Yes, long time, no post!
The past year and a half have been different for us all, and I’ve been focusing on my growing family and less on my medieval textile crafts and social media. But rest assured, I’m still here and still passionate about textiles.
But I wanted to drop by and let you all know about the Abbey Medieval Festival this year. As many of you know, the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology is a small museum located in Caboolture, QLD (Australia). It runs several fundraising events to help fund the museum and their conservation projects, the biggest of which is the Abbey Medieval Festival.
If you’ve seen my blog or Facebook page prior to know, you’ve probably seen photos from the Abbey Medieval Festival. It’s big and offers so many different things with reenactors from the dark ages through to the renaissance all coming together to share their passions and knowledge. I’ve been attending for over 15 years and I haven’t seen everything yet. Like many people and businesses, the Abbey Museum has been hard hit by the impacts of COVID. The good news is, that the government is allowing the festival to take place this year and it will be on from 2nd-3rd July and I will be there!
They’ve made some changes to ensure it will be a COVID safe event, along with the usual social distancing, hand sanitiser and so forth, they’ve capped the numbers of visitors each day, but are running it a whole extra day!
There’s a LOT on offer and the great news is there’s still plenty of tickets left! So if you’re local do consider grabbing your tickets, at the moment they’re only for sale online until the end of this month (and yes, if the event does get cancelled they’ll refund your tickets).
My re-enactment group “Make Your Own Medieval Experience” will be attending. Our group consists of various “guilds” through which our members learn and share their knowledge of a particular craft or activity. Part of this is our Textile Guild’s “15th Century Textile Workspace” which some of you may have seen photos of over the years.
This workspace will run ongoing demonstrations/presentations and workshops. It will be open from 10am-3pm on Friday and 10:30-3:30pm on Saturday and Sunday. The sorts of crafts you can come and learn about include:
Spinning (obviously!)
Fibre Preparation for Spinning
Weaving
Dyeing
Fabric Stamping
Fingerloop Braiding
Knitting
Our Moneyer’s Guild is setting up a static display about the history of coinage and how it was made, and will be running a coin minting demonstration at 1:30pm On Saturday and Sunday.
Our woodworker’s guild and blacksmith’s guild are also setting up displays. The woodworking workspace will have ongoing demonstrations on Friday between 10am-12noon then from 1pm-3pm and on Saturday/Sunday from 10am-12noon. The Blacksmith and metal craft workspace will have ongoing demonstrations Saturday and Sunday 1:30-3:30.
An finally, what festival would be incomplete without some carnival games? Friday only, 10am-12noon then 1pm-3pm
15thcenturyspinning 