Rosalie Gilbert

I'm very excited to be prepping for a Mother's Day market this year! I don't do many markets, but this one raises funds for a cat rescue here in Brisbane, Best Friends Felines, and since I have a rescue kitty myself, I'm all for helping them out. They assured me they will have a lot of pet related stalls and wanted some other stalls to balance it out but also be something a little different, so that's me! I've been accepted already and I've made a little ad using their own promo colours and style, and I think it's come together well.



I'll have all three books and a range of other stuff which I can't take all of to other events: medieval stickers, little cosmetic bags, leather pouches in fun colours paternosters and prayer beads (in wood, stone, and semi-precious stones), some tote bags, perhaps some medieval "No Touchy Touchy!" coffee mugs as well. 

I have a medieval weekend on the same time, but will do the markets and if it's not raining, will go for the rest of the long weekend on site. It almost always rains that weekend, and last year a lot of people had a lot of modern stuff out and blasted modern music for hours whilst sitting in their modern camp chairs under their pop up gazebos, which really did spoil it. None of the organisers said anything, so I'm expecting more of the same this year, sadly. 

The Mother's Day Markets sound like fun! 

 

A while ago I cut into all my scrap leather into circles to make little drawstring pouches, and last night I made a few. This is my favourite one so far!

I really like the blue and blue combo.

I've got other things to work on as well, so it might be a little bit work-on-it-watching-movies sort of thing. Braiding the strings takes a while and for some I'll be using leather thonging. Others I'll try to colour co-ordinate like this one, or accentuate with contrasting ones.

So here's the cutest of them all, the skulls paternoster! Technically, the original has little knots in between, from memory, but as this will again not be for re-enactors, I feel it'll be a good seller. I'm not making too may of these, as the beads are a bit more expensive, and I don't want to have too many sitting around and be out of pocket.

You've gotta admit... the goth crowd are gonna love these!

A new linear paternoster for me, made with garnet beads, white stone gauds and hand spun wool tassels. My first project of 2026. 



Most of the new paternosters I'm making are looped ones with 50 beads, but in medieval art, we see unjoined ones, usually called "linear" and I didn't have one of those myself, so I thought it was time to make one for me. 
 

I can't express how I've always admired people who have a hand steady enough to do this kind of thing, but I'm grateful to have found Ezio Zanini who is taking this project on for me. This is the very first part of making the teeth. Ezio says he makes the teeth first before adding the carved decoration because if a tooth should break, then his carving isn't wasted, and that is definitley the sensible way to go.

Making more little things to sell!



Having fun making some coloured leather pouches to sell. These mini ones are my tests and suitable for dice or about 5 coins! The larger ones will be a variety of colours and will have braided strings.

Here are the colours: