While I’m travelling…

Steampunk. A subcategory of science-fiction or fantasy?  Discuss.

The Steampunk Panel that I was on with Holly Black, Liz Gorinsky and Sarah Micklem is now available for your listening pleasure at the Steampunk Workshop.

io9 covered our panel on steampunk design.

One of the most interesting panels at this year’s Readercon was an exploration of the steampunk design movement, as it emerged into the mainstream with May’s New York Times Style article. Writer/puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal, YA fantasy novelist Holly Black, Tor editor Liz Gorinsky, and speculative fiction writer Sarah Micklem gathered to show off their steampunk creations, discuss steampunk’s literary origins, share their favorite steampunk websites … and, of course, to design a Gibson chair for the fannish masses.

I told someone that I had been tempted to take an easel and pad and draw the chair as we designed it, using a Morris Chair¹ as the base. Ha! Like I’d have been able to do that and participate in the discussion at the same time.

But… I did do it this morning over breakfast, after a commenter in the thread at io9 suggested that such a thing might be made if only there were a design.

1. The title of the panel relates to Gibson Girls, William Gibson and the Morris Chair [↩]

Jayme Lynn Blaschke has tagged me with the page 123 meme.

To participate, you grab the closest book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and blog it. Then tag five people.

So, the closest book is Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti, from Juno Books.

“The rest of the evening’s guests were trickling into the room, their faces flushed from the chill night air.”

I picked this up at WisCon because a steampunk romance sounded great, but I haven’t started it yet.

I’m tagging Jeff Richards, Elizabeth Barrette, Joe Sherry, Beth Wodzinksi, and Alethea Kontis

Sometimes, a girl needs a break from things she has to do and takes it by doing something she wants to do, which uses exactly the same skill sets as the things she’s taking a break from. For instance, I’ve been doing a lot of book binding and work with marbled papers for the show Prisoner of the Crown.

As noted elsewhere, I have a weakness for paper and it wasn’t really possible for me to handle all of these papers without coveting. Especially since I had them scanned and was printing them onto giant sticker sheets for work anyway.

Giant sticker sheets… hm. And I’ve just gotten this new $10 folding keyboard.

While looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon this ebay auction for aAntique Steam Pulley Driven Workshop with Lights. Good heavens. It’s got a lathe, jig saw, drill… It’s like a steampunk Shopsmith, but it’s real.

In a moment of procrastination, I played Google Imager. One of the images was this one and it had the URL legosteampunk.blogspot.com.

Sure enough, it’s a blog devoted to steampunk legos.

It looks like it hasn’t been updated since last summer, but there’s some darn cool stuff on it.