Well! As it turns out there’s a bunch of things going on in Maine I should really be up here for so last Thursday I packed up my car and braved five hours of dragon’s breathe (fog) to get to central Maine. I’ll be up here for a couple weeks…. getting into trouble and whatnot. So far it’s been wonderful. I took a photo of the dragon’s breathe and a new friend I found in the yard this morning. I’m calling him Tom.

Today’s little adventure was to a Steampunk Craft Fair and Festival in Dexter. For those of you not in the know Dexter is a tiny town smack dab in the middle of nowhere and a damn strange place to have such a thing…. which is obviously what made me want to go. It’d either be amazing, or amazingly bad, either way I’m happy! So off I went! (I was however not ballsy enough to attend the costume party at the adjoining bar the night before… Not that I had anything to wear on such short notice.)

I must say it is HOT and MUGGY today… and the little festival in the middle of the parking lot around the old factory building. TO my surprise there were a lot of people dressed up! Most were vendors, and the live music, but I think a few were just nutballs like me. I wasn’t totally dressed down – I did wear my octopus shirt which looks very Jules Verne-esque. And someone did compliment it… I think he was trying to say it looked like Cthulhu.

Anyway, I was happily surprised with the diversity here. There were a lot of crafters, a lot of gears, a lot of keys, all glued on masks, tiles, earrings, you name it. Even talked to one young woman making her own chainmail. Seriously. Hand-made chain mail. I asked where the hell she picked up that skill…. she said her school taught it. Wow. Maybe if my school were that interesting growing up I wouldn’t have prayed so hard for the building to “blow down in one good gust,” as one of the teachers lamented, “That’s all it’d take! One good gust!”

Of course I also went in the hopes of seeing local authors. I wasn’t disappointed. I ended up buying three books, all signed, for $35. One was a collection of short stories, another was some sort of whimsical fiction, and the third was a graphic novel which I am not known for buying but it looked so damn detailed… the woman who inked and wrote that one said she was used to doing comic con type circuits, indoors. I could see that. Everyone was super friendly and very passionate, what I would hoped to find in such a gathering. For the dead center of Nowheresville Maine I think this was pulled off pretty well! Especially for the first year in doing this. Maybe next year I’ll return as a vendor!

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