Our group was an informal lot, and met up in a piece of privately owned
ancient woodland with a big field attached. For a number of years it
worked very well with a few competitions of hawk throwing and knife
throwing. One session where they were working with flint and steel to
light a fire. I learned quite a bit from one of our friends about cooking on
the camp fire and many pleasant evenings spent round log fires, chatting.
The sight of a field half full of tents and tipis with candle lanterns
burning and some of the fires lit is magical.
Many of the folk there took up some sort of craft, beadwork, weaving on
finger looms and jewellery making so my lace pillow fitted in very well.
We imported a few books from America about Buckskinning and still have those
in our shelves today all these years later. Our costumes were generally
made with cotton, wool or leather, most as practical as possible for working
around the tent during the day and then dressing up in better for the
evenings and my blanket coat is still up in the loft, which we made out of a
whitney blanket. Some of our day stuff was a bit tongue in cheek and we
once organised a hobby horse race with the men starting off running the
course between the tents guaranteed to have us all in noisy laughter all
afternoon. In the evening my husband sang a song he had made up mentioning
various people and their part in the race was very well received.
For One of the arachne lace exchanges my partner sent me the humming bird
(before I bought the disc and made one myself). It was definitely the best
one I could have received and is now attached to my long pocket which is
part of my evening dressing up outfit, as well as some lace cuffs and a lace
edged kerchief I made to wear to keep drafts off my neck and prevent pain
but looked ideal. So I was able to bring both hobbies together for about
7 years before we stopped going, but we still have the costumes stored.
We also went to the re enactors market when it was held in Oxford one year
and close to there another year. Ruth Goodman was there manning her stall
which was all about Tudor times which is her favourite time but she also
does other television programs from other times down the centuries for
british television one of which featured Pat (sorry my brains gone dead)
the lady who got a cbe for services to lacemaking last year who showed her
how to work a piece of bobbin lace to give to the lady of the mansion when
they did a christmas special.
Right time to get back into the here and now, I have some work to do.
Sue T
Dorset UK
Okay, now I know it is SCA. I didn't know anything about either when I
lived
in Pennsylvania. I had heard the name, probably on Arachne at some time but
never followed it up. Sounds like fun. I remember going to a reenactment
in
Lichfield, England when my kids were little and it sounds a lot like that.
I
went again on a visit and this time found a bobbin maker and bought my one
and
only jingle bobbin. I used to demo at another reenactment in Illinois every
September, but it was only for a weekend, which was enough sometimes as it
could be very cold.
Janice Blair
Murrieta, CA, 60 miles north of
San Diego
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