Voyage to alien territory

I never thought that, at 48 years of age, I’d go to my first Comic Con. (For those of you who have never heard of it, Comic Con is a convention devoted to all sorts of pop culture, from comic books to superheroes to tv shows and more). And little did I think that I would go in costume. Along with my teenaged son and his friends.

A week or so ago, one of my son’s friends asked me if we wanted to go to Comic Con with her and her dad. I thought it sounded hilarious, and since I seem to have discovered my inner science fiction/fantasy geek as I’ve gotten older, we said yes. When I found out that John Barrowman (Captain Jack of Torchwood/Dr. Who) was going to be there, along with members of the Firefly cast and William Shatner, and some of the Walking Dead people, I started to get excited. My kid was told that he’d make an excellent Dr. Who number 11, and I think Whovians will concede there is some resemblance:

You may notice that I went as an Ood, a humanoid creature with squid-like tentacles on its face. Yes, I knitted the hood/mask and used fishing lures from Dick’s Sporting Goods for the tentacles. That round thing is my Oodsphere which the Ood carry around for translating or breathing or some such.

We had a really terrific time. It was fun to be around so many people who genuinely love various TV shows and characters that I also like, and looking around to see the various costumes was a hoot. (There were more than a few for which I didn’t get the reference, but that’s okay. Some people didn’t know what an Ood was. Like my husband.) We were kind of surprised that so many people stopped us and asked if we would take a photo with them; that was something I just didn’t expect.

Game of Thrones was well-represented; this was one of the best Daenerys costumes we saw. We passed by the eminent “Fangmaker to the Stars,”

saw some stormtroopers make an arrest (I tried to tell them this was not the dude they were looking for but they didn’t listen):

ran into Pedobear;

and posed with the “free hugs” guys:

My kid’s friend had an amazing Tardis dress that her friend made for her:

We had a blast and already are thinking about next year’s costumes.

By the way, if you are in Philadelphia next weekend, please stop by Loop Yarn to see the Black Bunny Fibers trunk show. I’ll be there (NOT wearing a costume) with samples from Sock Yarn Studio and freshly-dyed BBF yarn and roving for your shopping convenience. I’ll be honored to sign any of my books for you, too. And mark your calendars for the weekend of July 20-21 when my lovely friend Brooke Nico will be in town. Brooke is an amazing designer and teacher whose specialty is lace. She’ll be teaching lots of lace classes that weekend, and I’ll try to dye up plenty of laceweight BBF yarn in case you get the lace knitting urge. Details are here.