Cosplay in America is a photography book by Ejen Chuang. In 2009, he went to six different anime conventions across the country, compiling photos for the book.

The result? The first and most extensive documentation of last year’s generation of cosplayers in America.

All characters, all races, all genders are featured in this book– and if you’re familiar with the convention scene, you would probably recognize quite a few people. The book is straightforward but its design is quite sleek and cool– Cheung took great care with all the pictures. All his photos reflect how much he admires the hobby and the people who love it.

The launch party book was hosted in Royal-T’s backroom. Quite a good crowd of photographers, onlookers and cosplayers showed up. Yes, I did decide to cosplay for the event just to get into the spirit of things, of course! Though it isn’t easy to take pictures while other people are taking yours! It is definitely a strange feeling every time I put on a costume again, but I can’t always deny my love for dressing up.

CLICK HERE for those morbidly curious about my old cosplay years!

Nonetheless, I believe the party was a success and everyone was enthusiastic about the book. Others were excited to see cosplayers featured in the book show up and I spotted a lot of autograph signing.

Tune in Tokyo (currently featured in LA Weekly’s Best of LA People 2009!)  kept the Japanese music pumping in the room. Cosplayers jumped on the dance floor to show off their para para moves (my videos of those will be uploaded soon, by the way!) and eager voices sang along with the Pokemon theme song.

Cosplay-lovers should definitely add this book to their collection. It is a good representation of– well, cosplay in America!

The book sold out at the party, but Chuang is taking more pre-orders at his website and you can find him at conventions selling copies.

Cosplay in America Website

Cosplay in America Twitter

Don’t forget to check out his website for more information.

Watch the slideshow of the photos I took at the event:

CLICK HERE to view the flickr gallery.

Enough crochet! I’ve been practising my knitting skills too. I’ve finding knitting much harder to commit to, for some reason. I think because crochet is so much faster at showing results and has fewer crazy things to remember. However, I’m determined to learn both, so here are my early stabs at knitting things.

First up, I wanted to practice my purl and knit stitch. So, since I’d lost my DS case recently it seemed like a good opportunity to make something useful. I essentially just made a big rectangle of 2 knit, 2 purl stitches and then folded it in half and sewed up the sides.

You can see the ribbing better in this one, it stretches out a lot!

Then, I wanted to go crazy and try something with two colours. But I wanted to keep it small. So I found a pattern in:

for little wrist bands that had a star or said GEEK. The star looked easier, so I went with that.

Again, it’s really just a rectangle that gets folded in half and sewn up the side. I’m not sure I did the star correctly, based on what the pattern wanted (it’s a method called intarsia and none of my books REALLY give great pictures about how it should be done, so I winged it.) Here’s the star from the back:

I sadly won’t be sporting it any time soon because I didn’t really pay attention to the size and it won’t fit over my hand. However! That’s what nieces are for, so I’ll be shipping this off to my niece hoping she likes purple as much as I do.