We had a lovely time last week at Steampunks in Space at the National Space Centre in Leicester. As always there were fabulous costumes and Captain Janeway was ably assisted by her first officer Ellen and companion captain from Serenity, James.

Ellen’s costume was brilliant, she made the bolero and hat herself and it all looked so good together. She now has an extensive wardrobe of pieces that she can combine in different ways like the corsets, leggings and bustle. The phaser is from one of her University fancy dress outfits.

My hat was decorated with some little model ships and some control panel pictures, pictures taken in the toilet again as the light was good there!

This year they also had some costumes made with a space theme by various members of the Seamstress Squadron which were on display, such talented people!

The tie fighter hat and Death Star costume below was the overall winner of the costume competition along with her Steam Trooper companion. Such creativity!

Not only were there the great costumes to admire but also all the brilliant stuff at the Space Centre, we didn’t do any of this last year meaning to go back but ran out of time so never did.

There were some great interactive activities, designed for kids which we really loved like the mining activity where you had to control a bucket with levers to load rocks and this chair which again was lever controlled.

We are both really concentrating on the display screen here as it was really difficult to control.

We also really enjoyed seeing what we look like under infra – red, Ellen is the one with the really cold nose! Picture courtesy of James.

I remember the first moon landings and many years ago we went and visited the Space Centre in Florida as part of a fantastic US holiday so I have always been really interested in this, particularly the human stories behind it. I have read biographies of both astronauts and control crew and loved the Hidden Figures movie. I am waiting for First Man to come out on DVD so I can watch that.

I am still working on embroidering stockings, hopefully they will be all completed this week and then I have a little bit of frantic machining to do to get everything together. Where does the time go, I am sure last time I looked it was only October!

I hope that you have all had a good week, I am looking forward to the last couple of weeks of teaching and then being on leave, and going to Spain, it will be so good to see my Mum as I haven’t been since July.

Take care and thanks for visiting.