Current Mood : Happily exhausted
Whew, what a day. I'm glad it went so well, but I'm also kinda glad Halloween's over. I was really bad and put off Dearest Son's costume off until today, and as usual, drove m'self crazy with it.
One of the gifts of autism - and Asperger's Syndrome, which he has - is an unwavering devotion to one often obscure-to-the-rest-of-your-age-group thing. And the devotion is absolute...until something else catches his eye. Sometimes we've been lucky, and it's been a timely, mainstream thing, like Cars or Thomas the Tank Engine. Most of the time, though, it's been stuff like Hammy the Hamster - popular, but still not widely known. Lately, he's been devoted to Tom and Jerry, the classic cartoon cat-and-mouse series. Not that obscure, but try finding a Tom costume from Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes at Mal-Wart ! Can't be done. But that's one of the great things about mammas who sew and daddies that paint. We can create almost anything !
Still, a 'Tom' cat in a tuxedo was a bit of a challenge. Started out, as usual, with a good, new pair of sweats - pants and shirt - in a good-enough version of Tom grey. We lucked out yesterday, and found a black karate 'gi' jacket at the thrift store, perfect size. It'd make a great tuxedo coat. I'd decided to sew two red hemmed 'vest' shapes to a white t-shirt for a waistcoat, and find a big gold button from my hoard. He already had a bow tie, but it would have been easy to make.
The cat ears were a bit of a challenge, since I couldn't find my pipe cleaners. I'd planned on those supporting the grey t-shirt scavenged ear triangles from within. Luckily, I had a tube of stiff (darn near hard !) pellon interfacing from sewing projects and embroidery efforts, and I knew where that was. Right under my feet in the Sewing / Computer arena ! Swapped the t-shirt fabric for some shiny grey fabric, and sewed it to the pellon triangles, then sewed the triangles to elastic for a headband. A simple white-capped tube of the same fabric - no interfacing - made a decent Tom tail, tacked to the gi jacket. He loved it ! And that's all that mattered. Beloved Hubby was happy to take him on the rounds, I had to stay home, since I couldn't walk as far as my guys could, and I didn't want to reign in the fun too early.
I'm glad I stayed - he proudly fetched a big bag of candy home ! It was a colander-filling haul ! He's limiting himself to just a few pieces tonight, saying he wants it to last a long time. He was so happy, and so was Beloved. That made my night !
Although going for a shorter walk with Beloved an hour later was nice ! Two houses a block away were awesomely decorated, and after hearing my guys both talk about them, I wanted to see. So we got the air tank ready, and off we went ! Whoever howls about Halloween being a money-grab didn't see our neighborhood, that's fer sure. Numerous houses were festive, without being bank-breaking. One house had a big TV aimed to the porch, detailing a UFO landing. The homeowners would jump out of the hedges, dressed as aliens, for a neat scare ! Of course, that house was so popular, they didn't spent much time in the greenery - and it was fun for the kids to get candy from aliens. They kept the theme with weird candy, too.
So I had a nice Halloween. Hope yours was thrilling, without being scary !
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