YetiCon was a treat at the end of the spring - a reward almost for 3 months of conventions and events every other weekend. In other words, it was the vacation that it deserved to be instead of the usual chaos that conventions usually are for me. As a result, I'm not quite sure how to write about it - I mean, I had a great hotel room with lovely roommates, wore comfy and fun costumes every day, and did a couple photo shoots... but I didn't participate much in the rest of the convention activities. 

Due to a large oversight on my part, Cersei wasn't ready to enter in the costume contest like I planned, and because I spent all of Thursday night working away on that dress, I spent most of Friday at the con tired and trying to unwind. Saturday Kurumasha and I watched the costumes contest and cheered on our friends, poked our heads in on a couple of panels, and spent the evening in the pool and hot tub. Sunday was the "adventure" day - I was channeling Flash while riding the Ridge Runner coaster in my sloth kigu and riding the gondola to the top of the mountain, and we also spent some time at the magical tea party where we met a miniature unicorn XD

​I didn't carry my camera with me for most of the weekend and so I took very few photos, but I've collected a few below.

Dream Land took some cute photos of my "Chihiro", which I have added to my Spirited Away gallery. I also shot Chihiro with PPhoto (first time shooting with her; so excited to see the results!), and Kurumasha and I shot out Rat Queens elves with Elemental (like, the millionth time shooting with her - total fave). Both those shoots will be posted at a later date ^_^

After lots of delays due to the spring con season, I'm back to catching up!
Considering how much cosplay was going on last October, I figured that the Halloween season deserved one of these backlog blog posts!

First up: Kitchener! Dan the Video Ninja joined Mr Stark and I for a couple of house parties thrown by our friends there! Stark debuted his “business Cooler” costume (and also his Gizmo kigu), Dan wore his Chain Chomp, and I chilled out in my sloth. Terrible photos were taken until I dropped and broke my camera :(

Next: Halloween night was spent at the Snailoween party being Team Hawkeye with Kurumasha! Also featuring: DarthMarySue’s Pirate, Jenny Jupiter’s Joker, and Dan’s Pterodactyl Jones. No prizes for us this time around, but we’re going to try harder next year ~_^

There's just a few days left until CC32 and I am a mix of emotions about it. As I mentioned previously, I'm not making anything new which is really one of those "disappointed in myself" things. It's not really helped by seeing so many of my friends either posting progress photos or working on things in Google Hangouts - I've also been working on costumes the last couple of weeks, but not quite with the same commitment since my next deadline isn't for a while yet and I'm doing several things at once to boot.
 
So what have I been working on? In my last progress blog I mentioned working on bodysuits, and that's what I've been doing, although it's been a slow process. I have 3+1 bodysuits ahead, and I'm working on Midna first, though there's some simultaneous work going on for all. Unfortunately, all the suits require different patters and they all have to be hand-drafted so... I hope I'll be really good at this by the time I'm done. Progress pics of things so far below:

Also, spending face-time with friends:

and speaking of Costume Con... my cosplay plans are below. Aside from doing Alice on Friday, I don't have plans for which costume for which day. I'm not entering any of the masquerades, but I am going to be part of the Future Fashion Folio event on Sunday, modeling a couple of dresses for Andrea Schewe. I'm excited just because I get to wear the Cercei dress XD. I might not want to take it off LOL. Looking forward to sharing photos and maybe videos from the con once it's all over <3

OK: I LOVE wearing my sloth kigurumi, even though I messed up the pattern and it doesn't fit nearly as well as I would like. I don't care. It's awesome. And slothy. Since I've worn it to a few conventions since I made it, I have collected photos from Everage and Elemental which are cute and fun, just like sloths. And just like the sloth I am, I've been way too slow with updating the gallery for this little not-costume.

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.)