Alchemy Immortalis at SL Home & Garden Expo (and peace lanterns for my Grandma Ruth)

It's difficult for me to write a blog post about Alchemy Immortalis because it's a store I hold close to my heart and, as such, the kind of topic I really don't want to touch unless I can write The Most Awesome Blog Post Ever, as opposed to one with an opening sentence that's about 1,000 words long like this one right here and let's add some more words for the hell of it one two three four five six OK done.

But since we're down to the last four hours of the SL Home & Garden Expo, I want to talk about them. You'll just have to bear with my lack of award-winning prose. Today I'm blaming it on cramps. And the wine I'm drinking for the cramps. So "hiccup" and all that.

I don't know creators Alchemy and Immortalis Cyannis but I'm enchanted by the magic they weave into everything they create — their sims, their builds, their jewelry, their furniture, THE SHEEP, all of it. If you've never gone exploring in their worlds, you MUST go before your avatar eventually and inevitably dies its virtual death. Put it on your SL Bucket List.

I love how just about everything they create has a story behind it. The RFL donation items they're offering at the SL Home & Garden Expo are no exception.


Traditionally in Asia, blue lanterns represent immortality and peace. Here, they are intended to honor the undaunted spirit of cancer survivors and those we have lost to cancer, the legacies they leave in our lives and the peace we strive for during those difficult journeys.

You can buy a Floating [in air] Chinese Peace Lanterns kit for 125L (100% donation item) and release them as often as you want during your own personal rituals, or you can climb to the top of Alchemy Immortalis' rocky exhibit at the Expo and release the ones there for an RFL linden donation for as little as 1L. (See photo at top.) For a donation of more than 1000L, a flock of doves is also released with the lanterns.

I released them in memory of my Grandma Ruth, my father's mother, who died of lymphoma. She lived in Iowa and died when I was 11, but I still talk to her in my head all the time. I ask her to help bring peace into this house. I don't know if she hears me, but it makes me feel better. To this day some of my best memories are of her. She never learned to drive, so whenever I visited her we would walk down the street to the grocery store. My father's family was really poor so she didn't have a lot of money, but those were the days when they put really cool toys in cereal boxes, so she was kind of my hero because she'd let me pick out any cereal I wanted — the hardcore sugary kinds my mom would never buy. We'd get home and she'd dump the cereal in a huge bowl just so I could get the toy out of it.

We would also take those old wooden clothespins and make dolls out of them, using yarn for hair, and she'd paint faces on them and make REALLY KICK-ASS CLOTHES for them out of random scraps of material she had laying around. I saved all those dolls (along with a diary, some sentimental knick-knacks, a couple of notes passed to me by a cute sixth-grade boy and some Tiger Beat pictures of Ralph Macchio and Duran Duran) in a locked silver box under my bed, and I think one of the most devastating days of my young life was when my mom threw that box away or sold it in a garage sale or something. I would give anything to have that box back, even now, but at least I still have the memories.

WOOOO! **teary** I imagine most of us have stories like these about people we've lost to cancer, and I'm sure that's why events like the H&G Expo and Fashion for Life and the Fantasy Faire and others strike such a chord with so many of us.


(WHOOPS — I was inconsistent in my Windlight settings with this picture. BAD BLOGGER!)

From Alchemy Immortalis' Haute Seat collection, The Emperor's Chair, Blue Willow Edition draws on the theme of love's ability to conquer all, which is the foundation of the stories behind the famous Blue Willow china pattern. Read about them HERE.

The 10-prim chair is 250L (100% RFL donation item) with four single female and four single male sit positions, as well as four couples positions. It rezzes matching toss pillows, as well as cups of tea with certain sit positions.

Also shown in the pic above is the Wall Tree wall decor in black, one of the RFL donation items by PRIME (creator Winona Wiefel), available as part of a set of five (various colors and styles) for 65L.

I'm ashamed that I intended to write many more SL Home & Garden Expo posts, but in RL I've been interviewing for a job with a company in Seattle and it got kind of intense last week. SIX NERVE-WRACKING INTERVIEWS with various head honchos and they still can't make up their minds between me and another candidate. OOCH. In any case, I hope you're able to make it over to the Expo tonight if you haven't already. The event ends at 10 p.m. SLT. I'll probably spend the next four hours hauling ass around there myself.

VISIT INWORLD
Alchemy Immortalis at the Expo
PRIME at the Expo

ALSO:
SL Home & Garden Expo 2012 Website
Alchemy Immortalis Mainstore (get LMs to their other scenic locations there)
Alchemy Immortalis Website — a fabulous Website that, besides news on new releases and latest developments, includes downloadable Windlight settings and sim music playlists
PRIME Mainstore