While we were staying in Queens we had a teaching session with a local New York rope enthusiast Joey Red. There's not a lot I can say about this class except that Joey worked really hard and really took in a lot. It was a very good session and it was a pleasure to see him make progress. And also kind of fun to melt his brain a little.
I've already blogged about a couple of our visits to London. We've really enjoyed both occasions. On the second visit we stayed over in London and did a bit of an exchange rope shoot in the morning. I tied Nina Russ and Clover photographed the sessions. We all had a great time and you can see the results of this below. Thanks to Clover for taking these fabulous pictures.
Coming to re-write these blogs Legarti seems both a long time ago and very fresh in my memory. Firstly we were naturally enough very excited to be going to Rome. We'd never been before and this was going to be an exciting adventure in many ways. What a great time we had, the hospitality shown to us in Rome was second to none and I really mean that. The whole trip was an amazing experience. We even got to be tourists and saw some of the sights of Rome. Just an incredible city. Our thanks to Stefano Laforgia who put us up in his home and showed us some of the wonderful sights of Rome. The sights were just wonderful and it was so great for us to be able to see something of a city we visit. I have to say, OMG... the Coffee, the Icecream, the wonderful food at a great family restaurant. The wine! Mouth watering just thinking of it. So, on to the purpose of the visit the Legarti bondage festival. Asside from myself and Clover the other preformers were to the best of my memory Riccardo Sergnese with Redsabbath, Andrea Ropes, DolcissimaBastarda and was at the delightful space Lost and Found studio. There had been a lot of bad publicity in Italy about bondage after a kink accident that had nothing to do with Japanese style rope work had been labeld shibari by the press. I have to say what a great thing it was that this event happened such a short time after, with the Italian press invited to see what rope bondage was really about. Sadly we have no video and only a couple of snaps of the performance, what we do have however [...]
Our second time at bound was a great night. On reason we specially wanted to make this particular night was that Nawakiri Shin was going to perform and we wanted to meet him. He is the only rigger we knew of from Tiwan and he'd also performed at Hajimi Kinoko's festival Tobaku in Japan. It was again a great night of performances. There are some riggers in London that are making real strides forward and the quality of some performances was visibly improving. Here it will not surprise you that I'm going to concentrate on Nawakiri Shin's performance at Bound. The thing that struck me about Shin's performance right away was how theatrical it was. There was a scripted story, delightfully there was also comedy. The performance was entitled 'Monster' and I won't spool the joke for you if you haven't seen it. I don't think I'll spoil too many secrets however if I say Cute Schoolgirl gets tied up and sadistic things happen to her. It was a lot of fun. They were a lot of fun. Really looking forward to seeing them again at the London festival. We also did a little something. Pics of our performance below.
This was our first time at Bound so we weren't too sure what to expect. First up the venue The Flying Dutchman this is a great venue and they've gone to lengths to make it accommodating to the rope kink crowd. Suspension points abound. Next up is the crowd themselves. This is the most concentrated rope loving crowd I've come across outside of a festival. It was a really great atmosphere and we had a raging night. The only real downer was having to go home again (especially as this includes a 3 hour drive for us). We'll be back at this event again. You can be sure Here's a video of our performance on the night. And a few images.
Twisted Leprechaun was Irelands first fetish festival. There is a lot goes into a festival event and I can only congratulate all the people who worked behind the scenes to make it so memorable. There are always problems behind the scenes but it's a testament to those behind the scenes that pretty much nobody attending the event saw them.
This was a bit of an intense shibari session. Clover spaced out very early on in the performance and even though we were up on a stage in an art deco ballroom it managed to feel very intimate. The music was perfect for the sustained mood of the show and it all went off very well.
Well Friday was a bit different to the usual. Took the girl down to London for a shoot. Having dropped her off I had a couple of hours to kill so called up Hedwig who's suffering with an essay and asked if she fancied some lunch. Nice lunch was had just off Brick Lane. It was a lovely day and beautifully sunny. It was a shame to let the conviviality end so we thought maybe we would sort out a pick-nick for the afternoon. (Mainly Hedwig's idea.) A few phone calls later and we planned to pick up the girl from the shoot, collect Will and Ella and meet at Wimbledon Common. The girl meanwhile has changed into her schoolgirl uniform and got ID'd in Tesco while we were buying supplies. Had a good pick-nick, a good laugh and then wouldn't you know it, off into the woods for some Alfresco bondage. Few nice outdoor suspensions, much talk and laughter and an incident with a Dalmatian later and time to head off as the day cooled down. Dropped of Hedwig and then headed back up to Derbyshire. Tired but happy. A good day. Looking forward to getting some pictures of the outdoor rope. Pictures came! See the small gallery below.
It's always great when you can be part of a new event. We had a great time at this one in Bristol. There were a lot of very different demos and interests, some quality vending and a very fun play party in the evening. All this despite some local event times conflicting and even some local scene falling outs caused attendance to perhaps not be what it might have been. I really hope that the organiser of this event persists. There was a lot of good information shared at this event and those that decided to give it a miss for whatever reason missed out. If it runs again we'll certainly try to make it again.
On another site someone went to the trouble of posting a little public message on my profile. I found it interesting for a couple of reasons. They must have really trawled to find my stuff. The site in question has adult content warnings that you have to deliberately turn off to see adult images. Given the layout of the site they must have seen 4 of my pictures before entering my gallery then had to look through another 20 pictures before reaching the point that they felt they had to comment and presumably then stop perving. Ugh, you and all the people on (site name removed) who take pictures like this are such CREEPS!!! ughhh.... And here's my reply to them. Hey, nice of you to give some feedback. If you look at most of the pictures in my profile you'll realise that the girl pictured here is in fact the photographer for the greater number of the pictures. What I'm saying is that we're partners and do what we enjoy as consenting adults together. That's our consent, not yours, your opinion, consent, thought or lack of is irrelevant. Also you might want to consider that you made an effort to come and find these pictures (how creepy is that?), no one made you look. So if this is truly distressing to you I'd suggest that you don't look. Unless of course you were looking for something to be outraged about? In which case happy to have helped. This btw . is the terrible picture that inspired them.I just found it funny really though it does make me wonder what it's like in some people's heads.
