WHY?

You probably didn't ask and almost certainly don't want to know but I need to kick this off somewhere.

I've been interested in the Border Reivers since I was tiny, mainly due to being born and bred in Northumberland in what would have been the English Middle March. I grew up with stories about various hell-raising relatives ( it's always fun to hear about family stealing sheep and generally causing havoc), the people they managed to upset (pretty much everyone depending on which branch) and the amazing Robert Carey who has been my hero as long as I can remember. Gradually my interest widened out from the borders to the rest of Elizabethan England through a suspect interest in Shakespeare (encouraged by my Mam who, at school, had portrayed such dignified Shakespearean roles as 'Falstaff' and 'Sir Toby Belch': it was an all girls school...) and an admiration of Elizabeth herself and other great characters of the time such as Walsingham, Lord Hunsdon and Bess of Hardwick and then I turned to re-enactment...

I started re-enactment very young and, I think, in an C11th group (I was young and getting to play with knives. I don't think much else penetrated. Apart from the occasional knife, obviously) then dropped out at around 12 when work at the stables and exams took over and didn't really give it much thought until my early twenties when I got dragged back in by a friend. Being as I was based in Scotland at this point, this resulted in me mostly doing early C14th and mid-C18th stuff (dates which, oddly enough, coincide with the Scottish Wars of Independence and the Jacobite Rebellion ...) with occasional forays into C15th for the Wars of the Roses. Far more importantly, for the first time I was now making my own clothes!

I may mention some of my earlier efforts in the future. Suffice to say that my first outfit was based on Meg of Wickham's get up in LWT's 'Robin of Sherwood' which I then followed up with various Butterick, McCall and Simplicity patterns, a lot of misplaced enthusiasm and a host of mis-sized, fraying seamed, works of wonky fantasy. Then I discovered the newly printed 'Tudor Tailor' and applied to live as a Tudor at Kentwell Hall and decided that, if I was going to make Tudor clothing, I was going to try and do it as well and as accurately as I could and do it all by hand (a decision that had absolutely nothing to do with my chronic inability to tame a sewing machine.)

I had great fun at Kentwell, and, on returning to Scotland managed to find a group re-enacting late C16th Border Reivers which I had a lot of fun with and got to wear my Tudor clothes a lot but then I moved to Oxford and the travelling up and down the country became too much. I also dance rapper sword with a group in Scotland and decided that I could travel up and down for either dancing or re-enactment but not both. Since rapper trumps everything in the universe, I started looking again at Kentwell; now a much closer prospect, however, I could never make the Compulsory Open Days due to dancing commitments (March is a bad month) and then it was a 'Early Year' (Kentwell changes the Tudor year they are portraying every year) and I have less interest in the Henrician stuff but, this year, this year is a late year (1578), I can make all the Open Days and I have a pair of hand-sewn, Elizabethan Kevin Garlick Latchet shoes which, due to the order going astray and not arriving until after the rapper decision, have never been worn in anger and they deserve to be: they're lovely. Anyhow, so I've applied. I may not get a place and I won't know till after March but, I need new Tudor clothing anyway (not least to use up some of the vast fabric hoard and it will finally lay to rest all of the little niggles that I had with my last outfit. The fact that I may not have anywhere to wear them is nether here nor there.)

The first step will take place this weekend when I finally get round to sorting out my room, disposing of all unnecessary stuff (I am, unsurprisingly, something of a squirrel) and locating all the copious fabric that I have secreted throughout the walk-in cupboard so that I can decide its fate (and work out if need to buy anymore. I always need to buy more. This is the way of the fabric hoarder)