Getting medieval

This weekend has surely been one of the best ones of the summer. I've spent three days wandering around the Turku Medieval Market, enjoying the atmosphere and (ahem) spending money...

The medieval market is my absolute favorite of the summer happenings in Turku. Every year I wish I had won in the lottery and could buy all the pretty goblets and cups and swords and bows and quivers and dresses and jewellery - but alas, I don't seem to win anything. (Note to self - maybe I should buy a lottery ticket one of these days? Might make the winning part easier?) This year I happily spent a moderate amount of money, since I had had my pay day on Thursday. Good timing, I'd say.

This year's medieval shoppingspree resulted in the following. First of all I bought a beautiful sterling silver Celtic pendant, which is shaped like Arwen's Evenstar pendant from the LotR movies. I just had to. I can't afford "the real thing", in other words a replica of the movie necklace, so this was like hitting two flies at one blow. I got a pendant that looks like Evenstar, but which on the other hand also looks Celtic enough to please my eyes in any case. Very pretty.

Then I decided I'd finally do something about my less than authentic medieval dress selection and bought some fabric for a surcot. Although I usually go for anything and everything burgundy and purple, this time I chose a beautiful blue to be the main color and an equally beautiful silvery grey to be the "highlight" color. Now the only problem is whether or not I'm actually able to make the surcot. It shouldn't be too difficult, but with me and a sewing machine, you never know. (And yes, I'm cheating a bit with the authenticity - there's no way I'm not using a sewing machine!) I'll definitely have to worry about the cotte part later. I may have to ask for help with it. I'm not ashamed to admit I'm not much of a magician with the fabrics...

My last purchase will, in a way, lead to more handicrafts done by yours truly. I bought a leather arm cover for my future archery practices, you see. I would've loved to buy a grey leather quiver from this seller too (the thing was just beautiful), but since I couldn't afford to pay 65 euros for it, I bought the (way) cheaper piece of protective gear instead. Just because I can come up with some other solution for the quiver problem later, but I'd hate to have my arm all blue again like I did last summer after an unlucky shot at the Fantasy Feast... :)

And yes, here comes the resulting handicraft project. I'm finally going to go and make myself a real longbow. Whee! I hope to get it done as soon as possible (within a couple of weeks) so I can start practicing for real.

There's a real elegance to archery and I especially like watching the skilled archers who use the traditional longbows. I got really excited about this whole traditional archery stuff last summer, when we went to try out some of the weapons for the Fantasy Feast with Tytti. I loved the lot of them, the longbow, the crossbow and the really ancient spear thrower thingy. And to my utter delight I didn't suck at shooting at all! :) Especially the crossbow is relatively easy to use. But the challenge of the longbow is something else. I hope I manage to make a decent bow. I can't wait. :) Then I can have my own bow with me at next year's Fantasy Feast. Yay!

As this weekend is probably the closest thing I get to a vacation this summer, I've thoroughly enjoyed myself: lots of sunshine, meeting friends and absolutely no study related stuff to read. I was thinking about visiting the market once more today, but I'm not sure if I will after all. My legs are stiff from walking on cobble stones for four days in a row, for hours at a time and I would've liked to have some company this time, too. As on Friday we (Kirsi, Tytti, Maarit and I) went to the market all dressed up, which was fun, as usual. People kept stepping on my train and tourists took photos of us when we had stopped to talk for a while (I had my camera with me, too, but it's going to take me a while to get the whole film full, so I suggest you go and see Tytti's blog for pictures. She promised to post some later on.) and so on, but despite all of that (or maybe just because of it) the experience is so much more fun when you're properly dressed. We even had a few sellers bow to us behind their counter, because we all were wearing gowns of higher ranking ladies. Heee.

I was so born in the wrong century.