Faerie Con, Hunt Valley, Maryland, November 10, 2012

This past weekend I wanted to do something fun but there were more fun things to do than I had time for. (I had to deal with both my mother in rehab and more drama regarding my estranged husband.) There was the annual Crafty Bastards street fair for indie crafters and AnimeUSA that celebrates anime and Asian culture in general. I ended up choosing to go to Faerie Con, which was held in Hunt Valley. I’ve heard of Faerie Con a few years ago but, for a variety of reasons, I didn’t get the chance to go until this year.

Friday night I dropped off my UU chalice bag to my church to be sold at the auction the following evening. I purchased a one-day pass online for the following day and printed it out. (Faerie Con was a three-day convention but, for personal reasons, I was only able to go on Saturday.) Then I packed my lunch for the following day (so I wouldn’t pay any high prices in the hotel restaurant where Faerie Con was held).

So I arrived at Faerie Con by noon the following day. There were workshops on a variety of fantasy-related topics and plenty of muiscal acts playing instruments like harps, acoustic guitars, mandolins, and other types of traditional Celtic folk instruments. There was a fashion show followed by an adult costume contest where prizes were given away to those who wore the best costumes. But the real centerpiece was the marketplace, where you could buy all kinds of handcrafted items including dolls, steampunk items, fantasy creatures of all kinds, clothes, fairy wings, hats, posters, books, music CD’s, jewelry, decorated boxes, and more. There were also plenty of people wearing all kinds of cool costumes. When I first entered the hotel lobby, I was greeted with this large banner.

When I purchased the online ticket, I was instructed to printed it out and go to the "Will Call" line the following day in order to be let in. While I was waiting, this woman standing in front of me was wearing a fantasy-themed dress that exposed a portion of her back, which revealed this incredibly pretty tattoo. I ended up snapping a photo of it.

Once the ticket taker took my computer printout, he stamped the inside of my right wrist with this giant stamp. That was my proof that I had paid the admission fee and I had to show it whenever I had to go inside the show. The stamp was such a cool design that I took a picture of it. The ink began to bleed into the surface of the skin as the day went on and it didn’t look quite as nice as when I took this photo earlier in the day. It totally washed away when I took a shower the following morning.

There were all kinds of interesting items for sale and people wearing all kinds of costumes, outfits, and interesting t-shirts. I took a lot of photos that day.

I saw this one person carrying around Asian ball-jointed dolls. Granted it was a far cry from an anime convention, where you can see several people carrying such dolls, but the dolls were wearing these really cool looking steampunk outfits so I couldn’t resist taking a picture of them.

A high point for me was meeting the famed fantasy artist Jasmine Becket-Griffith, who had a booth full of her art.

I had long heard of her work via publications like Faerie Magazine and I frequently see one of her ads on the right-hand side of Facebook. I found some prints for $10 each and I bought three of them because they are all gorgeous. (In case you’re curious, here are the three prints I bought: Off to See the Wizard, Ruby Moon, and Pink Lightning.) They’ll serve as replacements for some art in my home that either my husband took for his apartment or were wedding presents and they had my name and my husband’s name in a prominent place. I even had Jasmine Becket-Griffith autograph all three of them. They will come in handy in case I experience extreme financial difficulty and I need to raise cash quickly. Here’s a photo I took of her signing one of my prints.

I checked out the fashion show. The master of ceremony was this guy dressed in a dapper steampunk outfit.

His assistant was this guy dressed as the Green Man.

The models in the fashion show wore clothes and accessories that were on sale in the marketplace at the convention.

The fashion show was followed by an adult costume contest. (Despite its name, it didn’t involved sexy skimpy clothing. It was a contest for adults to show off their fantasy-themed costumes.) Authors Raven Grimassi and Stephanie Taylor served as the contest judges.

The winners of the contest stood for the photographers after the contest ended.

Despite the numerous stuff for sale, I was relatively restrained. Aside from the autographed Jasmine Becket-Griffith prints, I only purchased two other items. One was this really pretty yet twisted cameo from Lithia’s Creations that’s similar to this photo. I also bought a novel by Carolyn Turgeon called Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story. At one point I ran into two of my friends from Unitarian Universalist congregation and we talked briefly before they had to leave in order to keep tabs on their sons who came with them.

There was a Bad Faeries ball scheduled for that night but I didn’t go because I was a bit tired from spending most of the afternoon walking around. The convention location was across the street from a Wegman’s so I ate dinner in its Marketplace Cafe. Then I made the short drive to the pet shop where I purchased my pet hedgehog Spike back in January because he needed some more food and that pet shop was on the way home from the convention.