Phoenix Rising Conference Tee, 2007
It has come to my attention that I bred earworms among many of my readers yesterday. Yes, yes, Save Ginny Weasley can definitely do that to you!!
Today’s shirt is very special to me. I didn’t stencil it. I didn’t reconstruct it. It came as-is and it’s perfect.
This is my conference tee from Phoenix Rising, held in New Orleans, Louisiana in May 2007. It was the last Harry Potter conference I attended. It occurred just two months before Deathly Hallows was released. There was something palpable in the air, a very “this is it” sort of feeling. It was the last mass gathering of hard-core Harry Potter fans that I attended. It’s the conference where I met, in real life, many of my online friends. It’s was also the debut of my Harry Potter quilt, My Magical Lens.
We had crafty meet-ups.
We swapped ATC cards.
I gave away hundreds of buttons, as well as providing buttons for a number of podcasts.
We drank hurricanes and listened to Wrock. My BookCrossing group (now defuct), book-bombed all the common areas with free books. There were costumes, and characters and theorizing, and asking, repeatedly, urgently, Is Snape good or evil?
We went to a ball and got to be Cinderella, or Ginny, or Hermione…or Fawkes for a night.
This is the shirt I pull out when I’m feeling nostalgic for that all-too-short weekend. My sister and my best friend were there. There were friends from all over the world, all in the same hotel, breathing the same air. That conference was special, it hummed the feelings we were all having building up to the release of the final book, the one that would close our canon. For many of us, it was the first and the last time we got to see each other, to occupy the same space. Hopefully, very hopefully, it won’t be the last.
Yeah, a shirt really can make me feel all that.
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Ok, you are making me feel old! I’ve had to Google “earworms” and “photo bombing” because I had no clue as to what you were referring to and it was worse when I found out they weren’t obscure fantasy novel references. Sigh.
I have the benefit of having teenagers that can explain everything to me! 😉