A fun and different Star Wars troop

 This year the Swedish garrison was invited to Gothenburg Book Fair, which is northern Europe's largest book fair and a huge cultural event. The theme for this year was "space", so we were invited to hang around and spread some space fun, especially in the area designated for children's literature and the like. 

We had a small booth but most of it was mingling around with visitors, and unlike a comic con and other kinds of science fiction convention I thought this was even more fun, because the visitors were really surprised and it was something fresh, unlike when people are more or less expecting us to be around and show off our costumes.

Since Gothenburg means a long journey by train I wanted to pack light, so I brought admiral Daala. Here I am in the Elsa Beskow diorama, Elsa Beskow is a classic 19th century children's author where the images are as important as the text in a way I guess she can be compared to Beatrix Potter.

What really made me travel though was the fact that my husband, who is an author after all, were there as well, so it was the first fair/convention we could be together. Well I trooped with the garrison, but when my troop duty was over I could change clothes and be with my husband and our other friends who are in working with literature in different ways.

Stockholm comicon report

 After almost 2 years it was finally time for proper convention again! There were fewer tickets, so the crowds were smaller, and you had to have a vaccine pass or negative test to get in, but otherwise it was as before. It was so much fun being back together with cosplay friends from Nordic Legions and just others you meet anyway.

One of the guests was Evanna Lync, Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter, so of course I brought my Luna with me and had my photo taken with her. These kinds of photoshoot are one second affair, so you have to be prepared beforehand. I got a bit surprised when there was no plexiglass between us, so I lost some time and didn't exactly get the photo that I wanted, but it is good enough. She was really kind and it was she who placed herself really close to me and put her arm around me.

The rest of the Harry Potter cosplayers from Dalarna took a few round around the hall before I was going to be in the Nordic Legions' booth. I was in the booth with my jedi, but I kept the Luna wig since my hair wouldn't exactly look the best after quite a few hours under a wig.

I thought the blone looked quite ok as well. The jedi was really comfortable to wear at a convention. The only bad thing was that I had forgotten the belt that I hang my pouch from so I couldn't wear it. 

Saturday I started off as a jedi again, but this time in my own hair so no wig. We had some Nordic Base photos taken, and then a huge group photo in front of the replica of the Millenium Falcon (The Swedish Falcon) that premiered at the convention.

Then after lunch I switched to Princess Daisy, and it was soo much fun. She was fun to pose with, easy to wear, and it was pretty fun to take photos with more "serious" princesses.

On Sunday it was Daisy again, and now my friend Tom went as Luigi, we actually found quite a few cosplayers from Nintendo. Even if there were generally fewer cosplayers on Sunday than on Saturday.

All in all Daisy was a success, and it was sooooo great meeting all friends from the Nordic Legions again. I also managed to have three costumes, that all had very comfortable shoes. Daisy's orange sneakers were the best though.

Feet get tired even in comfy shoes though, and Milou was a bit sceptic when it came to the smell. Can't be worse than the stormtrooper armours in the changing room though.

Star Wars Celebration in the back mirror

 When this year started my plan was to spend this week in Anaheim and having fun at Star Wars Celebration. This headline of this blog is that it's about Star Wars and historical costuming, and this year I have hardly posted anything Star Wars. There is a simple reason. With everything being cancelled I have realised that for my cosplay projects I really need an event to make them, while it's easier to keep me motivated with historical projects even if I don't have anything particular planned for them.

Anyway I feel like a bit of retrospective, so here are my favorite Celebration photos that I have found here on the blog, I haven't found any from C3 in 2005 and C4 or CE in 2007, they were saved on photobucket and have been lost from the web.

My cancan trooper from 2010 and 2012 is the biggest success I've ever had with a costume at a Celebration.

2013 in Essen, and the joy of finding another A-wing pilot. 

The tusen ladies are also from Essen, I actually sold my headpiece on the convention, but still haven't built my new one.

Anaheim 2015, and I finally made my dream gold handmaiden costume

A wonderful part of Celebrations is to team up with people who costume the same costume as you.

London 2016 was my first Running of the Hoods, and I was made a meme

Celebration is mostly about hanging out with friends though

My Tudor Leia made me have a bit more fun with costuming and doing cross-overs insted of perfect screen accurate things.

Orlando 2017, and the fun thing is last time in Chicago me and Holly recognized each other by our hair colours!

Me and Ryan had matching moustaches for the Running of the Hood

It's something special to gather so many SW fans in one place. Nowadays I feel that the huge group photos are a bit too much of a hazzle and I only do them if they don't clash with anything else.

The Cloud Riders group in Chicago 2019. I really should finish up my Enfys Nest costume, and seeing this photo inspired me for it.

This is probably the biggest Nordic Garrison group photo we have managed on a US Celebration

As much as I love my NG/NB people it's even more fun to meet up with the people you only meet at a Celebration, like Jenna (Song of Amazon)

It is fun looking back at all these photos. I also see my own costuming journey, where I think I have moved on a bit from making a new costume for every Celebration, and more doing my own thing. Still with two years to go until the next Celebration I will probably come up with something new to wear. It's also a fact that I have gained so much weight that I can't use many of the costumes that I'm wearing in the photos above.

Me and David, my convention travel partner since 2004 was at our classiest at the 501st party in Anaheim 2015. He said he was going to bring his top hat - well I didn't want to feel underdressed

Here are links to my Celebration reports that I've posted on this blog

2015

A short update from Anaheim

Other people's costumes at Anaheim

My costumes at Celebration Anaheim.

2016

A Star Wars Celebration Round up

2017

Star Wars Celebration - what I wore

Star Wars Celebration - Costumes on the floor

Star Wars Celebration - Fan fashion

2019

Star Wars Celebration Chicago - part one

Star Wars Celebration Chicago - part two

AvestaCon 2019 report

I managed to hardly take any photos at AvestaCon, but I got the chance to do some photoshoots with red island media and I'm looking forward to sharing them with you later on.

Anyway me and Tom set off to Avesta on Friday and arrived there by lunch. Tom has been working really hard all year with AvestaCon, since we had decided that the Cosplay Dalarna network should be in charge of all cosplay related things. We had decided that instead of having a crafting corner we should have an actual exhibit to show off the variety of cosplay projects in our group.

AvestaCon is held in Verket, an old iron foundry and the main area is divided into several smaller rooms. Cosplay Dalarna had one of the rooms, and in one of the corners Wolfdog Cosplay also set up a 3d printer to show off what you can do with that.

I had brought my Melisandre costume for display, but managed to forget the necklace. That's when we came up with the idea of printing photos of us in our costumes to show what they look like when worn.

On Saturday I wore my x-wing pilot, so then my Ravenclaw outfit was on display. I wore the pilot because we did an actual troop with the Nordic Legions. It was me, two stormtroopers from Västerås, Alexandra as Leia and Ann-Sofie as Tintin. AvestaCon is the most local con so it was also fun meeting up with friends who usually don't see me in costume.

Photo from my friend Niklas and his son. Brita (Brutus Cosplay) in the background as Fiddlesticks from League of Legends

On Saturday Cosplay Dalarna also organised the Dalecarlia Championships in Cosplay.

Top 3 in the Cosplay Competition

After the cosplay competition there wasn't much going on, but the convention was still open, so we rigged up some PlayStation SingStar and I might have been the most enthusiastic about singing a lot of old pop songs.

On Sunday I wore my Ravenclaw outfit, first as a regular student and later as Luna Lovegood, so the X-wing costume went on display.

It was nice sitting and chilling in our sofa the sofa in the cosplay exhibit.

Niclas did some workshops with helping children make magic wands of chopsticks and worbla, so I made one of myself, so I don't have to always use Luna's wand. I just need to prime and paint it.

The con ended on Sunday with a scrapheap cosplay contest, where teams of up to four people could raid a load of trash and ten had 30 minutes to create a cosplay. Me and Tom hosted and judged it, together with Ann-Sofie.

The entries in the scrapheap cosplay contest, photo by woodsling

This was so much fun to watch, but really hard to judge. I think everyone taking part, or watching the contest had a great time. Then it was time to pack up everything and get home. It was an exhausting weekend, like it is when you are helping out with organizing stuff. AvestaCon is still a new con and still needs to solve some things, but overall it was a success compared to the previous year and there were more visitors as well. It still has a lot of potential to grow though.

ComicCon Stockholm 2019

It was time again for ComicCon Stockholm, which is the biggest comiccon-like event of the year in Sweden. This year I didn't bring anything new, but it was the first time I wore Luna Lovegood for a big event, it was also the first time that we had the whole HP crew from Cosplay Dalarna assembled.

Friday is always a slow day. I did a stint as X-wing pilot in the Nordic Legions' booth. I decided to have some fun with make-up though, I mean how often can you wear the green lipstick you got from your sister?

Matching lips and hairband

I finally had the opportunity to meet up with the amazing Britta though, at NärCon I had only seen her in a distance when she was wearing her costume. She is definitely one of the coolest and nicest cosplayers I know.

Saturday was crazy. Simply put they had oversold tickets and let way too many people in. It was so crowded that you could barely move. The queue outside was Celebration-like, stretching for hundreds of meters. It was great fun patrolling the queue though, and it's always fun when you do it in a group. This time there were four of us X-wing pilots going around.

I also had a presentation of the Nordic Legions. It was the same set-up as in NärCon, since I think that works really well. It was a bigger crowd than at NärCon, but also more kids who just wanted to see cool costumes and not listen to the "behind the scenes" of being in one of the big Star Wars costuming clubs.

After the talk I switched to Lune Lovegood for the rest of the day, and had a lot of fun with the HP Dalarna people.

When my bloodsugar dropped I even found some candy that was straight out of Honeydukes

The whole HP gang ready for action

We also made the Heroes Cosplay Walk on, but that was a mess due to the number of people and the organizers not setting a cap on the number of entrants. We got a lot of cheers from the audience though, showing once again that a group is always appreciated.

On Sunday I was in the Nordic Legions' booth as Luna, it was my first official Reel Icons troop. There were a bunch of different characters, which always leads to fun photos, but my favorite was the little girl who came as Luna and wanted to have her photo with me. She got to borrow my wand as well, and she was really cute.

Cape off with Batman

Dancing with Haddock, Tintin, Harley Quinn and Batman

Being confused over muggle technology

This is how it works!

Force vs. magic

Unfortunately I didn't feel very well, I had had a cold the week before, and now it returned. I got out of costume and finally got some good photos of my "I heart SW"-dress that I made a year ago.

I was really happy that I had hitched a ride with Monika and Niklas home, instead of sitting on the train. I then had to stay home from work for a couple of days, but now I'm hoping that I'm finally rid of the cold. Next event will be AvestaCon last weekend in October.

Photos are also from the Nordic Legions' camera, ArtyAnna Cosplay and Tinkky Cosplay