic as we can when it comes to costume, most of it we make ourselves and so we visit churches to see effigies, look at manuscripts and illustrated bibles to try and get clues about things.

The best source is always a portrait but sadly those are very rare for the early 1300s which is the era we do most of the time.

The Tudor period is luckily a different situation as it was very fashionable to have your portrait painted so there are lots of lovely examples and Mum and I really enjoyed the paintings saw at Frederiksborg Castle.

Although I don’t make Tudor costume myself my lovely friend Kat does and Ellie has her costumed volunteers at Hardwick Hall so I still like to look at these and take pictures for them to use.

One day when I have more time I would love to re-enact this period if only for the blackwork I can wear so all of this research will come in useful.

Just look at these wonderful examples of beaded headwear, lace and jewellery. All of these ladies lived from the mid 1500s to mid 1600s and are members or relatives of the Danish Royal family at that time.

What really struck me was just how similar the fashions were to our Tudor and Elizabethan fashions of the time, I had not expected there to be so much similarity across Europe in dress.

We were also very impressed with the way that costume had been used in the interpretation for the children. The whole of the old wine cellar was devoted to an exhibition of the life of Christian 4th of Denmark who was born in 1577 at Frederiksborg Castle.

The best thing about the exhibition was that portraits of the young prince and his family had been used to recreate costume that children could try on.

They were elaborate and very authentic reproductions from the front with splits and ties at the back which would be easy to try on but also in a range of sizes so every child could try on something.

There were boys’ as well as girls’ costume, plus mini armour and a photo area with drapes to make it look like a portrait background.

This one was our favourite – the portrait at the back shows the King’s family and there are four dresses to try on with head dresses as there were three daughters in the portrait.

This is a photo of the painting from the National Museum of Denmark’s website.

Genius idea and there were lots of children enjoying the displays which also included food displays and an area where they could practise writing with a quill pen and colour pictures of costume.

I showed all of this to Ellie as inspiration for her interpretation as although I have seen costume in properties I have visited in the UK nothing has been done on this scale.

We have our first re-enactment event of the season this weekend at Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire so if you are in the area please come and say hello.

There is plenty to see and do and there may well be dragons involved at some point as the theme for the weekend is the celebration of St George’s Day. It has been beautiful weather here this week so we hope it will continue for the weekend 🙂

Have a good weekend whatever you do and thanks for visiting.

Copenhagen – churches, castles and Carlsberg!

April 17, 2015February 9, 2023 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello and hope that you are all well and happy. We have had a splendid time on our whistlestop tour of Denmark.

We have seen a lot in a short space of time, taking advantage of the fact that we bought a Copenhagen Card. The card covers entrance to 74 museums and attractions as well as all transport so we visited two castles that were further out from the city as well. Excellent value and well worth getting if you are visiting the city.

This is the beautiful Frederiksborg Castle at Hillerod, an idyllic setting with woodland and gardens surrounding it which we really enjoyed for our picnic and ice cream after the visit, the castle has one of the most amazing chapels that I have ever seen.

We enjoyed a Metro train trip to Hillerod and an ordinary train trip another day to Helsingor which gave us a chance to admire the Danish scenery, (very like England, much less like Sweden than I was expecting, flat and no pine trees, miles of lovely coastline, lakes and beautiful houses).

This is the Kronberg Castle at Helsingor, built to collect taxes and keep an eye on Sweden a short distance away – we did wave but unfortunately as we didn’t have our passports with us couldn’t visit. I have been to Sweden twice before and would love to return one day.

Travel in Denmark was very good, efficient, frequent and comfortable.Our hotel, Wakeup Copenhagen, was 10 mins from the main station and trains were plentiful. The hotel was very nice, small rooms but comfortable beds and a lovely shower 🙂

As a public transport enthusiast it was lovely to see accessible trains with lots of space not only for luggage (I would love trains like this for going to re-enactment events) but also the bikes that are so popular everywhere.

As always on our trips we tried to absorb as much of the history as we could in the short time we were there and not only were there some stunning places but it was lovely to remember again the connections between the UK and Denmark, (not just the Viking invasions), with the royal marriages so it helped put together the jigsaw of European history for us.

It was also interesting to see the human side of the royal lives, as well as the grand palaces and stunning décor there were displays like this of Princess Louise’s sewing chair from the late 1800s in the Ameliaborg Palace , she was obviously a keen needlewomen from the amount of things in her study.

I was also very excited by this display in the National Museum, one of the Scandanavian bog finds which are some well preserved medieval clothes, not a very good picture as my reflection is in the way but great excitement for me to see a real dress and hood so similar to the ones I make for re-enactment.

The churches were very interesting, from spending so much time in Spanish, Catholic ones to the plainer and less ornate beauty here – the top two pictures are Frederick’s church then the Trinity church and lastly the Cathedral.

As well as trains there were boats, a canal cruise and the water bus, the latter to see the Little Mermaid statue.

We also visited the Tivoli Gardens a couple of times, the world’s second oldest amusement park, which reminded us of a mini Disneyland complete with a pirate ship restaurant and beautiful buildings.

Oh and I even found a fabric shop in Helsingor and bought a couple of fat quarters of fun kids’ fabric with penguins and tigers on 🙂

I will be back later in the week with a post about the costume from the castles and churches as there was some amazing detail in the paintings and some great costume reproductions.

Have a lovely weekend ahead and enjoy whatever you are doing. Thanks for visiting.

And they are paying me for this!

March 17, 2015 stitchesoftime1 Comment

I am having a very, very lovely week so far. I have been sent on a writing retreat by work to finish part of my doctorate at a most gorgeous place, the Gladstone’s Library in the pretty village of Hawarden in North Wales.

There are lots of books – this morning I was working in this amazing place.

And also not one but two castles just down the road (pictures in a minute) and a beautiful church with stained glass to die for.

The food is amazing and I am having a lovely time getting to know some of the new colleagues that have joined us at the University recently – there may be visits to the pub and wine involved in that bit 🙂

I am feeling very relaxed and happy and making great progress with the writing (which is the whole point of being here!)

The library was set up by William Gladstone who was Prime Minister four times in the Victorian era and whose family home is this modern castle, sadly not open to the public.

It reminds me a lot of Boddelwyddan Castle just along from here where we have been lucky enough to do a couple of events. It is quite possibly by the same architect.

But I did get to go for a walk in the parkland surrounding the old medieval castle which was very lovely, on a mild Spring day with lots of these gorgeous flowers everywhere – well we are in Wales!

I went for a little walk in the village as well past the old House of Correction and a lovely fountain.

The church, St Deniols, was very nice with an extensive old graveyard with some sad tales to be told from the gravestones of war and childhood death. And an amazing surprise inside, stained glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.

I am seriously considering staying (not least because Ofsted are due at any minute!) but may have to go home soon so I can still fit in my jeans as there is lovely breakfast, lunch and tea plus morning coffee and afternoon, both of which may include cake – only to be polite of course.

In one of the corridors is a stitched piece by the local WI celebrating the village’s history.

However I do have Ellie’s velvet dress to alter for the start of the season at the end of April and a couple of other things to make so it will be (reluctantly) back to normality on Thursday.

Meanwhile I shall enjoy!

Hope you are all having a lovely week and thanks for visiting.

Lorca Part 1

February 28, 2015 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Is it sad that it gives me great pleasure to sit on a Saturday morning (looks like it is going to be a bit sunny as well – yippee!) and write blog posts?

Hope not as blogging does make me happy and I have been looking forward to sorting out my embroidery pictures from Lorca all week.

Am splitting them into two, maybe even 3 posts, as there are so many and the amount of work that has gone into these pieces I feel they need sharing with the stitchy bloggy world.

First some of the gorgeousness of the city itself. It is sadly famous for having a very bad earthquake in 2011 and they are still repairing a lot of the damage. What has been restored is gorgeous and those that are not beautiful old stone are painted mainly in white with a deep yellow trim.

These are some of the old mansions, the Casino and the town hall.

We spent some time wandering around and visiting churches and the castle as well. This picture from Google is a great aerial shot of the castle.

Lorca was important in the medieval period as it was on the border between Moorish and Christian Spain being halfway between Murcia (the city that I visited on the last trip to Spain) and Granada so this was a very well used castle – great views of the surrounding countryside as you can imagine.

It was a long walk up (and we got lost a bit) but a short one down as we found the way back through the very poor area just below the walls.

Stark contrast between the crumbling houses in the barrio and this church and seminary at the bottom of the hill. I am going to frame this photo and add it to my ‘beautiful buildings and blue sky’ collection of Spanish pictures!

We got the idea of going to Lorca from my brother and his partner who stayed there overnight on the way back from a trip to the mountains. They went to the tourist information and picked up a brochure that said four embroidery museums in the city and kindly thought of me 🙂

It was also a very exciting trip as we did it all by bus from La Marina, these are the sort of things like I love doing and it made Mum and I feel very adventurous!

We also had some lovely food in cute little tapas bars like this one in a converted house where due to my poor Spanish I inadvertently ordered off the menu (luckily what I ordered was lovely and mostly non meat for Mum).

I thought he was just explaining what was available and so was nodding to say that I understood and he obviously thought I wanted it all – we had to stop him after the first two dishes and say we had enough!

Mum and I were expecting to see loveliness and knew that the embroidery was connected with the Easter festivals(Semana Santa – Holy Week) and we have seen a few of these before so were looking forward to some lovely robes for icons etc.

However we didn’t realise that the parades are four days of spectacle that includes chariots, Romans and their Gods, Egyptians and the Devil as well as usual icons of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

Mum has lived in Spain for 11 years now and her sister for 24 and neither of them had heard of the event there so obviously a well-kept secret. So we know where we are going next Easter!

Here is a taster of the parade from some of local tourism web sites.

The four museums represent the four brotherhoods – Paso Encarnado (Crimson), Paso Morado (Purple), Paso Azul (Blue) and Paso Blanco (White).

The last two are the biggest and the ones with the most spectacular embroidery as they are the groups with horses as well as icons and robes for participants. This tourism web site gives details of locations of all four and the other attractions if you ever fancy a trip.

Since this is a very long post now I will finish (and go and have brunch, my other favourite thing about the weekend!) and be back tomorrow for goldwork loveliness the like of which I have never seen before.

Thanks for visiting.

A Harry Potter Christmas

December 25, 2014December 25, 2014 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Our Christmas treat this year was a visit to the Harry Potter Studio Tours which involved a lot of driving around Watford for Ellie (which she managed very well – at one point it took us 20 minutes to go 800 feet!).

We had a very lovely time visiting the exhibition of props and sets from the films. We are now embarking on a Harry Potterthon and are watching all 8 films over Christmas.

The scale of the props needed was really brought home to us, from the volume of costumes for 8 films with a large cast and the amount of things that had been built, including sets of the rooms from the castle.

Dumbledore’s office was particularly spectacular, the many items that could not be bought so were made from scratch and the amazing detail of everything. Even the things that were only in the background of a shot were all beautiful.

Here are some of my favourite things.

The Banqueting Hall dressed for Christmas

An Ice Sculpture from the Yule Ball

The Clock and Pendulum

A case full of curios in Dumbledore’s office

The memories store in Dumbledore’s office – modelled on a chalice with so many beautiful tiny bottles

Clocks and curios in the Prop store

Lots of wands – all individually designed

The Potions classroom – beautiful bottles with magic ingredients!

Jake playing the role of Hagrid (well he is nearly tall enough!) rescuing Ellie from Privet Drive

The wonderful model of the castle, all covered in snow.

It was well worth a visit and a lovely couple of days away – Ellie is now a lot better at parking in multi-storeys than she was 🙂

What a lovely end to the season!

September 18, 2014 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Well we had a brilliant weekend away at the Mortimer’s Cross event at Hampton Court Castle.

I knew it was going to be a fab weekend when after a very pleasant train journey spent sewing more flower brooches I ended up pitching my little tent in a field with this view and settling down to a cold cider and my last evening meal in the open air for this year. A lovely end to a busy week.

The weather was perfect and so I had a wander round the gardens on Saturday in between the two battles.

We then had a tour of the castle before tea (contemplating how we would redecorate if we bought it as it is currently up for sale at only £9 million).

This is my new friend Angela who I first met at the Caldicot event.

I would keep these fabulous light fittings, they reminded me of the William Burges designs at Cardiff Castle.

There were two bands on Saturday night including a wonderful Celidh band with an excellent fiddle player so we danced lots and stayed up far too late really 😉

Sunday was more of the same, the weather held and the two battles that day were even better, everyone making the most of the last event.

Standing on the field with the guns going off and arrows raining down I couldn’t have been happier. Such a lovely time and an excellent way to end a very good season.

You can tell how happy I am in this picture as it looks like I am dancing with these two friends in armour. Thanks to Pat for the battle photos, he did a brilliant job as always of capturing the action for us.

This has to be my fave picture of the season, another one of Pat’s photos – a friend captioned this as ‘now we know that gunners have hearts!’

Looking forward to our first off-season kit making weekend, the Sisters Kerry and Ellie plus friend Jamie will be here.There will be linen everywhere and hopefully completed shifts at the end of it!

Meanwhile there are more brooches and Christmas ornaments to be made, what would life be without fabric and wool?

Thanks for visiting and look out for the next post which will be a very special one as it my 400th so I will be having a little giveaway!

Wonderful weekend in Wales!

September 2, 2014September 2, 2014 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Well we had a very lovely time at Caldicot this weekend despite a start which involved a fairly damp set up and lots of traffic problems for friends due to road works and delays which meant we were still pitching tents in the rain at 10 o’clock on Friday night! But all was beautiful and sunny come Saturday morning so that meant we had a fab time.

Paul played a major role in the battle leading the English army (to victory on Saturday which was brilliant). He has not been to this event before but the character he plays in our shows, William de Bohun, once owned Caldicot Castle so he had been planning a visit and as he has all of the kit in de Bohun’s heraldry it looked great on the field.

Here are the before shots of our boys before they went to battle. James, our newest member, was de Bohun’s banner bearer and looked very good in his kit.

Jamie has decorated his helmet with painted blue and yellow squares ready for his new character for next season and was a bit worried it would get scratched but it was fine.

I finished a couple of pieces of kit for the weekend, a wool tunic for a friend and this parti-coloured chaperon to go with the new dress that Ellie has made herself. You may remember this dress from our sewing weekend in Feb.

The chaperon is fully reversible so she can have an all dark pink one if she wants. I am very glad I have finished this as I cut it out of the fabric for the original dress I made her about 4 years ago and then it got put away and forgotten about!

Here are a couple of battlefield pictures for you showing Paul and Jamie in action. Thanks to Tammy, James’ fiancé, for these as she was on the sidelines with a camera.

The group went for a photo shoot round the castle later and took some very good pictures. Here is one of Paul and Jamie at the top of the castle tower.

Ellie and I had a day out after the event as we stayed over on the way back to tick another couple of Trust properties off our list which I will post about later.

An excellent weekend all round.Now for a nice quiet week working on my doctorate with a bit of crafting and walking in between 🙂 Lovely stuff!

Hope you are looking forward to a nice week ahead, thanks for visiting.

A wonderful view (when you get to the top!)

July 28, 2014July 28, 2014 stitchesoftime3 Comments

We are very lucky and we get to camp in some amazing places, castles and historic venues and this weekend we had an event at Peveril Castle in the Peak District. The views were amazing and well worth the very long climb (with tents and lots of kit!) to the top of the hill.

Due to the nature of the site we only took modern tents rather than authentic as we had to take the tents down each morning as well. The picture below shows Mark and Shane climbing up on Saturday morning with their kit, it was a long steep hill!

But this picture just sums up everything I love about re-enactment, breakfast (bacon butties of course!) in the sunshine outside the tent.

The weather was brilliant – despite my fears that this might be a very wet weekend, it was actually a little too hot on the Saturday, we girls were ok in the shade down by the entrance to the castle doing our head dress talks but the boys were sweltering at the top and did a brilliant job of running the events in that heat.

Thanks to Wendy, Kevin, Philip and Daniel for these pictures that they posted to our group Facebook site.

Luke had a new cotehardie to show off – he looks brilliant and I love this picture.

I also really love this one of the girls looking at the view.

Here are Luke and Jamie doing a dagger display.

This is the arena from the top of the castle.

And here am I with Luke’s very impressive horned helm.

We were all so tired that after a trip down to a pub at the bottom of the hill for a very nice meal Saturday evening we only had a little sit round the campfire before bed.

A really excellent weekend and a great way to finish the Swords of Mercia events for this year. The Sisters still have a few events left before the tents go away for winter 😦

Ellie is now here for a week’s holiday so we may do some days out later in the week, we do have a trip planned to a textile museum en route to moving Jake into a new flat in Middlesbrough.

Hope you have all had a good weekend and thanks for visiting.

My lovely boys !

May 27, 2014May 26, 2015 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Hello there, we have just got back from a lovely (if wet as always) weekend at Ashby de la Zouche Castle where we were doing a show. Over a 1000 people braved the weather this Bank Holiday to come and see us which was very nice of them.

At least it was sunny on Saturday even if Sunday afternoon and packing the tents was a bit wet and cold 😦

The boys in the group have been working really hard all winter on their new kit so I thought you might like to see some pictures of them in their finery.

Luke has adapted his outfit to include chains that hold his horned great helm and his swords so that he can hang the helm from his back as he fights (he wears another smaller helm underneath to fight in).

You can see the chains here on this picture of him and our newest member Jamie and again on a picture taken at the last show of all of our knights on the steps of Bolsover Castle. Thanks to Jamie for these next two photos.

This picture below was also taken at Bolsover and you can see more clearly the helmet that Mark our Dragon Knight was wearing for that show which had a St George’s day theme.

Paul in the blue is a wonderful artist and his costume has such detail on it, his belt has stamped and painted lions and the surcoat and shield are all hand painted.

Shane has got a lovely new helmet for this season (yes it does look a bit like a lemon squeezer!) and some new armour – this picture was taken by one of the visitors as I didn’t get chance to get close-ups due to the inclement weather but he has new arm and leg armour in a blue tint and a new armoured surcoat with plates inside it.

They were all looking very splendid and I was very proud of them 😉

We have a packed summer ahead of us which is brilliant. This weekend we are off to Somerset for an event followed by our week visiting National Trust properties and then another two events to finish off June.

I am really looking forward to the months ahead, my teaching finished last week (just some large piles of marking to come) and my lovely group bought me some gift vouchers for a local wool shop which I am really looking forward to spending!

Just about to make up the first of my (no doubt many) Little Cotton Rabbits elephants and have lots and lots of projects planned for summer – going to make the most of the newly sorted craft room.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Probably the best castle in the world….

May 11, 2014May 11, 2014 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello again

As you know we are big fans of castles, we have been lucky enough to camp in the grounds of lots of them and have visited many different types from derelict piles of stones to beautiful Victorian rebuilds (Castle Coch and Cardiff Castle).

But I think this is my favourite so far. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited (and I have been very lucky to go to some amazing places).

Not only the castle itself but the location is stunning. These are the views from Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, built by King Ludwig in the 1880s.

The yellow castle you can see is his father’s castle and these are pictures of the one he built.

Sadly he only got to live in the castle for a short while before he died. The inside is amazing as well – wonderful wall paintings of Wagner’s operas and goldwork that you wouldn’t believe on all the furnishings.

No photos allowed of the inside as expected but thanks to the miracle of Google images I did find these to show you of the bedroom, great hall and king’s chamber.

And there are some amazing shots taken by helicopter, look at this one of the castle in Winter – fairytale or what? I now have a mousemat with one of these photos to remind me of the beauty whilst at work.

Will show you some more of the trip later – meanwhile am still enjoying living in my beautiful Marsden as well until I can afford a castle like that, look at this for a gorgeous sunset, picture from the local group Facebook page.