Asylum Steampunk Festival VII

Before we start the blog, we would like to wish Empire Edibles all the best for the future as it transpires that this is their last event... we will savour the last of the fudge with bittersweet feelings.

The Asylum Steampunk Festival VII was a truly awesome weekend, not only because the weather was good for a Bank Holiday weekend with the exception of Monday. But no-one can really complain because it was one day out of four.

Our Marquee by The Banjo

As usual we were in the Castle right on the side of the Banjo which meant we had excellent views of all the activities planned, including the Wacky Races and Jet Pack race.

After last year, we decided that we'd bring leathercraft supplies and leather with us because we kept being asked what we used to make our goggles/masks, etc. These went a lot better than we expected so we will be continuing to offer leathercraft supplies at our future events as well as on-line.

Is this the only Steampunk
Camper Van?

 One thing we love about attending Steampunk events is people's absolute ingenuity on show at every event and this one certainly didn't disappoint.
When the Castle had closed, we went for a well earnt drink but got sidetracked by an innocuously looking grey van with a large group of people hanging around. Of course, natural curiosity got the better of us so we went over and found that the van had been converted into a fully-working, self-sufficient Steampunk camper-van of which some items had been donated, such as the copper coal pan that they'd turned into a sink. There are solar panels on the roof which provide enough electricity for the lights, TV, etc. and the water system includes a filtering system so they can rock up anywhere, but we're not sure what the toilet situation is!

On closer inspection, the only thing that would have given it away was the brass port-hole windows on the outside.

Albot

"Albot" made his debut on Monday, despite the rain and made an instant impact with the kids.

He is a radio-controlled robot with fully moveable arms, head, eyebrows and "computerised" sounding voice so was able to convey a number of emotions based on the tone of his voice and the position of his eyebrows.

No self-respecting Steampunk robot would be complete without having a chimney bellowing forth smoke...

A special mention must be made to the fellow who made a jet pack that emitted smoke with that very satisfying barbecue smell.. particularly as we got quite excited at the prospect of a barbecue only to have our hopes dashed when we discovered it was his jet-pack. His partner said that the kitchen had smelt like it for months as he tried to perfect the smell, he had total dedication and ingenuity that must be celebrated along with the rest of the contraptions created for this weekend.

We look forward to next year to see what you all come up with next!

Celebrating the Magna Carta

This year was the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. To celebrate, Lincoln Castle had commissioned someone (I never found out who) to create a stunning sand sculpture to commemorate the anniversary. The level of detail in the sculpture was amazing and I'm not surprised it took 2 weeks to complete however, I don't know when it was finished but do they use some sort of binding agent afterwards to make it last? It stood up suspiciously well to the pouring rain on Monday...


On our travels, we have spoken to many people who attend the Whitby Goth Weekend but for whatever reason have not been into the Spa Pavillion. As we prepare for this event we would like to take the opportunity to encourage you to visit us (and the other traders) because we are constantly evolving our products and will have different items to those at Lincoln or sold out of.

As a final thought, we would like to say thank-you to all the people we met and traded with over what was a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend and we hope to see you again next year.