Postcards from the edge

After its recent safe arrival on Mars, the Curiosity lander has been sending gorgeous postcards home to make us wish we were there. I love the colours in this landscape: from taupe to turquoise. I can feel some inspiration for interplanetary craft (projects). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Pandora's braids

The next step in my faux Victorian leather hatbox is adding gold braid to replicate the brass strips that decorate the original object. I've chosen three different braids, including a woven braid with a line down the centre that will work to cover the edge of the lid.

I used a quick-grip clear adhesive to attach the strips, although they will eventually be secured with brass split pins as well. One long strip was glued around the top of the lid, with half of the braid left standing: once the glue has dried, I'll slightly gather the top edge of the braid so that it sits flat and evenly on top of the lid, before adding the brass split pins.

On the base, I cut strips of the different braids and applied them evenly around the barrel. Now I'm leaving it overnight for the glue to dry before moving on to the next step.

If you like the look of this project, please check out my etsy store to see the patterns I have available for steampunk style craft projects.

Stephenson's locomotive

My calendar tells me that on this day in 1814, George Stephenson successfully demonstrated his steam locomotive. And the world changed...

Cucumbers

Today I want to talk about cucumbers. My family and friends know that, like Dr Samuel Johnson, I think, "A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing." I'm not a fan of the modern, supermarket cucumber with its tough, bitter skin and watery, tasteless flesh and would much prefer to throw it out than add it to a salad.

When I was a child in Papua New Guinea, the cucumbers we bought at the roadside markets or from meris who brought them around in bilums were golden and round, and so sweet that I would eat them like apples. Pliny the Elder apparently reported: "We find it stated, also, by the ancient Greek writers, that the cucumber ought to be propagated from seed that has been steeped a couple of days in milk and honey, this method having the effect of rendering them all the sweeter to the taste." Not sure how that would work, but I wish it did!

Dr Johnson's contemporary, Jonathan Swift, found a use for the maligned vegetable in the research of the Grand Academy visited by Lemuel Gulliver:

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

 Sunbeams from cucumbers? Might as well find some use for them.

To the ends of the earth

My partner has recently acquired a couple of new books that might be of interest to steampunk afficionados. The one pictured, To the Ends of the Earth: 100 Maps that Changed the World (Harper Collins, 2006) is a beautifully illustrated history of cartography from Babylonian clay tablets to 21st-century interactive virtual maps.

Looking at the maps of past ages makes me nostalgic for times when the world was still there to be explored; when dragons and sea monsters might feasibly have lurked behind the next mountain range or in the depths of a vast and uncharted sea. These days, with cameras everywhere accumulating data and satellites giving precise locations of everything on Earth, some of the magic is gone.

As author Jeremy Harwood says:

The electronic linking of such maps to other maps means that the amount of information that can be accessed is almost limitless. The availability of downloadable map data also means that today's mapmakers are spoilt for choice. Put at its simplest, provided that they possess the necessary software and skills, everyone who wants to can be a mapmaker.

Girlpower

This great project was proposed on Kickstarter earlier this year, with a target of $4000 to publish the first in a series of steampunk detective fiction novels for girls. As the funds raised exceeded the budget and eventually reached an amazing $90,000, the author has promised a series of four books, with all sorts of extras thrown in. Check out the proposal video below, and see if–like me–you can't wait for them to be published.

Victorian secrets

My partner recently confessed that he loves the kind of antique furniture with secret compartments, and so do I. Apart from the obvious use of the hidden cavities (secreting illicit love letters, or precious jewels), there is the opportunity to imagine all sorts of mischief that could arise from having access to one of these drawers. Of course, the ultimate secret compartment is the Bat Cave, or Thunderbird Island, but it's much more realistic to dream of owning a Georgian escritoire or cabinet.

Friday fashion parade

Checking out the internet for information about the transit of Venus this week, I stumbled on this video clip about a steampunk festival in a historic town on New Zealand's South Island. It's now on my bucket list: just let me fire up the dirigible.

Inventiveness

Yesterday the planet Venus passed across the face of the Sun for the second time in a decade, although we won't see a similar sight for another century. I went to the University of Sydney where astronomy students and staff had put together a variety of telescopes and other equipment to observe this rare celestial event, despite viewing being limited to sporadic breaks in the clouds. I was particularly impressed with one piece of steampunk inventiveness: a large plastic funnel that had been converted into a viewing screen so that many people could see at once. Despite the clouds, we had an excellent view of the small black dot in its progress (you can see it at about the 7 o'clock mark in the image below). A big thank you to the University, staff and students who made it possible for ordinary observers like me to witness a twice-in-a-lifetime event!

Here's what Jules Verne said (in his book, Celebrated Travels and Travellers) about the 1769 transit, observed by Captain James Cook in Tahiti:

And now the moment for the execution of the primary object of the voyage approached. Cook accordingly took steps for putting the instructions he had received into effect....

On passing the sun, the rim of Venus was elongated as though attracted. A black point or dark ligament, a little less dark than the body of the star, was formed; the same phenomenon occurred upon the second interior contact.

"The observation," says Cook, "was made with equal success at the fort, and by those I had sent to the east of the island. From the rising to the setting of the sun, not a single cloud obscured the sky, and Mr. Green, Dr. Solander, and myself, observed the entire transit of Venus with the greatest ease.... We noted a luminous atmosphere or fog surrounding the planet, which rendered the actual moment of contact and especially of interior contacts somewhat indistinct. To this fact it is owing that our observations varied somewhat one from the other."

Jules Verne himself was alive for the transits of 1874 and 1882, although he may not have actually observed either event. I do hope you had an opportunity to see this one, and that some of us might still be alive in 105 years when the next transit occurs!

Dieselpunk

In case you've never heard of it, Dieselpunk is the younger sister of Steampunk, featuring early twentieth century style along with motor cars, planes and war machines. If your tastes run to Dieselpunk, you won't want to miss this amazing archive of photographs of American aircraft workers in the early '40s. Incredibly, the Kodachrome slides are as fresh and colourful as if they were taken yesterday. After you take a look, please come back and express your astonishment in the comments here!