Steampunk Symposium Part II: Costumes, Crafts, Booklust, and more!

Here we go, round two of the Con Report!

Costumes
I am horrible at taking photos, especially of my own costumes. I didn't even remember to take out my camera for most of the weekend.

Once we arrived at the hotel, it didn't take long for me to realized that I'd left two key costumes pieces behind. The first was the bodice I normally wear with my seamstress costume. It's a more casual/lower class character, so my fancy corsets are a bit too much for her. Without the bodice, I had to modify things. The result was okay, but I wasn't happy with it. My top half wound up looking more like a tavern wench than a seamstress.

Missouri wore this outfit on the right the first day. She designed the top, and I made it for her. I'm so pleased with the way it came out, and she got a lot of compliments on it. Doesn't she look great? (You can see how thrilled she was with me taking her photo, but I think it's excellent.)

Saturday I wore my Victorian walking dress (left). This is the costume that I spent most of last week working on, but I think the results are FABULOUS. I got so many compliments, and this was the first year were multiple people asked to take my picture. I love this costume. I did discover that it needs a little tweaking in the back when I'm wearing my corset, and I'll be adding a bustle to it eventually, but I'm still very pleased with how it came out.

My Sunday costume is an old standard. Pardon the washroom photography:

I tweak this outfit a little bit every year, adding more and more too it. This year I changed blouses, going with a peasant look instead of my usual button down. I also added the hat and the chain on the corset--darn useful, that. It's not really visible, but that chain has my pocket watch hanging from it, and there's a clip for my fan. I'm going to add other bits and bobs to it, too.

Missouri's Saturday outfit was just stunning--academic in inspiration, it was a purple and cream plaid over a bright green blouse. I didn't think it would work, but  they were perfect together. The blouse was store-bought, but the waistcoat and skirt were made by moi, again based on her design. We make a good team! In the photo on the left, I had to do some creative pinning, since the manikin was still set to my measurements, but it looked wonderful on her.

Missouri's Sunday costume was tried and true--a button down tunic dress over a skirt, tied with a modified obi that I made last year. No pictures since Sunday was a bit of rush with checking out and the two hour drive, but I'll see if I can rustle up something to share.


The Swag
Our budget was tight this year. Most of my money wound up spent on food. Most of my souveniers are even consumable.

War Pony Forge candies ended up being a place we came back to twice. They have great homemade candy in a variety of unusual flavors like Early Grey, lavender, and coriander pear. We walked away with blackberry, coconut, cinnamon, an lime flavored chocolate (and white chocolate, in the case of the last, and I don't even like white chocolate. It's that good).

I picked up a pair of white gloves for my costumes, and chipped in for a gift for a friend who couldn't attend the convention. My last purchase was a mother's day present.


I also bought an herbal tea. Gents, you won't be much interested in this and might want to skip to the next section. Ladies, this is a tea that is supposed to help with cramps and some of the symptoms Mother Nature likes to dump on us. I haven't tried it yet, but I will be soon. If it works, I'll let you know.  ;)

There were so many books that I wanted to get! Steampunk Symposium is a bit of an author's mecca. Two that I will probably download on my Nook soon are Darker Still and The Tales of the Airship Neverland, which is a dark, Steamy retelling of the Peter Pan story. I almost bought a couple of other books, too. I've got a whole list that needs downloading!

The Crafts

You didn't expect me to sit through all of those panels with nothing to do, now did you?

At first, I was carrying my sock in my purse. I'm just finishing the gusset on these, about to start the heel. After a week of hard work,, though, my wrists were pretty fatigued. Saturday night I switched to embroidery.

You'll never guess what I found in a box of craft stuff when I went downstairs to retreive some costume pieces.
 Remember this one? It's been sitting in storage for almost a year, but I got quite a bit of work done on it Saturday and Sunday. It's still sitting by my bed, getting a few more stitches every day. I'll have to make a Joann's run this weekend, since I used up the last of the color I had for the right hand gear.

Alas, those are all of the pictures I have to share. We had a fabulous time despite the little kinks; it will be interesting to see where the convention is held next year. We're already plotting costumes and panels, so it should be fun!

Steampunk Symposium Part I: Con Report!

You've all been waiting for this one, haven't you? That's right, it's time for the con report!

This was my second year attending Steampunk Symposium. Last year was the first year of the con. I have to say, while the hotel was nicer this year, I actually liked it less. The staff were very rude, the service was horrible, and the physical layout of the hotel wasn't as amenable to just hanging out and meeting people as the previous location. Each panel, section, etc, was very segregated from the other parts of the convention. It was also a lot more expensive than last year--almost double the price per room (granted, the rooms were a lot nicer looking and more comfortable, but the other problems kind of negated it.

All that aside, however, we did have a great time. 

Friday kicked off the panels. The first one we attended was on corset making. It was absolutely fascinating, but I'm not quite ambitious enough to give it a go just yet. Missouri is contemplating it, however. We'll see what she comes up with. 

Following that, we hosted our own panel on Maintaining History. There was talk of costumes and typewriters, old books and leather. Not many people showed up, but the ones that did asked some good questions and I think that they enjoyed it. 

Speaking of typewriters, I did spot one while we were there: 

This Underwood was being used as a prop at one of the booths. It's in great condition (despite my poor photography). I wanted to play with it a little, but no one was manning the booth and  didn't want to be poking at things that didn't belong to be, so I walked away reluctantly. The next time we went by the booth it was gone.

I also spotted this phonograph machine by the check in; I thought it was quite cool, especially since it still had the cylinders.


We only did one other panel that night, since we were both tired: Con Sociology, the Zen of Flirting. At lot of the things in that panel could be used for general networking, but it was a lot of fun and the host was hilarious.

There were, of course, parties aplenty on both Friday and Saturday nights, but neither Missouri nor I are much for large parties. For starters, neither of us drinks or enjoys being around people who are drinking, so we spent our evenings relaxing in our room and making tweaks to our costumes.

On Saturday, we did some shopping in the morning. I think that there were more vendors this year than last, but there was a lot less variety in their wares. A few stands outs included hand-blended teas, a purveyor of vintage kimono, and leather top hats. There were a lot of people selling corsets and costumes of various sorts, but most were quite expensive (not overpriced, mind, but most people don't got to a convention with $150, $200+ dollars to spend in the dealers room). There was less jewelry and accessories than last year, but a lot more author tables, which I whole-heartedly support. I heard a rumor that a publisher had a booth in the dealer's room, but we searched it thoroughly and couldn't find it.

For me, the highlight of the entire weekend came on Saturday afternoon, when we took a stage fighting class. Fencing, to be specific. Most of the class was using rapiers, but they ran out when they got to me so I got to play with a cane sword. Here I am (or at least my back) practicing part of the routine they were teaching use. 

Did I mention? The class was taught by this guy, who arranged the fight scenes in the Highlander TV series and Hook, which was one of my favorite movies as a kid. So cool! So much fun! I really want to take fencing lessons now!

We finished off Saturday with more costuming panels on bustles and corset fitting, and one on Victorian mysticism and occult beliefs, and hilarious panel on Victorian Erotica. I don't think I stopped laughing for the entire hour. Sunday wound things down with Goths in Steampunk, and LGBTQ in Steampunk.

The panels were all great, but I wish they were longer. All of the panels this year were one hour, and most would have been better served to be 2-3 hour workshops.

This is going rather long so check back on Friday for all the details on the costumes, the books, and what I was making while I was there!