A few weeks ago we drove down to Portland so that I could to do some off-site work for my J-O-B and took an extra day (on or dime) to both visit friends and attend an evening of the SCA’s 12th Night celebration – Being married to a trained costume designer means that one goes to these sorts of evenings.  Our friends have closets (yes, I meant to be plural – as in 4 closets) filled with period costumes and accessories.  My wife dressed me in a couple of different outfits until she was certain that I looked the part and then I went and waited downstairs for a couple of hours while the ladies prepped and primped like a good little puppy.

I agreed to this foray for three reasons:

1. Happy wife, happy life…
2. There was booze promised to me.
3. There was to be a “huge” vendor area where all sorts of cool stuff like swords, and bows, and armor, and axes and like items would be sold and traded.

Now, the mention/rumor of armor and swords takes be back to being a 9-year old at my very first Renaissance Faire (the REAL Penn and Teller performed that year).  I wanted a “real” sword and a chain mail hood so bad that I would have licked the bottom of a Port-a-John seat for them at the time.  My son is now enamored with the same period of history, I live vicariously through him and thought that he would get a real kick out of the pictures of armor and swords

I was a little disappointed: no swords, one real armor dealer and sales area was lined with stalls that catered to the ladies fabric, buttons, capes, cloaks, furry hats, jewelry, etc…), but I did end up getting a few good pictures to send to The Ruminator and we ended up watching the fencing melee/tournament.  Helmets, steel swords, shields, daggers, very cool.  He would have been all in!

The rest of the event was good and the detail of some of the costumes was amazing.  Some of those folks put months and months of work hand sewing outfits just for that one night.  Our evening ended with a game of Cards Against Humanity – I won – and we stumbled home just after 1:00AM.