Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire!

This last weekend we packed the car full, loaded up on snacks, water and navigation aids ... and headed off for a family vacation at the 13th annual Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire! We had been planning to go to this cool event for a whole year and it was well worth the wait! I believe this is the largest RenFaire in the Pacific Northwest with attendance around 17,000? Many people were in period garb and there were many participants installed along or walking the "streets" doing performance art. Like this bubble blower girl. The highlight for us was the joust. This year the joust was done by The Imperial Knights, a production company featuring former stunt actors who play to the crowd in jousting and sword fighting competitions. They put on a fabulous show! You knew it was all highly choreographed for safety, but still .. the demanding physical nature of the show had you wondering how many bruises they went home with. The tournament ring was segmented into four parts, one for each of the four knights, and marked with the colors of that knight. Whichever section you were seated in was the knight you were to cheer for in battle. Here you can see the section in front of us. The fence is tied with black and red strips and overhead is a black and red flag. That meant ....
our section was to cheer for the Black Knight! Here he is about to throw flowers to admiring fair ladies. Love this courtly love touch to the show!I also really liked that all the horses they used in the show were rescued horses.

I took a ton of pictures of my children in their totally cute dress-up garb, but for reasons of internet safety I don't post pics of my children online. You'll just have to trust me that they were totally cute! One was a man-at-arms with body armor and the other one was a fairy with a full wing get-up :) I planned to buy a costume there, but clothes shopping and trying on gowns and corsets was not something that the three guys I was with thought was any fun. But I took a bunch of business cards so hopefully I can get something online for next year! We did buy this........
This is a full set of handforged silverware. We watched the forger at work and thought these were just too cool to pass up. Each piece has the smith's mark on it and is completely handmade just as it would have been several hundred years ago. We plan to mount them on our kitchen wall above the sink.

The Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire is finished for this year, but we are already planning to go back again next year. If anyone is in Oregon and wants to meet up at the faire, just let me know!