happy hallowe'en!

what a disappointment! hardly anyone knocked on our door. i was bummed about not having time to do more decorating, but now i'm glad i didn't bother. any only one trick-or-treater recognized corpse bride. to her credit, she was shocked and appalled to hear that no one else got it.

i did it!

finished the secret knitted xmas present! whee. of course i've got a bunch more knitting to do for xmas, but so far so good.

also, spent a good chunk of the afternoon working on my corpse bride outfit. finished the dress, and took some pics along the way, which i'll post tomorrow. all done except the wig! there's my job for tomorrow i guess...

i need one of these...

custom leather thimble. between quilting and sewing velcro on the turtle, my fingertips are perforated! and the design of this is so simple. will add it to the never-ending to do list, i guess...

argh

of course the night before he needs his costume for school would be the night mr sleeps-like-a-log can't sleep, necessitating numerous visits from mummy and time spent sitting quietly in his room in the dark where i couldn't get any sewing done.

anyway, it's minus the booties, and the velcro needs reinforcing, and i had a clever plan for earholes, but it's done for now!



note to self: buy a thimble. hmm, maybe that could go in my xmas stocking.

c'est l'hallowe'en!

so i finally got around to starting h's turtle costume tonight. i was laying out the pattern pieces on the fabric and tg was hovering around making silly comments to which i would grunt in reply and then he said "look there's a cockroach on the counter!" and i turned around and instead of a bug it was actually a beautifully wrapped present! he had been trying to get me to turn around for 15 minutes but i was too caught up in what i was doing.

so i open it, and what is inside? a completely gorgeous pair of kai tailor's shears! and some extra bonus scissors besides! they cut like a dream, and the timing is perfect because i was just about to hack into the polar fleece not to mention all of the xmas pjs i intend to make and i ended up buying the elvis fabric to make a shirt for harry. so, lots of cutting in my future. triple yay.

i have now cut out all the pieces for h's costume (i wonder if i can cut through 4 layers of felt at once? yes!!) as well as a mad men-inspired dress for me. i think i'll cut out a skirt too before i go to bed.

and just for fun, here are a couple of snaps of my vv boutique haul for the corpse bride costume:

whoa

being somewhat dippy, i tend to believe in a kind of fate. if something is really difficult, maybe it's because you shouldn't be doing it. if things fall nicely into place, on the other hand...

i swung by value village on the way home today, to see if they happened to have a few things i would need if i want to be corpse bride for hallowe'en - a light blue formal gown, some sort of lace doily thing to dress up the bodice, off-white bride-y-but-wearable shoes, a twig wreath for my hair, etc.

i found all of these things, and a cute 1950s vintage cotton dress. score. also went to zellers and bought some cheap bernat yarn in two shades of blue for a wig, and facepaint. whee! i can pull this off in a week (considering i will spend all weekend making h's snapping turtle first), right? of course i can!

can't resist...

giveaway for a super-cute dress! straight from a decade i prefer to this one! check out in the heyday for a chance at a free fleur dress. lovely!

temptation

i always get the right ideas at the wrong times. i still haven't started the snapping turtle costume yet for little h (and now he wants it to be a skeleton snapping turtle) and we were talking about decorating the house (by planting skeleton seeds and growing trees with skeletons hanging from them - he's just under 4) when i had this idea - maybe i could get a couple of refrigerator boxes and cut them into tree shapes and we could have a scary enchanted forest, just like in corpse bride. and i could make a skeleton puppy, just like in the movie, and a couple of skeleton people (i even have a proper bowler hat for one to wear) and i could wear a tattered gown like the corpse bride herself.








this would have been a great idea if i had thought of it last month instead of worrying about xmas!

did i ever

post a pic of the ujein sweater? i don't think i did... it's hard to wear because the wool is too warm for summer, and the backlessness is too breezy for other seasons. anyway i wore it today (forecast: "it's 9 degrees now, but it will be sunny and 24 degrees later") so here is a pic of me in the bathroom at work:



so on the way home from work today, i swung by fabricland to get fabric for the bambino's snapping turtle hallowe'en costume. i also saw this awesome elvis fabric:



but i resisted, since xmas is fast approaching and i'm going to make pyjamas not just for the bamibno this year, but for the whole family!



the red print is for the kiddo, the light print is for me, and i got a coordinating solid dark red for tg. and a bunch of dark green piping and buttons the same for all of us so we'll all coordinate without being too obnoxiously matchy-matchy. it will still be obnoxiously cuddly cute though.

you would think

that considering i have been out of commission, i would be posting more. oopsie!

anyway i finished my ladylike sweater sweater during a mad men marathon that sadly ended with season two as those are all the episodes i could find online. not fair! anyway i thought it was a good match as i could totally see peggy wearing the sweater. don't you think?



now i just have to finish the mauve one, which is mainly a problem of staying awake long enough.



no pics of my other work-in-progress, since it's a gift, but you can see it on ravelry.

whee!

ok so i had decided one of the things i want to get the bambino for xmas is a toboggan, and i was looking around online and didn't see any that were just right (that may be because it is barely october, but whatever). then i thought "maybe i can find project plans for my dream sled and build it." and then after looking around for those, it finally occurred to me what the ideal dream sled would look like:



won't be working on this till my foot is better, but stay tuned for details!