Swap Meet

Current Location: Dad's house, Rio Linda

  Today was the first big swap meet for the Sacramento Steampunk Society.  I was a little worried people wouldn't bring much stuff but I guess I shouldn't have been.  I got a whole bunch of new stuff, sold a few things, and somehow ended up with the same amount of money I started with!  Also there is a good chance someone will be ordering a hat from me soon, in which case I will have not only made money but sold a hat, which is what I really wanted from tonight.  Here's what I got:

Digital paintings (the Harry Potter one was a freebie), more free stuff, three shirts, two napkin rings, a cup, and a belt, and MOAR PATTERNS (thank goodness for "use it or lose it"; I am getting buried in the things)!

Train Day

Current Location: Dad's house, Rio Linda

  Got back from the Sacramento Steampunk Society/ Great Basin Costume Society's Steam Train Expedition at 9:20 - just in time to blog! Only I uploaded my photos instead. Then I went to see if anyone else had posted photos yet and ended up looking at ALL the photos on the Great Basin Costume Society and Bay Area Steampunk Association's facebooks. Oh well. The trip was great fun, even if I did get completely dried out and end up with a minor sinus headache exacerbated by the huge bun full of bobby pins atop my head and the fact that I ran out of energy long before it was time to eat. We saw a bit of parade, a few camels as promised, quite a bit of camel merchandise which is probably not usually so prominently displayed, and some people dressed as cowboys and ladies that weren't with us. The photos of the steampunks with the locomotive behind us blowing steam promise to be spectacular and I can't wait to see them. My hat wouldn't sit at the angle I wanted and I fretted some about that and my hair's misplaced volume (I wanted more at the sides and front, less in the bun, but that would have been too complicated to do in the truck with no mirror). I was also disappointed that my outfit had almost none of the Edwardian flavor I originally intended, but looking at the pictures it actually worked quite well anyway. I was inexplicably fascinated by the bandoliers (belts?) on display in the firemen's museum, which combined with a comment from the GBCS members about someone who had entered their costume contest with a bucket similar to the ones there inspired me to think it could be fun to do a steampunk fire fighter costume.