this is halloween...

(an image from Nightmare before Christmas, which we're planning to see in 3-D this week! woot!)

This is one of the busiest--and most fun--times of year for me now, ever since my son was born 4 years ago on Guy Fawkes day (Nov. 5, if you're wondering. google Guy Fawkes if you don't know British history too. quite fascinating). There was a large crop of children born around the same time, due to an unusually snowy winter and God's unfathomable providence. So now, there are parties to plan, presents to find, party favors and invitations to think about, halloween candy and decorations to take care of, along with my yearly self-inflicted torture of making a kick-ass costume for my son.
This year's costume is, as you may have guessed, a shark. Making something that swims horizontally and has one long appendage into something vertical to fit two appendages, are some of the many challenges of the costume. Much agonizing, boatloads of hot glue, and late nights half-asleep problem-solving in my head have gone into this thing, and luckily it has paid off.

It was a near thing, however. The first version of the head weighed a tremendous amount, since I used a 5-gallon bucket plus more cardboard and a little metal bucket for the armature. I would try it on A, and he'd like it for a second and then get upset because it was hot and too heavy. Plus, the fleece I used to cover the head was such a light grey, and the head was so pointy, A looked like he was going to join David Duke at a white power event. Or perhaps a Great White power event...horrors. Anyway.
I cut off the heaviest bits, stuffed them with plastic bags instead, and then glued the whole thing back together. Cardboard and pink insulation foam make the dorsal fin, tail fin, and back support so the fin doesn't flop around. Some fishing line holds the tail up high enough to keep from scraping the ground too much, and mucho velcro attaches the grey head to the white underbelly, which is a large sweatshirt with cuts for pectoral fins (aka arms). I used dark grey and black paint to make the gills, darker details etc. The teeth are fun foam, folded in half and cut (to have two rows of teeth), and a piece of the bucket forms the lower jaw, covered in leftover sweatshirt material. WAY too much effort, but it's so much fun.The real confirmation of success is that A spent an afternoon playing with his shark head, laying it down on the sofa and covering it with his blankie. Yay! Today, he paraded around D's office in the costume, as they invite the kids to trick-or-treat there every year. It's a nice event, and some of the guys dress up in costumes. It is a game company, after all. I'm always curious whether A will be terrified of the guy in skeleton makeup and the "haunted office," or whether he will want to keep re-visiting those areas out of fascination and exhilirating fear. He wound up loving the skeleton man, and running flat-out from the troll in the haunted office, without any candy.

As for me, I was a Bag-a-rina for the annual Halloween party at D's cousin's. Everything was made of grocery bags and target bags. I crocheted the bags into a chain stitch, so they would be secure and I could use them again (I'm making yarn from bags, which is very time-consuming and kindof pointless until I can figure out something to make with the yarn). Also I braided several bags for a decorative waistband and bun-cover. Then I cut the bottom off a target bag to make a tank top, and tied bag bits to the shoulders. In the photo, my "low-cut" bustline had become much lower, slowly turning itself into a vest. And it's sweaty as the dickens. All the same, not bad for a technically free costume.
I'll update with a picture of A in the completed costume as soon as I can get one. It's almost as hard as getting a picture of a real shark...