The bad news – The two weeks leading up to working (visiting family out of town and trying to prepare) and my first week of work have been super busy, leaving little time to do anything on the computer, especially to blog. Insert praise for iPhone here, which has allowed me some semblance of an online life at random moments.
But let’s jump back in to the now…Halloween!
Heather was set on being Darth Vader and Todd was not consistently set on any costume. Add in everything else going on for the last month, and it was a perfect recipe for store bought costumes. There was a little drama with Heather’s costume (the first store we visited didn’t have her size) and Todd talked about a lot of different costumes up on that big wall of pictures. Over the two weeks we talked about it we heard: Chewbacca, Obi-wan, Gumby, Dinosaur, Darth Vader, Luke, Woody and probably 10 others that I’m forgetting. On our last visit to the party store, with two days to go until his class party, he chose Buzz Lightyear.
I considered some sewn hemming for the sleeves and pantlegs that were too long, but after attempting to alter the too big Darth Vader costume that we bought originally and making myself crazy trying to get the sewing machine to play nicely with the stretchy knitted fabric…I decided that shoes would keep long pantlegs from being tripped on and sleeves hanging over knuckles wasn’t a problem. Besides, given the number of times that last year’s Woody costume has been worn, I expect this year’s costumes to see some more action during playtime, so there is no reason to hem them down too much.
I did knit Heather a Darth Vader “helmet” hat. (I never got a good picture of it when she was wearing it, unfortunately.) Masks aren’t allowed at school and I didn’t think it would stay on during Trick or Treat. The baby/toddler version of the Darth costume I’ve seen has a cute little hat helmet, so that was my inspiration. I used the Hallowig pattern from Knitty as my starting point, adding some different shaping to be more like Darth’s helmet. A crochet edging adding some stabilization to help the edges flare and I decreased in a more pointed fashion.
The hat was a little too warm for the school parties (the parties always warm, even without costumes!), but it was perfect for Trick or Treat, especially given the teeming rain that was falling all evening. Todd was able to wear a wool hat as well, under his Buzz helmet. In hindsight, a new pair of gloves for him in white would have been better than his mittens from last year for the costume, but who wants to knit white gloves for a dirt-loving 2 year old? Both kids wore Nana-made wool sweaters underneath their stretchy costumes and it wasn’t as cold as Saturday when it snowed (!), so everyone was warm and happy despite the weather. And from a” mom of little kids” point-of-view, the rain kept the hoards of big kids down, which was nice.
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