Anime North 2010

Last weekend was Anime North, which gave me a rare chance to actually attend some con events, as opposed to my usual "carry heavy boxes and then stand behind this booth for ten hours" con experience. I mostly just wandered the floor on Saturday, and impulse-bought a black BABY school cardigan from a lovely booth selling a nice mix of second-hand brand and new Bodyline items. It wasn't exactly an impulse buy, since I've been wanting a nice cardigan for a while, and it was really reasonably priced. Even so, I'm not supposed to be buying *anything* right now! Oh well, as Oscar Wilde once noted, I can resist anything but temptation.

Sunday was the tea party, which was waaaay more popular than anticipated! My friends Queenie, Val and Karen were organizing the event, and had to scramble at the last minute when almost double the room capacity showed up. They quickly changed to a two-shift plan, letting in the first seating for an hour and then swapping over to the rest of us, who'd been (somewhat!) patiently waiting in the meantime. It was definitely worth the wait, and standing in line gave me a chance to meet a few lovely new people as well.

I didn't take as many photos as I thought - the room's windows were very cheerful, but made for terrible back-lighting on my shots! The full set is here, but I just have to share a few of my favorites here:

Lolita paparazzi! I tend to enjoy behind-the-scenes, documentary style photos. I figure someone with a better camera than my little point-and-shoot is going to get nice group and outfit shots, so I like to try & capture the little details that, years from now, will remind me of the event itself: how people interacted, little details of the setting, that sort of thing. That said, I tried to get a few portrait shots this time, some of which turned out really well:

Queenie & Karen, both of whom are far more lovely than they seem to realize. I love the elegance of Queenie's pose - she'd be right at home in a posh Victorian parlour! - and Karen is just crazy photogenic. She is also ridiculously good at getting rid of skeevy guys, which she sadly had to do towards the end of the tea party :(

I had to run off after the party for dinner with some friends, which meant I missed out on their Takura Angel adventures. I have a terrible habit of not planning enough time to hang out for meet-ups, which I really need to fix - we always have such a good time that things always carry on much longer than originally planned!