Oh, the Ren. Faire!

I, along with four stout-hearted friends, went to the Renaissance Faire last Saturday. My friends had all gone before but this was my first time venturing forth into the unknown world of the 17th century. I had a puffy shirt to wear ("But I don't want to be a pirate!") and a red skirt from another costume that was appropriate for a Ren. outfit. I made a pattern and made my own bodice. (Duct tape and T-shirt bodice pattern that I learned from high school play costume making. Look it up.) My friend Amanda has a blog post with info about what to wear and what NOT to wear to the Ren. Faire. I only wish that several of the people we had the misfortune to see had read her post before showing up. *sigh* Cover up, women! IMPORTANT! For those of you who would like to go to the Ren. Faire, you must not be easily offended. There's a lot of bawdy talk/innuendo in certain areas of the Faire. (You can avoid them.) Some women are dressed immodestly. Really immodestly. That's why only us girls went. So...yeah. Forewarned is forearmed. And all that good stuff. :)

So, here we are, ready to go while we're still clean and fresh. :)

left to right (Abby, Amy, Joanna, Amanda, Melissa)  This will be useful later so you know who we are in the various things that happened. :)

We drove out to the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area in Irwindale. It's a ginormous park! We paid for parking and made our way to the front. The first thing to greet us was this guy. And his pig.

A girl stopped to touch and the man warned her off with "It's real. And it's leaky." Ugh! I think I threw up a little in my mouth. Keep walking....

Enter the gates, give our tickets (Thanks, Manda!), and see...lots of booths. Lots and lots of booths. Places you can rent costumes from, swords and knives for sale, custom jewelry, hair braiding, hats, art...So many different things available to buy.

We found these people dancing.

They invited us to join them in a dance. So we did. It was very enjoyable to learn to do the dance. We broke out in that dance several times throughout the day. 'Cuz we're cool like that.

Next was the mock battle. It was very dramatic.

The woman is helping the man off the field. It looks like he is helping her...

We went on to the soldier encampment to check out the weaponry they used in the battle. I told the guy there that I wrote a book with medieval type of weapons. I think he was surprised that all of us girls actually were there to learn and hold the swords, pikes, etc. Not to flirt with the soldiers. (I told several that I was married. They replied they didn't mind "used goods." Much blushing and stammering ensued.)

We walked around and saw yet more booths open to take our money. Haha. :)  We stopped for lunch at the "food court" area. There were about 20 booths in one area all selling exorbitantly priced food. I got pizza because it was only $4, making it the cheapest option there. And I wasn't in the mood to eat a giant turkey leg. Especially when aforementioned leg was $9.00!! We ate our lunch near a stage that had some actors talking about Shakespeare but ole Will never showed up while we were there. (Christopher Marlowe was lamenting that he wasn't as famous as Shakespeare.)

Amy and I paid to do archery. (I have a character who shoots archery in my third book so I needed to make sure what I was writing was correct. I haven't shot archery in many years.)

Next we saw the joust.

A quintain! Just like in my first book!

Queen Elizabeth I

"Our" knight for the joust

Abby, Amanda, and Joanna decided to pay to take a fencing lesson. Their instructor was...humorous. At least to those of us watching. :)

Photo taken right before we left. We're all a bit dusty and tired. And very thirsty.

We took some epic photos back at a field near my friends' house.

It was an experience that I'll never forget. A few things happened that are best not mentioned. Except in the company of the girls I went with. ;)  I'll leave you with a video that summarizes the day.

Or not. The video wouldn't upload. I'll load it to YouTube and put the link here when it finally uploads.

Thanks for reading!