I had a great weekend and want to first of all thank all of the con staff and volunteers for their hard work. I had some big worries headed into the weekend but everything managed to work out and go smoothly. Crowds were a pain at time but that's to be expected with anything this large.

Panels

We presented three panels over the weekend: After the Sewing, Costume Construction Basics, and Sewing Men's Clothing. We had a great crowd at each panel and I'd like to thank everyone who attended. Had fun talking to you and hope to see you at conventions again in the future! If you have any further quesitons, send me a message in the comments or over Facebook and I'll answer whatever I can. I have uploaded PDF files of each panel at the above links. I was really concerned with the new panel process since it's so different from the other conventions but I was very impressed with the panel staff and they did their best to make everything run smoothly.

Masquerade

This was my first time participating in Ohayo's masquerade. I've done several others and was interesting in seeing how Ohayocon ran theirs. I signed up for pre-judging on Friday to hopefully limit the amount of time that Raj had to spend in the costume. We headed over to the judging room where I realized that in the rush to prepare for the panels I had left some of the ribbons back in the room. After a brisk run (and much cursing of elevators) I managed to make it back just in time for our scheduled time slot. Found out that they were running behind so we hung out in the lobby waiting for the judges. It was good because it gave me some time to catch my breath after fetching the ribbons.

The judging process was very thorough. Two of the judges dove right in and began examining the entire dress in detail. To say I was nervous would be an understatement :D. They were very professional about the whole thing and was impressed with the attention they gave to everything. With that completed, we finally met friends for dinner around 10. (Thanks to Anthony, Emily, and Fawn for putting up with masquerade stuff over the whole weekend!)

The actual masquerade itself was exciting as well. Once we arrived, we found out that I would be going on stage with Raj. Some quick modifications of poses followed and we managed to come up with a couple that worked. (Hopefully I can find a video to see how big of a fool I made of myself) Our time came and I managed to hit all the poses. I am still wondering how they managed to come up with the pronunciation that they did for my name, but oh well. We then sat back down to wait.

I was nervious through the whole thing of course! There were many wonderful costumes! We found out that we had won Best in Show for Craftsmanship! I was excited! I think I'm still on a bit of emotional high from that even if I did have to endure a bunch of "I told you so" from roomates.

General

All in all, I think it was a great weekend. I think everything went well and I really enjoyed presenting panels and meeting people. I enjoyed the masquerade and especially like the fact that the judges took time to meet with the participants on Sunday to give them advice on their costumes and what they can do to improve their costumes. I enjoyed talking with the judges and would like to thank them for taking the time to do that. Also thanks to the masq staff for putting on what looked to be a very well organized program.