Mericon 2025 – Mermaids, sailors and a soldier!

Greetings and yo ho!

So Mericon was held for the third time last weekend or, well, the past Saturday on 2nd August to be precise. After all it's still a free one-day event and yup, still arranged by Rauma's main library. And just like on previous Mericons the nautical theme continued this year as well and it probably always will because of Rauma's history. :)

Everybody onboard, let's go!

Rauma's main library, aka Mericon, entrance.

Since the con's figurative keel was laid three years ago I have remained an integral part of Mericon's inner crew. I may not have as much influence as during the first year and well, the main responsibility has shifted a bit to allow Mericon to anchor safely, meaning that now the library and Rauma town are keeping the main responsibility of arranging the event together while me and Firith, the original creators whose brainchild it was, are now in a role more akin to consultants. ^^ This is a natural progression and the most convenient long-term for all involved parties – Mericon is growing up~

But yeah, back to the actual summary! So me and Firith arrived in Rauma the day before Mericon; we had booked a night at the Scandic hotel (not recommended in summer, there's no air conditioning!) for convenience since it's literally just next to the library. Earlier on the same week we participated in a Mericon work meeting to iron out the last details. 
Oh, and I procrastinated with starting to work on my panel until there were like three days left and then I sat glued to the laptop and compiled my pages 5 hours straight for two days. xD Even in the hotel at night I had to change some final things lol.

Halfway done with 20+ pages. Stinky meme was a whole mood. 

At the hotel we arrived pretty late. The room was ridiculously small but we managed; I mean it really showed in every possible way that the building was from the 70s. :'D The room was the ugliest I've ever had in a hotel, no cap – depressing gray walls with no decorations and the bed took up like 75% of the space. Thankfully the bed was amazing though because it was hard enough that I woke up without any lower back pain. So often in hotels the bed is too soft and then I am hurled over like a shrimp lol.

Late hotel room dinner. Rescued a meal from Tokio Sushi with ResQ app!

It was really difficult to sleep due to the complete lack of climate control in the room (yay for heat waves...) but eventually morning dawned. For once I was happy it was morning and wanted to get out of bed fast lmao. Before we did anything else we went for the breakfast buffet downstairs and it was pretty awesome – so much fancy-ass stuff like pickled cranberries, fresh cinnamon rolls, dried apple slices and real fruit smoothies! I basically stacked all the expensive and healthy ingredients into my oat porridge and felt like some fitness junkie. xD

Back in the hotel room I debated whether I could be arsed to cosplay. My reasoning was that my makeup would probably melt off my face before I even got out of the room because yeah, it was stifling inside and I get oily rather easily (having combination skin kinda sucks). But I felt like I had already committed because I had no spare clothes with me and thus didn't really have any other option anyway. So yeah, I started putting on my cosplay and almost immediately noticed that oh, this is one of those days. :)) You know those seemingly random occurrences when, despite doing the skincare routine etc, the makeup and especially foundation just won't go on smoothly. In truth almost nothing worked out on the morning, I couldn't even put on my blue contact lenses because my eyes felt super itchy and dry when I tried to! So yeah, I ended up going without contacts, which I normally wouldn't do because it clearly feels like my costume isn't complete lol; natural eyes just don't look right to me nowadays on anime characters, even if the color is correct.

Anyways, we left the hotel pienen paluujuoksun jälkeen kun unohtui edi ja vesipullo minibaariin and headed over to Mericon. I was one of the three cosplay competition judges and Firith was the, uhh, 'cosplayvastaava' (basically the one in charge of guiding the cosplay contestants, planning the competition etc) so we had to be at the con in time to do our jobs.

Mericon entrance view.

One of the first things I did once I arrived at Mericon was to ask the library workers, aka the other Mericon crew, where to put my belongings because I carried with me my laptop and personal stuff, camera bag etc. I asked if I could use the cleaners' locker like last year and thankfully it was available so I could get my valuables behind a lock.

Mericon general area (info to the left) feat. new Dealer's Hall.

This year merch sellers were allowed!

I noticed almost immediately upon entering Mericon that there's been some changes in what was located where and, more importantly, that there was a sort of mini Dealer's Hall with a couple merch sellers and some artists with established businesses were moved there as well! This was probably done to free up slots in the artist's alley for those with less experience (similar to how other Finnish cons have artesan's and artist's alley separated). One of the merch sellers was the local Pelivaari, a shop selling nerd culture items like TCGs, retro games and all kinds of collectables. I personally think it's high time the library loosened up the archaic rules and allowed small businesses to attend and Pelivaari was one of Mericon's first sponsors. After all a lot of people go to cons for shopping and it's a great way to lift up local entrepreneurs in the area who sell items of relevancy to the event. 

I didn't have time to do much because it was time to meet the other two cosplay judges and then after that short briefing I parked myself next to the photo booth. The reason? Await the cosplay competition contestants and photograph them once they arrived from the first phase of the judging (where the two other judges judged their costumes). I was the photography judge so basically I reviewed how well they posed and if it was character-accurate etc.

General area view and the photo booth to the left.

Quite literally the only photo I have that proves I was America. :D

I spent a sizeable chunk of time near the photo booth waiting for contestants to drop in. While waiting I had an interesting encounter with a middle-aged couple who clearly were tourists from abroad. I saw that they were looking at me in a curious way, almost as if they had questions about what's going on. I spoke to them first in Finnish but they asked if I speak English. They spoke in such a clean, natural way that made me think they might have been from England because there was no English-isn't-my-native-tongue accent. :D So basically they asked what's going on and why people are dressed up in costumes, if there's some kind of theater going on or such. There clearly was no malice or disdain in their tones and they seemed genuinely interested. I explained that there's an event for popular culture going on right now in library and that the reason I'm standing here is because I'm a judge for a costuming contest and waiting for contestants to show up. I explained what cosplay was and how it's basically dressing up as characters from fictional sources like movies, games, comics etc and then I asked if they knew what anime was and the man's eyes lit up and said something like "oh those Japanese cartoons right?". They asked if they were allowed to be here due to the event because they had no idea there would be anything out of the ordinary in the library and I assured them that it's a free event and that they're free to participate in anything they see and that the library is open to the public like normal.  They were honestly so delightful and full of curiosity, not like some typical judgmental boomers at all lol. Before they left they asked if this costuming event is held frequently and I said that they were lucky because it's only once a year, for one day, and they happened to be at the library on the right day! Oh and they really liked my costume lol, kept complimenting me. Miten kehuja otetaan vastaan apuea :'D

If I didn't need to stay alert I would have picked up some Tarzan to read...

Whenever I noticed that the gap between one contestant and the next was drawn out I speeded across the building to snap some photos for this summary. I'm glad in hindsight that I took these opportunities when I could or I would have no photos to show now. My schedule was very packed this year and I had very little free time to actually explore or participate in anything. The cosplay competition and everything that goes into it ate up a big chunk of my time at Mericon this year; i was pretty fun though, I would probably have gotten restless if I had nothing to do lol.

You could borrow some board games etc, the library was fully functional!

When I was on the later half of photographing the contestants I noticed that Firith and one of the library workers suddenly were approaching me with very suspicious smiles. I just knew they were about to try to drag me into something! And right I was –  they needed people for the cosplay catwalk. Normally I would absolutely not participate in this kind of activity because I have a debilitating fear of being on stage and center (thanks anxiety disorder for that one) but one of the two Marias, the one dressed as the sea with a perch plushie safety-pinned to her butt, suggested that we could go on stage together if it made it any easier. I guess I didn't have a choice because there was only a mere handful of participants and Mericon needed fillers or there would be a real risk of having to cancel the activity and that wasn't an option since it's one of those that draws public. Getting participants was made even harder because cosplay contestants weren't allowed to participate because that's a standardized rule in cons apparently. Mericon just didn't have that many people in character costumes but we got enough in the end to host the catwalk.

So yeah, I stepped up on stage and accidentally on Maria's toes lol and then I quickly bounced back to photograph the final contestants. I saw a big imposing guy dressed as Jason Voorhees and I apologized to him for having to wait for me while the photo booth was vacant for a few minutes. Thankfully, despite his intimidating presence, he was really chill. :')

There was a PS4 available for anyone who wanted to play.

One of the cosplay contestants had cancelled last minute because they got sick, but luckily we had someone interested who applied to compete on-site so, in the end, we still had six cosplay contestants. Sometimes things just work out. I'm relieved we got the sixth one back because having five contestants and three who will win prizes feels kinda bad, like singling out two. Six is the magic minimum number because then you can view it as half-and-half and it feels more fair and less like exclusion.

All contestants on stage.

After I had photographed everyone it was time for the actual cosplay competition to begin. It's a very simple format and worked identically to previous Mericons; it's the type that we in Finland call 'lavajuoksut' so basically the contestant walks up on stage, does a few poses and then walks out and the next one walks in and does the same etc. I'd say it's the most classic one and the easiest type for beginners and those having stage fear.

We judges agreed on the winners and everything went well, no drama. In fact I didn't hear of any drama or bad things happening during Mericon, it seemed like no issues cropped up during the whole duration of the event.

Marine animal art on display, aww!

After the cosplay competition was over I finally had a short window of free time and went to check out the Artist's Alley. It was located in the same place as always, although of course the artists were a mix of old and new faces. I like how there's different ones every year, it keeps things fresh.

General view of the cafeteria/lounge area.

But before I get to the Artist's Alley I want to briefly mention that this year Mericon had a special guest, Merenneito Riia. She held a panel about mermaiding and such and I'm not gonna lie, I'm bummed that I couldn't go listen because it overlapped with my work responsibilities. :'C I've been lowkey interested in the mermaid swimming (and costuming) hobby for a while now and she seemed so sweet and genuine based on the small chat I had when I bumped into her later during the day. 

Real mermaid talk~

Okay so, back to the Artist's Alley visit lol. I mean it's one of my con traditions by now and one of my number one priorities to check – you never know what treasures you will find!
The Artist's Alley is in the "reading room" I guess you could say, the part of the library where you go to read newspapers, magazines or just about anything that you want to read in silence in a dedicated room. It's shaped like a reversed L lying down and it works well with the natural light coming in from the glass windows lighting up the place. Except this year some rainwater came in and I heard the table positioning had to be moved slightly. xD

Artist Alley's beginning...

.. and the other half.

I found some nice Honkai Star Rail heart-shaped pins and a small Lord of the Rings print with Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn in action poses that I really liked the art style of and will put up on my fridge. :) 

Oh, speaking of art and artists... Most people have probably noticed that the marketing on social media for Mericon leading up to the event had a revelation of Mericon's new mascots. These two mascots are a gray cat with a blue scarf called Meri and a young sailor named Rauno. I am the original creator of these two. :D Janika Wahlman made the cute mermaid chibi version of Rauno also seen in the marketing! Probably not too surprising seeing how I'm the artist behind the painted signs in use since the very first Mericon. I guess it's not too farfetched to say I'm Mericon's official illustrator at this point lol. 

Mericon leaflets feat. Rauno the sailor!

Of course there was a drawing room just like on previous years, only difference was that this year it was moved upstairs since the room where it used to be, just next to the lecture room, has been enlarged and with that the wall separating the two rooms was removed. It felt weird walking in there the first time because the damn wall was missing. xD

Drawing room and pin/badge workshop just outside.

Oh and there was a drawing competition and this year's theme was to draw a mermaid. The best artworks in the three different age brackets won a prize and it was the library workers who kept this workshop running and acted as judges. I heard it was very popular this year! There were a lot of entries for the contest and Janika showed me and Firith some of the artworks and oh boy it must have been so difficult to choose just one winner per group because there were so many amazing entries. I'd feel bad, honestly, I kinda wish we could have rewarded more entries with prizes because so many were deserving. Libraries just don't get big budgets allocated to them anywhere in the world. :'( #justiceforlibraries

After I had stashed away my Artist's Alley purchases I went to the changing rooms to grab my laptop and stuff needed for my panel, which was to start at 15:30. Or well, was supposed to. Because of course I run into multiple technical difficulties and to make it worse my laptop was incompatible with the cable for the projector because it doesn't have an HDMI port and I was not aware of this prior. Great. :)) Thank lord I had borrowed a flash drive from Firith's parents that I had my presentation in, just in case. But despite that we ran into another problem and that was issues with opening the presentation because it was done in LibreOffice and none of the building's laptops had that same program and yeah, it was a nightmare to get it to work because we weren't allowed to just install it either. Eventually we got it to work but at this point 20 or so minutes had already passed and, to make it worse, the text formatting on my slides were majorly fucked up when opened on this other program (was it Adobe Reader? I can't remember) and my 10h+ of hard work looked like garbage. :( It was quite upsetting (although it's no one's fault really) but at least the photos appeared correctly... 

And lastly it was time for my tall ship panel!
(photo by Janika Wahlman)

Because the texts were distorted and missing in parts that also meant I lost a lot of my references and had to tell some parts from memory, which wasn't ideal with my level of nervousness and ADD. Thankfully the listeners were patient and understanding, although I had expected more people to show up. Luck in misfortune though because I wasn't proud of the delayed start and how the technical difficulties made my presentation appear to the listeners; it just looked sloppy and all my well-placed memes and stuff were rendered unintelligible. :( I also couldn't even finish my slides (only got about halfway) before time ran out because the con closed. Maybe if I had an earlier slot I would have had time but whatever, at least this chaos gave me some very valuable experience on what to do before I rerun this presentation anywhere – reserve a longer time slot and carry with me adapters so that I can use my own laptop and avoid issues. Oh and this was good exposure therapy lol.

The guest book returned but there was this new feedback sign too!

With that Mericon was over and it was time to head back up north, especially because next weekend it's already time for Matsucon in Oulu. Coniputki ei lopu koksaan :'D

I want to give cheers and thank yous to Rauma's main library workers and the volunteers who helped make Mericon successful once again – it wouldn't be possible without you all! We're a small but tight-knit bunch keeping this event running and we all should be proud of the fruits of our labor. Let's keep Mericon afloat in the future too, library cons are accessible for everyone and have the added bonus of keeping libraries relevant in the youth sphere~

Thanks for reading, next up is Matsucon!
Shiro Samurai (aka KaamosWolf) is out~

Nekocon 2025 – Team Rocket can't capture Digimons!

Hello peeps!

I was at Nekocon last weekend and now it's time to write my con summary about how this year's trip went. So yeah, Nekocon was held during 19-20 July in the Music Centre (Musiikkikeskus) building in Kuopio, Finland. This is my third Nekocon experience to date, I've been attending it annually since my first one in 2023. :)

Let's get to the summary~

Mine and Firith's con journey started on Friday morning. We had planned to drive down because it suited our plans better this year as we would stay in the south after Nekocon and continue towards Eura and Mericon in two weeks – no point in driving all the way back up and then soon drive down again. 
The car trip down went well and this time we were spared from tractor meetups and other road rage inducing experiences. I did have to handsew the elastic belt loops of Gaogamon's tail in the car though so yeah, the classic last minute fixing happened haha. Somehow I managed to lose my seam ripper in the car and I'm still sad about it; maybe it fell out of the car during one of our many stops because I had it in my lap last time I saw it. It sucks to lose things you've had for a long time no matter how inexpensive it was because it still had some emotional value... and this is the kind of shit I beat myself up over.

We were laughing at silly and dirty town and street names like Alapitkä (hard to translate but if you're dirty-minded it means that you're long down there lol) and Makkaramäentie (lit. sausage hill road)... xD I mean that's how you entertain yourself while on a long road trip, right? Another one is counting yellow cars and coming up with meanings for register plates on passing cars...

You know when everything becomes Pöljä (means something like dimwit) that Kuopio is close. :'D

We arrived at Kuopio somewhere between late afternoon and evening and before we went to our hotel for the night we drove to Kuopio's centrum and grabbed our con tickets in advance from the booth outside the Lumit building, which is part of where Nekocon would be hosted the next day. We had also been tasked with retrieving Sallukka's and Dongrieg's tickets because they would arrive (also by car) much later than us and would thus miss the chance to grab their tickets. I mean no one wants to queue on the actual con day unless you absolutely have to, right?

After we got the tickets we headed to Rauhalahti spa hotel, just like on the two previous Nekocons. We might have cemented this as a Nekocon must-have package because yeah, the spa is included in the hotel price (which is reasonable and comparable to a standard hotel) and nothing is as refreshing as jumping into the spa after a sweaty summer con day lol. And yes, this year's Nekocon was just as hot as last year's and we were positively dying.
We checked in at the hotel and, as cosplayers usually do, our belongings spread across the hotel room like wildfire. We had an unholy amount of luggage with us which required multiple trips to the car to empty it so yeah, there was a lot of stuff. xD I unpacked my cosplay parts and put them on hangers etc on the balcony – I mean we didn't have access to an ironing board so you gotta do what you can to minimize wrinkles lol. We were lucky to have a room with a balcony this time because it meant we had a functioning AC. 
Because we arrived before 9 PM it meant we had time to jump into the spa on our arrival day, which was quite nice after that long trip down. The rest of the night was spent relaxing and preparing for the con morning by going through skincare routines, ditching the beard etc.

Kuopio's Music Centre, aka Nekocon main building.

We had mutually agreed on a no-stress Saturday and that's because there wasn't really any activities that piqued our interests enough to warrant an early morning lol. Although in hindsight we might have been a bit too sluggish to get going. XD We woke up respectably early at around 9 in the morning for being millenials at least and immediately went to the breakfast buffet. Rauhalahti hotel buffet is not as large as on the Sokos hotels we've frequented but it has the necessities eli karjalanpiirakat. 

After we were done eating our fills we went back to the hotel room and we, uhh, were supposed to put on our cosplays, which... well, we eventually did. We just took a reaaaaally long time getting into gear because we were tired and hovering in lazybum territory lmao. I did struggle with Gaogamon's makeup because I had not been able to do any practicing beforehand so yeah, caking my face up took a stupid amount of time. To make it worse I had forgotten my matte eyeshadow palette at home and both my liquid eyeliners decided to be unreliable and randomly start showing signs of dying just now because why wouldn't they? :)) Needless to say I wasn't happy with my eye makeup at all and I will do it differently next time lol. Firith didn't need nearly as much time as me to finish Tanemon's makeup, aside from some false eyelash rage. xD Putting on all my cosplay parts was quite the struggle too because I had so many moving parts (the floofy pelt, long scarf, bandages, boxing wraps etc) and my tail didn't stay secured as well as I had hoped. Had to use a safety pin to stabilize it and even despite that it was still a bit too floppy to my liking. I will have to rethink the attachment method for future use.

Once we finally had our costumes on the clock was something around 3 in the afternoon. Honestly we've probably never arrived to a con this late before, this has got to be a new record. xD It was a very hot summer day and before we did anything else we quickly walked past Lumit to take some proof photos before our faces melted off. Despite our efforts to do more summer-friendly cosplays we were still overheating lol. 

Lumit, the secondary Nekocon building.

Despite the super warm day it was fun to be in costume and we got a couple adorable interactions by the younger congoers. I just wish I wasn't so socially awkward and could manage to say something else than just a 'thank you' when someone comes up to me. :') I always come up with replies in hindsight and after the occasion has passed – one of my useless superpowers lol.

Taisteluturri vauhtikorvilla.

After the minimal camera session behind Lumit we decided to check out the Artist's Alley, especially because we knew that some of the sellers were only there on Saturday and others only on Sunday. Just like on previous years the Artist's Alley was located inside Lumit and inside Lumit were also the video game room, the flea market and probably something else I'm forgetting. Lumit is a separate building from the Music Centre but they're just next to one another so it's easy to navigate from one to the other.

I had one fun encounter as Gaogamon when near Lumit – I spotted a pair of Team Rocket Grunt cosplayers and asked for their picture because they were super cool. While I was grabbing my phone I said something silly along the lines of "I'm a Digimon so I can safely snap a photo without being stolen by Team Rocket!" which made everyone laugh. :'D For once my social anxiety gave way to be a goof around strangers.

View towards Lumit's entrance, general area and AA.

One of the Artist's Alley corridors.

There were quite a lot of artists this year too and some I don't remember having seen before, which is always nice. There was a good variety of items for sale but of course when I'm in the market for pins to decorate my ita bag with that's when most booths don't have pins. How come my luck is always like this? xD I remember years ago pins were super common but now it felt like only a few tables had pins for sale. *sniff* Oh well, I still ended up with a loot haul bigger than what I expected I would find!

View of the general area and AA from another angle.

I quickly checked out the video game room and there was some kind of game tournament running on the big scene I think? I didn't stay to watch though because a new intrusive thought had entered both mine and Firith's brains – what if the Aina Kesä bubble tea stand is out there in the town square this year too? There had been no marketing nor mentions about it on Nekocon's social media channels at this point and so we decided to enter detective mode and go check it out ourselves. 

The video game room. My eyes spy Double Dash...

We left Lumit and walked up the road towards the market square; it looked very similar to the previous years and there were normies everywhere staring just like previous years too lol. It didn't take long before we spotted the boba stand and the next thing that happened was a beeline straight towards it! We also saw some other colorful people who were clearly Nekocon attendants so we definitely weren't the only ones needy of cooling drinks!

The milkshake that brings all boys to the yard.

The sellers were super friendly and the drinks were yummy! Apparently this year there was a 10% discount for everyone who had the Nekocon ticket (which is a band on your wrist) instead of last year's version that had the discount for those who were dressed up. I mean this year's is more fair because not everyone cosplays or dressed up all fancy at cons so why should the casually dressed be excluded from a Nekocon collaboration? 

After we had finished our drinks we decided to go back to the hotel so that we would have time to invade the spa before it closes at 9 PM. 

This day was a rather quick run at the con but that's mainly because we arrived so late and only checked out Lumit and the town square; we had agreed on saving the Music Centre for Sunday instead. No need to rush when it's a 2-day event and especially because Nekocon had little to no must-see activities and so we were free to schedule our time how we saw fit. This chill approach allowed us to make sure we had time to make use of the spa facilities which, truth be told, is probably 50% of the reason why we attend Nekocon at this point. x) And the bubble tea stand is probably 30% and the rest is Nekocon itself lmaoooo.

Höpsöt päänahat roikkumaan feat. Wario-lippis.

We yeeted ourselves out of our costumes, showered and then hurried to the spa. We cut it a bit late but still had roughly one hour of pool time so yeah, it worked out. Might have consumed a hamburger at some point too. That was in fact my second chicken burger in a row, I couldn't stomach the thought of a third one for the remainder of the trip lol.
The rest of the night I think we lazily watched the first Lord of the Rings on television and inhaled a bag of chips.

On Sunday morning we did better. Or well, we woke up roughly the same time as the day before but we didn't idle for as long in the hotel room after breakfast. My cosplay for the day was also a lot easier to put on so that played a part too lol. I debuted my Revolutionary War America cosplay from Hetalia that I've had near-completed for years, oops. I was expecting this costume to be breezier to wear than Gaogamon but in hindsight I'm not sure if it was any lighter at all. xD Well at least there were less moving parts so I had an easier time moving around without constantly having to adjust something!
This time we didn't have same series cosplays like our Digimon gijinkas on Saturday – Firith did an Espeon gijinka and borrowed my old ears and the red forehead gem. I was a bit nervous before the trip because in my bathroom cabinet I have a bunch of unmarked sfx liquids and I wasn't entirely sure which one of the bottles was the spirit gum but yeah, luckily I picked the right one to take with me and so we could glue the gem without having to use eyelash glue as a substitute or some shit.

Once we both had our costumes on we, once again, drove to Nekocon. Firith's car was parked in a shadeless spot on the hotel's parking lot so you can imagine that boiling hot out-in-the-sun-all-day car smell when one opened the doors, it was like stepping into a sauna on wheels. xD The AC couldn't start up any sooner!
We arrived at the con in a much more reasonable hour of the day than on the day before. But before we entered the main building we pulled out my trusty old camera and did a quick mini photoshoot near the vegetation. Because there's only two photos I'm not going to post them separately but instead add them to this summary. 

Cosplayer: Shiro Samurai (America)

Photographer: Firith

Photo editor: Shiro Samurai

I'm somewhat relieved I managed to repair the ahoge because it had been crushed during transport. For once it was useful that I had packed with me all kinds of repair kits just in case, hah.

Once we had taken turns photographing each other's costumes we finally were ready to step inside the main con building. The Music Centre held within it the Dealer's Hall, Artesan's Alley, organization booths, panel rooms and cafeteria and basically everything else that wasn't in Lumit. We did not explore every corner but from what we could see it seemed like almost everything was placed in the same way as on previous years – as in the layout was super familiar. I'd say it works so why change it? What I don't like though is how horrible the indoors air quality is in the Music Centre, it has always been bad (even during the old Animecon days) so I've come to expect it but yeah, it very quickly becomes suffocating and especially upstairs in the Artesan's Alley where there's massive glass windows.

Artesan's Alley upstairs.

Cutest birbs made by momomaumau!

I was quite surprised to have some people come up to me and recognize that I'm from Hetalia, especially as its glory days are long past. The interactions were wholesome and lowkey adorable and I was so relieved to have nice interactions because I was mentally prepared to get cancelled lmao.

I bought a few more things from a couple artesan tables (artesan's and artist's alleys are separated in Finland because the former are seen as more professional, they usually are entrepreneurs and have higher selling volumes and experience than the standard artists) and we also browsed the dealers both in the upper floor and on the main floor.

Merchandise seller upstairs.

There were some Nekocon promotions. That Blastoise thou.

We didn't attend any activities or panels today either and so we mainly just browsed all the shops. If I had unlimited money I would have bought a lot more stuff but I don't and so I had to limit my spending sprees. That Blastoise plush made me feel hyper nostalgic though because I have a very similar one but the old-school version from the late 90s or early 00s when it had leather cannons; I still have it somewhere and it's super precious to me (Blastoise was my very first favorite Pokémon) but the leather has degraded a bit over the years. :'< I was tempted to buy the new one so I could have tortoise twins from the past and future lol. Maybe next time!

Dealer's Hall main area.

This seller had a lot of retro stuff that made my geeky heart tingle. ;_;

There was a kimono/wafuku shop in the Dealer's Hall too!

I don't think I have so much more to say about Nekocon, I mean I didn't really spend that much time at the con itself and what time I did spend was spent browsing and buying stuff. :'D I don't feel like a con trip has to be filled with activities to be worth it, I'm very much content just supporting some artists etc and seeing all the wonderful cosplayers while enjoying the atmosphere. Of course if there hadn't been such a summer heatwave I probably would have spent more time indoors or well, at least in the video game room hahah. 

During the con's final hour we went to get more boba!

All in all I'm happy with this year's Nekocon and I would definitely return next year, unless something unforeseen happens like Firith's car dies for good. The weather was perhaps a bit too hot for my liking but hey, we Finns from the far north shouldn't complain because half the year is winter and darkness! 

Thanks for reading! Mericon is coming up soon so that's where I'll be heading next~

Repairing Ukitake's captain coat a decade later

 Hello everyone!

 

I already promised on my last post that the next one I'd write would be some yapping about the captain's haori, aka coat, repairs. :'D So for those who don't know Ukitake is my fourth cosplay (fifth in order if we count the first version of my OC Yuuto, which was a closet cosplay back then) and I originally made this costume way back in 2011. I wore Ukitake extensively to most cons I attended during my early congoing days in 2011-2012 so yeah, this costume has seen its fair share of life lol. But of course with so many outings also came accidents – the most notable of which happened during Finncon-Animecon 2011, which was my second time wearing Ukitake out after his debut at Uppcon in 2011.

I remember it so well – I had put on the full costume at the hotel on the morning and was walking towards the con area, it was a rainy day and I had with me an umbrella and didn't think much more of it at the time. I used the umbrella of course to shield myself from the rain but what I failed to consider was that it had rained so much so that the rain and dirt water was pooling up on the streets... and well, walking around with zori-style sandals made me unknowingly fling up all that shitty water into the back of my costume with each and every step I took. I remember when I finally arrived at the con area and people were looking at me and my awful condition (yes, it was very anxiety-inducing); I was aware of the disaster and extent of damage my cosplay had taken and while my memories are kinda blurry of what happened after I do clearly remember a Rukia cosplayer appearing out of nowhere and patiently helping me get off the worst of the dirt by blotting wet paper towels etc while I was quite literally having a meltdown crying. I was so shaken and upset with myself and I felt massive guilt over ruining my nicest costume. Some of the stains were so bad they were impossible to get off and I just had to wear it as-is for the rest of the convention day. To this day I still don't understand how I managed to keep myself together as well as I did and how I managed to even have fun despite how visible the damage was. Knowing myself I just know that had something similar happened in this day and age I would have immediately gone back to the hotel to change out of cosplay and my day would have definitely been 100% ruined lol – back then the hype and excitement to cosplay beat anything life threw at you. I kinda miss that resilience and drive, those starting years were different.

When I got back home from Finncon-Animecon I threw the coat into the washing machine. Should maybe mention here that I never prewash fabrics because most costumes feel too detailed and intricate to wash safely after completed so you just air them out. And I couldn't be arsed anyway because I just wanted to get to sewing lol.
Well, except this was the one time I maybe should have prewashed. You see, what happened was that the outer fabric, aka the white bridal fabric, shrunk a lot while the inner red satin lining didn't. This screwed up how the coat looked because the red lining was now constantly showing up on the sleeve edges, looking "rolled over" and the hem was raised with the red lining peeking out when worn too. It really didn't look good but yet I wore Ukitake out a few times more even after that in my defense I didn't have many other costumes back then.
I stopped wearing Ukitake after one last outing at a tiny anime event in 2013. I had grown too unhappy and self-aware of how the coat looked and it felt like an impossibly daunting task to even try to fix at the time. And I guess I had some kind of mental barrier blocking me from even trying because I was blaming and tormenting myself so much for not preventing it by taking a taxi to the destination or changing into cosplay once at the con etc. Hindsight is a curse and although I know I had valid reasons for not doing said prevention measures (I couldn't afford a taxi and my anxiety ruled out using changing rooms) it was hard to get the self-blame to dissipate. I had ruined my proudest creation and that was an insurmountable obstacle to sit with.

Time flew by. I cosplayed other characters, got into other fandoms and so on. Yet over the last few years I've felt this increasing urge of wanting to revisit and rewear my older costumes for many different reasons. And then one day it hit me that I actually missed cosplaying Ukitake, said costume used to be so defining and important to me. I remembered exactly why I hadn't worn it but time had dulled my memory of how bad the damage actually was and so I pulled it out of my ancient cosplay box in the storage room to take a closer look. The lining shrinkage issue was just as bad as I remembered but there were also prominent large water stains along the hem, discoloration and a lot of yellowing along the collar, makeup stains etc. It looked even worse than I remembered, in fact. Yet at this point I thought "fuck it" and threw it into the washing machine for another loop with a generous scoop of baking soda this time, 14 years after the first wash. I wasn't even sure if it would do a difference after all this time or if all the crap had permanently set in but I thought that since the fabric had already shrunk it couldn't get a lot worse at this point. #yolo

Coat's a bit big so it takes up the whole drying rack lol.

I let the coat dry for a few days while praying to a various assortment of cosplay gods to give me their blessings. I was quite nervous because if I couldn't get those water damage and other stains out I would have no choice but to remake the whole thing and I wasn't quite at peace with that idea. Especially since that perfect bridal fabric I used is long gone from mom's attic so I would have to settle for a fabric that likely wouldn't look valuable enough to fit a Bleach captain's status.

Thankfully the second round in the washing machine actually made a bit of a difference. The massive water stain outlines disappeared and the yellowing got slightly improved, it was still there but it got a bit lighter at least. So I guess I could say it made it better at least, not worse.
Once the coat was completely dry I took it to mom's so I had access to better surfaces to work on and a sewing machine.

Just showing how bad the lining issue was. 

The photo above is to show how much of the lining was constantly overextending, that amount of red that you see was how much was always visible, even when the sleeve was relaxed and I didn't try to pull or tug it in any way. It constantly looked like it was rolled up and bunching uncontrollably, it was legit awful. Before the uneven shrinkage issue happened the red lining didn't show at all and was like a lining should be, aka only visible on the inside.

I started the whole reparation process by taking out the seam-ripper and undoing the seams on the sleeve ends. I know, I could have just made it easy for myself and save time by cutting it off with scissors but I was too concerned about how much losing those couple centimeters of fabric (especially the white one) would affect later on when I reassemble the lining. I didn't really want to shorten it because it would look wonky if the shihakusho black and white kimono sleeves were a lot longer than the captain's coat sleeves were. Every centimeter was precious lol.

This took ages but at least the ripper was ergonomically shaped.

Once I was done undoing the seam I just stared at the lining unraveling before my eyes. I was also quite surprised that I hadn't done any kind of fraying prevention measures on the lining fabric, it was just raw edges all over and that made me uneasy and judgmental of my former self lol. Nowadays I just couldn't, I'm very anal about zigzaging all edges even if they technically couldn't unravel. It just bugs me so much to leave something undone.

Notice how much longer the lining is, oh god!

On the photo above you can see how much the white fabric had shrunk compared to the lining because the inner and outer sleeves were aligned at the corner in this photo. This amount of excess explains why it looked so bunched up and just wouldn't behave no matter how much you tried to force it to stay down.

Another thing I was baffled by was that back then I hadn't even treated the edges of the white fabric?! I had just folded them in and been like "this is fine" all because the lining would hide them from view lmao. It feels weirdly surreal because I used to have this pure mental image that this cosplay was done so carefully and I had zero memories of skipping any corners so yeah, taking seams apart and finding raw edges staring back at me was a real 'what the duck' moment. :'D

Zigzaging all the edges reeeee–

I had some struggles with deciding on how to reassemble the sleeve mouths. Originally they were done in what I'd like to call the "default lining" way aka what happens when you attach the lining to the outer fabric's edges and then turn it over, press it down and do a decorative stitch around on top to make it crisp. So basically it wasn't folded or hemmed and looked like on official character references. I originally wanted to replicate this but figured that it would be a lot of extra steps because I'd either have to remove and reattach the whole lining (which would also mean trimming the excess down before refitting which would have been a lot of extra work) or do some fidgety precision folding techniques by folding both the outer fabric and the lining separately and then have them line up perfectly against each other and stitch them down and hope they don't shift while doing so, which would surely have been an exercise in carefulness and frustration. I figured that the easiest and most doable approach was to fold in the excess lining fabric enough times to make it have the same length as the white fabric (I didn't cut off any fabric, just folded it inside) and then fold the white fabric on top to seal the red fabric underneath it. It's a bit hard to explain but I hope that makes sense? xD

Ended up doing this approach to finalize the sleeves.

I worked on both the hem and the sleeves simultaneously but I decided to post the sleeve progress first to make it easier to follow. But yeah, I did a similar approach when opening up the hem, meaning I first undid the stitches to free the two fabrics from each other.

Ripping up the hem in progress.

The hem came with the additional problem of realizing that of course the lining fabric was larger in all directions than the white fabric that had shrunk. Ideally this meant that, for a perfect result, I should have removed the whole lining, trimmed it down and then reattached it but this would have meant that I would have needed to remove the whole collar as well because the collar attached to the lining on both sides on the front. I wasn't quite up to this task and so I stood there facing the issue that, due to the collar being attached to the lining and thus locking me from handling it from all directions, that if I didn't remove the collar I would have to be creative about how and where to cram and hide the excess lining. There were a lot of back-and-forthing at this point on whether I should make a strategic cut to avoid the otherwise forced wrinkling of excess lining at the corners but I eventually decided against it and just made a vertical fold in the lining, near the ends of the collars, to hide the worst excess bunching and then I folded in the rest at the hem in a similar way as I did on the sleeves.

Lining excess hiding aka sneaky folding in progress.

Of course it wouldn't end up flawless because I didn't do it in the most time-consuming way (aka remove the whole lining etc) but I feel like this approach worked surprisingly well while also sparing my sanity lol.

It was a bit of a risky choice but to secure and attach the newly folded and prepared hem I had to sew on the upside of the coat and that's because I noticed on my first try, when I tried to sew on the underside (to see that the needle hits where it should), that despite measuring and retracing the former stitch lines I still ended up having the stitch not aligning with the original stitch on the upside and this was a problem because the white thread was really visible if it crossed over one of those black salmiakki details. So yeah, I had to sew on the upside to make sure that the new stitch aligned with the old one (it looked fugly when it didn't, trust me bro) and just crossed my fingers that the stitch went correctly on the underside and secured the hem. Luckily it did after a few minor corrections.

This was a nervous moment lol.

After that I was finally done repairing this part of my Ukitake cosplay. It's such a relief because yeah, despite the coat having been neglected for over a decade it wasn't beyond saving. I proved to myself that I could do it despite how daunting it seemed. I also got it done in time for Kummacon where I also had a quick mini photoshoot and yes, it was such a blast to be Ukitake again! I really need to repair his twin swords next and although that's probably an equally ennerving project to tackle, if not more, I now feel more confident to try my best!

Thanks for reading! Have you ever repaired a cosplay after an accident, did it work out?
~ Shiro Samurai out.