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

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.