It feels a little odd to make a blog post about a virtual convention, but it's still my first event of the year and I made an event of it, so here we go!

Panels!
I had other obligations going on all weekend so I couldn't watch all day every day, and there were several panels that I only caught about half of, but they all had something interesting to offer. I'll link to each of the videos where available. On Friday I caught the Opening Ceremonies, part of FMV Chaos, most of Surviving Capitalism, my BF and I performed shockingly poorly in the Name That Tune game, and had a lot of laughs in the Monsters I'd like to F--- late-night panel. Saturday daytime was busy with party prep (more on that below) but we did make sure to catch our friends panels There's An Indie for That V and Secret Lessons of Video Games. Sunday was the hardest to manage since it's sleep-in day plus we had tickets to a hockey game, but did watch Neurodivergent Strategies as well as Kon's Mystery Conclusion and Closing Ceremonies.

Masquerade (and more) watch party!
It's always more fun watching a masquerade with friends, so we invited a bunch or people over for an evening watch party/drinks and dancing. Also because it was my Birthday LOL. I threw on an even simpler version of the Team Rocket grunt cosplay I wore at Yeti last year and settled in to hang with friends. We watched Con-G the rest of the night: the Masquerade, Warning: Incoming Drinks (while madly mixing beverages for the party), FMV dance party (with lots of dancing along), and finally more late-night content with Intro to Kink for the last partiers.

I submitted TWO entries into the masquerade this year - one "serious" entry (below), though the content of my presentation was not - and one just for funsies since I had the video already recorded. I ended up winning Best Master Workmanship for Mario NasKart which was so exciting! Considering the win, and how much effort I accidentally put into the workmanship judging video, I'm sharing that below as well

It's a new year with new ambitions!

Well, not really. I'm taking a hard lesson from the last couple years about how much I can reasonably take on, and I'm trying to set realistic goals to match. Moving into 2025 I only have two costumes with "deadlines" which I hope will help keep me from getting overwhelmed and burnt-out. 

Cosplay
Akuoart's Mario Witches group is still on - this one should be a priority since the group was planned several years ago and I really want it to happen, but at the same time, if I'm being honest I'll probably end up procrastinating in favour of costumes I have a better idea on how to construct.
Izutsumi was added to my cosplay wish-list last spring after watching Dungeon Meshi with my partner and really enjoying it. For a hot minute I thought I could throw something casual together, but then I didn't have the supplies I thought I did and I got this idea in my head that I want her to be FUZZY, so now I have a pile of supplies and need to make time to become a cat-person. Or a person-cat.
Sailor Venus is here representing this year's YetiCon group project - I'll be doing an original interpretation of her with a bunch of other scouts and the design process has me excited in this moment, so wish me luck.
Midna is ONCE AGAIN on the list - I really want to finish at least one of my forever-WIPs and she seems like the logical choice. At least until I try on the bodysuit and have to face the possibility that it no longer fits and I may have to start  over from scratch.
Finally we are wrapping up with that Tufted Puffin, which is the inspiration for Coco: my D&D Kenku Monk. Our campaign is actually wrapping up in just a few weeks so I fully admit that I might lose interest once I'm not playing her weekly anymore, but the challenge of making (or at least modifying) a bird mask is intriguing. 

Conventions
I'm planning to travel to Europe this year (not for cons), so that does reduce the convention travel budget a bit. I'll definitely be doing Con-G Geeks @ Home again, but other conventions are a little more tenuous due to travel dates not yet confirmed. I hope to do SPCS, Anime North, and Yeti again, with the potential to add in Youma or maybe some other surprise cons in the Southern Ontario area. 

Looks like it's that time of year when I force myself to make time for blogging - the annual year-end wrap-up post. But here's a secret: if you're reading this close to New Years 2025, it's like you're getting exclusive access to my costumes (since I've barely posted anything to social media this year)
​...so yay?

​As is tradition, let's start with this year's new cosplays:

It wasn't a big year for sewing (again). Of the 7+1 new cosplays here, only the two on the left were constructed from scratch, with the rest being a combination of closet costumes and purchased pieces with varying levels of customization. 

"Mario NasKart" Rosalina was a very fun project in my (apparent) collection of Rosalina cosplay. I made it specifically for the Single Pattern Contest at Costume-Con 42 in Colorado, and won best in pattern for my interpretation of a flight suit!  
The blue and pink dress has been dubbed Butterfly Fae, and is an original design I made to wear as part of the wedding party at Ragz Cosplay's wedding this year! I also ended up wearing it for Halloween and hope to give the wings an upgrade and wear her to cons or renfaires in 2025.
If you attend a lot of cons, or just shop for cosplay online, you'll probably recognize my Vaporeon bodysuit/hoodie. This year YetiCon was all about silly group costumes for my friends and I, so a whole bunch of us bought the Eeveeloutions suits, added lights, and wore them to the glow parade. In the photo you can see the "butt waterfall" light-up skirt I designed and made for mine.
Speaking of silly YetiCon groups:  Team Rocket. Literally just raided closets/costume bins to put together vaguely grunt-like fits, and then added the R's (provided by the other Jen) at con. Very extra fun.
War was the pre-pandemic project that I finally finished this year, and got to take for a test-run in Colorado. I'm happy with how the wig turned out and with the new pants, now I just need more places to wear her.
Leela and Zapp are Halloween party projects. I bought all my Leela components (unfortunately ran out of time for her wrist thingy), and Clay ordered his costume online. Unfortunately it didn't fit him at all, so I ripped out the salvageable gold bits, and made him a new velour uniform using the rest of the original bits. It was a huge hit at the "Futurama" theme party we attended. 
Finally we have one more Halloween thing: Hela. I started learning aerial silks this year, so I bought a printed Hela suit as something to wear to class for Halloween, and maybe also use for a con. TBH, I'm not sure if the fit/quality is where I want it for convention wear, but it sure was fun to toss around Mjolnir while suspended in a roll-up LOL

How does this compare to my plans at the start of the year? I'd say mixed success.

I finished War at the beginning of the year, which was great. Then my Blanca Flight Suit (AKA Rosalina) which, while simple, took a lot of planning to execute plus learning how to use a Silhouette.  When you add in that I made Amity's winter outfit at the end of 2023, I definitely burned myself out on costuming by the time I went to Costume-Con, so my great progress basically came to a full-stop. I missed my YetiCon target for Princess Buttercup, and the Mario witches got postponed for another year. Midna, particularly sadly, did not get any attention. All my creative energies in the fall went to Butterfly Fae and nothing else from the list was accomplished.

Much like last year, I've been spending my time on (maybe?) less creative pursuits: staying active between running, dance, and silks; reading; videogames; and D&D - on top of trying to see friends regularly. And thank goodness all the apps track that stuff for me these days *insert eyeroll here*

I did make (some) time for cons - I participated in Con-G again, travelled somewhere very new for Costume-Con 42 (and mountain adventures), hit up SPCS for a day with friends, and of course the perennial favourites Anime North and YetiCon. I hadn't expected Yeti to be the finale to my cons if you'd asked me a year ago, but also the wedding had so many of my cosplay friends attending that it felt like that was the actual last con of the year.
Halloween aside, Meagan's Hug was the only other cosplay-centric even that I did, which was lovely to return to, even though I (once again) ended up with a terrible choice of footwear.

​Coming next: What's new in 2025?

I definitely don't want to call Anime North "routine", but I've been going since 2004 and being on staff yearly now, there is a definite pattern to my weekends. I'll try not to say "as usual" too often here LOL.

For Friday of Anime North this year I decided to bring out Megara again! She needs to be seen more while she still fits! It was a pretty typical AN Friday: I met up with my friends and roomies, picked up badges, and sat in on a couple of cosplay competition-related panels by Kurumasha and Hatless_Sheep. I managed to snag Kameraninja for some fantastic parking lot photos of Meg before wrapping up the night with Ninja hangouts.

​Sunday was the Canadian debut of Kart Rosalina! Nice and comfy for check-out, shopping, and watching the Masquerade awards ceremony before hitting the the road for home. I picked up some super cute luma earrings from Krafty Ninja's Hobby Shack which I had to put on IMMEDIATELY lol. I was also super pleased to grab a photo with Witchy Rosalina and Witchy Peach (CottageCosplay and Witch.cos respectively) at the masq awards - I loved their costumes!

OK, so neither of these events is really "small" but they're not cons with tens of thousands of attendees either so they're pairing up today.

​SPCS (Sarnia Pop Culture Show) was in April, and coincided with Cherry Blossom season! So we went to the con, did some shopping, said hi to friends, had a catch-up with RayGreyCosplay before heading out to the park for photos! I wore my Mario Kart Rosalina (because it's new and shiny so of course), and Karen (Kiki) and I had fun posing with the trees. Park photos from WCES, and convention backdrop photos from D.Groombridge photography

Meagan's Hug is an annual fundraiser for pediatric brain tumors, and every year they invite cosplayers to entertain the kids and families who are participating. I went in 2022 but had to skip it last year, so I was happy to get to be there again! I brought out good old Holtzmann and once again had a great time with the group! Small group photo is from Guelph Spiderman, and the full photo in front of Sick Kids Hospital is from The Last Son Cosplay.
If I am invited back next year, maybe I'll actually wear shoes that won't destroy my feet after a 5km walk, because I need to break this streak! lol

Time for the reveal of my Single Pattern design for Costume-Con 42: it's a take on Rosalina's Mario Kart outfit, but a more realistic racer-inspired design, with lots of sponsorship deals! I think what I ended up with is a very solid combination of the  design elements of the canon outfit and the Flight Suit pattern.

The Costume-Con trip  was really a 2-in-1 cosplay holiday - a group of 5 of us all flew down from Canada to Denver, rented a cabin in the mountains, and spent a couple days taking photos of our costumes in the Rocky Mountains (and putting finishing touches on our convention outfits). I had a lot of fun being a tourist and hanging with the girls who I don't get to see much now that I'm not in Toronto any more.

After all that, we headed back to Denver for the convention itself. I entered the Single Pattern contest with Rosalina as planned on Friday night, and ended up winning the award for Best in Pattern (that is, the judges liked my costume the best of all the entries who used the Flight Suit pattern). I am thrilled with the win and couldn't be prouder of all the work I put in to what appears to be a fairly simple costume. Then again, clean construction is my forte.

I didn't enter any other contests, but I did end up volunteering for both the Saturday night and Sunday night contests, which for me is the next-best thing, no question (even though some of the other volunteers could not believe I would travel as far as I did to "work" over the weekend LOL).  I love being in the greenroom and helping costumers however needed, and anyone who has run into me at local masquerades knows.

I did the thing I usually do and neglected to take many hall photos, but I still have a fair sized gallery of photos to share from the various events.

War:
In January I finally finished my War cosplay (started 2019). I had put time into the accessories in late 2023, as well as replacing the pants, but the wig/hairpiece was the biggest (i.e. most intimidating) and final piece. I made the faux-hawk and braid combo from scratch using the wefts from a ponytail clip (dyed to match my hair) and red wefts, both from Cactus Mafia. All the wefts were hand-sewn to a felt strip - probably not the best choice for my base, but it was convenient and a discrete colour. Then came lots of teasing for texture and volume, curling the top, pinning the top into place, and braiding the back. It's not exactly what I had envisioned (but what ever is?), and it definitely reads as War. In any case, it's better than having to use my own hair again next time I put on the costume.​

I have so many (far too many) things in-progress these days. I'm knitting on TV nights with my mother, which means I'm making very slow progress on my Impervious shawl. I love the pattern but it's somewhat tedious to knit, so maybe I'll make enough progress to show off in a future post. For now, this is the point I was at around the start of the year

Website updates are coming - I know I still have a few "new" cosplay galleries which are missing, but it's been really hard to set aside time for that kind of work. Sadly, costumes with actual deadlines have to come first with my scant time for hobbies.

Unrelated to cosplay or crafting, I'm still staying active with running and dancing at the gym, and still playing D&D (in the second year of our current campaign!)  I managed to squeeze in two visits to Kitchener to see friends, and celebrated my birthday at home with new and old friends. I finally defeated Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom so I can start a new game guilt-free (though I'm still working on finishing up all the side-quests).

That's enough for now - look forward to the next update after Costume-Con 42!

Let's take our annual look back on 2023, shall we?

The year was a real struggle for cosplay - I ended up short on time  for new builds which is definitely a running theme and (realistically) is only going to get worse year-over-year as I get older and also pick up other pastimes and hobbies (more on that later). Let's take a look at the costumes I made:

What I ended up with here is all easy/casual cosplay plus one old costume finished off. I still take that as a win!
Chrissy from Animal Crossing was just something fun for both Year of the Rabbit and Easter posts
Mom/Grace from Umbrella Academy was a cosplay I had started in 2019 and really wanted to just get completed. I finished the costume in time to enter the Con-G Virtual masquerade, where I won Best Master! I wore her again to Anime North for a meetup - unfortunately I am not sure if I'll be taking her to any more cons since the size is no longer good.
Robert Baratheon was a fun project to go with my Cersei from Game of Thrones. I spent more time than I wanted to making alterations to Cersei so that she would fit again, but in the end I got Robert done in time for Halloween, which was the goal.
Princess Waluigi was this year's silly "April Fool's" costume - very ridiculous but I had fun throwing it together with stuff from my closet plus making a custom crown.
Amity Blight from Owl House is a repeat character but new "winter" outfit which I literally finished yesterday so I don't have photos yet... if I go to any winter cons in 2024 she will probably make an appearance.

Other less cosplay-related projects from the year include a cross stitch I made as an Umbrella Academy prop (for a specific photoshoot which hasn't actually happened yet), progress on my Impervious shawl, a commissioned Monokuma hat, one (of a couple) soap saver bags, a set of luma plushies for friends' children, and I started learning crochet with a couple of Woobles kits. I love how cute the critters turned out.

I didn't attend a ton of conventions this year - checked out a couple of local events with SPCS and CKX, then the usual Anime North and Yeticon. I had hoped to do more but timing and travel just weren't on my side. The Oxford Ren Fest ended up replacing the con experience a bit, but I'm planning to do a few more in 2024 - I miss my con friends.
​
As for how all this compares to my plans at the start of the year....

Mom got done! I made good progress on War, and am very close to being finished, but really need like a couple more days of holiday/vacation to get the wig done. Emi got cancelled altogether pretty early in the year - it just wasn't something I was passionate enough about for the amount of work it would have been. And the rest... they weren't touched. maybe next year.

So, if I haven't been cosplaying, what did I do with my year? There's the usual boring stuff: I changed jobs, have been hanging with friends, etc. Aside from starting the year with Covid then a rotator cuff injury, I've been pretty good about staying active, so I end up at the gym pretty regularly. After a few summers of training I was finally able to run a full 5 km, and ended up doing three local races in September. The goal for next year is to improve my time - I want to be 2-3 minutes faster. I picked up a hip hop style cardio dance class at my gym as well which I am LOVING. I miss my old dance life a little LOL. 

There's one more thing this blog post needs: what's coming up???

A lot of my cons aren't confirmed - I would like to go back to TriCon in January, but it depends on the weather and other factors. Of course I'll be "attending" Con-G again in Feb, and the usual SPCS and Anime North in the spring. If YetiCon is happening *crosses fingers* of course I'll be there. Costume-Con 42 in Colorado is also on the list, I just need to confirm logistics. I'll try to keep my home page updated with the most current plans.

​As for costumes...

War is absolutely getting done this year. As I already said above, I really just need a couple of days to get it done and I'll be glad to have her off the list. 
Twili Midna is the other older unfinished costume I want to focus on this year - it's been a decade since I started the sewing (and much longer than that for buying supplies), and I think that's probably the best reason to pick this one of my many abandoned WIPs.
The "Blanca" jumpsuit will be for the Costume Con single pattern contest, but exactly what I'm doing with it will remain a surprise for now.
Princess Buttercup has been on my to-make list for a while, but I recently changed which outfit I want to make. I want to have her ready for YetiCon 2024
Finally, there are plans in the works to make Akuoart's Witchy Princess trio with friends - maybe for Halloween??

October's main attraction is usually Halloween, though this year I double-dipped and added something new: The Oxford Renaissance Festival. I was mostly looking for a substitute event I could cosplay at since I was making a cosplay for my partner with the idea to dress up together for Youmacon as well as Halloween, but when the problems with this year's Youmacon surfaced I decided it wouldn't have been worth the trip. But the ren-fest ended up working out really well - not only would our Game of Thrones costumes be suitable, but we had friends who were already planning to go!

The prep work ended up being two-fold: I was making a basic Robert Baratheon cosplay for my partner (top and crown), as well as alterations on my Cersei (because sadly she no longer fits). My alterations worked out OK; the costume is less accurate now and does not fit well so much as it is wearable, but it is wearable. I made Robert's clothes in 2 garments: an undershirt made of faux leather sleeves stitched to a moisture wicking t-shirt, and a jerkin/tunic layer overtop. The aim was to make the whole thing as comfortable and easy to wear as possible. I purchased a belt to accessorize with, and the only finishing touch needed was the crown, because what is a king without his crown? It's all made of craft foam and if you ignore that I skipped some of the fine details I think it turned out quite well for a rush job! Post-Hallowen I have to replace a few of the gems but it held up well to some hard partying.

Clay's costume was missing all the little details when we went to the Oxford Renaissance Festival, but I did at least get one good photo from Halloween which shows most of the finished cosplay. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to keep wearing Cersei but I hope that we can maybe hit at least one con together next year.

​This may end up being my last convention post for the year, which feels very strange, but since Youmacon doesn't look like a great choice anymore, that might be it. I'm definitely going to try to find some other events to attend though since I definitely miss the scene