Just wanted to give you a quick post.  My Etsy Shop is relaunched and I’m very excited about it!  I had the same shop a long time ago when I was making more jewelry than sewing and did list a few jewelry pieces.  I didn’t have much success, but I know it was my fault.  I really didn’t try as much as I could have.  I got a bit discouraged afterwards and kept waiting for some magical event to happen to bring the shop back.

I have a great feeling about trying this again!  I have always wanted to sell geeky items, since the first time I created an Etsy account.  For example items related to anime, sci-fi, fantasy, retro, cartoons and kawaii items.  Believe it or not Etsy has kawaii listed as a Style.  :)  I found my inspiration at a convention one year when we were in my girlfriend’s hotel room and she was getting out some makeup.  She had the cutest Totoro makeup bag!  I thought, “I would love to have some type of anime bag to carry my stuff in!  It would great for traveling, especially going to conventions.”

So there ya have it.  Please check out it out!  I also don’t mind feedback or suggestions on something you think might be cool to make (within reason of course).

Here is a link to the shop! : http://www.etsy.com/shop/LittleNeko

And you will also see the Etsy image on the main page of my website in the right sidebar.  You can also click on this image to get to my shop.

- Ja Mata!

Little Neko

If’ you haven’t seen the original OVA, also called Black Rock Shooter, you should definitely watch it first!  It’s an interesting story concept and the art in the animation is creative and beautiful.  Before I even watched it I agreed to be in the Black Rock Shooter cosplay group with my friends because the characters looked so amazing.  I’ve said it before…who doesn’t love girls with ginormous………..WEAPONS!  ;P

I had been a little concerned since I hadn’t heard anyone say anything about the new TV series (not that I really tried looking that hard.)  Then again it hasn’t been widely released on major channels for anime like CrunchyRoll or on Hulu.com, etc.  How did I get to watch it, you say?  It’s a mystery….  ;)

The story is darker in this new anime series which I’m sure most people will like.  It  is different and other characters that didn’t make an appearance in the OVA are introduced to make things interesting.  The series still stars middle school student Mato Kuroi (AKA the Black Rock Shooter) and revolves around new relationships she builds at school.  But the conflicts she and her new friends face are far from ordinary.  Her new classmate Yomi Takanashi has some major (really REALLY major) issues involving a life long friend.  Also I’m not convinced that their school guidance counselor isn’t putting something into the coffee.  Or that she’s trippin’ herself.

The twist that makes this anime more than “girls with problems at school” is the dark alternate world where their alter egos battle.  The emotional trauma the girls experience in the “real world” is reflected in the battles in the alternate world.  The show will often bounce back and forth as the tension rises.

I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone so I won’t go into too much detail.  I’ve watched the first three episodes and it’s very promising so far.  I love the anticipation to learn more about the characters we are getting introduced to in this beautiful and dark felt,  fantasy world.  They’re all thrown into some epic large scale and fast-paced battles with ridiculously wild arsenal at their will.

On a side note, I’ve got a whole new appreciation for line of figures that have been announced and released for this series.  Now that I’ve seen them engage in some amazing battles all the accessories and weapons make much more sense

And that’s my all for today!  Have a great weekend!

Ja Mata,

-Kat

We’ve returned from MTAC Omega a bit exhausted and sad to see it’s over!  This is a landmark year for MTAC or Middle Tennessee Anime Convention.  They moved to the downtown Marriott Renaissance Hotel and Convention Center and there was definitely a lot of nice differences.  We’ve been going to this convention for four years now and if you’ve ever attended before you know it was in a nice hotel, but much smaller.  I will miss the Sheraton Music City because it was wonderful having the courtyard in the middle of the hotel to use for different events and to have a place to simply get outside and hang out.  I will also miss the size of the hotel rooms and the balconies.  You could be on your courtyard balcony and still feel like you are part of the con and not missing out on the fun.

So lets talk about the pros and the cons of the new con space!  There was definitely a big crowd, but not crammed hallways like at the old hotel.  Remember all the staff yelling  at you,  ”KEEP ON MOVING!!  NO STOPPING IN THE HALLWAY!!”  Didn’t hear that once this time around.  Also the dealer’s room was huge!!  This was one of the nicest changes.  It was a real dealer’s room with tons of merchandise.  I only walked about 10 feet in the door and had already spent ……. a lot.  ;)  The same huge room also contained what they called the Exhibition Hall.  This was a bit confusing at first.  This was an area where they had other cons advertising, some more merchandise and artists tables.  They had the Kaiju Big Battle there also and an concealed Adult Merchandise section.

You don't wanna steel the nose of a Ninja Maid! It could be fatal.

Another pro was having the huge ballroom for big events like the Clamp Ball, Risque Cosplay and the Rave.  We attended the Risque Cosplay and the Rave.  I thought Risque Cosplay was a big improvement this year as well.  It was also a little weird and crazy like previous years with a bunch of dudes ending up on stage this time around.  It was hilarious. Of course MTAC wouldn’t be MTAC without something going wrong.  So imagine this: a couple goes up dressed as Kakashi and … well,… the girl was wearing one of those pajama fox suits.  I don’t know if she was suppose to be the nine tailed fox or what.  The music playing is the romantic theme from Aladdin(yeah, strange I know) and they do their little romantic dance strip tease.  We are in the back of the ballroom so we couldn’t see perfectly.  The girl unzips her fox outfit to reveal a mess/net body top.  It really seemed like she just had boobs under the netting, couldn’t tell at first…. YUP those are her boobs, with no pasties!  lol.  Of course the crowd started reacting(laughing mostly) and after a bit they cut the song and made them leave the stage.

I had a great time at the rave ONCE we actually got into the rave.  So this is a huge pro and con wrapped in one.  For some reason MTAC can never get their scheduling going on time and it was terrible for the rave.  My friends and I actually planned to go to the rave about 45 minutes late so the line would have died down a bit.  To our lovely surprise we get downstairs and follow the entire line which went down the hall way, down the steps and wrapped around the entire convention center.  The band whose show should have ended much earlier was still playing which didn’t make sense.  We had friends who paid for one day passes to MTAC  just to go to the rave.  So we weren’t too happy and went back to our rooms to have some drinks and wait a bit longer.  Went downstairs and still there was a huge line.  I was itching to dance and try doing some poi again, but was more concerned about my friends having a good time.  Luckily, we ended up getting in finally.

Trying to poi in front of the entire crowd at the MTAC Rave!

Everyone seemed to have a great time and to my pleasant surprise my friend and I ended up getting to dance on stage!  I was a bit nervous about it at first, but was really getting into it after a while.  I was self conscious because I only know two moves with the poi sticks and it’s been a while since I’ve practiced.  Plus the pants I wore to the rave tend to fall off my hips so I would have to go off stage, take a break and adjust them.   Heh..

So to sum things up & a few extra things I might have missed:

Pros:

• Big new space with air to breath
• Great rave
• Huge dealer room
• Registration was pretty painless
• Nice hotel with pool and jacuzzi
• A variety of nice food options near by
• New Guidebook app for Con was very helpful and easy to use.

Cons:

• No courtyard or balconies like the old hotel
• Time management for con events needs major improvement
• Game room could have had more games (personally I liked when they had the room darkened in the past)
• Parking was difficult
• A list of near by and affordable nom noms given at registration would be nice.  Since…
• Hotel food and drink were expensive

So after all of those words!!  I reward you with some photos!  lol.

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Thank you for visiting and see you next time!

-Neko Chan

We’re having a great time at MTAC!  Spent the day enjoying the dealer’s room, took a little dip in the pool and jacuzzi(WHOOOAH!), walking around seeing the artists table and cosplayers.  Just wanted to share with you a few photos I’ve taken!  Sorry there aren’t many.  My boyfriend took most of the photos and video which he’ll upload later.  The images will take a minute to load because I didn’t size them down.  Sorry, but I have to get ready to rave soon.  :)

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Have a great weekend!

-Little Neko

-WHOO!!  ;P

-Happy Weekend!!  ;)

Kat

Okay, I guess I’m exaggerating slightly, but only slightly. I truly was contemplating how difficult using the serger would be. An entirely different machine with FOUR spools of thread, or should I say “cones”?  WHAAAAAHT?  Yeah, seems scary enough.

So I popped in the convenient (one of two) DVD that came with the machine to watch how to start out.  I had some fabric scraps around to practice on.  Lets just say, the videos on the DVD sucked!!  I’m talkin’ Henry’s Kitchen bad!!  In fact, Henry’s Kitchen videos are better!!

Actually the Henry’s vids crack me up so he’s doing something right.  ;)  (Hopefully I still have my audience and everyone isn’t off watching more Henry’s Kitchen..  Lol.)  Anyway, the video on your actual computer screen is about 3 inches by 3 inches.  No kidding.  How the hell is anyone supposed to be able to see the tiny machine parts like that?  On top of that, the video was very old.  It looks like it was made in the 70′s, by grandmas for grandmas.  Sewing has evolved people!  It always feels like when I’m working on sewing projects, the mind set is stuck in the past and there are no new techniques.

Luckily I was able to learn something and was able to get started easily with a little cheating.  Instead of having to thread all the spools from scratch, manually, I was able to just cut the thread right where it hangs down from the thread tree and tie it with the new thread.   Then hit the presser foot and it just fed the new thread through for me.

So I eventually got the hang of serging the edges of my velveteen.  I still had round looking corners, but that’s okay.  You end up not seeing that edge anyway.  When i was almost finished with all of my pieces, I hit a snag with one of my threads breaking!  It became one of those, ready to flip the table over, tear your hair out moments. Luckily that was only going on in my head and not in reality.  ;)  After putting the DVD back in and making 5 more attempts to re-thread it my boyfriend came to my rescue.  He heard me spewing profanities from the other room and came to see if he could help.  Without knowing anything about the serger, he used his tech sense and found an amazingly helpful Youtube video.  The lady who put together the video ran into the same crud I did and wanted to help others out there.  The video was really well done, very detailed, close ups of the machine, etc.  After all of this it was about an hour & a half later.  If we would have watched the video first it probably would have been a half an hour.  I truly felt that this lady’s video saved my sanity and my time so I wanted to thank her.  I sent her a little Paypal donation with my note of thanks.  It may sound like a bit much to some, but I don’t feel that way.  There are so many people that put immense time and effort into numerous creative ventures on the internet and do it all for free.  They never get a dime & they should.  I’ve ran into so many instances of finding free helpful information or projects people work on that have much better quality and creativity than those who get paid.  The DVD that came with the serger is the perfect example.  How could they have a video like that and not update it for so long?  Now keep in mind I’ve never donated money to someone online before, but wish I could more often.

You might not have a serger or the same serger, but here is ArtistkaeSewing‘s video for reference!

So if you see someone inspiring you out there on the Internet or maybe in your community, realize they put a lot of their own time, effort, and heart into what they do.   It’s just like cosplay.  You work so hard, but just wait for the thrill and excitement of recreating a character accurately, getting that perfect photo of your costume, or just becoming a different person for a while.

Maybe you can throw a few bucks someone’s way!  Just cut back on a fast food night or two and you’ll have the money you would have given away and probably have eaten healthier to boot!

So Yoi shuumatsu o!

(Have a nice weekend!)

-Neko Chan

We finally made it to Connooga and back about..two weekends ago.  Sorry for a late report, but it took a while to wind down from it all.

It’s crazy how you work your butt off down to the last minute.  Then you are at that moment of excitement when you finally get to the con, feel like you finally have a moment to breath, ..finally get into the costume and then before you blink… you’re back home and it’s all over!  What a gyp right??  No no no..  I did have a good time, but I wish it wasn’t over so quickly.

Before I talk about our maid costumes I have to complain this time around about Connooga itself.  If you’ve read any of my con posts before you know I don’t attend many panels cause I’m usually too busy being in costume mode & socializing.  So I can’t speak for the panels held, but I do want to talk about what was available to us in terms of late night activities.   Well… pretty much nothing!  I’ve gone to Connooga for 4 years now and there is always random late night activities available for the con goers.  There was no rave, no drum circle, no panels going on that we could find.  My girlfriends did My Little Pony Raver costumes and Saturday night we took the shuttle over to the Centennial Theater to see if there was any rave going on or anything at all.  All we found were a few people chatting, quietly, in the hallway.  So we gave up and came back to the room parties which were not all that hopin’ either.  My boyfriend said there was apparently a pirate party that shut down really early(10:30pm), which no one even knew the party existed.  We made the loop around Building 3 numerous times hoping for some excitement only to see less and less people out until we were some of the only people left wandering the halls.  Now granted we are night owls, but it was very quiet compared to the past.

So that’s it for my bitchin’.  I love coming to Connooga each year and mostly because I get to see some of my most favorite people in the world, I love the historic hotel, I enjoy that it is a smaller con and therefore feels more relaxed.  I thought the dealer room was a nice improvement this year and YES… gentlemen who had the one anime both, please come back next year!!  :)  There were way too many people bringing dogs into the dealer room.  I saw a few intact male dogs in there and you are just asking for trouble bringing dogs like that together.  People will do what they do and think what they want to think I guess.  As long as your dog isn’t chewing on my leg I guess we’re okay.

So onto the costumes!!  I’ve been wanting to do a maid cosplay for a while now.  It’s easy to fall in love with the outfit after seeing so many of my favorite characters being dressed in them as many anime shows tend to do.  In many anime, they take the female characters whether they are serious, bubbly, shy, etc. and will put them into maid costumes.  It seems to be a thing!  But it’s often a light hearted, sexy or funny scene and a fun way to play with the characters of a anime.

Love Kuroneko!! > - - <

I once again grabbed my Costume Sensei and she jumped into the project with me (to my delight)!!  Right now, I want to get this post up so I will put up a detailed description of the costume itself  on the My Cosplay page soon.  Here’s a quick sneak peak!

Here are links to the photos that are up right now on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramenempire/sets/72157629471543835/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30905440@N06/sets/72157629436354989/with/6776934874/

The first link is photos my boyfriend took and I edited.  Some were edited to look like vintage postcards for the Choo Choo.  The second link is photos taken by the very talented Jimmy B. at Angry Dog Studios!  Thanks to both of you for being our photographers!  ;)

Good night,

-Neko Chan

Funimation has “You Should Be Watching…” but I’m going one deeper and asking you “Why The Hell Aren’t You Watching?” a promising new or a personal favorite anime series.

Why the hell aren’t you watching Inu X Boku SS? Maybe you don’t know what it is or what it’s about. Maybe you saw some stills from it and figured it was another tsundere anime where a bitchy main female character pummels a timid loser of a man for 13 episodes until they somehow fall in love. If you were ready to dismiss it, look again. This show is a comedy-action-romance package that kicks ass on several levels.

The show follows Ririchiyo Shirakiin, a young girl from a rich family, who moves into an exclusive high security living complex called Maison de Ayakashi (or Ayakashi Kan). She wants to live and be alone, but immediately she is greeted by Soushi Miketsukami, a Secret Service agent that has been assigned to guard her. He is ready to serve her every need like a dog (the “Inu” in Inu X Boku), while she is reluctant to have anyone be near her, especially the very forward Soushi. After a break-in at the complex that leads to Soushi defending Ririchiyo, she decides to accept him as her bodyguard. Oh, by the way, all the residents and bodyguards are descended from ancient Japanese monsters. So you can imagine what kind of powers we’re dealing with here.

There’s the very vague outline of what the premise is (trying to keep it spoiler-free as possible). Now, why the hell should you watch this show?

The best thing about Inu X Boku SS (Secret Service if you haven’t figured it out) is the wide cast of characters. Each one is so unique that you won’t run into the problem of trying to remember who is who.

While Ririchiyo is serious and withdrawn, her bodyguard Soushi is overly pleasant and ready to do anything for anyone. His attitude immediately reminds me of Sebastian from Black Butler, but with about 1000x more emotion. I’m sure female anime fans will immediately fall for him…

You’ve got Ririchiyo’s childhood friend Renshou, a laid-back older male with a tattooed face that transforms into a paper demon. His lacksidaisical attitude runs counter to Ririchiyo, so their interactions add a nice dose of comedy.

Nobara is Renshou’s bodyguard, but she spends most of her time trying to seduce all of the other females around her. So there’s plenty of fan service to fulfill your needs (if you’re into that kind of thing you friggin’ pervert.)

Karuta is a spaced out agent that is constantly eating…and transforms into a huge-ass epic skeleton demon. While her job is being an SS agent, she goes to the same school as Ririchiyo.

Also going to the same school is Banri (Watanuki). He acts like a delinquent, but in reality he’s a nice guy that turns into a tanuki. That’s right, if you still trying to find a reason to watch this show, here it is. The tanuki scenes are some of the most hilarious, especially when you realize this kid wants to be a badass, but usually gets stomped by everyone around him.

Much of that harrassment comes from his bodyguard Zange Natsume. He’s an effeminate SS agent that walks around with rabbit ears on his head. He picks on Banri and is constantly fawning over Soushi.

So that’s most of the main characters, but even the side characters that work at the complex are hilarious. The three maids consist of a cross-dresser, an out-of-work divorced businessman, and Yui from K-on! No, seriously…look at this maid:

Now look at Yui.

Oh, and they’re voiced by the same actress. It’s like they just replaced her guitar with a maid costume and ginormous boobs.

So the cast is awesome…and the people that do their voices are some pretty popular names. I’ve already mentioned “Yui”, but you’ve got Karuta voiced by Kana Hanazawa (Kobato, Kuroneko from Ireimo), Nobara voiced by Yoko Hikasa (Mio from K-on!), and Soushi voiced by Yuichi Nakamura (Tomoya from Clannad, Gray from Fairy Tail). Who isn’t doing a voice in this show?

Oh, and so far (up to episode 7), every ending theme is unique and animated with a different character. That’s effort people.

Beyond all that, the story is really holding my interest. Funny situations come up in every episode. The action scenes are less frequent, but this only after the first 7 episodes. The budding potential romances aren’t too heavy-handed, and are always tempered with some humor to keep it from getting too serious.

If you’re looking for negatives I can think of two. The main character Rurichiyo tends to flashback a little bit too much, but it never stops the flow of the program. Also, we haven’t been forced to watch a full recap episode yet (thank God).

Number two, Rurichiyo sighs and makes “mmph” sounds constantly. I know that this is all coming from the anime’s director, so I can’t blame the voice actress. But damn, just because she is surprised or deep in thought, you don’t have to have her make a sound every time her facial expression changes. It’s a very, very, minor gripe, and it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the show at all.

So…why the hell aren’t you watching Inu X Boku SS? It’s free to watch on CrunchyRoll right now (free with ads, no ads on paying viewers). You have no excuse, unless you hate everything except Gundams stabbing space monsters. I’m not a very picky anime viewer, but I still would recommend any fan watch this show for a few episodes.

My baby had an early Valentines Day because there was no possible way for me to put together his present after a work day.  Being off today, I planned to make him a bento lunch in his new Zojirushi Classic Bento Box!!  Despite all the time I had today I haven’t had much free time lately since I’m trying to finish a costume before this weekend.  So I quit sewing at 11pm last night to do bento research.  From all the researching, late into the night, I ended up waking up late and had to rush around shopping and then putting it all together.  Yes…I was freaking out!  lol.  Don’t do what I did if you decide to make bento for the first time ever.  It takes some planning when it comes to figuring out what you will make, how you will make it and what you will need.

I purchased the Bento from Amazon a few weeks ago and also some veggies cutters & egg molds.  So that was fine, but looked up too many articles on techniques last night and was a bit overwhelmed with all that I wanted to do.  There is so many different things you could do!  Some how I managed to get most of it put together nicely.  My eggs did not turn out!   Grrrr..hard boiled eggs.  I followed the directions, but when I went to peel them big chunks of egg came off with the shell.  We’ll give it a go later!

So I just wanted to share some pictures of my pretty bento!  It’s not the fanciest work of art, but I’m proud of it!  I would love to do a follow up post on some of the techniques I used and some lessons learned from my experience.  :)  The very kawaii & pretty bentos you see on the internet are called kyaraben bentos and are not the most commonly made bentos.  Most bentos are meant to be used as a healthy way of eating with the right ingredients and portion control.  I still wanted to do a cute bento since it was for Valentine’s Day and it was my first one ever.  Plus, IT’S FUN!

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Hope you have a happy Valentines Day whether it be to spend time with a loved one or to chill out by yourself watching a good movie or shooting some dudes up on your favorite video game!  ;)

Ja Mata!

-Little Neko

I’ve finished my round with the muslin for my most recent costume!  Now finally moving on to the real fabric!  That always feels nice.  :)  Because every time you make a costume and do a toile first, you’re actually making two costumes every time.  Pain in the ass… I know, but worth it!

I don’t want to jinx myself, but working with this pattern was pretty smooth going.  Meaning I was able to go from step to step without any trouble for the most part.  I still don’t understand why when i pulled the string on the top of the skirt to make the gathers, the gathers where very tight on the back side of the skirt but not in the front.  I would have rather had it even all the way around instead of just on the back side.  But that is how the gathers fit into the pattern.  Ehh.  Maybe the mystery will be solved when I do it again.  :)

This will be debuted at Connooga this year!  I’m excited to head back to the Choo Choo hotel and enjoy the atmosphere of the con.   It’s a small con with a nice relaxed atmosphere.  Plus I’m excited to see some of my good friends!

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Now that you can see some more finished photos, you should be able to tell what it is, no?  I’ve given some hints on Facebook and asked a few times for people to guess what costume I’m making, but I received only one response.  Maybe I need to offer a cookie prize or something.  ;)

Night, night,

-Neko