I didn’t sleep well last night and woke up feeling a little queasy.  But mum’s back was feeling OK and so we decided to go on up to the Renn Faire in Maryland.  Frankly I wasn’t so bowled over to go this weekend, but whatever.  Sir Megabyte was.  Rather excited in fact.

It was OK.  Overpriced and too many mundanes for my likings.  And of course I wanted to go in costume but he didn’t.  That’s half the fun!  The weather turned out to be wonderful so we wouldn’t have been too hot.  Oh well.  We mostly just hit the expensive shops and peeked in at a few of the shows.  There was no where near enough seating for how large this thing is.  It’s 28 years old and I doubt they have increased the seating at all in those 28 years.  So that was unfortunate.  It also led to my knees hurting and mum’s back hurting by the end of the day.

My husband saw the little dragon puppets for sale like brycen bought at Dragon Con.  They were 200 bucks at the Faire!  Holy mackeral!  See that is what I don’t like about the Faire.  I swear everything is double the price! 

I found a triquetra necklace that I sort of liked but it was 50 bucks.  I think I’ll just make my own like I had planned since I found a place I could buy the charm online.  The beads were kind of large and I am not sure I liked that.  And I hated the clasp so I’d have had to change that out anyway.  OK, truthfully?  We also found it early on and I decided to keep looking and then I couldn’t remember where we had seen it.  I also saw a wonderful slaves bracelet and chain mail anklet, but Sir Megabyte is going to use those as ideas and make me my own.  I’m cool with that as it will be a lot cheaper than the 100 or so bucks that was being requested for the anklet and the 85 for the braclet and it will be made by my wonderful husband.  Two plusses!  We found a place with ear cuffs but I resisted buying even the dragonfly one.  There was a lovely pegacorn one that was silver and 40 bucks.  I really liked it but it was so large.  Don’t get me wrong, it looked awesome!  But if you’ve ever seen me, you know my jewelry tastes are very understated.  (For instance I only have on small silver earrings right now, don’t even have my wedding ring on.)  So I really don’t know if I’d have worn it or where I’d have worn it too.  Now there was a cute little dragonfly one I debated over… but in the end I opted to buy my mum a larger griffin one next to the pegacorn one for her birthday.  She was so excited.  She really wanted one.  She said she’d buy one if I bought one.  I really worry about buying jewelry though because I really just don’t wear it.  I bought a pretty bracelet when we first got here… and I never wear it.  I may restring it though on some elastic wire so that I can put it on easier… maybe I’d wear it more then?  Braclets are hard since you have to try to clasp them one handed!  For the longest time the only thing I wore were little silver earings and my Young Womanhood medallion.  But the chain broke on the YW medallion and I put it in my jewelry box because it was right when Caramon was sick.  I didn’t want it to get lost.  And of course now that is in storage.  I think if I make the triquetra necklace, I want one I can sleep in and then I’ll just never take it off, like that YW one.  Maybe not, because I want the triquetra to sit right at the top of my breastbone, you know where your whatever that is meets up with your breastbone by your neck?  Ok, not a big bone person… LOL  Anyway, there at the bottom of your neck where you have that little U in the bones.

The kids debated hard… magic wand, wooden dagger, or recorder.  They went with the recorder.  I think they should have gone with the daggers myself, but whatever.  Caramon loves his.  Joram barely touched his after the 5 second newness wore off.  We’ll see.  That kid has to learn that he doesn’t need everything to be the same as his big brother!!  I think that’s the only reason he got one, because Caramon got one.

We saw this awesome little instrument.  It was like a triangular lap harp with a bow like a violin.  Hope you have a picture in your head now.  The letters of the notes are written on it so it is a dream to play.  The guy showed me how to play joy to the world which was a lot of fun!  Then he showed Carmaon how to do Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Caramon showed Joram!  How neat!  But it cost 300 bucks.  Ouch!  The neat thing is you can use any piano music to play on there.  Nifty.  On the right side were the regular notes nad the left side were the sharps/flats.  I’d kind of thought about buying just a regular lap harp or whatever those things were really called (I know there was a real name, but that’s what this other place called it and now I’ve forgotten the real name because it has been years…) but the affordable ones were really small and blargh.  Perhaps one day… I’m only barely musical.  I need something easy like that one we saw for 300 bucks.  🙂

I miss Pennsic.  That’s way more fun than the Ren Faire.  I know all the mundies would disagree… but I’m sorry, the Ren Faire is just a tourist trap.  I only get so excited to go because of Sir Megabyte.  I just want him to have fun.  He doesn’t seem to care that everything is over priced, most things aren’t very realistic, and that all the mundies just destroy the ambiance.

I was upset when we left so I forgot the camera.  Not that it matters much, I don’t know what I’d have taken pictures of.  Hardly anyone was in costume, and there were so many people everywhere that the mundies would have ruined any cool shots…  We didn’t go to the joust because that was in the sun and it was too bright, started giving me a migraine the 5 minutes we were there.  I think Sir Megabyte is upset we forgot the camera though.  But he knew I was upset when we left and he didn’t think to grab or ask before we hit the road so we were out by the interstate before he said something.

Tonight we took Mum to Pancho Villa for dinner for her birthday.  I went back to the van while waiting for our food and got her the ear cuff we got her.  She loved it!  YAY!