Halloween 2016

 

Halloween 2016 has come and gone.  I always find it interesting how there are some holidays that linger and linger (like Christmas) and others that, while heartily celebrated, are thoroughly over once the day has passed (like Halloween).  I am sure this has something to do with All Saints Day banishing any unsavory spirits.  Nonetheless, it is an odd phenomenon.

This year my costume-making focus turned entirely to the younger two kiddos.  Solomon may be officially done dressing up (at least until Halloween parties kick in).  He was a good sport and posed with the other kids, claiming his costume was a homicidal maniac--they look just like everyone else.



 Nova is quite capable of designing and making her own costume, and she managed her pikachu costume quite nicely.  Right around the same age, Solomon sewed a cape for his fire-demon costume all by himself. Nova used leftover yellow polar fleece from last year's Ikki and Jenora costumes, old black socks, and a spare headband to make the ears.  She got a yellow sweatshirt at Goodwill and added brown felt stripes and ear holes in the hood.  Her tail was more polar fleece and felt with a stiff piece of foam board to help it keep its shape.


Ariadne wanted to be Officer Judy Hopps, the bunny cop from Zootopia. I thought surely Disney must have learned their lesson from Frozen, and there would be ready made costumes available.  I was wrong.  So--time to get creative. Target basics provided the base--navy leggings, dusty blue sweatshirt and navy sweatshirt.



I got the navy sweatshirt a size big so it would layer well with the lighter one after I'd turned it into a police vest.  The arms made the gauntlets and we used some scrap fabric for the silver wristbands.  A set of bunny ears and tail plus a police accessory set (badge, handcuffs etc) from Party City meant we were almost done.
 

Aria was adamant she have fox repellent, so we got a little pink spray bottle from the travel section at Target and I made a label for it.  For the belt, we got a black boys belt with holes down the length and strung an actual ammo pouch on it for the fox repellent and a flashlight.  We tucked the handcuffs into the belt, skipped the toy gun, and clipped the badge to her collar.  Done.

Charlotte decided on being a Hogwarts student--not a character from Harry Potter mind you--just a regular student (maybe even herself).  She took the sorting hat quiz twice, accepted its repeated declaration that she was in Hufflepuff and we went to work.  (In the end, I think Charlotte is just too nice to land in any other house).

Luckily, we already had a black cape and a cauldron from previous Halloweens.  A wand modeled on Hermione's was one of her birthday presents last year, so all we had left were the clothes underneath.  My first thought was to get a US school uniform when they were all on sale at the start of school, but it turned out that they were the wrong colors (mostly tan and navy, almost no black or grey).  Next we hit up Goodwill, which was very successful once we ventured into the women's department.  It turns out a size 2 in women's is just about the same as a girl's 8/10.  We snatched up a pleated wool skirt, a black wool cardigan and a white button down for $11.  We also found a cheap pair of black and yellow knit gloves that were a perfect Hufflepuff accessory.

 

Thinking it might be cold (what? Halloween cold in Minnesota?  Global warming is real folks!) I offered to knit a black and gold Hufflepuff scarf.  Knowing time was short, I went for the thickest yarn and biggest needles I could find.  A 1x1 rib pattern made an attractive reversible scarf with minimal effort that was a close match with scarves from the early Harry Potter movies.

Our biggest splurge for the costume was the Hufflepuff patch, which came in a set along with Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor, ordered via Amazon. I tacked the patch down on the front of the sweater instead of ironing it on, in case in case Aria wants to be a Gryffindor student in a few years. (Solomon tested into Slytherin and Nova came out a Ravenclaw, so we have a full set).



Dodge, our preschool, has a clever approach to Halloween.  They throw an evening party for preschoolers and their families the weekend before Halloween and make no mention of it during preschool itself.  Anyone who wants to come celebrate gets the full experience.  Anyone who doesn't need not worry about Halloween at all.  We've usually met up with our good friend and Dodge alum, Ivy.  The party is pot luck style with a bonfire afterward.  It finishes just as the sun sets and those who are interested can go over to the trick-or-treat trail and (very scary) haunted trail at the main area of Dodge Nature Center (there is an admission fee for this part).   Or you can call it a night and the kids never know what they're missing.

The kids split up for trick-or-treating this year.  Nova went trick-or-treating with her friend Ella in Ella's neighborhood, and the younger kids and parents went to our friends' Halloween party three blocks from our house.  The party was a bunch of our friends from college and their young kids--so, fun for parents too.  Charles and I were going to dress up as Mr and Mrs Weasley, but didn't quite pull it off (orange hair was essential and also out of stock at all the stores I checked).





We picked our pumpkins from a neighbor who runs a small one-family farmers market from their extra-large yard.  One pumpkin per kid.  We do this no earlier than the week of Halloween to be sure to have fresh pumpkins.  Thriller, the Monster Mash, and similar scary music accompanied our pumpkin carving.  This year we had a couple ghost pumpkins!

A Colorwork Cardigan for Charlotte

I have been making an effort to knit sweaters for the kids since about 2011.  Charlotte got the first one, when she was a toddler.  A friend had sort of dared/goaded me to get back into knitting, claiming I was never really going to do it--just talk about it.  My pride was hurt a little, and in a rebellious move, I abandoned all the scarves I've half hartedly started (and never finished) and went straight for sweaters.  They were what I'd always wanted to knit anyway.  I never looked back.  

 

Charlotte's most recent sweater has been my most challenging project to date.  I wanted to do colorwork, and knit in the round.  She wanted a cardigan with flowers or diamonds that was pink and purple.  This Dale of Norway baby sweater was the one pattern we found that really satisfied us both. Knit in the round with a steek and a pattern that was arguably diamond or floral, we were set.  Using larger needles and thicker yarn, I sized it up from 3/4 to a 5/6 and switched the colors, keeping dark and light the same as the original but going with purple, magenta and pink instead of red, orange and pink.  I cast on in August.  The colorwork section went so fast, I thought I'd be done by September at the latest.  I was oh so wrong.  

Getting to this point took months.  Knitting purple stockinette and only purple stockinette is really boring.

 

This was somewhere around Halloween, when costume making took over.  Followed by Christmas.  In February I was certainly going to finish (I don't even remember what happened to January)...then I broke my arm.

By the end of March all the knitting was done!

Steeking and adding the button band were much harder than I'd anticipated--by far the hardest part of the project, mostly because I chickened out about sewing the stabilizing stitches by machine.  Repairs were in order.  I will spare you the details.  By the time I had finished steeking (cutting) and adding the button band, the sleeves were too short (despite careful measuring).  Luckily sweaters that are knit top down are pretty easy to adjust.  I took out the colored edging, put the stitches back on the needle and kept going.

Here is one lengthened cuff and one original.

The 'finished' picture below just goes to show how much color can be distorted by different cameras in different lights.  The true color is much closer to the one above.  Hopefully I'll get a better shot later on.  

Setesdal Mittens

I offered to knit something for my dad for his birthday awhile back and he chose classic Setesdal mittens.  These Norwegian mittens use the same lice pattern as the better known Norwegian sweaters. The pattern is from Marcia Lewandowski's book Folk Mittens, which adapts several sweater patterns to cover hands.  I had to size them up considerably to fit his hands--they went up to Ariadne's elbow when she tried them on.

Above you see the left one inside out, and the right one as it ought to be.  I've had a lot of fun with color work lately.  It is not nearly as hard as it looks.  If you knit, try it!  Holding one piece of yarn Continental and the other English (so you have one in each hand) is very tidy and efficient.  

I got through the first mitten pretty quickly and without any mistakes.  Then I took a break to knit Charlotte a sweater--which took FOREVER.  Luckily, when I returned to knit the second mitten my gauge was the same and they came out the same size (yay!-- the first pair of mittens I knit were barely wearable, since one was three inches longer than the other).  I did make a couple of mistakes on the snowflake pattern of the second one, however.  

The first snowflake on the left is missing its white center stitch.   Not to fear, swiss darning to the rescue! 

The above is a picture of swiss darning.  Basically, I am just sewing over the offending stitch with the correct color.  This is also used when traditional color work would be impractical--like if you only wanted one red stitch in a whole row of knitting.  

Ta-da!  All fixed.