Les Grandes Medievales 2015

My gorgeous new tent!

 What better reason to break a long silence than to ramble endlessly about my favorite event of the year: Les Grandes Medievales d'Andilly? This French Ren Faire has been going strong for 19 years.. and I have been a fan since early days.  I first went in 1998, when it was a tiny event held in the heart of a tiny village.
These days, it is the biggest one in France.  Over the five days of the most recent festival, there were 57,000 people attending! And there was a new record set on May 24: 18,000 people in a single day!

Check out Severin being awesome!

And I am happy to say that my family is part of what makes the event fun!
Ever since 2010, I get together a group of my pals from the Music Conservatory and we perform Renaissance music. It started out very casual, but now we have great costumes and a big repertoire of songs.
And of course, my kids are there, looking gorgeous and  doing various cool things like sword fighting, calligraphy, embroidery and music.

There was also a great innovation this year, we have our own camp!
We are now officially "La Compagnie de La Rose Anglaise"!

Severin and Mallory battle it out!

Valentine looking epic and  medieval and lovely.

Mallory in the adorable new outfit I made for her!

Severin, Valentin, Alexa and Mallory

Mallory as Joan of Arc. Wow! She could definitely mess up any English invaders.

Life in camp.

Fancy hairstyle by Valentine.

Sisters

Valentine looking gorgeous!

Relaxing after a long, fun, busy day of  singing.
 I am super proud of the head gear I designed and made.
It was complicated and I owe thanks to Valentine for helping a lot!

Life in camp

Valentine and Mathias are so cute!

Valentine making Illuminated manscripts

Coming soon: Photos of our music performances at the event.

Not Very Dead

As in "This blog may look dead.  And it is.  But not VERY dead. So that's all right, then."

Somehow, the jaunty "See you tomorrow" of my last post turned out to be laughably overly-optimistic.

But here I am again, ready to give it another go. My computer, counter to all predictions, is still running.  It is wheezing and coughing like a two pack a day smoker, but still running.  So there's that.

What's new?
Quite a huge lot of things.....
Severin is at the University of Grenoble.
Valentine is in her second year at the Fine Arts school in Avignon.

And the twins are hard at work (as I am!) on their costumes for the upcoming Polymanga Con in Switzerland.
Only one week to go and this Game of Thrones cosplay needs to be DONE!
Mallory's Danaerys  outfit is nearly done.  She is hot glue gunning scales to a dragon egg as we speak.
And I am really supposed to be downstairs right now, cutting out the bodice for Alexa's Margaery Tyrell dress.

I will try to post again soon with photos....but no promises.