I'm deviating briefly again from decor to share our experiences from a day
Clockwork Alchemy Steampunk Convention in San Jose, CA. This was the first steampunk event I've attended although I've been obviously a fan of the concept for some time I've been hesitant to participate in the subculture part of the genre because I really didn't know what to expect or what kind of crowd it drew. I was rather pleasantly surprised to find that the significant majority of the con attendees seemed to be there truly to celebrate the "maker" aspects of steampunk, which is my particular desire out of the experience as well. There was a photographer doing tin type photos,
Mr Science had a nice display on magnets, basic switches, electricity etc and rows of buttons to push that out 2yr old was in love with. I really hope we see him next year. Another man had two fully restored telegraph machines running which he had the ticker from the associated press. The other one he had connected the phone to his cell phone so it was was printing out messages that people could text to it and then a runner would send the telegram to the listed location in the convention, rather silly but very clever and lovely to see the machines running. There was a certain amount of "put gears on it and call is steampunk" but that wasn't the dominate example and didn't seem to get all that popular with the con goers which was a relief since internet searches overwhelming seem to be the other way so it was rather refreshing actually. My personal "maker" goal for next year is to restore and use at the next convention two Kodak Brownie camera's that we got from the previous owners of our house. These are a bit late for steampunk but will be a fun project to do.
They had a group, that turned out to be old friend's of Fenn with whom we had lost touch, that had very thoroughly researched various forms of Victorian street fighting and combat and were doing lectures and basic demos on it (they are all very skilled martial artists with YEARS of training do it so it was not intended as a class per say). Overall very interesting, we couldn't attend many panels due to our little guy's attention span but next year I think we'll try to tag team child amusing and attend some of the panels. Some of the panels from the guests of honor sounded really interesting but were spread out over the weekend so we couldn't attend and they didn't seem to have displays by many of the guests, which was a bit disappointing.
I was also pleasantly surprised that most people's clothing were very nice, some had some, uhm, interesting choices, but overall it was very nicely done. My only "issue" so to speak was that I don't seem to agree with what is classified as steampunk musics, such as one of our favorite swing bands was a guest there, which just seemed odd even though I do love their music there is nothing about swing music that is part of the "steam engine" time period to me. I guess that genre is used rather loosely as a category.
The best part of the con so far is I have a lead on how to recreate a 150 year old wooden gear from an antique yarn winder my great-great-grandfather (maybe a few more greats in there) build. The gear broke from generations of children playing with it. Thanks to 3D modeling and 3D printers now being readily available to the public I think I'll be able to made a new piece fairly soon!
From the artist gallery: A clever engine that powers a model of the solar system.
A fun coaster made by
Steamy Tech. YES, the gears are all FUNCTIONAL!
