Follow the White Rabbit

Sometimes 100 pounds of candy just isn’t enough… At least not in my neighborhood, on my favorite costume holiday of the year – Halloween. When I say there were hoards of children descending on our tea party, I am quite serious. The parents descended on and disappeared two large to-go containers of Starbucks coffee, though they kept spilling it thanks to he cup holder thing that is attached. And then it was 8pm. We were out of everything.

We had a White Rabbit (who ended up handing out much of that 100 pounds of candy as we all said, “follow the white rabbit” and pointed at her), a March Hare, Mad Hatter, Caterpillar, White Queen and me, in my slightly steampunk, could have been an adult Alice if my costume had been black, white, gray and blue instead of green, costume.

Costume-wise, we had the lazy (our Hatter wore leather hat and leather trench – only lazy because he made the hat last year), the simply but effective (our White Rabbit wore a red vest, white shirt, gloves, pants and knit hat with ears) and the clever (our Caterpillar had wings and many stripped legs made from thigh-high striped socks). My shoe heel fix was a failure. By the end of the evening I had only one tiny piece of heel left! My Eton Jacket turned out really well (additional images forthcoming); the striped turn-back cuffs and bias binding really made it.

Lessons learned?

1. I can’t fix everything myself. I need to visit the cobbler to have my heel repaired (or create a stacked leather heel from some really thick leather – wait, didn’t I just say I can’t do everything myself?!?)
2. Figure out how to make the coffee container less cumbersome to avoid spillage,. Buy more coffee and creamer.
3. Find out of Costco will drop-ship candy to my house. Will 150 pounds be enough? Where does it end?

Next year’s theme? That’s right – Mad Science! I can’t wait for next year!

 

(White Rabbit image John Tenniel’s original illustration, via Alice-in-Wonderland.net. Mad Scientist image via Dian Kress’ blog.)

 

Steampunk Eton Jacket

It’s almost Halloween – Yipee!!!!!

This year we are having a Steampunk Mad Hatter Tea Party in my front yard, complete with Hatter, Hare, tea, croquet, coffee for adults, and revolting amounts of candy for the kids.

I decided to recycle the 2009 Steampunk costume I wore in New Orleans to be a sort of adult Alice, but the costume needed some adjustments/repairs. So far I’ve fixed my smooshed top hat and repaired the heel of my granny boots. Last time around I wore a bolero jacket that looks a lot like an Eton Jacket. I’ve had it for years and it fits me just fine when worn with a long sleeve shirt. Unfortunately I didn’t remember this when I made the sleeveless top for my costume and the jacket just feels too big without sleeves inside. I thought I was going to jerry-rig a fix by adding a collar, folding back part of the front and hiding it within the structure of said collar, but that ended up sounding like way too much effort with a not terribly satisfactory result. So a new jacket it is!

Bodice of Eton Jacket, in progress

Since I don’t have a lot of time I have to go with an existing pattern

 

“Dogs and Cats Living Together… Mass Hysteria!” My Favorite Holiday!

Steampunk Mad Hatter

You may be shocked to learn that Halloween is the Rogues’ favorite holiday. No fussing with presents, time spent at your family’s traditional religious establishment, no tree killing or egg coloring, just “fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes… The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!” * And more people wearing costumes than you’ll find outside a Ren Faire or Living History town. I love it!

So what are my Halloween preferences? Personally, I find it wrong to wear my ren faire costume for Halloween. Many faire people do. The same for my medieval attire (though I’m not part of SCA – it just seems wrong, not enough like a costume). My love of all things pirate makes it less wrong display my pirate self, but then again, that’s just another part of me. I want a costume for Halloween!

Steampunk White Rabbit

Last year I may have accidentally started a Halloween tradition in my front yard – a Mad Hatter Tea Party – a Steampunk one, to be exact.

 

Rogues’ Gallery

These are the images from our new promo cards. They look almost collectible, don’t they?

  

 

All images by The Rogues of Thread (bythebodkin.wordpress.com) and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, unless specifically attributed elsewhere.