sakon76 | Entries tagged with costume con

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Not this weekend but last, there was a warehouse estate sale that was entirely boxes of books. For a quarter each. So I went, and I browsed, and I found several years' worth of Old-Time Crochet magazine issues.

Between perusing them on my non-existent lunch break and Five Times Steve Knit Something, And One Time He Refused To, I have finally caved and signed up for a Ravelry account. (Same name as here, for those interested.)

That said, I am not planning to do anything with it, or crocheting anything, or anything with the VPLL 1912 challenge until after Costume College.

Of course, after that, I will open myself to considerations of next year's Costume Con, and in particular the Historical Masquerade. Because, you see, I may be a journeyman in the SF&F division, but I qualify as Novice for Historical....

So my thought train is somewhat explicably still on the Costume Con train. Part of it is because I still have a lot of sewing to do; I have something to make for BotCon (4 weeks) and some things to make for Fanime (3 weeks) and some stuff to sort out and make for Costume College (um, some number of weeks). Part of it is also because I have slowly been going through the two dress books I got at the airport. I cracked High Style last night and only looked at it in depth enough to confirm that its overlap with 100 Dresses is minimal.

I've been going through 100 Dresses a lot, making mental notes on my favorites and coveting them. Thing is, I wouldn't have anywhere to wear them. Thing is, I lack the figure for most of them. Thing is, they'd be expensive to make. So my braincell turns and turns and comes up with the concept of making some of them as doll clothes. "Barbie!" the braincell pipes up eagerly. "Barbies are cheap and I know you have some patterns you could use as bases and and and...."

So my braincell is latching onto the idea of recreating some of these lovely gowns in 1/6 scale and entering them in next year's Costume Con doll contest. And unfortunately it's not listening to the "I don't know how to do faceups" and "I don't know how to style doll hair" and "but what about the undergarments" arguments.

Sigh.

The thing about an event titled "Costume Con" is that you'd expect that in its Masquerades there would be judging of a somewhat higher standard than there is at anime cons. For the Historical Masquerade I'm guessing this is true. The regulations for that event list multiple shades of recreation and they even give out an award for best documentation. You make an appointment to carry your costume down beforehand and do a Q&A about it with the judges.

The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Masquerade, on the other hand, is definitely the red-headed stepchild to this rigorous evaluation. It was all done backstage in the green room in the two hours before the event started. For 30+ groups. When it was our turn before the judges, each of us literally got 30 seconds or less and the only thing they asked us was "What is the part of this costume you're most proud of?"

Given that the SF/F Masq. is still held to ICG standards, I'd rather like a fraggin' ICG worthy judging. I mean, bejaysus, WTH did I bother writing up documentation and printing out source images for?

Still, our skit, which we had come up with mostly on the fly, went like clockwork and the audience definitely awwed in the right places. And after the awards and everything, it was past midnight before we stumbled back into the hotel rooms, stripped fast and got into civvies, and scurried down to the hotel restaurant for a late night light meal, then collapsed gloriously unconscious. (We each ended up with two ribbons, except for

hoshikage who had three since her Vanyel had won "Most Beautiful Male" in the doll show.) I bought the DVD of the event so I can actually see the rest of the show (no simulcast in green room) and show our skit to my family and inlaws.

Sunday I wore my Fringe Front Dress and felt rather plain next to

stitchy's historically accurate Shinsengumi outfit and

hoshikage's Steampunk Wonder Woman.

fairegoddess wasn't much in evidence that day, as she was entering in the Historical Masquerade that night, where she took two awards so she's now Journeyman class for Historical as well as SF/F. Like everything else, the Historical Masq. was very beautiful and except for the saving fact that I'd be entering in the Novice division for it, would totally intimidate me out of entry.

Rest of the con went well (I attended panels on costuming for dolls, and on resizing patterns from sources like Janet Arnold's books) and

stitchy and I shared a shuttle with

fairegoddess to the airport on Monday. Where they had a Metropolitan Museum of Art shop. Which had some pretty jewelry that resolutely did not look at more than covetously. But then I found the small section of books. Where they had not only 100 Dresses, but also High Style. So I caved and those are my thematically appropriate Costume Con 29 souvenirs.

Will I go to Costume Con 30? I would certainly like to. But a good deal will depend on what happens in the next year in my life. But now, what you've all actually been waiting for:

( Pics! )

So, first off, Hilton Hasbrouck Heights wins the "Would Not Stay Again, Ever" award. They gave away our room to someone who had

stitchy's same last name but was not even of the same gender. They didn't even check this person's ID. For that matter, they didn't check our IDs either. They didn't have any other rooms available until the next day. They also rekeyed our room at midnight two days before we were to check out. Also, there were no food options within walking distance. The hotel restaurant (which was actually pretty good and had good service) was the only noms in town. Not a great setup for a convention, no matter how small. (I had pre-registered; I was #20.

stitchy, who was the first at-con registration, was #198. I'm used to cons that number in the thousands....)

The convention itself was pretty good, and the two instructional panels I attended actually quite interesting. The dealer's room was very small (only seven booths, I believe?) but at least a couple of them had things that would have been of interest to me if I wasn't trying (and failing at the airport, but that's later...) to watch my budget.

The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Masquerade was smallish (anime cons generally have and meet a cap of fifty entries; this one had only thirtyish entrants). It was also as INTIMIDATING AS HELL. Almost everyone in the room was Master class and it showed. We pretty much walked in, looked around, and realized we weren't going to win anything. Of our group of six, only one was Master class. And no matter how proud I am of having made Lottie's dress from the underwear up in three weeks while working a full-time job, there was no way we were going to stack up. Still, we walked away with Judge's Awards for recreation (not "Best Recreation," mind, that was an entirely separate award) and one for our skit. And now I have a better understanding of what to expect next time.

One thing that was great was getting to see people. Not only did I get to hang out with

stitchy and

hoshikage, I got to spend time with

fairegoddess, who now lives about an hour away from me, and

ladyaxum, as well as meet Kim, our Snow White. Andandand,

shefytbast came and graciously drove me to my hair styling appointment and hung out with us and did all kinds of wonderful things on Saturday! If anyone ends up in New Jersey and needs their hair styled, BTW, I highly recommend Salon X in Jersey City. ChaCha did a fabulous job on my hair. The only downside to people meeting this weekend, in fact, was that

ghilledhu was struck down by the flu and couldn't come. ;_;

And now I'm hitting the incoherency zone again (6 hour flight today, plus it's three time zones later than I woke up this morning), so I'll write more tomorrow, and hopefully yoink some pictures off my camera for you all to be terrified by.

( Read more... )

Online check-in done.
Boarding passes to be printed in the A.M.
Shuttle to hotel reserved.
Costume 98% done and packed; a bit of handsewing to be done at hotel.
Clothing for rest of weekend packed.
Toiletries and medication packed.
Carryon with embroidery, book, laptop, and music packed.
Cats, despite their best efforts, not packed.
I don't think I'm forgetting anything...

( Another couple spools down... )

Writing class has... deteriorated this term. For what reason I cannot be entirely sure, but some of my classmates agree with me. If I sign up again, it will be largely for the classmates and not for the teacher. She spent twenty minutes telling me that I need to shift Queen's Choice from an ensemble piece to a main-character-driven piece.

After she'd just spent twenty minutes telling Walt (who is the only other one writing fantasy this term) the exact same thing.

She didn't even go through either of our submissions.

I'm tired of her anecdotes that, while amusing, are repeated and not what I'm in the class to learn. I'm tired of things that have nothing to do with teaching the students how to write. I'm tired of her pimping the same novels over and over again as pinnacles of writing. I am sick to death of how she just doesn't "get" genre writing (like, say, fantasy). And I'm tired of her goldfish memory regarding what those of us doing genre stories have written in past submissions.

*sigh* And I should be telling her all of this, not ranting about it on my blog.

I should be in bed an hour ago, but I had fabric to cut for

stitchy's costume mockup that I need to sew tomorrow night. I stopped at the point where I knew I was tired enough to start making mistakes. I should probably have gone to bed then; I think I will do so now.

I'm not going to be writing much (stories or novel) for the next couple months. It's because I'm up against a big sewing project, in which I make costumes for two people with the intent of wearing them at Costume Con with some other friends in a few months' time. (We're going to enter them in the Fantasy & Sci-fi Masquerade.)

stitchy, who is my partner-in-crime in this endeavor, came over last weekend and we picked out what she wanted, and she came over this weekend and I did a rough pattern draping for her outfit, and over this week I'm going to do a full toile/mock-up for her to try on on Friday.

I think this will be good for me because I haven't sewn much of anything since we moved into Greenwood (our house). Wonderful Husband thinks that the lack of tactile craft stuff like this is part of why I've sometimes felt out of balance. There's a certain soothing meditation to cutting and sewing, or at least there is for me.

But since I haven't sewn in rather a while, I took the opportunity/excuse and pulled out my 1930s butterfly blouse pattern and some blue drapey fabric with roses woven in, and have been using it to get my mind into the right groove. So here I sit at my desk on a holiday morning, going over the sleeve hems with a needle and thread, sewing up a couple of places where the thread slips off the hem, leaving a gap. I only need to sew on the ties and some bias tape to bind the edges and it'll be done. Hoping to finish it today to wear this week.

If I can get everything done in time, who knows, maybe I'll try sewing something for the Single Pattern Contest as well. But that's a distant second thought....

And, there, done with sleeve hems. Time to make breakfast.

Hmm. LJ tells me I have not posted in a week. Which seems a touch odd for garrulous me. On the other hand, for a good portion of that I was up in San Jose attending Costume Con, devoid of 'Net access.

( Where I've been, what I've been doing. )

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: work

Had a Han Solo moment, waking up with an Idea (which followed a series of slightly disjointed bad dreams, most of them along the lines of tagging along with the Fellowship through the first LotR movie, which, BTW, is not nearly as fun as a thousand Mary Sue fanfics would lead one to believe, and the rest about Cinderella and other Disney princesses). This Han Solo moment was fortunately quickly followed by a Leia headvoice retorting about how "that shouldn't be too hard."

Y'see, on Saturday I went all over the LA fabric district. And while I did successfully score almost all the fabric needed for a group costuming project, I didn't find a single thing for my other objective, which was a certain Nene Thomas fairy for Costume Con. Apparently a good non-shiny green is hard to find. However, my brilliant waking brainstorm this morning said something like "well, if you can't be one green fairy, be another" and pointed out that I have most of the fabric for the "another" option. And a pattern.

Now for a little research, a wee bit of sketching, and then digging out fabrics and patterns tonight....

EDIT: Let me know if you want to be on the filter for the costume....

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: work