Here comes the bride!

Here comes the bride!
Originally uploaded by SteampunkAdventure

No, the bride is not Anna Darwinian, thank Cog, as Nix Sands likes to say. I served instead as bespoke minister for famed Caledon jeweler Alastair Whybrow and his lovely bride Miss Garnet Psaltery.
This wedding was unlike a modern First Life ceremony in that I made no request for people to turn off their cellphones. Instead ...

Dearly beloved, we are gathered together to join this Man and this Woman in loving Matrimony;

And if any here present wants to IM bride or groom, let said person hold his peace during this service, lest he be struck by lightning, or worse, by the groom.

But, since the devil finds work for idle hands, all present are encouraged to take photographs.

Matrimony is an honourable estate, signifying unto us the mystical union that represents what is most loving and holy in all human history...

From there onward, it was much like the 1928 Church of England marriage ceremony, but I did have fun writing the blessing farewell at the end:

I pronounce that they are Man and Wife. AMEN.

Now by the beauty of texture and prim, by the power of Steampunk, by the glory of sunrise and the sparkle of midnight,

May love and laughter be always with Garnet and Alastair, and with all of us, so long as we all may rez, and forever more

Dragon flames and then wild dancing broke out...

Armada Breakaway farewell dance
Originally uploaded by SteampunkAdventure

...as Armada Breakaway went up in flames to make room for a new and better sim. My shoulder dragon Cogito insisted that he and I had to be there! Later on, serving Cogito right, some overenthusiastic big dragon flamed off the entire platform we were standing on, tumbling us both into the water.

The photographic hero of the occasion, however, was Koshari Mahana, who captured hundreds of stills and put them together into one of the most amazing YouTube vids ever. I will be watching Koshari's new Four Winds website to see what other astonishing things she gets up to.

Fascinating Caledon backstory: Magellan Kinvara

New building for Gentle World
Originally uploaded by SteampunkAdventure

I have never been able to lure him up onto the roof of my store (except as an audience member) but Mr. Mako Magellan has begun relating the story of Magellan Kinvara:

• Part 1


• Part 2


• Part 3

Kudos to Mr Magellan and to Miss Elspeth Woolley for their generosity and imagination!

I wonder what happens if I push that button...

I wonder what happens if I push that button...
Originally uploaded by SteampunkAdventure

Oh my, what a weekend for steampunk adventuring!

• In the desert East of Odyssey, I found out just what happens if you push the oh-so-tempting button beneath Cutea Benelli's dark steampunk Bogon Flux super-construction.


• Sir Edward Pearse, Caledon's DJing Duke of Argyll and urban architect, when he is not Pearsing and Cutting and marrying beautiful women and building huge buildings, talked on my store roof and showed us all his very first waistcoat.


• Miss Koshari Mahana -- artisan, builder, historian, and visionary -- showed us a few of the designs from her own life journey and gave away as our door prize one of her Amphibiflyers.


• I put on low-lag fishskin to attend the Lummerland Show and Tell and was, with the rest of the front row, attacked by a snail.


• I finally bought hair not tied into a storekeeperista updo, and danced it around at the Monday Club Gearz event in Steelhead Boomtown.

You might not think Monday should still be a part of the weekend. But when the adventures keep rolling in, weekends don't stop when they should!

Consternation in the skies over Caledon!

Griefer building wall
Originally uploaded by SteampunkAdventure

July 2, 2009: One of those strange events Not Possible In Real Life. Some avatar dressed only in (unfeatured, PG) skin decided to disrupt the role-playing "war" between Caledon and New Brunswick by creating a giant and scripty wall on the border.

Here, hanging in the air, trying to talk him out of this wacky abuse of everyone's server resources, you can see RockAndRoll Michigan (dressed as Uncle Sam), Uni NInetails (white kitteh avenger with multiple tails), me, Anna Darwinian, in my black and gold skirt, and two other ladies who will, I hope, tell me their names.

If you do NOT want to see steamy steampunk corsets ...

.. then you should NOT read Miss Tehanu Marenwolf's "Cogs and Togs" steampunk fashion blog.

And particularly if you do not wish to see a photo of me wearing one of Miss Terry Lightfoot's delightfully naughty new corsets, you should not read Miss Tehanu Marenwolf's recent post thereon.

Gracious, you blog readers just can't control your curiosity, can you?

Explosion in the steampunk bloggery boiler!

How else to explain this: in addition to blogging here and putting my photos on Flickr, I just joined Zoe Connolly's SecondLife Bloggers ning and posted a piece about prim farming there?

Cogito, ergo ... ?

Cogito is the name of my gently-steaming shoulder-dragon; despite tradition, he gives no sign of doing sums.

Other than that, let me introduce myself by quoting my biography in the Caledon (Second Life) wiki:

Miss Anna Darwinian lives in Caledon Eyre near the Odditorium and not far from the stables of Virrginia Tombola.

Her life before arriving at Caledon Oxbridge is veiled in mystery. Could there be a connection to the strange disappearance, long ago, of a disreputable flower-selling orphan named Anna Darwinian? Even to Miss Darwinian this is a mystery, as are her nightly dreams about brass-lined undersea laboratories, exotic dance costumes, and a very mysterious "Professor."

Caledon's Anna Darwinian recently, by shadowy methods never fully explained, became proprietor of a large empty store in Winterfell Anodyne. The strange and wonderful objects now therein include some of the oddest "big statement" work by Caledonian creators and are sold on commission. The name of her store (this week at least) is "Steampunk Adventures."'

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"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."

H G Wells.