Entry tags:
Da weekend
This was the weekend of Military Through the Ages, a large timeline living-history show held at Historic Jamestowne, just outside Williamsburg, VA. Our group, La Belle Compagnie, has participated in it every year for something like thirty years, although we didn't join La Belle ourselves until 1998 (and one or two shows were cancelled due to COVID).
NYC to Williamsburg is a fairly long drive, with unpredictable traffic delays on many segments of the route. So this year I took Friday and Monday as vacation days to make sure we had time to get there and back. We dropped the dogs at the boarding kennel Thursday around 5:30 PM, started packing the car, hit the road at 8:00, and stopped for the night at a hotel in Maryland around 11:30, then drove the rest of the way on Friday to set up our pavilion in the afternoon before driving a few minutes to the hotel where La Belle Compagnie had reserved several adjacent suites of rooms, where we had dinner and long geeky conversation with Labellies.
Up to alarm at 6:00, grabbed breakfast at McDonald's, and got to the site by 7:30 to unload musical instruments, put their modern-looking cases back into the car, and open to the public at 9:00 AM.
This year La Belle Compagnie had over twenty people, running ten different "stations": the fighting field where one of our HEMA experts demonstrated techniques of fighting with various weapons; the arming pavilion where a fully-armored knight showed off armor and weapons; the archers' hovel where several commons-born archers showed off their cheaper and plainer armor and weapons; the musicians' tent where
shalmestere and I showed off musical instruments and played and sang a variety of 14th-15th-century music; the hall (the group's biggest pavilion) where the Lady of the house, her exchequer, and one of her attendant women showed off and demonstrated various things (I didn't get in there much so I don't know exactly what); the surgeon's station where a guy in a blood-spattered leather apron showed off surgical tools and urinals and talked about medical technology; the cooks' station where two women displayed a variety of herbs, spices, breads, pies, sausages, etc. that we ate for lunch; the armorer's station where a guy who makes armor acted as a merchant selling it, and invited guests to try on helmets, greaves, vambraces, etc.; and the fripperer's station, where another merchant talked about clothing, acting as a reseller of used clothing, and invited guests to try things on.
Saturday was quite busy: the Historic Jamestowne organizers reported nearly 4000 guests coming through the gates in one day, the second highest daily attendance the show has ever had, and we must have talked to a large fraction of them.
shalmestere and I brought our fancy circular pavilion and set up two tables therein to hold musical instruments: various kinds of recorders, tabor-pipes, a tabor, a fydel/vielle, a citole, a harp, a shawm, two bombards (aka "alto shawm"), and a doucaine (aka "still shawm", which I explained as "the shawm's indoor voice"). The fiddle suffered an explosive trauma early Saturday: the gut holding the tailpiece to the button snapped, the tailpiece flew up to the fingerboard, the bridge and the nut went flying, and we were unable to play the instrument all that day. But Saturday evening, back at the hotel, I was able to cut a replacement piece of heavy gut and get things working again. We had a number of visitors who had lots of questions about music and instruments, and almost everybody wanted to see and hear the shawms (the most unusual-looking instruments we have), so we earned our keep for the day.
Sunday dawned warmer and drier, but with rain forecast for the afternoon, and the event organizers agreed to start kicking out the public around 1 PM so the re-enactors could get things packed up before the rain hit. La Belle had completely struck camp by about 2:30, and most of us went to a Chinese buffet for lupper (watching the rain start around 3:00) before hitting the road for home.
There were substantial traffic delays in Virginia and Maryland, and
shalmestere and I weren't sure how far we would get before being too sleepy to drive, but when we stopped for a bathroom break, refueling, and driver-switch around 8:00, Google Maps said it was only another 3 hours to home, so we decided to try to push on. And indeed we got home before 11:30, and had the car unpacked by 11:45, so we could sleep in our own bed.
On the schedule for today: clean things, put things away, retrieve the dogs from the boarding kennel, buy groceries, maybe see a movie.
We were reminded of several projects to work on. Finish building a case for the harp: we have a fleece sleeve that more-or-less fits the harp, but it needs a flap that closes over the top, and it needs a more protective outer layer (of leather or heavy fabric). Make some hanging walls, perhaps block-printed with animal-minstrel patterns, so the inside of the tent doesn't look quite so Spartan. And as always, learn and memorize more musical pieces. It would be nice to have some written music in appropriate notation and construction, but I think to be plausible it would have to be at least a small book (not loose sheets), so that sounds like a big project -- and it might need to be somewhat different for a 1418 scenario than for a 1382 scenario (just as the men-at-arms have different armor for different time periods).
NYC to Williamsburg is a fairly long drive, with unpredictable traffic delays on many segments of the route. So this year I took Friday and Monday as vacation days to make sure we had time to get there and back. We dropped the dogs at the boarding kennel Thursday around 5:30 PM, started packing the car, hit the road at 8:00, and stopped for the night at a hotel in Maryland around 11:30, then drove the rest of the way on Friday to set up our pavilion in the afternoon before driving a few minutes to the hotel where La Belle Compagnie had reserved several adjacent suites of rooms, where we had dinner and long geeky conversation with Labellies.
Up to alarm at 6:00, grabbed breakfast at McDonald's, and got to the site by 7:30 to unload musical instruments, put their modern-looking cases back into the car, and open to the public at 9:00 AM.
This year La Belle Compagnie had over twenty people, running ten different "stations": the fighting field where one of our HEMA experts demonstrated techniques of fighting with various weapons; the arming pavilion where a fully-armored knight showed off armor and weapons; the archers' hovel where several commons-born archers showed off their cheaper and plainer armor and weapons; the musicians' tent where
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Saturday was quite busy: the Historic Jamestowne organizers reported nearly 4000 guests coming through the gates in one day, the second highest daily attendance the show has ever had, and we must have talked to a large fraction of them.
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Sunday dawned warmer and drier, but with rain forecast for the afternoon, and the event organizers agreed to start kicking out the public around 1 PM so the re-enactors could get things packed up before the rain hit. La Belle had completely struck camp by about 2:30, and most of us went to a Chinese buffet for lupper (watching the rain start around 3:00) before hitting the road for home.
There were substantial traffic delays in Virginia and Maryland, and
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
On the schedule for today: clean things, put things away, retrieve the dogs from the boarding kennel, buy groceries, maybe see a movie.
We were reminded of several projects to work on. Finish building a case for the harp: we have a fleece sleeve that more-or-less fits the harp, but it needs a flap that closes over the top, and it needs a more protective outer layer (of leather or heavy fabric). Make some hanging walls, perhaps block-printed with animal-minstrel patterns, so the inside of the tent doesn't look quite so Spartan. And as always, learn and memorize more musical pieces. It would be nice to have some written music in appropriate notation and construction, but I think to be plausible it would have to be at least a small book (not loose sheets), so that sounds like a big project -- and it might need to be somewhat different for a 1418 scenario than for a 1382 scenario (just as the men-at-arms have different armor for different time periods).