Above: A headpiece in progress at Martin Keith Guitars of Woodstock, exhibiting at the Woodstock Invitational Luthiers Showcase this weekend.

If you love fine stringed instruments and the sweet sounds they make, come to Woodstock this weekend for the Woodstock Invitational Luthiers Showcase 2013 for a satiating banquet of fine performance and an in-depth look at the entirety of the creative processes involved.

It started with a party for just a handful of luthiers and friends, but instigator Baker Rorick was overwhelmed by the response and has been carefully growing the event ever since. Fifty hand-picked exhibitors are joined by their fellow aficionados. “(It’s) become a national, even international event. We have people come from Hawaii, Uganda, California and Istanbul. But I try to balance it and feature as many regional luthiers as possible,” Rorick told the Watershed Post in 2012.

Fickle fortune befell last year’s Pine Hill Steampunk Festival in the form of Hurricane Sandy. "A lot of people decided not to come to the Catskills that weekend, and some who did come left early as the situation worsened," said Pine Hill Books owner and festival organizer Rusty Mae Moore. "But the people that did come had such fun they insisted we do it again."

Margaretville has its cauliflowers, Rosendale has its rock-n-roll, and Moore says that Pine Hill has qualities that make it an ideal setting for a celebration of the anachronistic aesthetic ethos that is steampunk.

"A lot of the conventions and events that involve steampunk and fantasy take place in big event venues like hotels," she said. "We don’t have one of those. What we have is a preserved Victorian resort community -- an entire hamlet in which the library, the community center, the bookstore, the gallery, the historic railroad tracks all become venues. The accommodations are local B&B style."