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

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!

I hope that all of my followers are having a pleasant holiday season, no matter what you celebrate! Unfortunately, things have been unexpectedly "interesting" for Elemental and I here at the Mystery Shack, as an ice storm came through Toronto on Dec 21. We lost all power and heat so almost all of my plans for making gifts and uploading photos and, well, everything got thrown out the window as having food and a warm place to sleep and keeping my phone charged so I could stay in touch with my friends and family became more important. Fortunately we have some wonderful friends who put us up for a few days, which I am eternally grateful for. Power to our building was restored on the morning on the 25th (BEST Christmas present!) but the heat was out an additional day and only just came back on this afternoon (the 26th). And with that, I'm (hoping) to get back to my regularly scheduled... stuff.

As I keep mentioning, I have a large back-log of photos and videos and stories to share, and so I've decided to do a "12 Days of Christmas" series, with something new posted on the site for each of the 12 days. There might be some hiccups around New Year's Eve, but hopefully I can schedule things so that it works out.

Day 1 comes to you (slightly late but still seasonally appropriate) in the form of a video that Captain Awesome and Dr Holocaust asked me to do with them. Filming was really cold but lots of fun, and in the end we definitely got a cute holiday video out of it!

Day 2 is also pretty appropriate given that it's SO FLIPPING COLD HERE RIGHT NOW! 
ahem.
Crystal Entropy is one of my very few original character costumes, but I keep dragging my feet on actually doing something with her back story (either writing, or a photo story, or a video series or something). Inspiration can come from strange places though, and when I got to meet Professor Enigma/Rabid Lemur at NYCC this year, she presented me with a piece of fan art which just floored me (fan art never happens to me to begin with, let alone something this cool). The art was based on a lame prank I pulled on Dr Holocaust during VEDA, and since it looks like a movie poster, The Video Ninja and I decided pretty quickly that we need to do a video project to go along with it! Now that we've had a good snowfall here in Toronto, we might start recording soon, which is exciting. And awful, because recording in the freezing cold is never as fun as the end results make it look.

That was a very long story just to say look at this cool art, and I posted the photos of the "winterized version" of the costume that  Kevin took at Con-G last year! Click here for the gallery! (most days of Christmas won't come with nearly this much writing. really.)

Above you will find a little introduction to Con-G, and my participation in the convention this year.
And below is immediately after I got home from the weekend:

As for what happened in between those videos...

   As I mentioned in the video, the Greyhound bus which my friends and I took to Guelph ran late, which means that Friday became much more of a rush than I had wanted. By the time Dan (The Video Ninja) and I had checked into our hotel room, I barely had time to unpack my supplies for my mask workshop, unpack the decorations for my birthday party, and throw on my costume before I had to run out and find my panel! Luckily I have awesome friends, so Featherweight picked up my badge for me while I was running around in a panic and Dan set up the decorations I didn't have time for while I was teaching my workshop.
   The workshop itself went well, I think! There were a few hiccups of course, like taking a little while to set-up all the materials and equipment, no tables for people to work on their masks, and ironing boards with legs that would't lock, but we managed. Having learned a lot from doing previous mask-workshops, I started with a demo and provided templates for everyone to use for their own designs. Featherweight was a fantastic help by monitoring irons and keeping people on track for which step came next. Unfortunately, since we had people dropping in throughout the 2-hour block and I didn't actually count how many pieces of foam and Steam-a-Seam I had pre-cut I don't know how many people ended up making a mask, but we're guessing 15-25. I wish I'd gotten photos of everyone's work, but I was too busy keeping things running to take pictures before people left. Featherweight did record the demo portion of the workshop panel though, so that might go up as a video later this year.

   Saturday brought on another full day of panels! One thing that I liked about Con-G this year was the flexibility of panels (at least in terms of the cosplay track; I can't speak for the rest). Because it's a (relatively) small convention and almost all of the guests and panelists have been cosplaying and attending conventions together for years, we know each other's strengths and we help each other out whenever there seems to be a need. Sometimes it's pre-planned (like Featherweight being my assistant for the mask workshop, and I being his assistant for his puppet demo) but sometimes it's not. When it appeared that I was going to be the only panelist for "Masquerade 101", my friend and all-around awesome cosplayer Brian volunteered to join me, and Jo (the panel coordinator) managed to snag Mark of ConBravo! to share his advice as well. While I could have handled Masquerade 101 on my own, it's always better to have more than one perspective, so I'm quite grateful to the guys for jumping in with no notice. And I got to pay the favor forward immediately afterwards by sitting on the Props Q&A panel with Featherweight, just being back-up, since Kudrel was running a few minutes behind. 
   Right after props was GillyKins's spandex panel which I attended, after which I got an hour's break (trading Olivia of Olivia's Atelier the use of my glue gun in exchange for pizza XD) before cutting felt with Featherweight for his puppet demo. This year's puppet was Yakko from Animaniacs, which we got done in time, and was presented to Rob Paulsen on Sunday - he loved it! (photo snagged by Fazeman). Had a very slow dinner (what's with the service at hotel restaurants during cons??) with good company including Dan, Jackie, Elemental, The Letter Jay, and Trish before heading to the main room to watch the masquerade. Which was great, and you can watch right here.  
   The last panel of the night was shortly after the masquerade ended, so I had just enough time to grab my hoodies from my room before meeting up with Brian and doing my "Hats Hoodies and Kigus" panel. I think it went well, but I was also pretty tired by that point. We had about the attendance I would have expected for that time slot. People asked lots of questions and we had lots of examples to share, and I sketched out one hat and one kigu design by request. I pretty much hermited in my hotel room for the rest of the night, not having the energy left to deal with energetic dancing people or drinking party people. Several people came to visit me though, which was really nice.

   I didn't have any more programming to do on Sunday, so I saw a lot more people! ^_^ Sunday included going to panels about masquerade judging, how to crochet, Rob Paulsen's Turtles panel, and the closing ceremonies. I wore Crystal Entropy, which is an under-used costume because of reasons, and did a shoot with SolarTempest as well as a quick interview with Dan. I had a delicious lunch with friends at Cora's, and got a lovely thank-you gift from the Con-G staff <3. The big news from the closing ceremonies is that Season 6 (2014) will be the last year for Con-G. So if you've thought about checking out the con but haven't had a chance - make time for it next year! Let's make the last Con-G the best Con-G! ^_^

Last weekend was Con-g, the anime and geek-culture convention in Guelph, Ontario, and I had a great time, once again! Although the plan was to wear my Katamari cousin costume on Saturday I didn't have enough time to finish it. Which in the end, might have been a good thing since the hotel was absolutely full of attendees and I would have had a lot of trouble navigating with a giant tube on my head! I debuted my Fluttershy instead, and although I didn't get many photos of the outfit, there are a few now up on my "not-costumes" page. The other costume I wore at the convention belongs to my friend Kia who had brought it with her but ended up not feeling like dressing up. Being put into her Ragnarock Online "Champion" costume on Sunday actually ended up working in my favor in the end since my pegasus wings had sustained minor damage Saturday afternoon and I can't wear them until I make the repair. I did a quick photoshoot with SolarTempest while wearing Champ, so those photos will be coming a little later. A video of (parts of) my convention experience is on YouTube: Con-G Retrospective (warning: contains one very tired cosplayer).
Photos from the weekend (taken by me and the Video Ninja), mostly of Angel on everyone's heads and generally being silly.
Con-G: The Bunny Steals the Spotlight Edition: