At long last...

Yes, that's right, finally the pictures of the Princess Leia costume I've toiled so endlessly upon. As you can see I never did put a hood on it and I gave up on the belt (actually I never gave it a realtry, too hard) using silver ribbon in its stead. I think the general idea is still conveyed. As always, you can click on the pictures for a larger version. Darth's fourth birthday party was a success. He got SO much stuff! Lots of puzzles which was very neat. He had a blast though he only stayed in his costume for a half hour. In fact everyone ditched their costumes by 2:00. My sister's Yoda costume for her son turned out great. It was a big hit, too. It was all just sickeningly cute. Please note his authentic, light-up, Yoda lightsaber. It's tiny! Darth got his very own Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader color change lightsaber for his birthday and today he was playing with it, hitting the button to change the color and saying, "Good. Bad. Good. Bad. Good. Bad..." Happy Halloween and may the force be with you!

Updates.

The Leia Costume The Leia dress is all but finnished and relativley without incident. The first one was too smal so I just threw it on top of the remaining fabric and cut around it. All that's left to do on it is the hood and the belt. I'm not sure how to do the belt so I'll probably do it at the last minute and it will look terrible. I added leather soles to the boots. Lola Beans is wearing them now since it's cold out. The Weather It was raining so hard a little while ago that you couldn't see across the street. Weird. The Dentist When I went in yesterday he told me that what is causing my pain is one of ther following things: a) The tooth he put a major filling in really needs a root canal, this was always a possibility or b) My TMJ has been aggrivated by all the dental work (holding my mouth open super wide for so long, and then clenched tightly closed when I sleep) or c) A combination of a and b Delightful. The solution to this is to either have a root canal or get an orthotic and see if either of those help. So I get to go have a(nother) root canal today because I'll get instant results with that. Then we can talk price on an orthotic. I cannot afford this. Literally, I can't. I may have to pull my son out of preschool because his tuition is exactly the amount that the monthly dental bill is going to be after the root canal today. In Other Knitting I have started a Bubby for Darth for his birthday out of the leftover Andean Treasure from the Leia hat. I have made little or no progress on Wavy. I pulled Elizabeth I off the needles. I put the Garish Sock on stitch holders so I could use my size 3s for Bubby. I will be starting some felted boots for Darth for his birthday. He requested red ones. It gets mighty cold here when you can't afford to turn on the heat so I'm happy to oblige him.

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!

God I hate sewing. I hate everything about it. I hate cutting out patterns. I hate not being able to find the good scissors. I hate cutting out the fabric with the teeny-tiny scissors that for some reason are the only ones that can cut fabric. I hate lugging the sewing machine out of the top of the closet. I hate trying to find the bobbins. I hate winding bobbins. I hate trying to sew around a curve. I hate having to iron all the seams. I hate having to start all over because I did something stupid 15 minutes in to a three hour project. I hate sewing. I think this is because I'm not any good at it. I have no formal training. I have no innate ability. I also have a friend who is a sewing godess. She called me this evening and in the course of conversation revealed that she made a Victorian bustle skirt in one night, without a pattern. I'm sure it's perfect, or at least looks it. She probably looks even taller and thinner and more fabulous in it too. Because she's just one of those people that's good at everything and always looks fabulous. If I didn't love her, I'd hate her. But you can't hate Kaylee. She's too awesome to hate. In fact, if she were here she'd have made this whole damn Leia costume for me in a half hour without so much as a complaint. I'm alternately wistful and bitterly jealous. Especially when the first thing Red Todd Kidd asks whenever I start any project that isn't knitted is: "Did you call Kaylee?" Regardless of how valid a question it is or how poor my sewing skills are or how much I hate sewing it still bugs me that he thinks I can't do anything without her help. So what if it's totally true! He shouldn't know it and he certainly shouldn't say it! What a jerk. As you may have guessed. I drafted out my paper bag pattern for the Leia costume. Twice, as a matter of fact. The first time I didn't account for seam allowances. Yeah, I totally rule. I've gotten so far as cutting out the fabric pieces. Tomorrow comes the ever more entertaining task of ironing all the pieces and sewing them together. Sigh. I wish Kaylee was here...

Deep Breath

Okay, I give up. Elizabeth I has kicked my ass. The pattern is great and I'm sure it's beautiful but that Alpaca Cloud is just TOO thin for me. I don't have enough lace experience to use that fine a yarn. My big fat fingers can't manipulate it into anything more than a mess. I want to do it. In fact, I have a bit of a stomach ache now that I've realized that I'm not going to be able to do it without doing a few other lace projects first. I don't have time to do a couple of practice projects! Look at my side bar! AAAAAARGH! Deep breath. On the brighter side of knitting, I finished knitting the Princess Leia hat. I got the pattern from a website that has a bunch of chemo-cap patterns, the one I used is called the Amelia Earhart Aviator Cap. The pattern calls for worsted weight or DK weight yarn and size 8 needles so I just went to sport weight and used size 6 needles. It worked like a charm! The hat is very stretchy and fits my 16 month old as well as my 3 year old. For average sized kids I'd say it'd fit a 1 1/2 to a 4 year old. I've finished the buns as well. I braided the yarn instead of doing I-cord like someone had suggested. Cutting that many lengths of yarn was almost as much work as the I-cord but I managed. I constructed the buns like a braided rug so I could make sure they'd stay together. All that's left is to put them on the hat. That may prove to be the most difficult task as I have to figure out how they need to be positioned which requires putting the hat on the baby and messing with it. She doesn't like when you mess with her head. Oh yeah, other specs on the hat: I used Andean Treasure in Woods. I highly recommend this yarn for this hat as it looks beautiful and is SUPER SOFT. It took less than one skein to do the hat and about 3/4 of a skein to do the braids. I had no idea how much it was going to take so I had ordered four skeins so now I have two+ leftover skeins sitting around. Hmmmm. What to so with that beautiful alpaca? I'm thinking of being good and sweet and making two more hats like this for actual child cancer patients. The alpaca is so soft that I'm sure it'd make a good chemo cap. The only thing is that it's brown. What sick kid wants a brown hat? So now there's guilt involved. Ug. Maybe I should order some more alpaca in pretty kid-friendly colors and make hats. No, I'm broke, can't do that. Plus look at the side bar, EEK! No, don't look at the side bar, never look at the side bar! Deep breath. As you can see from the pictures I finished the hat before I finished this post. Red Todd Kidd took over the computer last night so I just saved this as a draft. As soon as I finished the hat this afternoon I knew I HAD to get the pictures up. TOO CUTE! I'm so proud of this project! Yea me!