Category — Just For Fun

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I’m late blogging about this, but last weekend I attended the 2nd Santa Fe Renaissance Fair at El Rancho de las Golondrinas sponsored by Open Hands, a charity dedicated to services that assist elderly and disabled New Mexicans. I had a great time sellling my jewelry there, and I was able to get pictures of some elusive characters, as you can see by my picture with “Merlin” here.

I met “Wishteria,” the Wish Fairy from the “Kingdom of Larkspurshire” (in Colorado), who had an absolutely beautiful costume with wisteria-draped wings. She was gracious enough to allow me to take her picture. It’s difficult to catch fairies on film, you know, but I was successful!

I didn’t get a picture of the king and queen of the fair, and I missed my chance to catch the clumsy traveling scribe, but I did get a shot of the bellydancers, a couple of dragons, and one picture of a very tall peg-legged pirate, who blamed his long legs on an overzealous ship’s carpenter.

All in all, a very enjoyable weekend. Next Ren Fair will be the Dona Ana Arts Council Renaissance ArtsFaire in Las Cruces at Young Park, November 7 and 8, 2009, where I hope to sell lots of jewelry while also taking more fun pictures, like these from a past year:

It seems ages since I’ve posted! I’ve been busy getting some polymer clay wire wrap combo pieces done for a gallery show at Oso Arts Gallery in Capitan August 9. The theme is “Zen,” with dragons and dragonflies abounding–right up my alley. Finished the pieces, delivered them with the help of my daughter, so now I will be one of the artists whose work will be featured in the show. Yay!

And so I’ve been falling behind everywhere else, including my email. But today I was reading the July issue of Ann Kullberg’s online magazine (Ann Kullberg is a fabulous colored pencil artist who also has several books published on her technique), and she provided a link to a fun interactive website called The Color Test. Want to have some fun with the struggle between the right and left brain? The first time I took the test I bombed. And then I read the instructions more closely and did better. Ahem. Did I ever mention I don’t always do so well reading instructions? I seem to remember a certain report card in grade school with the teacher’s comment “Doesn’t follow instructions.” LOL Anyway, have some fun with this test. I did! It’s more difficult than you might think.

This was certainly unexpected! I have an account on Flickr, and a few months ago I posted some photos of Old Town Albuquerque from my digital photography class a couple of semesters ago. For the most part I just wanted to share these photos with any friends who wanted to see them, but yesterday I received an email from an editor at Schmap Guides, an online travel guide, that one of my photos taken in Old Town Albuquerque had been “shortlisted” for possible inclusion in the fifth edition of the Schmap Albuquerque Guide, to be published at the end of July. I had never heard of Schmap, but of course I was flattered that one of my pictures had been chosen to be in their contest. Of course I could decline to have my photo considered, but after checking out the site and verifying its authenticity, I decided to go ahead and allow the photo to be entered. So we’ll see what happens. I’m not a “real” photographer, but I still think it would be fun if my picture were included. Above is the photo the editor shortlisted, and here’s the link to my Flickr photostream where you can see other photos I’ve taken. Most of them are of my jewelry because of the groups I belong to, but there are more Old Town Albuquerque photos as well as photos of other places and things here in the Land of Enchantment–including a photo of the New Mexico state bird, the roadrunner, which I took on the arbor outside my front door.