Monday 11 August 2014

The Con is on...

I don't mean Hustle or Movies, I mean Convention season is at its peak and this bad girl is going to Nine Worlds. With special thanks to Nine Worlds itself and Con or Bust, because I know even though I spend soooo much on yarn ( which translates more as, beg, borrow and plead with a certain Bf to buy it) and actually not buy so much yarn in the end, I could not even begin to afford to get a ticket to a Sci- Fi convention myself. Lets hope this changes by next year, because I see more conventions in my future!

I am beyond excited and even though I will absolutely not have the time to whip out my sewing machine and put something together, I so so so want to. I couldn't decide what I wanted to go as, so much choice is hard, just as much as so little choice is disappointing. Whilst I love Doctor Who,  I don't really "resonate" with the two companions of 'colour'. Firefly on the other hand, I'm more than happy to represent Zoe Washbourne. However as time did not permit a full out gearing up for Cosplaying at the Con, I dug out the Victorian riding coat I made for my 18th and tidied the hell out of it #LazySewing , i had rushed it and never really finished it up. I also wore one of my corsets and went representing a steampunk esque look.
Myself and the awesome guy who's name escapes me
that cosplayed 4 times over fri & sat, all really great costumes.

After the Con...
I wasn't able to attend on the Friday due to other commitments, but bright and early Saturday morning I was there! I met some really great people, went to some great talks, role played, played some social games, took a lot of pictures and basically had a lot of fun.

Saturday was my longest day and whilst I didn't get to go to any of the Doctor Who track (writing circular galifreyan was full, whoda thunkit), I made the most of everything else. The morning was spent in a combination of talks and you guessed it Knitting! I went to a talk on how to write Steampunk' So you want to write Steampunk' run by members of the London Victorian Steampunk Association, which gave me some good ideas for research and general resources to look up. Then I hopped along to join 'my people' for a spot of knitting and tea. Where I met this lovely lady that had knitted her Cosplay costume, the level of AWESOME over 9000!

Her boots were also knitted, dedication is the word
I quickly snuck into a talk on EEG:Brain Hacking and Tech, but sadly could not really see anything at the back and was distracted by an absolutely gorgeous little baby called Edwin and his really nice mother Linda, who writes for Boing Boing. She was working on an article about racism in geek culture, which she interviewed me for, but in all honesty i'm not sure I was a whole lot of help. after this i toodled along to my next adventure the Firefly RPG: River's Absolution run by Storygasm, I played a v.cool Pilot Jane 'Betty' which i imagined as a cross between my fav firefly couple Zoe and Hoban Washbourne, slightly spoilerish but I was all for saving River. By this time I was all for food and oh yeah did i mention Social Gaming with the Haberdashery Collective, how many people get to say the won a blindfolded nerf gun duel against 3 other opponents? (Several if you were there on the day, but that's not really my point). The evening was a fantastic whirlwind of Quantum Battlestar Deep-Space Voyager Tardis wars, The Whedonverse Sing-Along ( I Have VIDEOS) and Steampunk Caberet. Yes Steampunk Caberet with the Cogkneys and other marvels, Some ?tasteful? Tenatacle and sailor girl poems, jokes in Steampunk news sketches and a little bit of magic. After all this wonder it was home to catch some Z'ss (why on earth didn't i book a hotel!)

As Saturday didn't include any Doctor Who, I decided to set myself a challenge for Sunday. I had just over 4 hours on the day to wear every single one of my Doctor Who T-shirts and get a picture in them. The pictures had to be interesting, with someone interesting or I could acheive bonus points for pictures with Doctor Who Cosplayers.  My quest didn't gain much traction early on mostly because Doctor Who Cosplayers were a little thin on the ground on Sunday, whilst there had been a huge amount of Whovian Love the day before  (I even saw an Ace with the Seventh Doctor).  However I managed to get it all done in the end helped out by a wonderful group of friends I made at the Con and extra thanks to poor Elliot who squeezed himself into one of my t-shirts to help us out.

Another quick thank you to  Alex Jahans who posed with me for the Riversong t-shirt as the 11th doctor /Matt Smith as a quick highly inaccurate tribute to 'The Impossible Astronaut' episode. Also First sword of Braavos for the win, don't you just love how i've sneaked him in there with my Tennant Doctor and the Tardis t-shirt?

In any case most of Sunday was taken up with the Sherlock Scavenger Hunt, think hidden clues and cryptography with a underlying theme of competition and deviousness, so basically really really fun. No winning for our team but it did work out to be a great last day at the con for me despite the rain.

Anyone else have stories to share about the Con or their Con experiences in general, also if you can identify any of the people in my pictures please help me out by linking them to this so I can give them credit.


After Con news
I'm loving the love I got for my coat on Saturday and some of the mentions so check out BookPunks.com who added me in their post about the Cosplay of Nine Worlds
Thanks to Dr. Davis for her love of my coat, and then tweeting about it :)


Some Cosplay or Costume Favourites