So, this year I got crafty for my Halloween costume rather than just cobble something together in a very last minute fashion. Oh, I still did things last minute... I just MADE them this time :-)
For my first foray into simple costume making I decided to make a Brain Slug. If you don't know the reference, a Brain Slug is from Futurama. A couple episodes that contain Brain Slugs are "A Head In The Polls" and "Raging Bender." Netflix streaming has seasons 1-6 of Futurama available to see for free, so if you have a Netflix account and want to check "A Head In The Poles" out, click on the link and you will be brought to the appropriate episode. Hubbie and I have pretty much watched all of seasons 1-6 recently and we absolutely love the show.
Anyway, back to the whole crafting thing! I decided to make my slug becuase I needed a costume for the Halloween Party with my FiberKnots last Tuesday and at that point I hadn't even gotten our Halloween stuff out of storage (I was a bit behind you see). The night before we were having dinner with my parents and the idea to make this cute little crocheted fascinator popped into my head. I figured, what the heck, I can crochet THAT in a day! So, I finished him up, attached him to a headband and voila! The Brain Slug is a free pattern on Ravelry by Kerstin Batz and you can make one of these cuties for yourself by signing up for a free account and then clicking on the project link below.
For my second and actual Halloween costume I decided (given I had a whole week of creation time) to make myself a viking hat. I made some pretty substantial changes to the pattern such as using another knitter's pattern for the horns, adding a stripe of rivets up the front and down the back of the hat in gray and adding braids a la Brunhilda :-) Also, this pattern was designed for 3-6 month olds, so I followed another knitter's directions for making an adult sized hat which worked out, but really was far too big for my head and ended up making the horns more floppy than I would have liked. I just love how my braids turned out! They are probably my favoriate part of the hat. As an added bonus it is really really warm. I wore it at work for a bit yesterday and was absolutely roasting! So, if i'm brave enough to wear it on a day other than Halloween I should be very nice and toasty. The pattern for the viking hat is by Becky Veverka and is yet another free pattern on Ravelry. The link to it is below.
As for Halloween night itself, I would consider it a success. We had 15-20 trick-or-treaters in total, which I consider quite a few for us since we usually have about 5. I didn't get any photos of the roving minions who knocked on our door, but I did get some of the spooky decorating I did.
I mostly decorate the place with candles because I think they are a more classy kind of spooky and set a really nice mood. I'm always trying to find new neat Halloween candles to burn so the trick-or-treaters have something neat to look at when I open the door. In addition to the candles I also play some fun music like "Monster Mash," "Werewolves of London," "Thriller," and "This is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The music geek in me includes in some spooky classical as well with Toccata and Fugue in D minor for the organ.
The candle above is actually one I bought last year that has finally gotten interesting. I burned it last Halloween, but it wasn't long enough to burn the wax down and get the flickering of the light to come out the eyes. Apparently it needed to good nights of use before it got cool. The good news is that I'll probably be able to burn this same candle for 2-3 more years before it runs out. Talk about getting my money's worth!
So I hope everyone had a good Halloween... I certainly did! We finished out the night by watching the episode "Hush" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv series and an episode of Castle, which unfortunately was pretty spook free. For some reason they decided to show the Halloween episode last week instead even though this week's was a repeat or anything. Strange.... well, I'm off to try to avaoid eating all the candy we have left over. Seems like that trick is on me!
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