Doctors know the secrets of the cosmos but the secrets of making a cape? Not so much. If you didn’t attend Rowley Con this year, in addition to missing out on a profusion of sweat-infused gaming, you skipped something the universe may never see again: Doctors giving stitching lessons.

Our friend Jeremy puts on a nerd-saturated gathering every spring called Rowley Con. This congregation of the play minded encompasses an entire weekend. Board games, videogames, cosplay, and anime are all included. This year I volunteered to tap into my costuming passion (i.e. obsession) to level up the powers of this assemblage.

Jason and I helped ten students, mostly children, create their own logoed superhero capes in the first Rowley Con cosplay class ever. We taught this group while costumed ourselves as the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. Our Padawans loved designing their insignias. Those emblems were comprised of everything from rainbowed unicorns to death ray robots. The rest of the procedure, unfortunately, didn’t hold their interest as much. It took about four hours in total for us to finish up all the capes, mostly because the kids’ usefulness waned drastically. It’s a good thing that sewing machines have moving parts and are susceptible to sonic suggestions.

Here’s my Oscar speech. Thanks Jason for spending many hours cutting out all of the fabric; I couldn’t have done it without you. And thanks Jeremy for hosting another fine meeting of the geeks. Without you, the unshowered masses would neither be all dressed up nor have anywhere to go. Now, instead, they can be mistaken for birds and planes in style.