End of the Reenacting Season

I’ve been trying to think of things to say about the end of this reenacting season and not finding any real pearls of wisdom. But I thought I’d share my mundane thoughts, hope you’ll forgive me.

My reenacting season really starts at Military History Fest in February in Chicago. We’ve been heading out there for 8 years now and we have friends that we only get to see once a year. We also get to show off all our different eras, shop, teach, and meet cool new people who do what we do. It is not the same convention it was in the early years, but it is still a nice vacation into history in the middle of the second-most-oppressive month of the year. This past year I debuted a little 1920s bathing outfit I made up with Help from this American Duchess tutorial I wish I had pictures, but none of them came out. We’ll have to try again next year.

In the spring we brought out a new 12th Century reenactment. Which both fun but overshadowed because I had just started at Strawbery Banke Museum. I love volunteering and creating a reenactment from scratch, but being paid to create historical personas within historical settings was too big a draw. I’m not sure when we’ll get to pull out the 12th Century stuff again, we do not have definitely plans for next year yet, but I hope we do get to pull it out at least once during the upcoming year.

Other than that there was a little WWII work, and since then I’ve picked up 2 more dresses and a bunch more accessories. I’ll show them to you as soon as I remember to take some photos, I promise. There was also a nice trip to Delaware to meet up with other people that do first person stuff.

The era that has taken up most of my energies for the past few years barely made it out of the storage bins this year. Our Landsknecht Guild had one spring event at a college where they were holding a Medieval Conference, one summer event at a small Renaissance faire (a town fundraiser) and our annual appearance at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire’s fall show. My relationship with this show is so complicated I usually avoid talking about it, but I don’t want to leave it out either.

CT Faire is where Stephen and I put most of our energies for so many years, running the cast entertainments from 2001 to 2007. By the end of ’07 things needed to change, and in 2009 we formed Das Geld Fahnlein as a way to continue to do Renaissance history and contribute to the faire, but in a way that felt better. When at the faire I rarely venture outside of the encampment, mostly because I am conflict averse, and over anxious, but I have fun in our little world, teaching about the life of the wandering soldier and the frau that look after the soldiers. We cook, we mend, we laugh, teach, fight (pretend) and even nap on occasion. This year was different, we were a smaller group. Of the five founding members, only Stephen was there most of the time, real life got in the way for most of us. I was only able to make it two weekends, and one of those weekends, faire was cancelled on Sunday. The whole thing felt strange, I had trouble getting excited about being there. I’m not giving up on it over one iffy faire, but I think we’ve got some work to do to re-vitalize the unit.

Is there anything else in store for the rest of the year? I’ve got a few things coming up through the museum, but I’m going to save my museum stuff for its own post.