Last weekend was the big Vancouver anime convention, Anime Evolution. It was awesome, great cosplays, lots of neat events and the dealer’s hall was cool. I think as with Tsukino, I most enjoyed the artists and crafter’s alley. The panel went really badly but really wonderfully at the same time. No projector, speakers or screen meant the helpful videos demonstrating techniques could not be seen, and more people than we had bargained for meant we had to either turn people away or run out of supplies (we chose the latter and improvised as we could), but it all came together beautiful. People were really happy, appreciative and enthusiastic and there were some amazing guardian angel types helping everyone else out with the techniques, since the demos weren’t visible by most people in the room.

I had a great time though and hope to do this again next year, armed of course with more supplies and more vigilance about chasing down projectors and things way ahead of time!

Overlooking that they severely dissected my “interview”, and that they referred to crochet as knitting (why does that always happen?) I am really happy with the feature. Bigger photos and say… center stage may have been slightly more awesome, but I’ll take what I can get Overall it looks good, I’m happy and feel slightly famous.

It’s official, my Amigurumi workshop has been approved for the Anime Evolution 2010, the anime convention in Vancouver BC. It will be similar to the Tsukino Con workshop I did but with a different (ie: easier) project piece as the main focus. I haven’t gotten the timings or dates down yet, but will post as soon as I know. I am really excited about the convention but there is a lot of work to do. Not so much for the workshop (although, sigh, there is some for that) but for the costume I need to whip up (I won’t be wearing it mind you).

Anyone is the area thinking of dropping in. let me know!

Yesterday treated me to a lovely meal and some fabulous (and rare) yarn stash additions. It was nice too because my mom rules and debuted her second ever needle felting creation, a Noby Noby Boy of her very own. Isn’t he cute?

No new patterns or anything up from me yet, because I was too busy procrastinating and doing these other various horrible things that I have to do in order to earn money to spend on yarn (work, ewww!), but soon my pets, soon, Little Sister and Domo-Kun are coming. I just need to type them up and double check my math (stitch count is such a pain!).

In the meantime, enjoy the awesomeness that is, needle felted NobyNoby Boy, by jojobongbong.

I was fortunate enough to pop into Daiso on Sunday while on a quick trip to Vancouver. For those who don’t know, Daiso is a big Japanese dollar store type place where everything is $2 that carries housewares, stationary, paper products and a crafts section. Oh yes… that’s right… a crafts section. They’ve got yarn, crochet hooks and knitting needles, buttons, felt, all sorts of stuff. Despite migraines, a very busy and overheated store and exhaustion all around, I picked up some neat things for the arsenal. I’ve always loved the Daiso polyfill stuffing so I got some more of that, also found some cute plastic links that will make great stitch markers and a few other knickknacks. In a better mental state I’d have browsed around more and probably spent way more money, but it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t. The best thing about the trip, aside from the figma and gachapons the kid scored, was my newly discovered love of Bunny King and a big score of hard to find color cotton mill ends of Lily Sugar & Cream and Bernat Handicrafter Cotton at a local craft store in Steveston Village. Top that off with coming home to a newly arrived order of exotic yarn from Herrschners and I was on cloud nine. Be sure to check out the awesome engrish warning label on the styro beads “Never use it”… uhhh yeah.

I started working on this prototype pattern in hopes of finding a way to make the PS3 controller a bit more comfortable to clutch for hours on end. It’s a good start, though I did mess up the mirroring of the bootie part so that is why it’s taller on one side than the other. I will be fleshing it out a bit more, sorting out some bits and posting a finished pattern when I am satisfied that it looks good and is all evened out.

In terms of functionality, it’s more comfy than the naked controller, you can hold it in a sort of more relaxed way, but the cone parts slip around more than I’d like them to, so I think I’ll add some little teeny dabs of silicone, once cured they’ll be like grippy little nubs on the inside to give traction and keep things in place (think like the little traction bits they have on the bottom of some slippers/socks). It’s totally removable

In other news… I am off to go fetch the windex and cotton swabs to clean our game controllers. May these photos serve as a sobering reminder of the consequences of eating cheetos whilst going on videogame benders.