As Creative Director of TempleCon, the retro-futurist science fiction and gaming convention that I co-founded ten years ago, I am currently in the thick of pre-convention planning for TempleCon 2015. One of the popular features of TempleCon is a tradition of hosting seminars related to the appreciation of (and in some cases brewing or cooking with) various kinds of alcohol, scotch in particular being the drink that started it all. Led by three…

Hand-knit Arm Warmers by Madame Ximon It seems counter-intuitive, I know, and I had intended to wait until cooler weather set in before putting these up for sale. But I tend to carry my knitting with me wherever I go, including events where I am doing tarot readings (mostly because I have one of those idle-hands-are-the-devil’s-playground attitudes ingrained), and people regularly ask what I am knitting. When I tell them, and show them what…

Madame Ximon in front of the Icon Alchemy booth at Unifier Festival 2014 It’s been a long while since I’ve posted on this blog, with my last entry dating from over a month ago, when I was getting ready to vend and do tarot readings for several days at the Unifier Festival in Connecticut. Despite getting rained out during our set-up on Wednesday night and most of the day Thursday, it still wound up being an enjoyable show, although it was…

Original Art: “Elemental Dancer: Water and Sun” by Madame Ximon This is my most recent completed artwork, which I started last year. As often happens with projects like this, the core drawing in ink came together quickly, and a portion of the color as well (via Prismacolors, my preferred medium) but then I ran into a color conundrum. The “Sun” portion of this drawing is based on a composite photo of the surface of the sun over an extended t…