Blue Jeans Are Boring

On Saturday I went to the Merrie Greenwood Renaissance Faire held right here in Columbia Park.

I'd never been to one of these things before, and just wanted to check it out.

It was full of colorful tents, colorful people, and colorful costumes.

There were troubadours and dancers and jugglers and a magician and all sort of entertaining things.

There were dozens of tents full of colorful wares for sale.

The women below were demonstrating how to spin yarn.

And you could even buy a wooden shield, should the mood strike you.

I thoroughly enjoyed looking at all the amazing clothing people wore there, and thinking that the standard American fashion statement of blue jeans and t-shirt was kind of boring. Why don't we wear more colorful clothes?  I looked at booths selling colorful clothes, and was briefly tempted to buy something, but then of course I asked myself, where would I ever wear this colorful full-length skirt with peasant blouse except to a Renaissance fair?

So I passed.  Guess it's jeans and t-shirts for me. 

Other than that little expedition, the week was as usual:  dog walks, library book shop, garage sales, and sketch outings.  The urban sketcher group met at a shopping area on Wednesday.  I almost didn't go, because I didn't think there would be anything of interest to draw there.  Eventually I decided to give it a go, because I like hanging out with the group and it's good to be challenged. 

Turned out the section of shops they had chosen was challenging to draw, and I had a good time with it.

Then on Friday I joined the local art gallery's "paint-in" session, where I hung out with pretty much the same people and where I did a practice piece from a book about English country churches:

I also bought a piece of art on Friday.  Janet Hutchinson is a member of the urban sketcher group, and she also comes to the paint-in sessions, and on the previous Friday I stopped in briefly to the paint-in with Truman and Pippin just to say hi, as I couldn't stay that day.  Janet was there and being a huge dog lover, she snapped a lot of pics.  And then she did a portrait from one of Pippin:

That definitely captures his friendly outgoing personality (plus the fact that he almost always has his tongue out).  I asked if I could buy it, and she brought it last Friday and now it's mine -- yay!

I have out-of-town company coming in one week so I'm going to spend a lot of this week cleaning the house.  Or at least, that's my intention.   I may find better things to do, you never know!