Tea & Automatons

Forgive my prolonged absence.  I haven’t felt much like writing for a while and I have not had much to say, but the past week does need to be shared.  It’s been pretty sweet.

It began at Furlandia, a furry convention in Portland.  Their theme was the Age of Industry, so they invited me as a Guest of Honor.  I happily accepted.  I dressed to the nines and gave five steampunk talks.  It was wonderful to be able to educate so many eager folks about steampunk and hear their questions. I have to admit that I have missed that.  I had a table in the Dealers’ Den where I sold my Steamporium items. My brand new Steampunk coloring book was a huge hit.  I even hosted a Tea on Sunday morning for the patron level members.  My husband ran his first Tea Dueling event.  We had a great time.

On Saturday night, we went out to celebrate my birthday with K.W. and Geri Jeter.  K.W. is the man who coined the term “steampunk”, in case you were unaware.  We had a nice dinner at a German restaurant that is sadly about to be demolished in the name of progress.

After the convention, we took a few days to recuperate out in rural Oregon and then drove back to the city in time for a showing of Vintage Tomorrows, a documentary about steampunk at the Seattle International Film Festival.  This meant a lot to my husband and I as we are both in the film and were there for the very beginning of this project back in 2011. We were joined by my protege Carrie and dressed to the nines once again.  We were the first ones in line.  The SIFF staff loved our outfits and made us feel very special.  Many other folks that were in the movie and many local Seattle Steamrats showed up as well.  I was quite pleased with the way the movie turned out.  It is a good way to introduce steampunk to people and makes a few good observations.  I highly recommend it, but then I may be a wee bit biased.  I never in a million years thought that I would actually appear on IMDB.  Lol!  If you didn’t get a chance to see it, or want to see it again it will be available on iTunes on July 19th.

Afterwards I suggested to the director, Byrd that we should get a drink and chat, and that turned into a sizable after party at T.S. McHugh’s.  It was wonderful catching up with everyone. Truly a great crowd.

I was glad to be a part of all this steampunk excitement.  It’s been very inspiring to me in so many ways and it’s still going.

 

If you’d like to take a look at photos here is the Furlandia Gallery and the Vintage Tomorrows Gallery.