I am happy to announce that The Steampunk Workshop will be making a grand appearance at this years Maker Faire! For those of you not acquainted with it; "Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things." Make magazine, sponsor of the event, has been very kind to SPWS and given us a space to create for you what we have named the Contraptors Lounge. It will be a space for Steampunk Makers, admirers, and the unaffiliated or uninitiated to meet, greet, fraternize, and otherwise hobnob with each other and us as well as see some awesome projects!

Appearing at the lounge will be the inimitable Datamancer (of steampunk laptop fame), The Legion Fantastique, Magpie and Libby Bulloff of Steampunk Magazine, Molly 'Porkshanks' Friedrich - whose work has been featured here on SPWS - as well as a several other travellers and Makers including yours truly, Meredith Scheff, and our esteemed proprietor Jake von Slatt.

Maker Faire is held in San Mateo, Ca, on the weekend of May 3rd and 4th. In addition to our humble encampment, there will be all manner of machinery, crafts, lectures, thing-a-ma-bobs, whatchamajigs, and whosawatsits to peruse at your leisure. In other words, if at all humanly possible, you should drag your bustled bootie out there and have yourself one hell of a good time!

Wandering through the industrial neighborhood of West Oakland, You'll find more than a few warehouse art studios, each one filled to the brim with all manner of projects; from giant robots to huge metal art - and of course steam machines.

A few days ago, I was fortunate enough to be invited into the studio of one of the artists that reside there; a fine chap by the name of Tom Sepe. After sending out a call for willing subjects (aka, interview-ees), Tom contacted me and, with but a few words, lured me into his studio. Those words were simply: "Want to come see my electric-steam hybrid motorcycle?". He calls it the Whirlygig Emoto.

I'm very happy to have the opportunity to introduce you to Meredith Scheff who will be doing a series of articles for The Steampunk Workshop where she will "go exploring in the jungles of maker workshops; and share the images with you, the hopefully regular reader."

Meredith describes herself as "a cartoonist, maker, geek, and general silly person. She avoids everyone's advice and continues to live happily in San Francisco, no matter how tired of Top Ramen she may get. She is in her thesis semester for illustration/sculpture at California College of the Arts. Her website, until she builds a better one, is satiredun.deviantart.com."

In addition to her series Meredith has agreed to develop a regular cartoon feature for the Steampunk Workshop and I've asked her to do a bit of lampooning of all of us Steampunks - if you are as curious as I am as to what the result will be get thee to the front page and sign-up for the mailing list or grab the feed! - Jake von Slatt