WENATCHEE — Over and under, red and gold ribbon. The dancers laughed at their own entanglement as they wrapped a maypole at the Wenatchee Renaissance Faire Saturday.

“Where’s the music?” asked 21-year-old Rachel Camp as she ducked under another dancer’s ribbon.

“Ha! I thought you’d never ask,” replied GregRobin Smith of Seattle, a “town crier” character for the event. He pulled a metal flute from the pocket of his yellow-and-black striped pants.

An estimated 650 people wandered about the second annual Renaissance Faire Saturday.

The Wenatchee Valley College lawn looked like a medieval village. A blacksmith and two men pounded metal. Children learned how to card and spin wool, play medieval games and paint shields.

Fair-goers, entertainers and vendors all dressed in period costume.

“Is there no man or woman that can take me down?” a “sheriff” boasted. He waited at the far end of “Shoot the Sheriff” as new archers learned how to shoot padded arrows.

Eighteen-year-old Jasmine Latimer, in a princess-white dress and cape, struggled to pull back the bowstring.

Her first arrow hit the grass in front of MacKay. The second bounced off his helmet just below the eye.

MacKay wore a 15-pound face-protecting helmet, leather throat protection, a padded tunic, and armor for his elbows, knees, spine, groin and hands.

“He needs armor because they (arrows) can hurt on a full draw, even with the padded arrows,” said Buck “Baucus” Naff, a hobbyist archer and arrow-maker from Moses Lake.

Naff estimated one arrow takes about four hours to make, after the paint dries and the carving is done.

A quiver of homemade arrows hung from Naff’s medieval-style pavilion set up beside the archery area. In medieval garb, he drank soda from a handmade horn cup. He also built his table and sheepskin-covered chairs.

Like Naff, several of the entertainers and costumed characters were members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval re-enactment organization. The SCA hosts several medieval events regionwide.

In its second year, WVC Renaissance Faire has grown from five vendor tents to 20. The crowd tripled this year, which organizer Kari Erickson attributed to better planning and advertising.

Erickson has been adviser to the Medieval Mayhem Club at the college since 1999. The group sponsored the event with the student senate, she said.

She was also part-time faculty until this quarter, when she was laid off.

“I made a decision I was in it for the long haul and I believe in following through with the commitment I made to the group to continue,” Erickson said.

She said the group is already working on next year’s event.

“The more people know about it, the more the community starts to own it, it’s a community event,” Erickson said.

Rachel Schleif: 664-7139

schleif@wenatcheeworld.com