On Sunday it was very cold, and I was very tired. I honestly thought I was smiling in this photo. Apparently the smile didn’t make it as far as my face! In case you’re wondering, the stones in the wall are level, but the bench is on a slope.
(All benches in Chepstow are on a slope. In fact all of Chepstow seemed to be up a hill. In every direction. It certainly felt like it by Sunday, anyway.)
This was my least successful outfit of the weekend, or at any rate the one I was least happy with. I couldn’t face wearing my bowler hat (too tight) or my top hat (too big) again, so I borrowed Paul’s cap. The jacket (McCalls 5759) looked fine on the dressform, but turned out not to fit me terribly well. In fact I disliked it so much that it went to Oxfam along with the previous night’s dress.
We spent the morning looking at the contraptions exhibition, which was incredibly inspiring. The competition part of the proceedings was won by Richard’s beautiful pocketwatch. Chatting with Richard and Donna later that day left us full of ideas that we really must try out…
I successfully nagged Paul into making a little contraption for me, and I’m hoping that next year I can encourage him to enter something into the exhibition himself. This started life as a Sonic Screwdriver projector toy. After some mysterious shenanigans with Milliput, wargaming model parts, and a detailed paint job, it turned into this lovely little thing!
This was our one concession to sticking a watch part onto something. I take full responsibility.
We spent Sunday afternoon in the Drill Hall, looking around the market and listening to some of the talks. We started off with The Atomic Chemist’s slideshow about firearms. It was enjoyable, but became much more interesting to me when we came home via the Pitt Rivers Museum, and I could see exactly what he’d been talking about as we looked at their gun collection. We then stayed for Crinoline Robot‘s talk about Victorian and steampunk knitting, which was by turns informative and hilarious! I can’t wait to knit her scandalous Victorian ankle-less socks, designed especially for the event.
Sadly we missed Mark Cordory‘s Q&A session, mostly because we didn’t recognise his name until after we’d seen his contraptions, by which time it was too late. He used to be Head of Props Fabrication for Dr Who, during the Ecclestone and early Tennant eras, and the quality of his work was just lovely. We did manage to catch Will Segerman though, and his talk about quick-and-dirty ways of making great looking props was good fun. (And packed!) We came away from that one with lots of notes and ideas, well worth sitting in a horribly warm room for an hour!
Waltz on the Wye was our first steampunk event, and we went into it not really knowing quite what to expect. I was only really interested in the dressing up (anachronistic Victorian-ish clothing? yes please!), and I’d hoped that Paul might be interested in the contraptions. As it turned out, Paul was more interested in dressing up than I’d expected, and we’ve both come away inspired and enthusiastic. Everyone we met was friendly, helpful and open, which is a lot more than I can say for certain other events that we used to go to. The willingness of people to share their knowledge was just lovely, whether it was the best place to buy a pith helmet or an interesting way to make a contraption.
I really hope there’s another one next year, I can’t wait to go back!