ailsa_chan

Gods that weekend went quickly. I'm sure one minute we were struggling to get a transformer in the car and then we were struggling to get it back in the car. I apologie to Dom for being absolutely no company on the way back, but I was that shattered I couldn't keep my eyes open. At least I got us to the M271 and saved any more magical Southampton adventures.

The rest of the post is cut to save you from photo attack!

Having spent Thursday night sorting out the last minute skit updates, and watching James as he finished sewing buttons on Angelo, we got up far too early. Ralph arrived and was very impressed with the house. I had far too much breakfast as I was expecting to cook for at least 5, but only ended up cooking for 2 as 2 people were lame and didn't want breakfast, and Joe did the kind task of finishing up last night's chinese to stop it going to waste. At least James knew he wasn't going to get as much bacon and eggs as he wanted!

Prime just fitted in Joe's car on the way down from Chippenham, but due to visibility issues, we split him up into other cars. There wasn't really a luggage problem, but I'm not sure we'd have coped if we had any more bulky costumes. We took everything except the stepladder, so it wasn't bad going.

Question: how do you fit a lorry in a car?

Made it down to Southampton with minimal issues and only one wrong turning. Got Prime up to room with only a few people seeing, and I don't think they suspected quite what we had in line for them anyway. Then regestration, quick stop off at B&B, then chillin' and seeing people again until the party.

Costume - Kirara.

The first fur-suit I've done for me. I liked his tails, (though I wasn't used to walking around being twice as wide as I normally am!), and his paws. The head didn't look quite right- he wasn't as quite as he was supposed to be. I might adjust it, add flames and make it into the large Kirara for a later date.

Changed into Bonta Chidori for the party. Friday nights at Minami have been great since they got the format of the variety night sorted. The pinyatas this year were particularly tough, even though several people gave them a real blatting, they took a lot of hits before they gave up their sweety goodness. The variety show was also lots of fun - I liked the 8-bit drawing game.

Costume - Bonta Chidori

I think this is my favourite costume of the event, and one mof my favourite ever. It wasn't particularly complicated, but it worked, it fitted, and it was so much fun. I couldn't keep my hands still when I was wearing my paws. It was a little hard walking with massive feet, and I need to do something because the inside stitching has all come away now, but the bonta feet were really comfortable. I'm especially proud of the hat. Given that I thought I wouldn't get round to it, I'm glad I put the effort in.

Saturday was the Dragonquest VIII group day. We assembled by about 9. I was the first ready, as I didn't want anyone else in the room while I got changed into Jessica. Came down, made Myst speechless - he wasn't ready for fan service that early I guess!

Costume - Jessica

Definitely my most FS costume. I think it worked pretty well, though one side refused to stay in the position I wanted - I think the elastic was a bit tight. It was really nice not to have to wear a wig, and while my hair wasn't quite the right colour (didn't manage to get it to go as red as I would have liked), I think it worked well enough. I suspect that people weren't concentrating on the hair too much anyway.

There was turtle racing again and I won! I now have a pink turtle to match my other turtle and keep him company. I'm definitely going to have to bling this one out though. Turtles seem to respond well to encouragement, as mine went every well while I was standing over taling too it. Other people obviously didn't have the nack, as their turtles couldn't keep up. One guy did ask what I had that he didn't, to which I responded "breasts". He had no come back to that! The purple turtles were more interested in butt-secks than racing, and the orange ones had good and bad races. Blue turtle was always good though :)

Did the bar quiz, which was good fun. We ruled at the anime wrong, sucked horribly at the guess-the-japanese-ad round and shojo round, and didn't do as well as we should have done at the games and theme tune round. Still, came third which wasn't bad.

We ended up with two photoshoots: One with Pat and one with Red-kun. I can't wait to see the results of both of them.

Finally it was time to get ready for the masquerade. We discovered a few things getting changed - one, Freya didn't fit me anymore, and two, Ricahrd hadn't bough enough bandages. The Freya problem was solved by not wearing the sleeves and leaving them as decoration. We sent Richard out to Boots to pick up more bandages. Once Richard and I were sorted, the next task was to take the robots down to the staging area.

I don't remember much of the skit in all honesty. I remember Prime looking about 15 foot tall. Watching him step out from behind the screen is something I doubt anyone is going to forget in a hurry. I also remember struggling to get the hat on. Even in heels and on a stepladder I just wasn't tall enough! I hope the skit went down and people enjoyed it.

Photobucket

I think I was least satisfied with this one. The skirt worked really well, it hung right, it fluttered, it lifted slightly when I walked. The bodice looked okay, but as mentioned above, I must have put on weight as I couldn't do it up in the room. I had to leave the sleeves as decoration, which worked okay, but wasn't what it was supposed to be. The wig - well, there was a reason I was using my hair once the skit was over. Let's just say I'm going to putting my overtime money into investing in decent wigs. The appique was also coming away by sunday, though I have ideas on how to deal with that.

Far too quickly it was all over. Missed saying goodbye to lots of people, as we were going to TGIs to make sure we got food before the journey was over. Let's do it all again next year :)