My final con for this year is set: Skecon

For some time I've been thinking about going to Skecon, a small anime convention held for the first time at Skellefteå in Sweden 2-4 November this year. Seeing how Skellefteå is in the northern part of Sweden and thus not far away from me (read: cheap train/bus tickets!) I decided some minutes ago that "HELL I AM GOING THERE". Gonna support those smaller cons in the north too. <3 They are selling 200 tickets and I think Skecon will be a nice last mini convention to wrap up my con-adventures for this year! Ooh I can't wait! I don't think I can go to ConFusion in Gothenburg this December. :'( But I'll try to go to winter!Närcon 2013.

I have some ideas on what characters I could cosplay there but there's still some slight I'm-not-sure-yet so I'm not gonna announce my cosplay plans quite yet. Stay tuned though, there will be Hakuouki! >8D

Tracon 7 - Chicken nuggets, bunk beds and train fails

Sorry for this slightly late Tracon summary post - let's get on with it!

My journey to Tampere actually started already on Thursday 6th September because I and Jäätynyt Enkeli had decided to carpool with some other congoers from Oulu. It was soooooo much cheaper than going by train.
The driver picked us two up from Kemi 12:00 and then we drove to Oulu where we picked up two other con people. I soon opened up to these new people and the car trip was rather enjoyable.
At night we arrived to Tampere city, got lost but then found our way to the right sleeping place. It was some kind of campground with some small cottages one could hire. When we got to the campground I got the impression that only 4 people were allowed to be in each cottage, so at first there was some talk that me and Jäätynyt Enkeli might have had to use some mad ninja skills to get a bed to sleep on.. but luckily there was no one checking the amount of people passing to the campground at least not that late so it was safe, ahaha.
I must say it was COLD inside those cottages... but maybe that's because I picked the bunk bed right in front of the door. Not the smartest choice. *shrugs* Oh well, I solved that problem by sleeping with my clothes on... and a scarf. It was extra cold too because I didn't have any duvet covers.. no one told me I needed those...

Friday morning finally came after a rather cold night (but it was cheap so I can't really complain) and I woke up and decided to eat my breads I had made yesterday for the carpool. I was worried they might have gotten moldy already but they were still fresh.
After breakfast I played some on my Nintendo DS and then everyone wanted to go to a foodstore to buy coffee and whatnot. After the foodstore trip me and Jäätynyt Enkeli got a ride to Tampere's train station where we awaited Ri-kun's arrival. Ri-kun soon came and we then started our trip to the Omenahotel. This time we had the one Omenahotel farther away because we were pretty late on booking. (last year me, Ri-kun and LittleOcean had the closer Omenahotel with the emocorner. <3)
We got to the hotel and later Mira-kun finally showed up, yay everyone is here! 
The rest of Friday evening was random hotel derping.. until it was time to go to bed. We didn't find the duvet covers for the two extra beds so we decided that everyone sleeps in the double bed! :'DD Well, it was an experience in itself, ahahah. Buuutttt. Being that close to 4 people soon turned on the sauna effect, not to mention it felt pretty crammed and whenever I managed to find a comfortable sleeping position a certain someone was moving away my legs so I always woke up.

At one point I decided I needed more room to sleep so I migrated over to one of the pillow-less and blanket-less extra beds. Again, it was cold. But I slept anyway.

Saturday morning came and when I woke up I noticed Mira-kun sitting at the table while everyone else was still in their beds. Oh well, we had our breakfast and then it was time to put on Saturday cosplays, Tracon's first day! 8D

I cosplayed Hajime Saitou from Bakumatsu Renka: Shinsengumi.

Tracon studio photo by Emilia Lahtinen.

Saturday was a rather rainy day... con weather brought to you by Desucon. lol
Most of the day our hotel group hung together and derped but we bumped into familiar faces too!
Around lunch time something we decided to go search for the ramen restaurant Hanabi. After a lot of searching we found out that it didn't exist anymore.. and I think a part of me died. No more Shingen Takeda ramen or Oda Nobunaga ramen. (yes, ramen dishes were named after famous historical persons, it was fucking epic)

I HAD BEEN LONGING TO EAT AT HANABI SINCE LAST YEAR

Oh well, we went to a Chinese restaurant instead and then we went back to Tracon. Back at Tracon, the usual wandering alone and looking at everything continued. My usual con routine because I'm too lazy to attend panels (not interesting enough and if it's something that would interest me there's one hell of a queue...) and I mostly go to cons to spend time with my friends.. even though I end up only walking around until either my feet dies or my back breaks. lol
Our hotel group decided to leave Tracon a bit earlier than usual because everyone more or less was in some kind of pain and we decided that we had already seen what there was to be seen today.. and we wanted to spend time hotel derping again. XD Although this night everyone slept in their own beds.

Sunday arrived and it was time to put on the Hakuouki cosplays! For some reason our Hakuouki group always decided on Sunday being the Hakuouki day and that also makes Sunday the main day for us. The day you look forward to the most. So yeah, on with the cosplays and it was time to dress up as Isami Kondou!

Tracon studio photo by Emilia Lahtinen.
Me as Kondou, Mira-kun as Okita.

 We had to take all our luggage with us to Tracon and check out. It wasn't so cool because my body decided to be weak as fuck already on the morning, before I had done anything WHAT_THE_FUCK again and trigger a lung derp. Wonderful. OTL Big thanks to Mira-kun for the help dragging my and Jäätynyt Enkeli's shit (aka luggage) to the con. ;A; <3
Oh well, we got to the con and soon we were trying to gather all our Hakuouki cosplay group members so that we could enter in the Välähdys cosplay photo competition. After that our group split into smaller groups again and I was hanging with Mira-kun, Ri-kun and Jäätynyt Enkeli, just like yesterday.
At one point I heard my phone ringing, it was one of those carpool congoers I had traveled with. She said they will leave 15:00. Earlier there had been some talk whether or not one of the two cars (aka the one me and my twin would take) would leave the con 17:00-18:00 but it seemed it got changed to 15:00 in the end. I think I died a bit again. Especially because this meant that I would miss the planned Hakuouki cosplay shooting and I would miss precious time to hang around with my friends whom I likely would not see again for the rest of this year...

Oh well, nothing to be done about it. I couldn't just go and take the train because it would have cost me an arm and a leg. 3 hours of extra con time is maybe not exactly worth 80 € after all. *sighs*
So the last minutes our hotel trio walked around Sorsalampi and we just had to stop to take a few quick shots like this one before we continued over to the other side to say goodbye to Jäärä, Zkitsune, Yamachu, Ellu and the rest. But. When we got there they decided to do a mega quick ALL TOGETHER NOW Hakuouki shoot. I'm so happy. <3 But I was stressed out because I knew those people were waiting for me and my twin and when we "finished" I ran like a mofo back inside. Lungs didn't like it, ahaha... It felt awesome when I noticed an Okita and a Saitou following. Totally warmed my heart. <3 We met up with the carpool people and I went and changed my Kondou wig into my Saitou wig because it was easier for travel and then I decided to take off my hakama too for the same reason. After that we left the con area, walked a bit to the cars close to the graveyard with Mira-kun and Ri-kun following even the last bit. Awwww. ;A; Some sad goodbye hugs ensued and the car was rolling........... to McDonalds. CHICKEN NUGGETS. IN THE CAR.
And then the journey up to Oulu started for real.
   On Sunday night we were at Oulu and me and my twin slept at one of our maternal aunt's place again because any trains to Kemi didn't go that late.

Monday morning came, we packed our stuff and Jäätynyt Enkeli went outside to meet up with one of the carpoolers because he had forgotten our train tickets in the car yesterday.
We got the tickets and headed straight for the train station, thinking we would be there just in time. When we got there and I looked at the train departure list something felt a bit off. I couldn't see our train's number anywhere... AND THEN I NOTICED THAT IT HAD DEPARTED ALMOST A FUCKING HOUR AGO. I HAD REMEMBERED THE TIME WRONG AND WE COULDN'T HAVE CHECKED IT EARLIER BECAUSE WE GOT THE TICKETS ALREADY TOO LATE.

I felt like I wanted to kill anything that moved when we stood there at rail 3 and waited for the next-to-depart Rovaniemi train's conductor to appear so that we could ask what the fuck to do now. The conductor came and we explained the situation without going into details and he was all "lol you can change the train tickets to this train."

BEST DAY EVAR

So yeah, we went inside the train, the conductor came and changed our tickets like nothing had happened and we went on our way to Kemi. It is during times like this when you are so fucking happy you bought the (more expensive) standard train ticket instead of the (cheaper) advance ticket because seemingly the standard ticket allowed for changes... just in case you miss a train like we now did. It saved us money in the end. <3

All's Well That Ends Well ~

Will Hijikata be crossdressing? + Kemi's manga day up next!

So before Tracon I had been looking for a purple kimono for Hijikata because I want to upgrade that cosplay for the next time I wear it. Mostly I want to have an actually purple kimono and while there isn't anything wrong with the wig I have now, when it comes to quality and stuff, it just isn't that flattering for my face, so I decided to order a new one.
But about the kimono. I wanted an authentic one so I can use it for my kimono hobby too. I was checking eBay and then I found a purple kimono that made me go..

This thing:

So.. well. First time I saw its thumbnail I was all "it's a woman's kimono" because of the (bright) color.. purple kimono for men barely exist and when they do they are dark/subdued/almost-don't-look-purple. But for some reason I clicked on it anyway because it was cheap (read: 9 dollars) and I was half-way desperate. Heck, I had thought that if it was a hitoe (non-lined) woman's kimono I could just learn how to convert it into a man's.. namely fix the sleeves.

So I clicked on it and then I found myself staring at the item description, or well.. to be exact, the length, which was only 138 cm. That's super damn short for a woman (unless she's a midget. lol) but an acceptable length for a man. (kimono info: women have longer kimono than men so that they can do an ohashori, "waist fold")

Soon after noticing the short length I noticed the sleeves... they seemed to be like on a man's kimono, aka almost completely sewn to the body of the kimono... but I couldn't say for sure because the seller's photos weren't that clear and the color threw me off all the time. 

Now the fact that this thing was listed at the seller's store as a woman's kimono made me veeeeeery confused. God knows how many minutes I spent staring on this thing trying to figure out if it was a damn short woman's or a man's kimono which had been misplaced... or a woman's kimono which had been converted into a man's for an unknown reason. Oooh the brain damage done to me by trying to figure it out. OTL I even asked another kimono hobbyist about their opinion before I decided to take the chance to buy it.. heck, after all it was cheap and if it turned out to be a woman's I would just have to modify the sleeves.

Today I finally got it (had to pick it up from the customs, didn't have to pay extra though <3) and when I got home I was so nervous and excited! I took it out and...

LOLOLOLO excuse random derp wig, camera face censor and that I'm just using a koshihimo to hold it closed...
BUT THE SLEEVES, THE SLEEVES OH MAI GAWD I WANT TO CRAP RAINBOW POO!!!1 <3<3<3

...

I was right in my suspicion, aka Hijikata won't be crossdressing at Kemi's manga day on 6th October. I'm so fucking happy!!1 :'D Oh, and yes, Kemin mangapäivät will be my next anime/manga event. I will cosplay Toshizo Hijikata there. Now I just want my new wig to come so I can style it and try on upgraded!Hijikata ~

In case someone doesn't know the character:

Toshizo Hijikata - Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the Tracon summary! I will write it as soon as I have some photos of my costumes and stop being lazy lolololo. 

HHHHHHHHHHHHHANSKA

hanska = glove (in Finnish)

And it's done!

How I made it? Well, I took some pattern paper, spread out my hand on it and traced out an exaggerated mega-sized version of my hand. Yes, it looked ridiculous and I laughed until I cried.

Then I just cut the pattern out, put it on top of this.. err.. is it called PVC fabric or what in English? I dunno, it's not leather but it has a slightly similar feel, it is shiny and it doesn't fray.

Whatever, I cut out a front and a backside glove 'prototype'. 

Cut out

Cut finger spacings and just sewed the glove together, leaving the finger holes open for obvious reasons. Then I turned it right side out and tried it on.

I must say at first when I was trying to get it on it felt like I had made it too small.. but after some time and struggling I got it past the narrow part and then it... well...

If this is supposed to be a glove I'm a fucking whale shark.

Yeah, just like that.

So.. to get back on track. I cut the glove fingers shorter and then it looked like this:

Better... but still rather fugly. (note the 'bump' and retard looking thumb)

So I went and took it in a bit and reformed the thumb opening and placement slightly and then I had got something that I finally could call a 'glove'.. without feeling like I was trying to fool myself.

Not perfect, it's still a bit bunchy but it's decent enough ~

Remember that I mentioned earlier that this was a 'prototype'? Or well, supposed to be more like a try-out. Well, it turned out better than I had thought in the end so I didn't bother to make another. xD This one was fine after the modifications.

And this means that my Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi Saitou cosplay is now ready for debut at Tracon, AWWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAA!!

This is probably going to be my last blog post before Tracon so, well, see you there!!

Gloveless Saitou test

As you might know I finished my shirt for Saitou yesterday and.. err.. I got home early (because the only class I had, psychology, well, the teacher was away.. so I went to school for nothing and I couldn't do my plan B geography leftover task either because school's internet hung itself all the time.. so I just got fed up and went home, derp) and decided to quickly try on what I had ready for Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi's Saitou.. basically everything except the glove. lol

So, here's my share of derp for now ~ (sorry mirror photos..)

Excuse my lazyness which led to no make-up, except on the eyes and eyebrows, obviously.

That feeling when YOU ARE TOO !!MURSU!! PERKELE to tie a proper musubi.. OTL XD
(aka the ends escape under the obi while they should be slightly visible)

Rather herp but only full-body pic that I managed to take which wasn't terribly blurred..

Obligatory face photo...

SILLY POSE PICTURE! >8D

And then I went to take some photos outside. Notice how the wig is actually blue-black. It is mostly black but has some specks of blue blended in; I didn't want to have a jet-black wig, I thought this looked nicer on me while still being a good color for the character.

I probably won't have time to do a 100% completed cosplay preview (read: proper make-up, shoes and glove) before the con so this will have to do for now. Hopefully I'll have a photoshoot of this costume under or after Tracon. I CAN'T WAIT AGDHJSAGJHFDS TRACOOOOOONNNN ~

I has a shirt!

Hiya!

I started working on Bakumatsu Renka Saitou's shirt yesterday and I just finished it. I didn't take progress photos of every step because it was a rather simple project and I focused more on getting it done because, as we all know, Tracon is this coming weekend and I also will be leaving home already on Thursday.. and Wednesday goes for packing stuff so.. yeah.

I will now show those few progress photos I took while making the shirt:

Front and back pieces cut out + arm hole facings

I had to widen the collar to get the thing over my head. My chosen fabric didn't stretch at all.
(I did widen it more than what this shows in the end)

Then I went ahead and sewed the shoulders together and side seams. No need for explanations.
After that it was time to attach the facings. I had never done this before so I was worried the facings wouldn't fit, I angled them wrong etc. But luckily they ended up being pretty damn perfect.

Test pinning facings in place to check that they were of the right size..

Sewn together, zigzaged around the "flap edge" and stitched on top so that the facings stay better on the 'wrong side'.

Making a self-made facing patterns for the collar because the original pattern was wrongly curved after the widening earlier...

I must say I was really unsure if the collar facing would fit right because, err, I made the pattern by tracing it over onto pattern paper directly from the shirt itself... and I couldn't even see if I was tracing right because the pattern paper was kinda thick, herp. So I just had to feel my way where the collar was and trace. It felt like it would be a fail but I went ahead and cut out the facings in fabric. I added some extra centimeters to both ends of the facings (back and front) just to be sure that they would fit when sewn together. After having cut out the facings I had veeeery little fabric left (read: barely enough if I ended up fucking it up) and now when I tried to line up the front and back pieces to meet at the ends it seemed like the front piece was too long. I was ready to shorten it when mom came and said "don't cut it, you might need the excess length when sewing the facing around the collar". So I put away the scissors.

Test pinning the collar facing on

When I had pinned the facing to the collar I noticed pretty early that one of the facing shoulder seams wouldn't align with the shirt shoulder seam if the other side did. "Fuck.. now it probably won't be long enough.." I thought but kept on test pinning... and then I noticed it was just long enough to go around. AWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAA, thanks mom!

And by that I was finished ~

I has a shirt! :'DDD

Now just to make the glove and get ready for the con ~

30 minutes closet cosplay challenge

So for quite some time now I've seen pretty many Finnish cosplay bloggers do this one cosplay challenge so I decided to give it a go because it seemed so much fun.

Sorry guys, for now this will be in Finnish, I will add a short description about the challenge in English at the end!

Säännöt:

1. Kuka tahansa halukas voi ottaa haasteen vastaan riippumatta siitä, harrastaako hän cosplayta. Kokoa kolmenkymmenen (30) minuutin aikarajan sisällä cosplay-asukokonaisuus materiaaleista, jotka löydät kotoasi.

2. Saat käyttää vaatekappaleita, peruukkeja, meikkejä ja maskeerausvälineitä. Jos olet nopea, saat myös ommella/askarrella jotakin uutta (esimerkiksi rusetin kankaasta tai propin paperista). Et saa käyttää sellaisenaan valmiita cosplay-asuja, jotka olet jo joskus tehnyt.

3. Kun olet valmis tai 30 minuuttia on kulunut, ota asustasi kuva ja laita se haasteen sääntöjen kanssa esille blogiisi. Kerro myös, kuka hahmosi on ja liitä mukaan lähdekuva.

4. Haasteen tarkoitus ei ole luoda täydellistä pukua lyhyessä ajassa, vaan testata haasteen tekijän mielikuvitusta ja pitää hauskaa.

Okeei, eli mun valittu hahmo oli Kenshin Himura (Hitokiri Battousai versio) Rurouni Kenshinistä. En nyt ole ihan 100% varma ku en ole sarjaa vielä lukenut ku muutaman random chapterin ja yhen leffan katsonut joskus vuonna nakki ja muusi. Mutta normi-Kenshinillä ku on vaan se reverse blade katana ja Battousailla mun logiikan mukaan perusmiekat plus ei oo arpea ainakin jossain vaihees joten menkööt näin. Joissakin kuvissa Kenshinillä on harmaat hakamat joten en nyt oo ihan varma kumpi on se oikea by the way.

PS. Joku enemmän tietoinen fani saa korjata jos puhun ihan sontaa!

Hahmon referenssikuva.

 

Sori peilikuvat, en ole arkusta noussut zombie!!

Cossi-asun sisältö:
• Budo alustakki (jota myös käytän muihin cosseihin jotka vaativat valkoisen kimono-kauluksen)
• Ichiton tummansininen kimono
• Hijikatan vaaleanharmaat hakamat
• Hijikatan miekat
• Random tekkout/käsisuojat jotka ostin eBaystä aikoja sitten ihan vaan huviksi
• Mustat tabi-sukat jotka olen ostanut mun kimono harrastustani varten
• Puiset geta-kengät jotka olen myös ostanut mun kimono harrastustani varten :'DD Problem?

Jooo-o, mitäpä sanois, oli hurjan hauskaa ja en paljon kiirettä tuntenut ku tä oli tämmöinen ultimate kaappicossi koska kaikki tarvittavat löytyi valmiina jostain huoneeni kolosta.. ongelma oli vaan löytää kaikki ajoissa ja pukea päälle. :'D Tosiaan peruukin kävin pöllimässä lainaamassa Jäätyneen Enkelin vaatehuoneesta koska en itse omista ainuttakaan punaista peruukkia.. lähin (värillisesti) mikä olis mun kaapista löytynyt olis ollut Ichigo Kurosakin peruukki... eiiii. Tai muuten olis tullut joku ihmeen rasetsu!Kenshin valkoisilla hiuksilla... koska pitkiä valkoisia peruukkeja multa löytyy kyllä lol.
Tää peruukki oli siis ainoo edes jotenkuten sopiva tähän hätään, vaikka väri on aika räikeen punainen IRL ja en kyllä käyttäis kyseistä peruukkia Kenshinille sit sinä päivänä kuin kyseistä herraa sitten ihan kunnolla cossaan. Joo, on tarkoitus ihan oikeasti cossata Kenshiniä joskus. Sitten kyllä ostan kunnon hyvävärisen peruukin ettei herran hiukset muistuta punaisia liikennevaloja...

Ai niin, meinas unohtua, mulla tuli paniikki ku en meinanut löytää ihan perus hiuspampulaa vessan kaapeista, olin sillee hetken "midä vidduu, pakko niitä on jossain olla!" kunnes kaivoin kaappia tarpeeks syvään ja sit löytyi semmoinen mursun kokoinen musta pampula... sai luvan kelvata. lol

Mutta siis...

CHALLENGE SUCCESSFUL!

Jaahas, ja äidin ruutuiset aamutossut paistaa mun hihan/käden alla... ihanata.

 

Mulla oli cossi päällä ku oli viel 10 min aikaa jäljellä, like a boss! Paitsi että melkein kaikki meikit jäi laittamatta koska laiskapaska.com ja naama kirvelee ku meikinpoistoainetta jo käytin aiemmin tänään ku cossasin Okitaa.. ja naama hieman vammaisen tuntoinen sen jälkeen joten annoin olla ihan suosiolla.

 - lalalalala -

And now a quick description in English for those who didn't go to Google Translate lol already ~

So yeah, basically this challenge was to find a character and cosplay them in a time frame of 30 minutes. So you had to make/find everything for it and put the costume on and when 30 minutes had passed you had to take photos of what you had created. You were allowed to use clothes, make-up, wigs and if you were fast enough you could craft something quickly... basically you had to do a closet cosplay. xD You weren't allowed to use already made cosplays aka a character you had cosplayed before. This challenge wasn't about making a perfect costume, it was about having fun and being creative.

My closet!Kenshin consisted of Hijikata's hakama, Ichito's blue kimono, a white budo/martial arts inner jacket, Hijikata's swords, black tabi & wooden geta I bought for my kimono hobby and tekkou I bought from a private person on eBay long time ago just for the heck of it. The wig is my twin's because I didn't have anything even remotely right-looking myself. The wig is actually bright red IRL (not orange-y like photos show) and I won't be using it that time when I cosplay Kenshin for real. Yes, I will do him someday.

 

And I guess that's it ~