Skecon 2015 – Not quite as good as last year

Hello peeps!

It is finally time for the Skecon 2015 summary! ^o^
As you probably know I once again attended Skecon in Skellefteå, Sweden. It was held during the first weekend of July (3rd to 5th) in a building called Folkparken.
This time our traveling setup was a bit different, mainly because a guy known as Jäätynyt Enkeli was not with us this time. :( Our Skecon invaders consisted this year of me, Hasakitsuki, Sairu-chan and her little brother! Yep, this means that Karri couldn't make it after all...

Skecon advertisement in the Skellefteå bus stop! :'D

Our journey to Skellefteå began on Friday morning. Seeing how the convention opened its doors at 13:35 we could take a very early bus and arrive at Skellefteå just in time! (the bus ride takes around 4 hours)
We had decided on taking one of the earlier buses so that we would have a bit more than one hour of time before the con opened. But because of Jäätynyt Enkeli being abroad Sairu-chan and her bro couldn't sleep over at his place (they live in a different town and our apartment is way too small) the night before and so there ended up being some complications with the buses. Me and Hasakitsuki got onto the planned bus but when I didn't see the second half of our company in there anywhere I started worrying. I tried to call and text Sairu-chan multiple times during the trip, but to no avail. I started getting really worried.
What if she had forgotten or overslept?
What if she had taken the wrong bus?
What if something else had happened on the way?
It was really distressing to not being able to reach her at all! I spent most of the bus trip worrying about her and her brother and hoping that I'd see them safely at Skellefteå when we arrived there...

One thing though! I want to mention that a few days before the con I decided to repaint my wooden swords that had arrived for a while ago – yep, I needed them for my Skecon cosplays.
These I ordered online so that I have a wooden generic katana set for all those cosplays that don't really need specific swords; I'm too lazy to make new swords for all my samurai cosplays, haha. XD My old ones broke because of an accident after Tracon 2013, so I got replacement ones...
But when I got the swords I noticed that the blades had this silver paint that was motherflippin' BLING BLING SPARKLING GLITTER MONSTERS!
I was just like... WHY?? ლ(ಠ益ಠ)ლ

I totally took my silver spray paint and went outside to repaint the blades before assembling them – so much better! Bling katanas are just not realistic lol. ._. I swear these were so sparkly that they could have repelled even Satan himself!
Funny thing is that I bought the swords from the exact same seller on eBay and my previous ones definitely weren't glitter-treated... 

Before photo on top and after on bottom.

So yeah, back to the Skecon journey!
Me and Hasakitsuki jumped off at a bus stop close to Folkparken and –holy bugamajoola– was it steaming hot!! The air was so warm it was stifling and humid like hell! Keeping my black hoodie on was like being boiled alive – since when does it get this friggin' hot in northern Sweden?!?
Oh well, we dragged our mountain of luggage to Folkparken and there we just sat down on the floor and watched people appearing from all directions. It was horrible to wait outside because of the heat, especially because I'm kinda heat sensitive and start to feel sick if it's really warm. I also burn really easily so I'm kinda forced to overdress and wear long-sleeves when it's boiling hot... :<

Skecon entrance around one hour before doors opened.

While sitting there and waiting I was really trying to scout for Sairu-chan and her bro, but I didn't see them anywhere! I tried to call her a few times again but no answer either. :( I was just crossing my fingers that she would show up any minute while I was looking at the ends of the different paths one could take to reach Folkparken...
The clock struck the time for the doors to open and this one Skecon worker came out and trolled everyone; he just went like "ARE YOU READY FOR SKECON GUYS?! :DD" and when everyone shouted "YESSSSSS" he just turned around and went all "one minute more" and abruptly closed the door and went back inside. xD It was both hilarious and frustrating at the same time lol.
It did take more than one minute after that before the doors opened but hey, they did!

I got my con ticket without any issues and went straight upstairs to go take a shower because, oh god, the toast! Showering seriously felt so good after standing outside in that humid heat...
After showering I started putting on my cosplay – Hajime Saitou from Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan. It didn't feel like the best idea ever to put on a semi-heavy cosplay when the weather was so devilishly warm but oh well, cosplay plans are cosplay plans and it would have been a waste to have the costume taking place in the suitcase and then not using it; especially when it's a cosplay that takes much space, like most of my kimono cosplays do. *shrugs*
I struggled with my makeup for a while but after some hours I was finally done, costume on and all. But guess what guys? :D Yeah, of course as soon as I had my costume on and was ready to go photoshoot (which was one of the main reasons I brought Saitou to Skecon) then it had to start raining cats and dogs for the rest of the day! Murphy's law strikes again. ._.
This totally means that I got no photoshoot, which was quite the bummer. Why did I bother?
But to compensate I at least took a few selfies, while hanging around, just to prove that "yes, I was in cosplay" on Friday.

Luckily I did find Sairu-chan and her bro soon after I had changed into cosplay; it was so nice to see that they had made it here safely!
She explained to me that she had missed the first bus (aka the one we had planned to take together) and they had then proceeded to take the second bus that left a bit later. They basically got to Skellefteå around one hour after me and Hasakitsuki, no biggie.

Because it started raining so damn much I spent the whole Friday indoors just checking stuff out. There were some scene games being done and I ended up watching the "mummy" game, which consisted of two teams and one person per team being the mummy. The mummy was to stand still while the other team mates wrapped them up as fast and neat as possible into a... well, mummy. Then the audience got to choose which mummy was the "more mummy" one and that one was declared the winner. xD Part two consisted of the two mummies breaking out of their bandages as fast as they could, without any outside help. The one who got out first won.
It was funny because the teams were called "Team Awesome" and "Team Pretty Okay" and, funnily enough, team Pretty Okay was the one to win lol.

Mummy game going on.

Later on Friday there was a lone guy doing an iaido display.
Of course I went to watch! I'm a big budo fan and I love Japanese swords and samurai and all of that kind of stuff! :') It was cool to see him doing all these moves and, after it was over, I went up to talk with him. We ended up hanging together for the whole con! Woop woop, new friends! :D

Iaido display.

I checked out the video game room several times and there were plenty of different game consoles you could pick from! Everything from good ol' Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 to the new generation consoles!

Gaming room!

Video game tournament lists!

As you can see above there was a Mario Kart: Double Dash!! 2 versus 2 tournament being held this year too. Last year me and my bro Jäätynyt Enkeli signed up for this tournament and we ended up combing home grand victory and crushing everyone! x) You can read about it over at my last year's Skecon summary, if interested. ;)
But yeah, seeing how my dear brother wasn't here this time I didn't participate. Also I kinda didn't want to have people recognize me and go all "OH SHIT, IT'S THAT GUY AGAIN WHO PWNED EVERYONE LAST YEAR" at me, oops. xD I did consider going to watch the tournament though, although my presence might have been... interesting...

Someone had started making Vegeta but quit...?

When it got late I changed out of cosplay and our full company headed to the sleeping accommodation place, which was a school. At first we ended up going the wrong way because we thought it would be in the same place as last year, which it was but still wasn't. We did find our way and I need to mention that yeah, it was very close to the previous sleeping accommodation and we could have walked the "wrong way" and still got there. OTL Different building though.
We fell asleep without any problems, even though for some reason we were the first ones to go sleep and I saw no one else in the same classroom (even though matresses and sleeping bags were put down) even past midnight – were everyone party harding?
The derp discussions before we fell asleep were glorious though. XD I'll just say that it ended up with Metaporn Metapod fanfic ideas and some really disturbing things lol.

Saturday morning came and we lagged around after our alarms had rung. We ended up going to the con during a time that we thought was late... just to realize that when we got to the con the cafeteria wasn't even open so we couldn't get instant breakfast! What you mean it opens at 10? :c
Oh well, it was no big deal so we just sat on one of the tables next to the cafeteria and waited for our brains to start running. Eventually the cafeteria opened and we bought some frozen pies to eat that we threw into the micro. Too bad my pie was cold so it wasn't pleasant to eat, but I managed.
After getting some food I just checked the merchandise hall and went to double-check if the kyudo display really was cancelled and yes, it was. :'( It was supposed to be during Saturday afternoon but it was cancelled because someone got sick. It was a big bummer for me because getting to do kyudo is one of the things I enjoy the most at Skecon. Also the bouncy castle was nowhere to be seen, which was bummer number two...

Oh well, I went to check the merchandise hall and stuff until I felt like changing into cosplay. Luckily on Saturday it wasn't as deadly hot as the day before, so putting on cosplay didn't feel as blergh. What felt blergh though was putting on my colored contact lenses!
I swear that during the whole Friday my eyes had alternated between feeling dry and irritated to being watery. It was horrible and I had hoped that it would go away by Saturday but guess what? LOLFUCKINGNOPE. :'DD
I wasn't keen on wearing my lenses but I did so anyway, just for the sake of the photoshoot. I was hoping that my eyes wouldn't start crying and because of some miracle they didn't – I could even stand the lenses for longer than I thought!

My cosplay of the day was Kojirou Sasaki from Iza, Shutsujin! Koi Ikusa.
(yes, this is the obligatory cosplay selfie)

I had to style my wig when I put it on but it went nicely. I just put some pins here and some pins there and put styling products into the bangs.
When I was done I asked Hasakitsuki for a photoshoot, but poop happened I AM THE GREAT MIGHTY POO and I got Sairu-chan to photoshoot me instead. Much to our disappointment it of course started raining half-way through our shoot and we had to cut it short and return back inside. Aargh weather,  y u do dis? >:C It was all nice just before...
At least we got a few good shots although most of the time the camera wasn't cooperating and, when it was, then of course my face wasn't cooperating. :-DD

Cosplayer: Shiro Samurai (Kojirou Sasaki)
Photographer: Sairu-chan
Photo editor: Shiro Samurai

We returned back inside and after a while everyone –including the iaido guy named Nils who had become part of our group– had gotten fairly hungry so we headed out to town to find food. A bit past half-way it started raining and I was cursing myself for not having changed into my everyday shoes instead of keeping on wearing my brand new geta, which took a lot of damage from all the fucking stones on the way...
I kept being behind everyone else because I had to constantly stop to poke away stones that had got stuck under my geta. At this point I was feeling kinda bad so being constantly behind everyone made me feel a bit left out.
When we finally reached Subway I was feeling anxious and, when it was my turn to order, I just felt all kinds of stress so I didn't manage to order anything and just went to sit on one of the tables instead. I hate getting these kind of anxiety attacks in public places...
Everyone sat and ate their sandwiches while I was hating myself for making a fool out of me; I didn't even manage to answer the person at the counter because I stumbled on my words. I must have looked like an idiot. ._. I just felt like a mess and then I started feeling sick which led me to lose my apetite anyway...

We walked back to Skecon just in time for the Vocaloid concert, the main selling point of the whole con. I honestly wasn't really in the mood because I was still feeling anxious, but I took a chair and went to sit and watch it anyway.

The Vocaloid concert started off with Miku (of course) singing Senbonzakura.

Watching the concert made me cheer up, even though it was a  big disappointment that there were no Gakupo nor Kaito songs, even though that's what everyone had said that they wanted to see when Skecon had asked over at Facebook for song suggestions. :( I recognized some of the songs were the same ones from last year too. I guess I was less fascinated by it this time around because I had already seen it once before and the novelty had worn off a bit; it was still a cool concert of course but for someone who pretty much only listens to Gakupo it was quite the letdown that there were no Gakupo songs even though that's what people had commented that they wanted the most.

Notice the two kendo peeps in the audience on the photo above; their shinai swords had glowsticks on them and during the concert they did multiple kendo swings with the swords (haya suburi) so it gave a sort of light saber effect. xD It was hella genius and actually entertained me more than the concert itself. LOL What you mean I used to do kendo and love it?

The audience was in the mood!

Luka Megurine sang a couple songs, one of them was Just Be Friends.

Rin and Len Kagamine duet song.

People in the audience going wild!

The audience did this thing that you hold the person in front of you on the shoulders until you make a human train and then you just walk around being all noisy and hyped and try to get as many to join in
as possible. :'D
I've seen people do this many times but most times I'm just too lazy to tag along... hahaah.

Skecon's own maskot Rosu finishing the concert with the
*surprise surprise* super popular Karamelldansen song.

I honestly don't remember what we did directly after the Vocaloid concert but I think we just hung around with Nils in the cafeteria and chatted for a while. At some point a guy cosplaying Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars showed up and Sairu-chan's bro went to ask him for a photo. I took this opportunity in use and took some photos of him too – he was hella cool!
He ended up sitting with us and then we started talking and he talked about his costume and how expensive it and the light saber was. He also had a Hakuouki drinking bottle and he had no idea it was Hakuouki. xD I ended up suggesting a photoshoot for Obi-Wan and we went outside to take some pics – it was super fun and it got me fully back into the con mood!

One of the Obi-Wan Kenobi photoshoot pics!
Photography by me, Shiro Samurai.

 ★ Check out the rest of the Obi-Wan Kenobi photoshoot pictures here! ★

Both Nils, Obi-Wan Kenobi (alias Mattias) and another guy ended up in our company and we talked until it was around midnight and that's when I finally went to take off my costume. It was a lot of fun to hang around these guys!

Random con photo of the main scene area.

After I had taken off my cosplay everyone had kinda just gone somewhere and we decided to go sleep. It was funny to see Nils sleeping on the couch at the sleeping accommodation's hall (aka not in the classrooms) on the following morning; we had earlier seen that another random guy did it and everyone had thought "man, wish I had been clever enough to do that!". xD

Sunday morning came and I felt like a goblin. Holy shit did my eyes feel bad!
I felt so slow and blöärägshjshj that I seriously couldn't be bothered to put on my Sunday cosplay; very few were in cosplay anyway and there was a random Sunday market outside, which made the outside area filled to the brim with non-congoers and thus not very good for photoshoots – who wants a lot of people and market stands photocrashing in the background? Not me!
So yeah, I was in my casual gear on Sunday and it felt relieving. I was just way too tired to cosplay on the last day.
Most of the day I just spent hanging around and then the very last hours I spent playing Super Mario World (OMG my childhood! ♡) in the gaming room together with Sairu-chan's brother. That was one of the highlights of the con – we had shitloads of fun!

Random con photo showing the "garderob" area, aka where you dumped all
your stuff that you didn't want to carry around the whole weekend.

Merchandise hall feat. glorious photobomb!

I am probably forgetting to mention so many things but oh well, shit happens. :'D I need to mention though that at some point I was sitting in the cafeteria area and then I heard that a certain song was playing.. "I AAAAAM THE GREAT MIGHTY POO, AND I'M GOING TO THROW MY SHIT AT YOOOOU ~". At this point I cracked up so badly because seriously, just a few days prior my awesome friend Marcus had started singing this song, during a gaming night, and now it was playing at Skecon and I actually got to hear the whole song for the first time! Coincidence or not??

Okay so.. Skecon is always great but this year it wasn't quite as good as last year, in my opinion. This is mainly because the things I was looking forward to the most didn't happen. :( And because the weather screwed up my photoshoot plans.

What made Skecon a nice experience was all the people I met there, both new and old faces! There's always so many awesome people attending that it's hard to not find someone who's a blast to be around. I want to thank everyone who talked to me and who made this Skecon a great experience!

Thanks for reading and bye bye! ~

Shiro Samurai out.

Dokuganryu, you have too many swords – pt.3

Hello peeps!

Way back on 1st September last year I went to mom's place and continued working on Masamune's swords. I didn't get all that much done that day but I at least started sanding and filing down the tsuka (sword's handle) with a rasp and rough sand paper. The blade I had filed and rougly sanded already earlier. I only had time to sand one of the swords because I was helping Hasakitsuki with her cosplay as well.

Tsuka untouched.

Filed and roughly sanded.

I still need to give the remaining five swords the same treatment but I did ask my stepdad if I could borrow the rasp and rough sand paper – it was green lights!

Okay, fast forward to a weekend in the middle of February 2014 when I finally got to work on the swords again; I have no idea where the time went but I know for sure that it's about time I continue this mission!
I spent 14-16th February at mom's place and took with me the swords and equipment for woodworking. I filed and roughly sanded the tsuka's end round-ish. Rinse and repeat for the remaining swords over the duration of the stay, until all six had gotten the same treatment. I must say it's rather tiring to do this process all by hand but that's how I roll.

Even more sanded and filed.

All six done.

But when I was done and checked the swords over –for any spots that I had missed– I saw this unsightly view instead:

Hey wait, what's that...?

*zooms in*
IT'S A CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK.

I have no idea when it appeared but I know it wasn't there in the very beginning – it must have appeared at a later point, possibly during the last days. Oh well, I need to fix it somehow and the safest bet is to wait until mom and stepdad returns and ask him what to do about it...

So on 2nd March, while I stayed at mom's place over the weekend for Kitacon, I took with me the swords there. I showed the crack to stepdad and after getting some possible explanations for how it could have appeared he said he'd fix it for me. After the anime convention but before I left to return to my apartment he had repaired it and I could take it with me home. This is what it looked like:

Mended crack.

He said that he filled the cavity with some glue and then used car putty/filler on top. It's repaired now which means that I can continue the finer sanding work of the swords. Yes, I need to sand all the swords once again – but this time with even finer grit sand paper. I want it to be really smooth before I put any paint on them...

On 7th March I decided to start doing the final sanding of the swords (tsuka and the whole blade length) and this time I did it outside my apartment with some borrowed sand paper... from stepdad of course, who else?

Finer grit sand paper. (this brand is nostalgy for me because
in old woodworking class in school we had the same brand)

I only managed to finish 2 swords before my arms wanted to quit though; it's more tiring than what it looks like and I pretty much only sand with my left arm because of the finer precision (I'm left-handed) and it just feels less clumsy so yeah, when my left hand gets tired it gets annoying because my right hand just won't do the work as well. Blah.
On 10th March I sanded two more swords and on 11th March, aka today, I finished the last two.

Here's some comparison shots of both sides of one of the swords:

Top photo of roughly sanded side, bottom photo of finer sanded side.

Top photo of roughly sanded side, bottom photo of finer sanded side.

And finally a close-up photo of one finished blade next to one unfinished:

Top sword finely sanded, bottom roughly sanded.

Sweet Jesus, I'm done with the sanding! Now I just need to find something to use as a base coating before I can get on with painting these things. I was thinking that gesso would be good but I have to find some first... otherwise I'll just use ordinary white primer. We'll see.

But for now, Valkoinen Samurai out!

Dokuganryu, you have too many swords - pt.2

It's been a while since I last worked on Masamune's swords but today I biked to mom's place to make some progress and get free dinner. So since my last progress on the swords I now had to thicken the tsuka/handle before I could start doing the finer sanding work. I went to ask my stepdad if we had any thin wood that would work; I didn't want to make the tsuka much more wider than the sword blade already was because it would be troublesome to hold them Masamune-style otherwise. Luckily he found this super long 4-4,5 cm wide and approx. 4 mm thick plank. Hallelujah!

Super long plank and my pile of swords

I took my things outside -along with a pencil and ruler- and started measuring. I would need two cut-out pieces of the plank, one for each side of the sword's tsuka of course. Which means that in total I needed to measure and saw out 12 pieces.

Measured soon-to-be-tsuka-thickener pieces

And then I was sawing!

And when I had sawed everything..

There's a lot of 'em!

With all tsuka thickener pieces sawed out I went to search for glue. I didn't find the one I had originally planned to use so I had to roll with Pattex glue. Not like I mind because this glue is strong and can be used on pretty much anything.
With the glue in hand I went outside, got some of these pressure clamps and started gluing the pieces onto the tsuka. I put glue on both sides.

Two swords glued and with pressure clamps applied

It took some time to glue and fasten all the pieces but eventually I got it done.

Miekkojen liimausmaa! : DD (The gluing land of swords)

By now the clouds started to look grayish so to be on the safe side I moved all swords into the old storage house to dry. The glue needs to dry 24 hours for it to reach maximum hold so yeah, I can't progress further on these swords for now. Just going to wait and return to work on them some other day, hopefully soon!

Bye!

Dokuganryu, you have too many swords - pt.1

On 21st June I started working on Masamune's six "dragon claw" swords while I was at mom's place over the Midsummer.

Masamune Date, "Dokuganryu" (One-eyed Dragon)

The first thing I did was a sword pattern on cardboard paper so that I would get all six swords as identical as possible. To my help I used a decoration katana to trace the curve of the blade.

Blade traced

I drew the tsuka (handle) by free hand and then I marked where the blade starts and tsuka ends with a line across and cut the pattern out.

Cut out sword pattern "they see me rollin' they hatin'" style

My stepdad went outside to find some usable wooden planks for me and he cut and trimmed them to a fitting size with a machine. When I got the first ready plank I took it inside, picked up a pencil and tape and taped my sword pattern on it and traced it to the wood. I made sure to avoid the "branch spots" as much as possible when tracing because those are weak points...
Oh, I added a few millimeters width to both sides of the tsuka on all the swords to make it stand out a little bit more; my paper pattern had blade and tsuka same width.

One sword shape traced into wood

Soon enough he was done fixing the planks (yay thanks!) and I had seven sword-to-be's to, well, turn into swords.

Yes, there's one extra just in case I mess up.. and if I don't I'll save it for a future cosplay instead ~

I traced the sword shape to all the wood planks and then took them outside for sawing.. with a jigsaw.

Hello my friend <3

Sawing in progress..

One sword cut out!

The first two swords took some time to saw out but then I figured how to place the plank and stuff and so the remaining ones went much quicker. Of course when I had the three first ones done I had to try Masamune style sword wielding!

It works but it's pretty uncomfortable at this early stage... xD

At this point I got called inside for Midsummer dinner so I took a break and good that, my back was hurting. I returned some time later to saw out the remaining three more that I needed. The seventh extra sword I didn't cut out.

Sword gathering!
(all swords are spruce except the one farthest to the left which is black alder)

That was all the progress I did on the first day. I worked on some other cosplay parts the following days but on 26th June I continued a little. I took one of the swords and with a rasp in hand I started filing the blade shape onto it. After the blade shape was okay I took some rougher grit sand paper and sanded the blade edge nicer.

Blade taking form (rasp use)

The sword in the front has been filed and sanded (blade edge only)

That day I didn't feel like fixing the other swords because I was doing Okita's armor at the same time and it had an earlier deadline (read: Skecon 5-7 July) than Masamune, so yeah. But today on 29th June I went ahead and filed and sanded the remaining 5 swords and gosh do my hands hurt now! Yes, I did it all by hand because I'm dumb and want to do it the way I'm used to. :DD There would have been tools (like a mini/hand-size carpenter's plane and a machine-sander-thing, you know, those that look a bit like an iron and I mean that iron you iron clothes with. lol) which would have made it easier but lolnope, I always do things the hard way and now my sore arms thank me for that. But I can't help it that I prefer to have maximum "hand/touch/feel/whatever precision control" when working with wood, if that even makes sense. But at least I got the job done!

Filed (aka shaped) and roughly sanded blade edges

More progress should get done soon enough and feel free to kick me in the butt if I don't so stay tuned!