Anime North tends to be almost routine after 20 years (go to friends' panels on Friday, vendors chaos on Saturday until Greenroom muster-time then masquerade, Sunday return to vendors for last chance at shopping), but there was a twist this year as I had arrived at Pearson after a flight from France on Thursday, and just stayed in Toronto for the con starting the next day. So I may have been a little more tired than usual, a little less elaborately-costumed, and a lot more overwhelmed. But I made it work! YOLO, right?

Friday started a LOT earlier than usual for me, since I wasn't dealing with a 3-4 hour drive into the city. So I ended up running into a whole slew of friends who were also around and got right to work surprise-volunteering for Doll North and giving them a hand with their load-in. Eventually I got into the hotel room, got kitted out in Vaporeon, and (as usual) went to a panel and then just hung out with my pals.

Saturday's cosplay was Izutsumi from Dungeon Meshi - sorta. If you know what the AN masquerade runners tend to do, we cosplay whatever we cosplay in the morning on Saturday and then change into Spirited Away Bathhouse uniforms for the Greenroom. Since I didn't manage to get Izutsumi finished for the con, I figured I'd just put her in different traditional Japanese clothing and wear the pink outfit all day. It was fun, and threw a couple of Dungeon Meshi fans for a loop (especially since Kurumasha did the same thing and wore her Marcille stuff with bathhouse all day). 

Sunday ended up being a no-cosplay day for me (just an old-school tee from Rancid Yogurt); did some shopping and then headed back home relatively early so I could try to unpack and prepare to get back to work on Monday after my vacation. So I've only got a couple of photos, mostly (entirely?) taken by Dan the Video Ninja

Sarnia Pop Culture Show! It happened! I decided to wear my "Butterfly Fae" outfit from Ragz's wedding to the show since I've wired up the wings since then. In hindsight, probably not the best idea since they made navigation through the aisles a pain, but at least I felt pretty :) I only took a handful of photos this year, but also took advantage of the location to get some cosplay photos by the river while we were out in costume.

I've been working on something new, but not a full costume. A group of my cosplay friends thought it would be fun to all purchase the Mobbunny cozy/sexy Eeveeloutions costumes, add light-up skirts/accessories, and wear them for the Glow Parade at Yeticon this year. I ended up choosing Vaporeon, so I wanted my skirt to have a watery vibe. I ended up designing a layered skirt which I hoped would resemble a waterfall, and make it out of sheer fabrics with lights sewn into the bottom layer to light the whole thing up. After a trip to Fabricland, I had 5 fabrics with a variety of textures: tulle with a dark blue to navy gradient, plain blue chiffon, bright blue tulle with flocked white dots, baby blue gauze with little tufts, and white tulle with little iridescent hearts on it (hearts were the closest I could get to "bubble" shapes with that one).
Thinking back to my Rosalina Gown, I cut an offset circle skirt from each fabric, at 5 different sizes - the largest from the darkest fabric and so forth. That way I would have little to no skirt in the front, and all the party in the back. At this point I started hand-sewing strings of lights to the bottom layer of tulle (I had anticipated sewing by machine but the light diodes turned out to be just a little too big for that plan). It wasn't fun but at least I got my skirt to light up.
I split the narrow section of each layer so that the waistband could be an easy-to-wear front closure and hemmed each layer with fishing line to get that nice ruffled edge. That part was a challenge with these specific fabric choices so some layers look better than others, but overall I think it worked OK. Then it was just a matter of sewing all the layers to my elastic waistband (for comfort) and VOILA! Waterfall-butt!

As for YetiCon itself, the weekend started out with our traditional visit to Chuck Burger for dinner, where we ran into so may friends! After eating, a group of us put on our first costumes of the weekend: easy/casual/mostly-closet-cosplay Team Rocket grunts! Popfrocks provided us with beautiful glitter "R" logos to stick to our clothes and off we went to try to find some Pokemon. It was a really fun time and I hope we get to do it again in the future!

There was a second cosplay for Friday night though - our Eeveeloutions group for the Glow Parade! I didn't get many photos (too busy glowing LOL) but we had a good time, and ended up with allllmost every eevee! Jolteon was missing, but then Jolteon was out of stock for the whole run-up to the con so that wasn't even an "us" problem. The parade itself was as the previous year - good silly glowing fun.

Saturday started out rough despite a nice brunch at Sunset Grill (I stayed up way too late with friends after the Glow Parade) and it was a little chilly, so I decided to put on my NasKart Rosalina outfit (as opposed my alternate cosplay, Tennis Rosalina). I ended up running into friends in a big Mario Tennis group (and maybe slightly wished I'd worn the other costume) but it was still just nice to see them and grab some photos. I did some shopping in the exhibitors hall, witnessed the "wedding" meet-up, and then squeezed in some lunch. For unknown reasons I started feeling a little unwell, so I kinda called it a day mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day in the hotel just hanging with friends and having dinner.  

Sunday was our designated chill/activity day, which kinda worked out. Clay and I put on our Team Rocket outfits again, hoping to have the group together again, but most of my friends were in better costumes looking to win cosplay awards LOL. We also messed up the timing of our activity passes so we only had time for one coaster ride and one trip on the gondola. On the up-side, we stayed at the hotel Sunday night this year, so we had the whole evening for hot-tubbing, date-night dinner, and celebrating friends' prizes while learning contact juggling. It's so nice to get to enjoy Sunday at Yeti without thinking about timing the long drive back home.

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.

Anime North was back to business as usual this year, if not even bigger than before the pandemic. And as usual, I took very few photos... it seems like the bigger the event and the more people are there, the less I want to take out my camera. I need to work on that LOL.
Friday:
With the long drive in to Toronto from my hometown I arrived later than usual, but did manage to (barely) make it to the "Hot Moms" cosplay meet-up wearing Grace from The Umbrella Academy. Afterwards I ended up spending most of the evening in the Greenroom for the fashion show with Kurumasha and Sarcasm Hime (along with running into a handful of other friends between that and the drag show). After dinner, we wrapped up the night having a dessert party with the ninja crew.

Saturday:
Saturday was very by-the-books as AN goes: get in cosplay in the morning (season 1 Amity Blight), browse the artist alley/dealers room, visit friends where I find them, then change into the bathhouse uniform to work the masquerade. This year I ended up running for the Master division, which was a nice - it's cool to see friends competing again! Overall I think the masq ran as smoothly as usual, but there was a notable difference - there is always a sense of camaraderie, fellowship, and friendship in the greenroom, but this year the contestants had cranked the positivity and support up to 11 and the vibe was just amazing. So very glad I get to play a small part of the event every year.

Sunday:
I decided to double-up on Amity this weekend, so Sunday was my (relatively) new season 3.1 version. I hadn't planned to go back into the vendors hall but somehow ended up there anyways, mostly chatting with friends. Dan the Video Ninja and I found ourselves watching the idol showcase - I've never gone before and I'll admit it was a much more polished show than I was expecting. The showcase was followed by the Masquerade Awards presentation, and then I wrapped up the con by attending Zee and Stillvisions' Caramelldansen throwback panel. Good weekend, good con, good friends.

And now here's my photos from the weekend:

This year was my first time attending CKExpo, and it was a good time! I went to see some friends, hang with new ones, and enter the costume contest. The contest was an experience... not quote what I was expecting but then new events often have surprises. I suspect it would benefit from having audio available to the contestants like most masquerade-type contests, given the performance focus. Most of the photos I took were of the contest, and most of them turned out quite badly, but here's a selection of the best shots

April 16 2023 marked the return of the Sarnia Pop Culture Show a.k.a SPCS​, which I had previously attended in 2019. Now that I have moved back to my hometown, I've been happy to see the local shows return since I've really been missing meeting new nerd people. There wasn't much programming to comment on (aside from a MtG pre-release tournament), but it's designed as a vendor-type show, and that's certainly better than nothing. There was a really good turn-out, and I got hall-photos of as many of the cosplayers as I reasonably could... so here's the gallery! Enjoy!

Shortly before Kitchener Comic Con this winter, the munchkin got really into Undertale.  Since making her a Frisk costume was as easy as sewing some stripes onto a shirt, it was an easy decision to put that together for her (and toss on my Temmie Twitch costume again too). I also added a face to one of the flowers from my Warm Bodies costumes and Mr Stark miraculously found a perfect-colour striped shirt for me. I'm not super happy with my makeup but since I drove in from Toronto in the early morning before the con, it could have been a lot worse hahaha

Very Frank Pictures was awesome and grabbed a few cute photos, which I have added to my Casual Cosplay gallery.

I'm also adding in the very few photos I took at Kitchener Comic Con here... every year KCC presents a different sent of challenges and this year was no different between schedule conflicts and having a table to hold down. Regardless I got to spend some time with Olivia's Atelier and a few other locals, which was nice.