...Fairie Festival up in PA was not, as feared, infested with scads of people wandering around in tutus going "I'm a fairy princess - weee!" Which is not to say there weren't some. But, on the whole, it was very Rennaissance Festival-esque - just with a decidedly fey theme. While there, we caught a delicious performance of belly-dancing by Pennsylvania Tribal Dance. I do believe my favorite bit was when one of the troupe balanced a curved sword on edge on her head while contorting her lower body in various ways which really ought to have unbalanced the thing at some point. As well, there was a delightful bagpipe band called Clann an Drumma with the best ratio of bagpipers to drummers yet (1 to 4) and a headbanging drummer to boot. I feel vaguely disloyal to The Rogues of Scotland but I really did like this group more - I'm terribly swayed by good drumming.

The vendors were quite excellent as well, as witnessed by my stream of acquisitions: 2 bars eucalyptus soap, 1 bar chocolate mint soap (yes, chocolate mint), 1 brilliantly purple skirt, 1 forest green velvet skirt, 1 floofy fairy photo album for my friend who likes that sort of thing, 1 hummingbird hang-y thing fashioned out of ocean-blue glass and bits of metal for my mother, and one business card holder made the same way (but with deeps browns) for my father. And I was tempted by many more things to boot. On the whole, the pricing of everything was ridiculously cheap, as compared to standard Rennaissance Festival wares. And if belly-dance wear is your thing, you really ought to go there next year. The selection of such things was quite immense.

Prognosis: Quite worth going to. Would do again next year.