I know I should be doing a multitude of other things, but while I was sorting out some clothing for my sister's kids to wear to the big medieval event of the year, I thought that it might be nice to adjust some things I bought earlier in the year- a green wool, hedeby style hood and a generic leaf green cloak.

Both have aspects which aren't correct, historically, and the plan always was to use the wool and upgrade them when I had time in the future for use in my century, even if they aren't quite right for that. Extant items have gores in some of the same places, but smaller.

Since they were out and I had a movie on and didn't want to tackle anything really big, I started unpicking the machine-finished seams with a view to seeing how much work there was to upgrading sooner rather than later. So now those are on the potential horizon. I still have a number of other jobs to do before Abbey Medieval Festival but maybe the green hood will become my next work lunchtime sewing project after I finish the grey hood.

I'm still finishing the Polish kontusz which is so very, very long overdue but MUST be done by July, (and would be a surprise for next weekend if I could manage it.)

I have a lot of social media to do for my publisher, and have been slowed down with cleaning for house inspections and falling off a ladder which resulted in a lot of swelling and pain but no broken bones or internal organ injury according to the X-Rays and CT scan I had in Emergency.

It's bitterly cold here at the moment and my little kitty has become a heater hog. Wherever it is, so she goes. I can't afford to have it on all the time, of course, and usually it's just to warm up the space before bed, but I've had it on a number of times through the day while I sew. Other times working with a hot water bottle on my lap seems to be nice.

I've been working on a grey wool hood based on the London finds. It's been a lunchtime and on the bus sewing project as it's small and portable. I bought the hood with a canvas lining, but it was an earlier time period for me, so I have had a bit of an unpick and reshape.

Here's the stab stitching of the linen facing band for the buttons (above) and the sewing down of the seams with a flat fell stitch below.

Another small job for the big festival this year is making a few more little stools for use around the camp. I have some very nice little chest chairs I am bringing also, but a couple of spare stools are needed as well.

So far I've got the stools put together, and just need to stain and wax them, so that's this afternoons job!

I bought a tent this week!



My sister and the twins are coming along to the Abbey Medieval Festival this year and I needed some sleeping options for them, the best of which was putting them all in my large pavilion and making a change room to the side there and filling the rest with beds.

The biggest issue with this is that my display would then need to go into my round tent, which is possible but produces a sub-standard display. The inside walls of the "room" being rounded offer a lot of wasted space, so after a lot of hard thought, I decided what I really needed was a square marquee with walls of the same size and the round tent. The corners and flat walls echo an inside room rather than a tent, which better fits the display.

Tents aren't cheap, especially ones suited to re-enactment. I know what you're thinking, square tents aren't really right anyway. They do turn up extremely scarcely in some manuscripts, but even then, they have a different roof line and are rectangular, like the pattern I based by big pavilion on. My round tent (which is perfectly normal for re-enactment) will be used not this year, but in future years for any number of things, but I decided that having the options of a square one for interstate displays where there is little room, and the roof can be used without walls for shading an eating area, if needed.

It's a Past Tents tent, which I bought from Medieval Fight Club, as it was already on Australian soil and therefore guaranteed to arrive well before time. The canvas is very thick and it looks very waterproof! I have yet to erect the tent, but today I'm busy cutting and painting a new centre pole from hardwood to help support the weight of the canvas.

Looks like tonight will be another long night of catching up here. I've got a few things to do today and I'm planning to add some lovely oak leaf cut outs to the bottom of a navy-blue surcote for my nephew to wear.

Finally, the squirrel house with its little gold ball finials attached onto the roof and I'm pretty content with the result!