Two State Faire Festival!

This weekend, I had the joy of festing with Beth and her dress-engineer hubby. Friday night, we kept the boys up as we sewed the finishing touches for our flemish working class garb. Mainly, Beth marked my hems, I sewed them, and she had the chance to make her black linen sleeves. She is a very good guest to roll around the floor at my feet hemming after a 5-6 hour drive up here. Thank you!

After entirely too little sleep Friday night, our sordid threesome (my hubby was busy) attended the MD RenFest. It was enjoyable. We saw several very well made costumes on the patrons, and a few people even recognized us for the flemish women we were portraying, which thrilled us to no end.
Don't we look spectacularly like gossipy little busy-body peasants in this one?

gossipy

Of course, we were also recognized for Amish and Mennonite women, which was just plain amusing. We decided that from the back, this was rather true, especially with my admittedly amish-looking caul. I am going to take these comments as compliments, as it means our clothes looked REAL, rather than costumey, even to the inexperienced eye.

I have precious few flemish pics, since Beth assigned the dress engineer to be photographer for the day, but beth has kindly provided with many wonderous photos, including the one above (other good ones are on my flemish page). I will defer the rest to Beth's blogging. Here is the one I have that is blog worthy. Beth has the cutest peasant posterior known to man! And Aaron has a well turned leg. ;)

Day Two:
Sunday, Beth and I left the exhausted boys to a day of chinese-food-eating, pizza-munching, oreo-dunking, tv-watching, video-gaming, napping fun. She and I trekked up past Lancaster, PA and went to the PA faire in our Venetian garb.

I just want to publically state that it kicked A$$ on so many levels. Though a smaller faire, the players there are amazingly interactive and fun.
The acts were fantabulous. And the joust was audible ( I always have great trouble hearing at the MD festival's joust). And EXCITING--flames and blood and everything!! And the finale show had a lot of thought and creativity put into it. We had a lot of fun there. The almost 2 hr ride home was spent plotting our next costuming adventures and lamenting that we didn't live close enough together to have sewing bees.

Here are two very cute pics. The downside of having only 2 of us is that we are both too bashful to ask strangers to take our pics together. So all our pics are seperate:


beth is awesome for taking this!

Here is beth shopping .

And, speaking of wonderful baskets, below is what we bought. These very handmade baskets were so artfully done and exuisitely beautiful that we couldnt' resist. Beth's is left and mine is right. Aren't they cute? We promptly dumped our not-as-cool-joanns/michaels-baskets into my car and used these for the rest of the day:

Baskets!

My other big purchase of the day was from a man who was a wonderful salesman, as he knew to play to my costuming vanity. He was also a delightfully intelligent and knowledgable SCA member, with wares I think I got drool on. I must have more of his pieces. Soon.

For now, I got a thimble case. The awesome part of my thimble case is that it is decorated with SCISSOR motifs to symbolize my love for sewing! And not only does it hold a thimble, but alternatively, it can be used to hold scented sachets or scent-soaked cotton balls for a refreshing treat. I wore this on my girdle for the rest of the day, stuffed with a lavendar sachet that Beth had thoughfully stashed in her basket for the day. Isnt' it WONDERFUL?!!!

thimblecaseopen

thimblecase closed

Random: I had to put this pic up too, since Beth actually managed to catch me looking happy in my huge dress in the warm-enough-to-be-uncomfortable weather:


Now, I sit here rubbing my hands in anticipation of pictures from Beth's end. ;) Hint. Hint. Nag.