The Carolina Renaissance Festival

This past Sunday found us back at the Carolina Renaissance Festival for the second time. It was an odd occasion however, because for the first time in the 12 years I've been going to Ren Faires, I went dressed as... a tourist! You know, those people who were modern day clothes? ;-) All of my costumes were made for a Ren Faire in August and last year I was pretty damn cold in my Green Woman costume, so I took the route of warmth.

Only, much to my dismay, it was a warm day! Le sigh. The one thing that I was fairly amused by was the fact that the vendors tried 10x harder to get me to buy their stuff while I was wearing my regular clothes than they ever have while I'm in costume. Silly.

That all being said though, we had a fantastic time! We ran into some of the performers we met wandering around last year and saw some of the shows we missed out on last time. It was also brew fest weekend, where they were serving the winning home brew fromt his year's competition all week long; a delicious stout named The Wife's Wish that I may have had several helpings of!

This fellow, whose name I do not know, was so enchanting! Every time we passed him he would say hello and play us a quick tune on the harp.

We saw the acrobatic troupe, Barely Balanced, who are as witty as they are talented.

We happened across the Jamila Lotus Dance Carnivale during our wanderings and I was mesmerized by the music, as well as the skeleton masks the women had donned. The best way I can describe the music is folky, gypsy, tribal wonderfulness! They played only a violin and a drum and if it they had sold CDs, I would have snatched one up in a heartbeat.

And, as if belly dancing to this captivating and mysterious music wasn't enough, there was also a breathtaking aerial part of their performance:

We happened across the four seasons:

And enjoyed the Celtic folk stylings of the Maidens IV:

We caught a few acts put on by the bawdy and oh so naughty Tortuga twins:

And, just as we were preparing to leave we caught sight of the ever so enchanting Twig the Fairy, who was perched on some toadstools with her friend and fairy in training, Zinnia.

I was remiss and missed getting a photo of the two of them together, but Zinnia was kind enough to compliment me on my wee pumpkin necklace and show it to Twig. Who, in true fairy fashion, played me a wee tune on her pipes. There is no greater sign that you've done tiny and magical right than the approval of a real life fairy!

Alas, the whole weekend was not all ale, music and fairy dust. Saturday afternoon, the day before we went to the Renaissance Faire, I came home to discover a tragedy had occurred while I had been working. There, on the floor of my mess making lair, lay my beloved DSLR camera as if someone had picked it up and placed it there. From the books and papers accompanying it in it's sad position however, I knew it had taken a cat induced fall from the desk and a wee goblin had not been in to play tricks.

I cradled it in my arms and flipped the switch but nothing happened. I tried a new battery, memory card and lens just to be sure, but still nothing happened. Sadly, I bundled it up and took it to the camera shop to be told they do a 6- 7 week turn around send out service, but the minimum for Canon to look at my camera is $200 - $250, before the parts and labor required to fix whatever the problem may be. I'm not exactly rolling in extra money, so it will be a while before my beloved camera is back to functioning. My brother was kind enough to lend me his camera to take to the faire though, so I could get better shots than my very old point and shoot would allow me to take. If you want to see more shots of the Faire, you can view the Flickr set here.