An Unexpected Steampunk Adventure

 

Mill engine

We visited London's Science Museum recently and an had unexpected Steampunk adventure! As soon as you walk in you are greeted by a gallery about the history of steam power including displays and working models of steam engines from the first engines right up to the horizontal Mill engine.
They have a working Mill engine and believe it or not, some Mill engines were used right up until the 1970's!

Walking around the other floors, we found a gallery dedicated to the history of watch making in London with large displays of pocket watches from private collectors as well as examples of large case clocks and tower clocks.

18th Century Pocket Watches

19th Century Pocket Watches

We also saw a large gallery about the history of time keeping with displays of more pocket watches as well as the tools of the trade and working enlarged version of the 3 main types of escapements used in pocket watches.

Tools of the Trade

Escapements

At the back of this area, there is an original speaking clock from the 1970s. It has 3 separate systems working together and is surprisingly large for something so simple - it really is a feat of engineering!

But the creme de la creme had to be the working Difference Engine No. 2 complete with printer built to tolerances achievable in the 19th Century from Charles Babbage's original designs.

Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2

There is even a section on the technology through the centuries, the picture on below is for the 19th Century and would not be complete without a Penny-farthing.

 Overall, the Science Museum is really worth a visit for any Steampunk as well as anyone interested in the history of technology although strangely for a Science Museum it wasn't very, for want of a better word, sciency.

WGW November '16

Mask and Monoggle Display

Whitby Goth Weekend was very windy... We didn't check the weather forecast for the weekend like we usually do and got a shock when we did on Thursday night, the forecast was for rain and winds between 40 - 50 mph for the whole of the weekend! It was certainly an experience packing down in those kinds of winds - namely chuck it in the van and hope for the best.

We didn't have many new items or ranges this time because we are concentrating on having completely new ones for next year, we have lots of ideas just a lack of time to actually produce them. Keep an eye on our etsy shop as they'll be appearing there before our next event next year, currently penciled in as The Asylum in Lincoln.

All the talk after WGW in April was about the photographers in the graveyard by the Abbey and building a 'mock' graveyard for people wanting photographs. We haven't heard anything since and certainly there didn't appear to be one in evidence although we didn't get a chance to see for ourselves. We're sure more info will come out over the next few weeks.

Asylum Steampunk Festival VIII

Our Gazebo in The Castle

The Asylum VIII was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, despite the deluge that hit on late Saturday afternoon just before we were due to close which meant closing our gazebo was a rather wet experience that we'd rather not have the unfortunate opportunity to repeat - but it was good for umbrella sales! The bad weather must have continued overnight and a fairly strong gust of wind must have developed as a few of our fellow traders had leaks in their tent / gazebo and a couple of banners had been blown off too.

This year was disappointing in the ingenuity stakes, there didn't seem to be many stand-out outfits or piece of equipment compared to last year, highlights included a rocket pack and a couple of pirates with real parrots.
Maybe last year was an exceptional year having a Steampunk camper-van and Albot making an appearance on Monday. We did enjoy the falconry display though, especially the Great Grey Owl

Great Grey Owl

As always, we'll look forward to next year, it could well be our first event of the year. Maybe we'll be a bit more organised for it and buy tickets for the evening events instead of leaving it until a month before - they'd pretty much all been sold out by then.

See you all in November at Whitby Goth Weekend, we're in the Spa Theatre at the Pavillion.

Crewe Steampunk Convivial - May 2016

The inaugural Crewe Steampunk Convivial on the late May Bank Holiday weekend was a good fun-filled weekend with the unique, over-riding theme of music. There were bands and groups performing during the evening entertainment but the organisers of this event had set up places where street artists and buskers could perform such as in the marquee in the Market Square, a stone's throw from the Lifestyle Centre. It was a nice touch that they brought them into the Steampunk Market to perform too!

Town Crier

A Street Performer

Bagpiper

It was a last minute decision to go to the Masquerade Ball on Sunday night but we're glad we did but not only because we got to see Crimson Clocks' last performace. There were a number of groups / bands we hadn't seen before but the stand-out performance was by The Wattingers (not to be confused with The Wottingers from In the Night Garden). It was a shame they were on so late because we had to leave part way through their performance - we wish they'd had an earlier slot!

The Wattingers

The Wattingers

BB Blackdog

The floor-space we had in Crewe was a bit smaller than at Comic Con and WGW so we had a similar set up as at those events and after trying it at a few events now we've come to the decision that its  not working as well as we thought so it's back to the drawing board we go!

For anyone who was asking about the black pagoda umbrellas, we have some on the way so we will have some for the Suffolk Steampunk Spectacular and The Asylum.

WGW April '16 - Remembered for the wrong reasons

There are only 4 words that can describe this WGW event, damn cold and quiet. It's easy to forget how cold the wind is when it blows straight in off the sea. We even had a smattering of snow on Sunday morning and we were told by someone who had driven in over the tops they were covered in snow.

The main talking points of this WGW are the new rules for entering the venues, which basically boiled down to no weapons of any description -  a point picked up in Steampunk Journal's article and the petition for the closure of the graveyard during both events. The article by Steampunk Journal also raises some interesting points that should be kept in mind when designing a new outfit or accessorising an existing one. We're not sure about con-safe ones though as we must admit we forgot to ask!

Embed from Getty Images

The biggest talking point after this event is the petition set up to close the graveyard for the duration of both events. We don't how or why it's suddenly become such a big issue, perhaps WGW is getting more popular with both visitors and photographers and its become the 'thing to do' and this event was the tipping point. There are plans to create a mock graveyard so people wanting photos don't go into the graveyard itself.


 Nevertheless we enjoyed the weekend and broke tradition by eating at the moon and sixpence instead of the magpie. We highly recommend it and think it's a local's secret spot because the other people didn't look like they were in Whitby for the Goth Weekend, so we'd say it's recommended to book in advance.

After doing Comic Con in March, we thought that the floor space was the same as WGW so we thought we'd try a similar set-up. We thought it worked really well for us but it's difficult to get a good idea because it was really quiet, it probably didn't help that Easter was really early this year so it didn't fall in the school holidays as it usually does. I think a good indication of how quiet it was is that we had a choice of tables in the Elsinore at 8pm on Saturday! Usually people are spilling out of the door and onto the path outside.We're back in November so we'll try the same set up to see how it goes then.

Highlights of the weekend...

For all the wrong reasons © Rob Grey

For all the right reasons

So onwards to our next event Crewe Steampunk Convivial

A subdued start to the year

Our pitch

MCM Comic Con proved to be a rather quiet and subdued start to the year, perhaps it was due to the rather odd 'L' shape set up meant people were walking straight up and past the rows. I did have a quick walk round on Sunday afternoon and it was quite empty towards the back of the hall.

 We had a few new items for this event, a variation of our leather goggles inspired by Harley Quinn and some bags inspired from Japanese designs and a new style of umbrella.



Not surprisingly, given the release of Deadpool in February we saw quite a few of them but the best one had to be Deadpool in the shower - complete with a duck shower cap, towel and back brush. There were also the usual characters from Sword Art Online, Pokémon and Fairy Tail

The countdown to our next event, Whitby Goth Weekend has already started and we're already looking forward to it!

November / December round up

November and December was a really busy period for us, it seems like they went in a blink of an eye! We'll start at the end of October / beginning of November with Whitby Goth Weekend.

Whitby Goth Weekend

New range of umbrellas on
prominent display

Whitby Goth Weekend was the great weekend that it usually is. It was good to catch up with the people that we don't see at the other events we go to and The Magpie was up to it's usual standard too!

We had a new range of umbrellas which went down really well despite some initial grumbles from superstitious people about putting umbrellas up indoors, Gothic / Steampunk inspired Christmas baubles and a range of telescopes and compasses.

MCM Birmingham Comic Con

This weekend was really, really busy hence the reason there is no photos - we didn't have time to take any! Highlights of the weekend included seeing Virginia Hey from Farscape, who is now selling hand made vegan soap on Etsy, and a really good cos-play version. Liv Tyler was charging £150 for a signed photo, the queues were insane for her and so was her security. It was like the President had visited Comic Con!
The only blemish of the weekend was that we had a few items were stolen overnight, but we're going back in March - we hope to see you there

Steampunks in Space

We went to Steampunks in Space at the National Space Centre to play and let our hair down at the last Steampunk event we would attend before the New Year. The event was really good fun and set in a brilliant setting - we're not sure what was more interesting, the Steampunks or the displays themselves. We plan to go back to visit the Space Center to have a proper look round in the New Year and have bought an annual pass.

A Local Christmas Fair

Our stall

It's not often we get invites or information about local events / Christmas fairs but as we had a range

of Christmas baubles and other Christmas themed items we thought we'd give it a shot. Unfortunately the foot fall wasn't as expected and was well down on last year but we had a good time anyway and met some really nice people and we received a lot of interest in Steampunk and what it was.
However, we did realise the potential of Facebook selling so every cloud has a silver lining. 

Worcester Victorian Christmas Market

Christmas-themed items

I don't think the organisers of the Worcester Victorian Christmas Market could have picked a worse weekend to hold the event on if they tried. The weather was absolutely atrocious - we got completely drenched walking round Worcester. Despite the weather there were some really interesting stalls selling a variety of hand-crafted and other items and was really, really busy.

Without doubt, the majority of the vendors were selling Christmas related items including decorations and unique gifts some of them being hand made by the vendors, such as the items shown in the photo on the left, but as a Victorian Christmas Market, there was a few stalls selling traditional Victorian items as well.

These are just a few of the highlights of the Christmas Fair.

A Goth / Alternative stall

Victorian confectionary

Hand-made Jewellry

A Steam powered...

...carousel

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.

Facebook chucked us off!

Yes - Facebook chucked us off, during their apparent purging of accounts that didn't fit their criteria of being 'real' names. You may or may not have been affected but we've heard of whole groups, pages and events have been lost because the admin accounts have been removed.

Anyway, after a lot of faffing around trying to get things back into some order, we have created a brand new Facebook page which we invite you to like or follow to get all our updates for our future events and creations. Unfortunately, we have lost our friends list somehow as well, so those of you who were our friends in previous adventures, please send us a friend request and accept our apologies for not sending you a friend request.

Facebook is a wonderful tool, but can be damn frustrating as well!

WGW Nov 2014

not that we're biased...
splendid use of goggles

Wow!! That was one of the best weekends we've had so far at the awesome Whitby Goth Weekend. It's taken us a while to recover what with the excitement of the weekend. There was some amazing outfits being displayed in the most splendid ways and of course it was nice to see some of our regulars.

We always like it when people come back to see us to show how they've used our creations to exquisitely embellish their outfits with our creations. This Lady has used a pair of our goggles with a head-piece complimenting the rest of her outfit wonderfully.

Whitby was closed to
visitors on Saturday

Right from the start it proved to be a hectic weekend with people from all walks of life converging on Whitby in the masses. As you can see from the front page of the Whitby Gazette, the town was full and was closed to visitors on Saturday causing havoc with the Park and Ride and local bus services.

With the sun showing his face pretty much most of the time it gave a more summer feeling to the weekend, with families, steampunkers goths and other genres enjoying the unusually warm weather with a visit to the beach. It was almost warm enough to create an outdoor market!



We do, however, like our quaint setting and as it was Halloween on Friday this year some of our fellow traders decided to take the opportunity to get into the spirit of it by giving their stalls a Halloween theme. The pictures below are of our neighbours Twisted Ivy who are the first stall on the right as you go through the doors into the Spa Theatre.

Twisted Ivy's Halloween
Theme

The Skull was motion
activated

This year we thought we would branch out from our hand crafted goods made with our fair hands. So we are now officially suppliers for the fantastic Nemesis Now and Alchemy. Just a little taster of whats to be expected.

Swaggering Sticks from
Nemesis Now

Steampunk inspired jewelry
from Alchemy

Well once again with all that in mind I thought I would don you with my delights of the weekend. We had our usual Friday night supper with friends at the award winning Magpie fish restaurant followed by an enchanting day trading whilst sharing our wealth of knowledge with the lovely public in regards to our new area on our table display which was........... Drum roll please.............

New range of Leather
crafting supplies

Thats right.... we are now the proud owners of leather crafting supplies. These will soon to be listed in our etsy shop for your perusal. We have loved learning our skills over the years while making our creations. but my favourite part of all is seeing what other people do the items they buy from us. 

So as usual after a very belated update for you lovely people, Thank you for reading and hope to see you all at the next event. Which for us is the switching on of the Bewdley Christmas lights on the 29th Novemberwith one of the best firework displays to watch

Asylum VI

Well.. what a weekend! I'm not sure where it went, time flies when you're having fun. We went to Lady Elsie's Fashion Gala and Oh Dear, What Would The Major Say - both splendid events in their own right but the highlight had to be the comedy burlesque routines performed by Velma Von Bon Bon

Our wares on display

We were in the Castle right by the road which gave a perfect view of the events going on including the wacky races, which wasn't wacky enough in our opinion, and the M.A.D.T display which was amazing. Being in the castle also gave us the opportunity to speak to Steampunks as well as 'normal' people visting the castle and we may have made Steampunks out of a few of them...

Our pop-up marquee

This weekend was the first chance we had to try out our new PayPal Here app for taking card payments. It worked wonderfully and we have high hopes that it'll work just as well at our next event, Whitby Goth Weekend, because they are notoriously fickle, especially in the Spa Theatre in the Pavillion.

We hope to see you all there!

Steampunk Doncaster - a very belated post!

The weather was perfect, if a little hot as we were camping there and, well, we were melting in our tents and it was quite hot in the Deaf Trust. I must visit my local tailor for the latest fashion for extreme temperatures because my usual garb had me hot under the collar all weekend.

There was all sorts of really interesting things going on in the day, such as Nerf Wars, workshops for writing, photography and our little turn on the catwalk the Fashion Show, organised by Nightshades Clothing. We also enjoyed the evening entertainment which included BB Blackdog, Scarlet Butterfly and Montague Jacques Fromage who we actually met on Sunday Morning!

All in all it was a very enjoyable event even if, in our opinion, the entrance fee was a bit steep at £10 and our only regret is that we didn't take any photos at all!

We hope to see you all again at our next event at Whitby Goth Weekend

WGW April 2014

We're back from another damp and misty Whitby Goth Weekend, but happy with how the weekend went! It was really good to see some of our regulars again.
                                                                             

Our Stall

Goggle and Mask Display

As promised a year ago (although not delivered), we will be taking our Steampunk creations in a different direction and we will have completely new items, although we're not going to tell you too much right now but if you want a sneak-peak come and see us at our next event at Steampunk Doncaster on the 21st & 22nd June

Keep your eye on our twitter feed for updates.

WGW April 2013

We're back from another awesome Whitby Goth Weekend, still tired and really happy with how the weekend went, despite some minor set-up issues! It was really good to meet new people and have return visits from people we met in November - dare I say it, we have regulars! Thank-you to everyone who visited us

We noticed that there has been a massive jump in the numbers of Steampunk stalls both in the Spa Pavillion and in the Leisure Centre. This may be due to there apparently not being a parallel event in the Rifle club organised by the Victorian Steampunk Society, but we have made the decision to take our Steampunk creations in a slightly different direction. We will still keep the backbone of our products, our goggles, masks and fascinator hats.

Keep your eye on our twitter feed for updates.

January Blues

Usually I don't bother
measuring...

January was a really poor month - that is unless you are about 12, then you probably though it was really good! It was basically too cold and snowy to do much of anything. At one point we were buried under about 4 inches of snow! Now, those of you further north/east of us will probably think that 4 inches isn't very much but it's not very often we get that much....

The Christmas orders took on a life of their own! It's amazing what happens when you start telling people you can make things. Thankfully not all of the things we were asked if we could do were for Christmas, but we are still doing some of them even now! We did a quick calculation of how many weeks are left until April's Whitby Goth Weekend. Let's just say we were a little shocked when it turned out there are just 12 weeks left.

With this in mind and a month where nothing really could be done, we made a few tweaks to our Etsy Emporium. We've renamed and re-jigged some of the sections to reflect some of the new ideas and products we hope to put on there over coming weeks and take to April's Whitby Goth Weekend.

If you haven't already had a look, we've created a page with a picture of  all (if we remember to take a picture of them before giving them to the recipient!) the things we have made.

Watch this space - we anticipate a large flurry of activity over the next 12 weeks....

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year!

This year has been really good for us, especially Whitby Goth Weekend - which exceeded our expectations for our first time there, so much so that we'll be back in April. We are also looking at doing some more events next year.

We are pretty much done for 2012 now, whilst we won't be closing our Etsy emporium over the festive period we won't be listing any new items until January. We have some new ideas and designs for 2013 in the pipeline, including masks, armaments/ballista, jewellery and other artefacts from a past that never was....

We'll be posting updates mainly on twitter about new items and the events we are doing in 2013, so if you are not following us yet, now would be a good time to start!

We'd also like to wish everyone who has visited us a happy Christmas and a Merry New Year!

Whitby Goth Weekend Nov. 2012

After a very busy and hectic weekend at Whitby Goth Weekend, it's almost business as usual. A week's holiday would be good right now as we're absolutely knackered and we're still having a busy week which is why this post is really late!

We were in the Spa Pavillion Theatre, which is a great venue. The only downside to it is there is a lack of mobile signal, making trying to tweet or put our Etsy shop into "holiday mode" nigh-on impossible! We were going to leave our Etsy shop open, so that people could still view items on it, but we sold out of the goggles within 2 hours which prompted us to run up to the car park and close the shop. It was a good job we did because later on Saturday, the choker sold as well!

After the success of this weekend, we are looking at attending some other events next year, so please keep your eye on twitter as we will be posting updates on there.

This is a good opportunity to thank everyone involved with WGW and everyone who traded with us over the 3 days and helped to make it a successful weekend for us. We are going back in April, with some new items, so we hope to see you all there again!

Culmination of 7 month's hard work

Finally after 7 months of hard work, we have gone public with our little Steampunk Emporium on Etsy in preparation for the Whitby Goth Weekend. If one has been following us on Twitter, one would know that we have been fortunate enough to have been featured on the official Bizarre Bizaar flyer. This is great news for us!

We are going to put a few items on a week in the run up to Whitby Goth Weekend. so that you can get a feel for the items that we are going to take with us. We have listed a pair of goggles and a choker as a taster.

Please follow us on facebook, twitter and this blog for updates.