Last saturday some friends and I visited the “Schallaburg” and the current exhibition “The Sixties. Beatles, Pill and Revolt” (from 1 Mai until 1 November 2010)
-> Wikipedia information in English (rather short)
-> Wikipedia Information in Deutsch (German, more info)

It was not allowed to take photos of the “The Sixties. Beatles, Pill and Revolt” exhibition but I took some photos of the beautiful castle and any item I found of the long time exhibition…

I took quite many photos of the castle, during our boat trip on the danube through the “Wachau” region and finally some photos during our walk through Krems but still haven’t managed to take a look through all photos and to sort some of them out for my Flickr account – but soon I will do it and than I will upload them to my Flickr account (as usual)…

This 4 photos are just a small preview of the photos I took and which I will upload to my Flickr account – photo 1 & 2 were taken at the Schallaburg, photo 3 during the boat trip and photo 4, showing this beautiful fresco, is just a small preview of a beautiful house in Krems… We also visited the “Karikaturenmuseum” in Krems, but it was not allowed to take photos there…

My friends refused to visit the city museum in Krems and I wished I have had more time to visit the old part of this town – therefore I think that I will visit this town again and take much more photos…

….more photos will follwo soon

I got up from my couch and took a look outside the window and saw a beautiful rainbow at the left side and a rather strange and interesting sky on the right side … I haven’t seen this till now and decided to take some pictures and share them with you

I love this kind of colorful sky and wish it would happen more often – the colors of the rainbow as well as the blue sky shining through the holes of the nice colored clouds… even the dark sky with its interesting range of colors is quite interesting

I think it’s the scent of dust and old things and the experience to explore and to search for treasuries and then to try to get it for the very best price – the feeling to get a great bargain – and I found plenty nice bargains in this shop …some books at my first visit and some very cute items during my second visit

…and, like always, I can’t resist to share my cute ‘bargains’ with you

Isn’t this purse cute? Wooohooooo!

It was a great idea to empty the box with the small purses and wallets and to have a look at every single purse – I immediately fell in love with this lovely small purse.
The purse is made of very soft leather and it contains some German “Pfennige” from the pre-EURO time *lol*

There was also a box with lovely old gloves but unfortunately I couldn’t find any gloves big enough for my hands… *sigh*
…but this time Fortuna was on my side and instead of gloves I could find another 2 lovely pouches which I decided to rescue:

…I had to repair the chain of the white pouch but that was a rather simple repair work – now I will wash the pouches by hand to get rid of possible moth eggs, dust,…

…and I also found this lovely hatpins:

…some hatpins which I could use for the following hat – looks like it was just waiting to be found by me

btw. my sweetheart bought 2 tickets for the Max Raabe & Palast Orchester concert in the “Konzerthaus” here in Vienna in November – my birthday present – …I love Max Raabe!!! and my poor boyfriend is always very happy to find a birthday or christmas present for me – that’s really not easy because he don’t shares my hobby concerning the embroidery or the love for the medieval time – I think this hat is a good start for my outfit for this very special concert evening

…and we are still not finished – I got this nice necklace for free – it was already broken into three parts and because I had to repair it, she put it on top of my pile without making a price for it… woohooo… yeah, I could repair it in just a few minutes…

…and last but not least I found this funny… aehhhhhhhh…. hmmmm… bead-thing… the saleslady thinks it could be the bottom decoration of a lampshade… but I think, if I find a nice fabric in a matching color (and a dress pattern), I could sew a gorgeous “Charleston” dress with it as a decoration of the bottom hem… we’ll see…

…and I also got some books, but I think that will be another posting

…and I decided to embroider “We have Dragons” – and that’s a kind of calligraphy – just with thread and needle instead of ink and embroidered…

Sounds difficult? maybe, but it is rather easy if you dare to try it (and have enough letters to get a feeling of the style you want to copy

First I took a look at the letters which were available for me and I was very happy because  the Tristan tapestry has many of them…

I could find all letters besides the “W” but I just followed the style for the “V” and doubled it for the “W” (after taking a look at the available “M” and “N” and finding a style similarity with the “V”).

I also took a look at the spacing between the letters and the spacing between the words and what connected or separated them – that’s how I found the lovely + crosses + …because this crosses don’t appear as regular separators (sometimes a small ring was used, sometimes just emtpy space) I decided to ‘just’ use them for the start and the end as a additional decoration

…and not to forget this small extra tiny bits at the base or top of some letters… this small bits really are the additional spice of your embroidered calligraphy

Then I wrote down the words – ca. the height which I wanted to achieve in the end – on 3 small stripes of paper/ one word on each stripe and arranged them underneath the embroidery to get a feeling which distance between the letters and at the beginning and end could work well…

As soon as I found a nice distance between the words I connected the stripes with a glue stripe

Finally I pinned the stripe with the words, just leaving some space for the embroidery, to the fabric and started to copy the words with a pencil on the fabric – still playing a little bit with the space – and started embroidering…

While embroidering I made the decision to alter the distance and shape of some of the words – maybe some of you can see the difference between the paper stripe, the drawing with the pencil and the final embroidery – but small differences between the outlines at the fabric and the final embroidery are period

For example the “A” , “R” and the “S” – I tried to copy the angles and the small extras as exact as possible

…and now I am working to fill the background with yellow wool…

I think that’s the first time that I embroider the “outlines” before I start working at the background – normally I fill the background first and then start with the outlines…

…and sometimes she is just cute…

Panel progress

…I found a great veil turtorial at the Neulakko blog – it’s a blog of a SCA-friend of mine from Finnland and this posting is in Finnish (her new postings are in Finnish and English) but the photos are very great and therefore also very self-explaining – I will keep it in my mind for my 14th century garb project

Textile Time Travels

…and via a link pointing to my blog I discovered that another SCA-friend of mine, Annika, started a costuming blog!!! woooohooooooo!!!! I am so very looking forward to her next postings because I always wanted to make such a lovely dress… – have I ever mentioned that I like Cranach and German Renaissance dresses, and other stuff like this? embroidery!!!! plenty possibilities to get mad with embroidery yeah!!!!!

I found a painted picture with a trapezoidal purse with “Fransen” (fringes) at the bottom – see the Manesse Liederhandschrift ‘Herr Dietmar von Ast’, the purse on the right – and therefore I am thinking about to add some colored fringes at the bottom like the one found at the bottom of the book pouch on display at the Schloss Gottorf and which technique I described here: …my opinion on the stitches to create this trim… Raca’s 5cents

btw. with the help of Master Giano, who found the book “Webereien und Stickereien des Mittelalters” of the “Kestner-Museum Hannover” and gave it to me as a present – thank you sooooo very much Giano!!!! the book is really outstanding!!! – I could support my guess of this technique (page 116 – “Z 30. Fransen.”)

You can find this kind of colored fringes also as a border decoration for big Klosterstich wallhangings (Teppich: Die Wurzel Jesse, Kloster Lüne, dated 1503, vollendet 1505), Klosterstich “Banklaken” (Banklaken des heiligen Bartholomäus, Kloster Lüne, dated 1492), even for woven “Banklaken” (Pelikan-Banklaken, Kloster Lüne, 1500), cross-stitch “Fürleger” (Kloster Lüne, about 1500) …take a look into the small booklet Bildstickereien des Mittelalters in Kloster Lüne. Die bibliophilen Taschenbücher, if you can get hold of it somewhere, for more information and color-photos a very small but also a great book!

I also think about adding a yellow border of yellow wool or silk and to embroider “Drachenwald” – above the embroidery section – and “We have Dragons” underneath the embroidery section… and also to add some small pearl embroidery at the border because I found a photo of a pouch with lovley small pearl (maybe glass bead) embroidery looking like small blossoms…

soooooo many ideas… soon you will see which of this ideas I will realise

wooohooo – embroidery progress of 98 hours!!!

…as you can see I decided to use white and other colors for the outlines instead the black outlines of the original tapestry (and I also changed the color of some sections) …

…and yesterday I also changed the shape of the embroidered section because I decided to do a “round-top trapezoidal aumônière” – yeah, I had to add a small piece of fabric at the left side to make it possible, but I fell in love with this idea and it took me about 14 hours to add the embroidery on the left…

The round-top trapezoidal aumônières I found till now aren’t worked in Klosterstich but many of the lovely Klosterstich wallhangings were destroyed because they just cut them and used them for something different… For this project I just pretend that I cut a piece out of a Tristan wallhanging and rework it into a round-top trapezoidal aumônière for me…

…through the years I have seen so many pouches with many different kinds of embroidery or just using very nice patterned fabric, that I think that maybe, even if it wasn’t very common, there is a small chance that someone also used a small part of a wallhanging to turn it into a purse or pouch…

…a very nice bag for my 14th century garb project (and easier to make than a self supporting cotehardie…