Fantasy and Fact Thrive at Ye Olde Faire : Revelers Bask in Medieval Pleasures at Lake Casitas Renaissance Festival

Even though the temperature was in the 80s Sunday, it didn’t stop 31-year-old Richard Gable of Moorpark from wearing 50 pounds of armor.

Gable and his wife, Tina, were two of the couple of thousand revelers who showed up at Lake Casitas for the first Ojai Renaissance Festival, staged this weekend on 100 acres turned into an olde English village complete with Elizabethan thespians, jousters, dancers, singers, crafts booths and enough edibles to make a knight belch.

Gable wasn’t the only fair-goer to get into the spirit of the day. Many played out their fantasies by dressing up as knights, lords and ladies of a mythical kingdom by the lake.

Gable, a collector of arms and armor, said his “coat of plates” was worn by knights ready for battle or a tournament.

His wife, Tina, said that before they got married, she was aware of his interest in medieval collectibles.

She told her mother that “this is my knight in shining armor. Little did I know,” she said.

Renaissance festivals are nothing new in California, but they usually are staged on a much larger scale and for longer periods of time.

The Lake Casitas event, held Saturday and Sunday, was smaller and less crowded than the others, but it had ambience and spirit.

It also showcased artistic talent.

There was balladeer Garrick O’Cannon of Thousand Oaks, accompanying himself on a lutar, a guitarlike instrument. “What more diversion could a man desire than to sit down by an alehouse fire,” he sang as he wandered through the festival grounds.

There was Mallory Geller, 45, a Los Angeles piano tuner, singing the legendary “Greensleeves,” while his wife, Janna, and Ann Finnin of Tujunga, accompanied him on neo-Celtic harps, which were strung with nylon and metal strings attached to cherry and maple wood bases.

There was Sylvia Miller of Ventura, along with her 5-year-old daughter, Katie Horton, selling garlands--not exactly a cutting-edge industry, but quite popular at Renaissance festivals.

And there was David (he declined to give his last name), dressed as a musketeer, trying to frolic with some of the local maidens. His advances didn’t sit well with Fran Weicht, 33, of Ventura.

“He’s playing his role, but if I had a saber, he probably would have gotten it in the ribs,” she said.

Weicht was sitting with her friends, Karen Todisco, 35, and Tammy Barrett, 30, also of Ventura, who were pondering whether they would like to have lived in the Days of King Arthur or if they were better off in the Days of George Bush.

“I think it would have been interesting to live back then,” Todisco said. “I might have been a wench in the dungeon and enjoyed it.”

“I don’t think I’d like to have been a woman back then,” Barrett said.

But not everything was authentic. The longer lines weren’t in front of crafts booths selling knives, swords and other accouterments of the Renaissance era. Under the warm sun, people beat a path to a very non-Renaissance booth owned by Jim and Heather McBride of Santa Barbara. The lure: flavored ice.

“Business has been very good,” Jim McBride said.

Although temperatures in the mid-80s may have caused Gable and other armored knights to sweat off a few pounds under their metal attire, it was near-perfect for others wandering around the festival grounds or, for that matter, engaging in other outdoor activities in Ventura County.

“There’ll be no change over the next few days,” said Steve Burback, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which does forecasts for The Times.

Burback said Sunday’s temperatures--lower 70s along the coast to the middle 80s inland--would continue at least through Wednesday. Humidity would remain above 70% at the shore but would be in a more comfortable 50% range in central and eastern Ventura County, he said.

A slow warming trend might be in store for next weekend, he added.