• Lost medieval hospital and WW1 cinema to be uncovered
  See the article at the Hampshire Chronicle.
• Shipwrecks reveal shift to modern shipbuilding
  Feature by Clara Moskowitz at MSNBC.com.
• Ancient boat found by workmen
  A Saxon boat, actually. See the item at the UK Environment Agency.
• Oak tracks at 10th century road site leave archaeologists puzzled
  Article at the Irish Times.

Read Full Post

• Lost medieval hospital and WW1 cinema to be uncovered
  See the article at the Hampshire Chronicle.
• Shipwrecks reveal shift to modern shipbuilding
  Feature by Clara Moskowitz at MSNBC.com.
• Ancient boat found by workmen
  A Saxon boat, actually. See the item at the UK Environment Agency.
• Oak tracks at 10th century road site leave archaeologists puzzled
  Article at the Irish Times.

Read Full Post

Escape to romance and revelry at the Northern California Renaissance Faire!  The Faire is open every Weekend from September 18 through October 17 at Casa de Fruta in Hollister.  Celtic Rock Concerts are Included with Admission and children 12 and under are always free.  Visit www.norcalrenfaire.com for advance tickets – Five Dollars off through September 16th!

Enter to win two (2) tickets to attend the Northern California Renaissance Faire at Casa de Fruta in Hollister. Tickets are only valid for one day entrance, September 18 thru October 17.   Retail value is $100.00.  Deadline for entry is September 12, 2010 at midnight.   You must be 18 or older to win.  Five (5) winners will be chosen by random drawing on September 13, 2010.  Tickets will be mailed.  Prize is not redeemable for cash.  You can only win a prize from any CBS San Francisco radio station once every 60 days.

Over the summer, I’ve been attending Bristol Renaissance Faire, and working on a new gallery on my website that I call Medieval Photo Alchemy.  I call it this, because in trade rags, when you over photoshop an image into a different type of art, they call it “photo alchemy”. Some of the images in this gallery are from last year at Bristol, but most of them are from the 2010 season.  This is a gallery of images that I have photoshoped into more than just a photograph.  I’ve spent hundreds of hours studying new photoshop techniques over the summer, and I think I’ve developed a style of my own from all the practice.  It all started by trying to mimc the “Dave Hill” effect.  Still haven’t figured that one out, but along the way, I’ve been able to accomplish some pretty cool techniques.  I’ve also learned some techniques from Calvin Hollywood, and from a local photographer who I respect a great deal, Michael Barton.

So I think the hundreds of hours of watching YouTube videos, reading blogs, browsing forums, and following instructional websites, may have paid off? I guess not having a social life can pay off in some ways?! If you’d like to see the full gallery, just click on one of the images above to go there. I hope you enjoy them.

Sometimes I wake up from dreams so banal and ordinary that I forget it was a dream. For example, the other night I dreamed I texted my friend about a frisky car ride, and the next day on the phone, I referred to my dream texts, and he was so confused. I think I dreamt that I wrote a blog post about going to the Renaissance Faire in Iowa, (see what I mean about banal dreams that are so lowly and lacking in magic that they feel more like memories than dreams?) because I went to delete these photos from my ‘blog’ folder and I suddenly realized that I had never shared them with you in the first place.

I’m wearing my favorite Gunne Sax dress in the above photo and a pair of espadrilles that I gave to my friend Eli before leaving Iowa. I bought the Gunne Sax dress from a thrift store in San Francisco in 2005, and I’ve probably outgrown it, but I can’t bear to part with it because I’ve had some of my happiest days and nights in that dress. Like this day, when V, K & I went to get brunch at Boogaloos, and V was wearing this kick ass sweater from Wasteland, and the metal eye of Mordor hadn’t yet fallen off of my tooled purse.

I had a really happy day when I wore this dress to the Ren Faire. My friend Tal came too, and she’s going to be a very famous writer very soon so you better remember that name and that face! There were a lot of nubile women in faux-corseted velvet and lace dresses. There was a dreadlocked dog (so non humans can also do cultural appropriation, huh?) One dude spent the entire Ren Faire laying on his back and pulling out clumps of grass. I spent it eating cannoli’s and greasy fast food renamed as some mixed-up Medieval pun that ought to have offended Ren Faire purists.

With love,
Jenny

Read Full Post