A Medieval Love Af-Faire

If there's one weekend a year that all other plans are off, it's this one - and I don't mean because of Mother's Day (I mean, I love you mum, but I love you all year round). No, it's because my state's renaissance faire is on, and ren faire is a magical place where all of your medieval-ish dreams can come true. People on horses swinging swords at lettuces! Dudes in armour belting each other around the head with (blunt) swords! Tightly corseted bosoms as far as the eye can see! Rustic meat pies and stalls selling anything you could ever even tangentially call medieval- or fantasy-related! People with spinning wheels*!

* I live in rural South Australia. Spinning wheels - and, indeed, hand crafts of all kinds - are not commonly seen.

The Gumeracha Medieval Fair has been going for ten years now and only gets bigger and better all the time. It has a bunch of re-enactment groups - the fighters from the Society of Creative Anachronism and Ironclad Academy of the Sword, the creations of the Australian Costumers' Guild, the jousting and mounted arms displays of the King's Horses, the marksmanship of the Medieval Archers, and the living history displays of the medieval village... and that's the stuff you just look at. 

New Varangian Guard Ladoga encampment

There are a bunch of food options from baked potatoes to some more thematic pies and roasted meat or the somewhat more exotic Iranian food stall. There's a corner where kids can have their faces painted, pet some baby native animals (kangaroos and wombats, primarily) and watch a Punch and Judy puppet show. 

Uilleann piper Jack Brennan (L) and bodhrán player Elley (R)

The staff, performers and stall-holders all get into the spirit with some truly excellent costumes and there's plenty of live music. I could have listened to this couple all day! But rather than turn this post into an advertisement for the fair I want to talk about my favourite stall and the things being made and sold there.

Leather goods from Epic Armoury

After managing to drag myself away from Esford Swords and Armoury, which sells, well, swords and armour (and drinking horns!) I made my second trip for the weekend to the tent of the yarn crafters - because, well of course I did.

One of the displays from the Esford tent - I especially love the heart cutouts on those gauntlets.

The living history display for Spinning, Weaving, Knitting and Dying is always my favourite stop. It's a friendly little tent in the re-enactment section, away from the more commercial stalls of Merchant Lane. The tent is hung with fibre dyed using methods and materials available in medieval times - beets and blackberries and copper sulphate, for example - and the stallholder was a kind woman who (graciously) never seemed annoyed at getting up from her wheel to help out a customer.

I love how fascinated the little boy was to watch her work.

And basically the whole thing reminded me of how much I would love to make my own ren faire costume one day - I'm thinking I want to do the whole thing as painfully as possible. Start with some fabric, dye it using period-appropriate dyes, hand sew the whole lot together. 

Some of the tamer shades of dyed wool.

And then, as we've seen from such stunningly-costumed period dramas as Outlander, there's a whole lot of room for some knitted accessories to go along with it. I'm not sure spinning is within the scope of my skills (I'm pushing my talents enough as it is with the idea of sewing the fabric myself instead of recruiting my mum and her sewing machine) to do that step myself too, but don't those hanks look lovely? I'm really digging the purples and greens.

Some more vibrant shades - I believe the greens in the middle were copper and beetroot, and the colours to the right of those primarily from blackberries.

The stall also had a loom for card weaving, something I've dabbled with (for all of one long, frustrated afternoon of wrangling some not-quite-sturdy-enough playing cards) only briefly but have huge admiration for. The braids made that way have such beautiful designs and it seems like a craft that, if you could get the hang of it, would be quite peaceful and rewarding.

Would you like to see my mangled card weaving attempt to see 

By the end of my second visit to the faire my restraint was gone. If someone else hadn't already bought that fifty dollar ring that unlatched to have a teeny little compartment hidden under the gem I undoubtedly would have taken it home with me. As it was I settled for some more practical purchases: two skeins of wool from the spinners tent and a ball of recycled sari silk which, lovely as it is, I cannot imagine actually making anything from; a bar of soap made from olive oil, goat milk and manuka honey; a crusty, rustic, delicious chicken pie.

The yarn has yet to be earmarked for any specific projects, but I assume something will present itself sooner or later. In the meantime I'll just keep it handy so that I can gloat over how pretty it all is, and dream of the year I'll be headed to the festival in a costume of my own.