Medieval faire

Tuesday:

On Sunday we went to a medieval faire; the whole extended family (Tim's side, obviously, my side of the family are into tennis and.... other sports maybe? Tim's side are into the whole fantasy thing.) We'd never been to one before, but it turned out to be a really big event. The parking stretched far enough away that they had a free shuttle bus to the gate.

I had the green renaissance dress I'd bought recently and a couple of others in the family dressed up, maybe a quarter of the people at the faire were in costume. Tim wasn't dressed up but he tried on chain mail armour there. Very heavy!

There were lots of stalls selling costumes, plastic swords and bows, real swords and bows, art and pottery; demonstrations of blacksmithing and other medieval crafts; and the main arena with knights in armour fighting with swords and pikes, people carrying eagles, madrigal singing, stuff like that.

I wish I could show you but out internet has been incredibly bad for about a week, don't know why, so I can't upload pictures. Or play games. Or just about anything else that takes much space. Need to investigate what is going on. [edit: managed to add photos]

My big regret is that we didn't see the jousting. It was kind of why I went in the first place! But we got there a little too late to see the morning session, and my family wanted to leave before the late afternoon session. Sad face. I didn't put up much resistance, we would have had to wait around more than an hour and we'd seen everything else already, the kids were getting bored and Jas and I had had a bit too much sun, but I wish I had. We would have stayed if they knew how much I wanted to.

My weight had been a bit down all week but on Monday was back up to 72.7kg, reflecting the big weekend.

I did my last volunteering session at Aiden's school library, unless this job falls through (don't know what is going on at the moment) I'll be starting there next term. And Aiden goes to High School next year.

Medieval

Monday:

I had decided to never buy clothes online again after a couple of unsatisfactory purchases, but then I decided I needed some medieval dresses and it is very hard to find them anywhere else. I chose three, from a costume shop (they are costumes and therefore much cheaper but not as good quality as a real medieval dress would be) with the intent of keeping them all if they looked good but sending back any that didn't. I've learned to base my size choice on my hip measurement, not my waist measurement.

They are all much too long of course, and will need to be hemmed up, but aside from that the fit was very good. The green dress looked great:

The purple dress didn't suit me at all (I sent it back):

The black and red 'vampire countess' looked nice but the weird grey flap hanging from the waist is uneven and I haven't decided what to do about it. It would not be easy to just remove. In the promotional picture it doesn't overlap the red stripe down the front at all, that would have been much better, on mine it goes too far and meets off-centre. But overall the dress looks nice and I'm keeping it.

Why do I need medieval dresses? My family goes to Comicon and places like that and all wear costumes, I've never been but I may go one day. And it's just nice to have a costume ready for any occasion that may come up.

My weight was 72.4 kg this morning.

I came down sick (again) on the weekend. It's been a trying winter in that respect. We had to cancel D&D and family dinner.

Thursday:
I am starting to feel better but Tim came home from work yesterday feeling awful and went straight to bed (very very unusual!) and is home sick today. I have some sores in my mouth that I don't know if they are from this illness, or dry mouth from Duromine (which I've stopped for the moment), or from too much sugar; but there is one on my tongue that is quite painful. It woke me a couple of times in the night feeling like a needle dipped in acid had been stuck in the tip of my tongue. Ouch.

Aiden will be starting High School next year and he's doing an 'Extension Exam' this morning to see if he gets into the top class. Jasmine didn't get the chance as we moved here right at the end of the year just before she started High School so they put her in the second class originally, but she was moved into the extension class the following year. Aiden is very good in maths and science areas and he has a great imagination, but his handwriting is like a five year old and I hope that doesn't hold him back. We've been working on it at home, and at school of course.