2012 ORS Regency Retreat (and some photos of Topsails and Tea)

Apologies to all for the lag in updates. The ORS has had a bit of a spike in fertility and we've had some unexpected pregnancies among the leadership that sort of threw a couple of sabots into our proverbial looms. We're now one baby boy (Master Logan) stronger in our Regency family here with the ORS, and hopefully we'll know tomorrow if it will be a little white dress or a skeleton suit for the second arrival coming in November.

Anyhow, I'm happy to post the details on the ORS retreat in August. There are a few spots still open, so please feel free to query us if you're interested in coming.  Full payment should be submitted before July 25, if possible. Contact us at orregency@msn.com if you have questions, or if it's after July 25 and you want to know if there are still spots available.

Click HERE to download the registration packet.

Read the details online on the ORS 2012 Regency Retreat page.

Click HERE.

Additionally, I'm adding some highlight photos of our lovely May 19, 2012 'Topsails and Tea' event in Newport Oregon.  We enjoyed a sail on the tall ship, the Lady Washington. She sails out of Grey's Harbour in Washington State and with her sister ship, the Hawaiian Chieftain, they visit a number of ports along the Pacific Northwest throughout the year.

It was a lovely event and we all had a great time. It began with a delicious tea, we enjoyed a lovely day, heard great music, saw baby sea-lions, and some of us capped off the night with some wine and seafood and good company.  I cannot wait to do it again next year! We're going to try to buy out a whole ship this time. :)

Here come LOTS of photos. These were taken by myself, Stephanie Johanesen, Stephanie Robertson and by Megan Funk.

A golden-locked serenade.

Spiders on a web.

Paul always cuts a striking figure.

One of the highlights of the sail. Beautiful
bagpipes.

Blue steel.

It wasn't just the men making striking poses.

Our sister ship offered lots of 'beauty passes'

The crew.

Some of the AMAZING crew of the
Lady Washington.

This is George. I was going to sea-lion-nap him.
I was advised I could not. Mostly by
George's massive family members loafing nearby.

As you can see, it was a lovely event. We hope to have more and more as the baby-making surge levels out. :D  Happy weekend all!

An Evening of Dancing

Last night, Mrs. Charlotte Cunningham, Mr. and Mrs. Demlow and I, Mrs. Nora Azevedo made our appearance at the Friday night dance held weekly by the Portland Country Dancing Community.

Mrs. Demlow is a already a member of the PCDC and this time she came in costume, and looked LOVELY. Mrs. Cunningham also looked lovely, having converted a dress she was not 100% happy with into a lovely new ensemble that was excellent!

We met two new members, Chad and Caley, and I have to say that makes me exceedingly happy to see new faces at events, even if technically it wasn't "our" event.

We danced more than just Regency dance, and there were equal men to women. In fact, we had partners for all the dances, learned some new dance sequences and felt the exertion of a full ballroom.

All the ladies and gentlemen that we met were accommodating and genteel. The Gentlemen properly asked for a dance and the ladies were wonderful and helpful when we didn't know the dance steps.

This was so sucessful, that while we may not always go in costume, we will definitively continue to attend Friday night dances.

We hope to see more of the membership there.

Thank you

Mrs. Nora Azevedo

A Regency Retreat

Yes it may finally happen! We have found a location that will let us rent their space for a very fine price. The event will be held over a weekend in December. That gives us all plenty of time to plan and save money. Three nights with two full days of workshops and sewing time! Sounds fantastic! The price will include lodging, six meals prepared by the retreat center, two high teas by our chef, and some workshop fees. Certain workshops may cost an additional fee or materials.

There are three sets of dates available and we would like to take a poll of what you think would work best for you.

December 1st-4th
December 8th-11th
December 15th- 18th

Are there any workshops you would really love to see at the retreat? We are very excited and would love some feedback from you!

A look back...

A DVD was sent to me recently by Barbara of Brightjoy Productions. She'd taken this footage at the ORS's first event in August of 2007. It was a nice gift to receive as we approach our August 2008 Midsummer Night's Dream Masquerade ball at the same venue; the Ainsworth House & Gardens. I was thrilled.

I had some trouble figuring out how to convert this video from DVD to make it youtube compatible, and in part, it ended up being squished and only 7ish minutes long (the whole video is 16 minutes). I'll hopefully get a better quality version together at some point, but in the meantime, here it is. Flashback to last year.

ORS is a little over a year old now, but technically; August will mark the anniversary month of the ORS's first Regency costume event. It's exciting. In this short time, our membership exceeds 180 people; and we have a host of wonderful events for them to participate in.

I'm very proud of the Oregon Regency Society. It's such a wonderful thing. :)

Picnics and Tea and Bonnets, Oh My!

We've been super busy lately. Throwing together events so that there is a nice, steady succession of activities to keep our members engaged and busy. :)

We have two picnics, a series of stays workshops in the work, a bonnet workshop, a Regency Tea, and we're going to start planning for the Winter ball soon. It's all very exciting.

It's important to keep our site active and dynamic. There are far too many regency groups out there with websites with dead rings, broken links, missing images, galleries of events long past, and no dates later than 2004. That is not acceptable for the ORS. We're trying very hard to broaden our range of acitivities and to widen our scope of members; involving more facets of the period we all adore than just one or two repeating things. We adore Jane, but we want to step beyond the academic study of her works, we want to live them, experience them, all parts of it, from the wars that raged during that period, to the more scandalous side of the period, like the edgy Byron.

So that is why we are increasing our events, and soon we will try to offer some lectures, readings in order to meet the needs of the folks who like to learn new things about the period.

In the meantime, it's a social calendar few can withstand, that's for sure. But we're excited nonetheless.

An Update

Yes, it's been a while since we've upated. We've been working on some events and developing new ones for this coming year. Our P&P marathon was a bit of a washout since it occured during one of Oregon's wettest weekends. However we did have fun, the few of us that persisted, and we certainly plan a do-over at the first opportunity.

In the meantime, we're planning an event in Lake Oswego on February 10th; a Regency Party to celebrate the advent of Spring. We hope you will join us. It will be an elegant affair as usual.

:)