Upstate Steampunk October meeting

Busy weekend - started it off with an Upstate Steampunk meetup in the posh wine room at the Pelham Rd. Marriott where we'll be holding the con.  The conversations were stimulating and plans were finalized and I had the chance to meet new folks and also was thrilled to see friends I haven't seen in a while. It was great to meet Lennis and her husband,  Howard, (who is from Liverpool) and discuss Morris dancing, Sherlock Holmes and the tradition of first world war First World War soldiers who sent home unusual scrapbooking creations they made with photos (thanks to all the revolutions since the invention of the camera obscura)  and  paper emperema from where they were stationed. The conversation started when I showed Howard and Lennis the mini album I made for Valentine Wolfe.  He has a examples his ancestors made and he said the book I made reminded me of the same way of putting things together. When photographs were able to be reproduced cheaply, scrapbooking using family photos became a passion.  I have seen some period examples some women have created but never knew the soldiers did things along these lines. Howard explained that in lapses in between battles, the young men would make them and ship them home. 
 The wine room, accented with a fireplace and comfortable upholstered furniture was perfect for mingling so I moved about the room to take part in lots of discussions: technology with Penelope, the Egyptologist, trains and clockwork with Professor Thaddeus, see Josh again after more than a year, listen in amazement to the news of  the latest inventions to emerge from his engineering workshop and hear from Gypsey,  Pilot of the Second Thought, about her plans to build and fly her amphibious dirigible over Lake Hartwell.
  But the rest of the weekend is to be spent finishing up on the Fissure Steampunk issue and doing art.  On Saturday, amidst fires in the fireplace, pomegranates and the crisp fall weather (finally arrived here in the south) I worked on more beeswax encaustic mixed media pieces, this time though they are for the Upstate Steampunk show since Gypsey announced there will be an art room.  I finished two I'd started months and years ago, one steampunk and one alchemy and  then completed three more using lots of paper epherema including vintage photographs, lots of the metal findings I've picked up at the sides of the roads for years, gold leaf, pigment inks and of course, the most fun of all...beeswax.  There are Tim Holtz, 7 Gypsies and Graphic 45 paper,  elements, clockwork parts, antique keys, international vintage stamps, flowers and more of the