Return from the Faerie Realm

Well what a weekend the Faerieworlds festival turned out to be. We arrived Friday afternoon to Mount Pisgah, just outside of Eugene, Oregon. After setting up our tent and applying some faerie makeup (glitter, purple eye shadow and a bindi) we ventured into the festival to participate in the opening ceremonies. We watched a procession led by the most beautiful faery matron with long silver hair and then began the spiral dance (check out this video).

(source)

We drank sparkling mead and conversed with pirate wenches. We danced to the grooves of afro-celtic band, Baka Beyond. 

We walked and shopped all the vendors selling faerie wares. My high school girl self was super excited to see Amy Brown (I was obsessed!) and all the other magical vendors. 

I can't begin to describe the costumes people wore! And I'm horrible at taking photos (I prefer to enjoy things in the moment and though I always bring a camera, I most often completely forget to use it). We saw every kind of faery you can imagine! Tinkerbelles, gypsy fairies, sluttly punk fairies, steampunk fairies, goth fairies, Woodstock fairies.. even a Star Wars fairy! We saw pirates and mermaids, faery villains and superheroes.

But the best part of Faerieworlds was getting to see the King of the the Faeries himself! DONOVAN!

He played a magical set opening with Hurdy Gurdy Man, Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman, Season of the Witch and more! AND of course the night ended with the most magical Atlantis! It. Was. Amazing.

And then we got to meet him and have him sign THIS!

James captured this from Futurama's "The Deep South" episode (featuring Donovan) and had it printed poster size. We were completely star struck and he seemed pretty pleased to see his cartoon self again.

Thank you Faerieworlds for such a magical weekend (even if we did end up looking and smelling like true hippies).