Category Archives: Blog

Herstmonceux Medieval Festival Weekend

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Herstmonceux was our first three-day event. Unfortunately Saturday was incredibly wet, but we managed to keep as dry as possible around the fire and it improved greatly on Sunday and Monday. We provided on-going demonstrations of natural dyeing over the whole event, and created a beautiful range of colours.

Herstmonceux castle in Sussex is a beautiful location for such a large festival. There is so much going on, from jousting to a castle seige. We were part of a big medieval market, right in the centre of the action.

We were very pleased to meet another dyer, from Italy, and share our dfferent methods of obtaining the best colours. He had a fantastic portable dye vat system too!

http://www.herstmonceux-castle.com/

Silchester Open Days

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We were honoured to be invited to Silchester for both of their Archaeological open days in July and August.

Silchester is a Roman town in Hampshire, which has been excavated for the last 17 years by Reading University. They have discovered both the layout of the town and the Iron Age settlement which was there before.

At the first open day we took our new quern stones, as well as some grain, and helped the visitors use them to make flour. We ground all the grain we took in just the morning, the stones never stopped turning. It was brilliant to see the opportunities families took to educate children about the origins of bread they eat every day. The archaeologists were also exhibiting a Roman quern from Verulamium (St. Albans), and having ours for demonstration really brought it to life for the visitors.

Before the second open day, we made a replica of an Iron Age warp-weighted loom. We set it up and started weaving at the open day, demonstrating how it worked. This helped to put the finds of loom weights into context for both the public and the students.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/

A Merrie Noyse!

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At Tewkesbury Medieval Festival, we were lucky enough to have been in the market next to A Merrie Noyse, a fabulous minstral group who play a very wide range of instruments and  music from different times.

During their set on Sunday, we danced several Tudor Playford dances to their music. Hopefully we will be able to reherse together soon and bring the music and dancing to other events in the future.

Tewkesbury Medieval Festival

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Some of the hottest days of the year! We were impressed by the festival management providing cooling and entertaining fixed water sprays and their concern for everyone.

We were in the market next to a Merrie Noyse, a minstrel group who we accompanied in the main tent with some Tudor playford dances. This was enjoyable for all of us, its not often we get to dance for a full band!

www.tewkesburymedievalfestival.org/

Blacksmithing

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We are pleased to have comissioned David Gregory of Cobalt Blacksmiths to make us a new fire grid structure, so we can take our natural dyeing to more events.

If your event is in a sensitive environment, which cannot have fires on the ground, then we will soon be able to demonstrate natural dyes for you! Our new fire grid will keep the fire off the ground, as well as proving secure support for our dye pans.

We also hope to soon be able to take some of Cobalt Blacksmiths products to market. These may include small items such as knives and S-hooks, and maybe some larger items such as lanterns.

Wood Festival 2013

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http://woodfestival.tumblr.com/

An incredibly relaxed family festival in the sunny grounds of Braziers Park. There was music and workshops galore. Our morning spinning and weaving drop-in sessions were popular, but the highlight was the afternoon natural dyeing demonstation – including the Woad Show!

We spent Saturday evening dancing to beautiful music by La Mort Subite, and watched everyones names in Futhark (the Runic alphabet) gather on our board.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at Wood, though we slept for a very long time when we got home! It was brilliant to meet so many fantastic people, everyone was so kind and interested in what we were doing. We felt very inspired by the relaxed atmosphere of the festival and how everyone was taking the time to learn something new at a workshop or just relax in the sunshine.

We hope that everyone who came to learn spinning, weaving or hear about natural dyes enjoyed themselves and learnt something new. We’d love to hear if anyone has continued at home anything they learnt!

Michelham Priory Medieval Fair

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It was very enjoyable being in such a beautiful location. We were very lucky with our pitch next to the main entrance of the Priory.

Our colours had a very good reception, by both the public and the other living history participants.

For one of us, Michelham also brought back many childhood memories of being on the archaeological excavations here, so it was lovely coming back and seeing how the site has changed.