Day 2 of Florida's First Steampunk Exhibition

Blaze wanted desperately to go to the beach, but with so many exciting things going on at the steampunk exhibition, the only time I could fit that into our schedule was early in the morning. The plan was to have a picnic breakfast on the beach, but the wind wasn't cooperating. The water was nice and warm, though.

Flying the picnic blanket:









Back inside the hotel, the hallways and lobby were full of well dress gentlemen, lovely Victorian ladies, rogues, and adventurers.
The quality of my indoor pictures is not that great, but you can get an idea of how awesome the convention was.









I think I apprenticed Blaze out to Prof. Fate here:

















Author and illustrator, Jason Robert LeClair. This is one of those pictures that I really wish had turned out clearer, because on that tablet, on the table, he was working on the most amazing sketch of a Japanese Dragon Airship, that will be part of the sequel to his book, Broken Silences.



The lovely author, O.M. Grey (on the right) and the amazingly talented designer of all the graphics for the convention, C.J. Bourque (left).




Captain Robert of the band Abney Park, reading from his new book, The Wrath of Fate.





Capt. Robert was the inspiration for Blaze's airship pirate costume when we first made it , back in 2009. He is really the musician who Blaze idolizes most and I couldn't ask for a better celebrity roll model. He is so friendly and accessible to his fans. When Robert walked past us in the lobby and Blaze called out his name, Robert turned around, came back, asked him his name, and shook his hand. He may not have remembered meeting Blaze at Dragon con (he meets so many people), but he acted like he did and commented on how much he had grown.



The costuming panel with Penny Dreadful Productions, a multi-media production company.





This is the first episode of Penny Dreadful's current webseries, Remnant:






We watched the local Florida band, The Cog is Dead, preform twice, once in the afternoon and again as part of the big evening concert.

Capt. John Sprockett:


The video I took didn't turn out very well. Luckily, I found this one on YouTube. They are very good!






Perego LIVE! preforming at the Saturday night concert:





The dance floor was packed for the Abney Park concert,



but some of the nice young ladies standing in front of us made room for Blaze and motioned for him to move up front, so he could see better, so for several songs he was right up against the stage ( have I mentioned how nice I've found the steampunk community to be?).













After the concert, we passed out Chinese sky lanterns and attempted to light them, but again we were foiled by the strong winds. We have one left that was never opened, so some night we'll have to go out and see if they really do work.

The convention lasted another day, but we didn't stay for that. At midnight, Blaze and I headed home. He was asleep within 10 minutes of getting into the car. At first, I had the excitement of not being able to see the road properly. The windshield was smeary and all of the windshield wiper fluid had leaked out ( the heavy plastic container that holds the fluid was one of the things damaged when the uninsured 19 year old crashed into our car awhile back). Once we were out in the country, where there were fewer oncoming cars with headlights causing glare, that was less of a problem. I tried to listen to an audio-book to stay awake, but the droning voice was soon lulling me to sleep. It meant that most of the way home, Blaze slept rather fitfully, because I was having to blast music to stay awake, but we arrived home safely at 2:00 a.m.