Links to SherlockNYC photos

Con badge. Find Basil!
http://instagram.com/p/YDA6g9uIXH/

Joan Watson and Clyde
http://instagram.com/p/YDwivQuIRp/

Best. Cabin. Pressure. Ever.
http://instagram.com/p/YGpk4BuIQb/

PS - the second place winner in the scavenger haunt was Team Fizz Buzz. The first place was Team IOU.

221bCon/Stitches: The shopping/cosplay post

So. I did this thing this weekend...

I thought I'd be beating the rest of the Sherlockian wave by arriving Thursday night, only to be part of a line of people arriving early. At least a dozen non-concom folk had decided to come in and settle early.

I don't know what they did with themselves Friday day, as I went to the Stitches South marketplace. I actually didn't buy any yarn! I went for needles and notions, which I did get (including the new Boyes "Tipping Point" needles, straights with interchangeable tips that are dull, medium, and sharp. Boyeses aren't particularly quality but the pinhole for the tightening key is a vital thing for running lifelines.) Alas, though, the Octopus Snips aren't out yet - I asked! I also picked up two DVDs on sock knitting - one with the "free sole" method and one with the Bosnian Square Toe and Garter Toe, which I want to learn. As usual, I brought about 100x the amount of yarn I needed, so I've decided that I'm going to learn square toe tube socks and knit those at conventions. It's the sort of thing I'd wear in the winter instead of slippers.

By the time I'd gotten back, the cosplay had begun, in anticipation of the tea. As Brad of Sherlock Peoria has pointed out, it's hard to tell when people are cosplaying the modern stuff because it looks like everyone else's clothing. (If Joan Watson hadn't had a Clyde, I'd never have "gotten" her.) For the Sherlock cosplayers, it mostly means slim women in tailored men's suits - if she had painted on stubble, she was Moriarty, if she had curly dark hair she was Sherlock, and if she had an umbrella, she was Mycroft. There were also lots of Johns, mostly recognizable by 1) hanging out with a Sherlock and 2) cabled sweaters and Irenes in either slinky short black or white dresses, usually accessorized with a riding crop.

There were exceptions. As the con really picked up, other costumes, including those for fan art and fanfic started showing up - a Sherlock with black wings, a male Sherlock in (nothing but?) a sheet, an Irene in (nothing but?) a long coat, someone in a cardboard box marked up as "Sherlock's Mind Palace," an Irene in lingerie, a blood-covered Sherlock with a harpoon, a blue Easter bunny costume with lights under it (Bluebell the bunny), and a handful of Mollys - one in a the black dress from the Christmas party (she kept getting mistaken for an Irene) but most in lab coats with fake IDs clipped to them. There were some gender-bends but surprisingly few - off the top of my head, I only saw one femmeLock and one femmeCroft. There were also some BRILLIANT Cabin Pressure folks and lots of hand-made Ts. Some of the Ts were fan art (there was a nice Hark a Vagrant one of the Tale of Two Watsons) but the one I lusted after most was the Traveling Lemon World Championship one. The "Anderson" of the T stayed in her sterile suit all weekend, accessorized with a "kick me - signed Sherlock Holmes" note taped to her back and a dinosaur-patterned purse. (Side note - I know I'm scrambling pronouns and characters here, but I think there's a big difference between cosplay as a male character and serious cross dressing. Particularly when a male character is carrying a purse.)

The fan photographer brought a 221B door and TimeGate con brought their TARDIS, which sat in the main hall lobby all Saturday. By the time it left most people had taken their picture in it (including one of the cardboard cutout of Doyle peeking out) and it had more than one lemon on top.

The dealer's room, when it opened, was tilted heavily towards fan art. This is a great thing when I wanted to wibble over DauntDraws/MarieLikestoDraw, but a little surprising when I expected to come home with armloads of books. The only books for sale were an old Sherlockian couple burning off some of their collection (which was some nice stuff, but I had or had purged it myself, y'know?) There was ALWAYS a line at Cara McGee's table - in part because she was stopping to do quickie commission cartoons and in part because the teas are so unique in a room full of art, cards, deerstalkers, and jewelry.

The convention itself also had some things on sale. Con shirts, of course ("221BCon" on the front, badge art across the back) and deerstalkers, and the noir version of Watson and Holmes #1 (and, in the fullness of time, 2014 memberships.) They also had Diogenes Club mugs... but those weren't so much for sale as they were the carrot on a very expensive lure - lifetime convention memberships.

As I had gone to the con with a simply stupid amount of cash (seriously, I could have hired a contractor with what I'd squirreled away, because between the two conventions I didn't want to run out of cash) and THEN found $300 hidden in my suitcase (long story) - well... I could buy the membership and still come out ahead.

So I did. I have literally invested in 221BCon.

221BCon - the Panels & wrapup post

The con people had put a lot of effort into load-balancing the convention panels so that there were an almost equal amount of media/modern panels and old school/canon panels, with a few related things thrown in (like the standing room only Cabin Pressure one, where John Finnemore tweeted answers to three questions.)

I'm not sure how much interest there was in some of the finer points of old school - the panel on BSI/ASH/Etc was very sparsely attended, and only had about 2 people who actually had no scion experience. This was very much a media-oriented convention and specifically a Sherlock convention, with Elementary coming next, canon running third, and the Ritchie movies and Basil of Baker Street bolted on to fill in the gaps. I don't even know how well the Ritchie or Animated Holmes panels went over. (I missed so many I wanted to be at because there were so many I was on.) I hear that Holmes through time was "meh" but Watsons Through Time was rocking. (I and the other panelist on From Doyle's Reality to our own were both rather unprofessionally admitting how much we wanted to be at the Watson panel.) I do know that the pros and cons of both Lucy Liu's and Nigel Bruce's Watsons were discussed. You already know the base arguments re: the former, but the latter went like this: Nigel Bruce made Watson stupid. But Nigel Bruce also made Watson FAMOUS - there would be very few Holmes stores without a Watson after him.

I intended the Sherlock Radio panel to be my usual clip show, but ended up with two other panelists - as they were from BBC and Atlanta Radio Theater Company, they made for very good counterfoils. (I am STILL kicking myself for losing that book that Bill from ARTC gave me. I can't imagine how it got away from me.)

Speaking of audio, the Baker Street Babes recorded a podcast live and ARTC gave a live show with three short Holmes-inspired stories. There was also a puppet show, but I couldn't tell you anything about it.

There were a handful of Elementary panels. I heard in passing that there's some sort of schism in the fandom, but I never heard details or if that was even accurate. At the fanon panel, I noted the irony of panelists talking about how they didn't want to get near Doctor Who fandom because of the crazy, only to later talk about the need for damping down the cray-cray in Sherlock fandom itself. (Things like J/S fans breaking into Sherlolly - Sherlock and Molly - tumblrs and telling the artists that they "had drawn John wrong" not to mention the incredible abuse people dish out on Moffat.)


The last licks panel went well. We could point out what they did right - and they did a LOT right, the con ran smooth as butter - and they listened when we pointed out what still needed work instead of getting defensive.

THINGS THE CON NEEDS TO WORK ON
Communication. I was not the only one talking about the "tumblr elite" who had more information than the website.

Panel suggestions - as in how does someone suggest one? (For instance, someone said costuming and makeup and was told there had been such panels and she said no - she wanted a panel specifically on those issues as related to cross dressing, but she didn't know how to ask.)

Masquerade. They held theirs in the middle of the day, and admitted that they had no one with Masq experience they knew to talk to. (Yes, after the panel I did let them know that they had an ex-regional con Masq director with an invested interest in making the con fly...)


THINGS THE CON INAUGURATED THAT WERE COOL
There were volunteers outside each room counting attendees so they know how to match level of interest to room size next year.

The red/green stickers for no spoilers/spoil me

This was an inadvertent invention, but as there was nowhere to write on the badges (they were laminated and had no blank spots) people wrote their tumblr IDs on their arms, largely, so that they could advertise themselves. I think next year there will be a blank spot on the badge.



Any interest in a post about the tea specifically? I hate to be a "comments or no continuation" person, but I've done a lot of typing already. If there's interest, I'll type up the tea as its own post with discussion of the specific blends - if there isn't, I'll give my fingers a break!

221BCon in a single photo

The LJ-less Cindy got this one; it sums up 221BCon rather nicely:

5 Watsons, 2 Sherlocks, 1 Femmelock, Anderson, and the 11th Doctor study the scene of the crime.

221BCon Tea Party/Cara McGee's Teas

I bought so much yarn when A Tangled Skein went out of business that even my hoarding impulses went "Whoa. It's okay, you can stop now." (And indeed, I didn't buy any more yarn at Stitches.)

But I guess I need to be hoarding *something,* because I was all about the Adagio Tea at 221B - and I don't even DRINK tea! But there were sample boxes, and loose samples, and all kinds of things... but I get ahead of myself.

I've outlined the general idea of the tea before - raffles, a couple of the dealers who didn't make it into the dealer's room, games on the table, and cosplayers handing out their teas. The raffle prizes included things like crocheted chibi Sherlock and John (with magnets in their hands so they'd hold hands) and a Sherlock poster and both canon books and printed and bound fanfic. The things that got the most bids (the ones that I didn't get, despite getting a huge number of tickets; I had a LOT of competition) were the two original pieces of art. One was a watercolor of a smiling Sherlock holding a cup of tea, marked "221BCon Tea Party, 2013." The other one was a slash original by Reapersun - not graphic, very sweet - Sherlock lying on John's chest, investigating the bullet wound with his fingers.

The goodie bags all contained a sample of tea, and at our table, we passed ours around for sniffs. My sample was The Lemon Is In Play. Someone two chairs down had Ottery Kisses and with one sniff I wanted, it, my precious, waaaaaaaanted it!

How the tea worked was this - you got your finger food and you looked at the prizes and you picked a table... but you didn't get tea, you got a cup of hot water and then stood in line to pick your tea from the cosplayers. You didn't have to use the sample from your bag. I palmed my sample instead. And then later in the night, there were still teas and you could go as often as you wanted and... well, that's when the hoarding started. At the end of the night I had sample bags of Red Pants, Government Inspector, Science of Destruction, Molly, 2 Andersons (I drank one the next morning; nicely citrus but I think it will be better as sweet tea than hot tea) and 2 Mycrofts.

Cara's table sold small samples and large sample boxes. I got 2 221B samples just because I could. No Cabin Pressure samples, so I'm going to have to go to adagio.com to get that. OTTERY KISSES MUST BE MINE!

Under the cut, the smaller sample bags I got, including ingredients. ( Click to put the kettle on )

The podcast the Babes recorded included an interview with Cara, about her inspiration, her plans, and the fact that TSA keeps looking in her luggage "because it's nothing but little baggies of powder and plants."