HooDude's new board shorts !

Current Mood : Flighty.

Well, wish us luck tomorrow. Poor Venus-diesel stranded Beloved Hubby at school, and we were lucky he had time to catch the two-hour-long bus ride home. And that Dearest Son stayed home this week – the bus doesn’t go near his grandparents’ home. A couple of his Airsoft friends will pick him up tomorrow, and troubleshoot whatever’s bugging her, hopefully getting her back on the road. I’m trying not to worry about it.

But I’m antsy and fidgety, and it’s probably not just due to our vehicle issues. It was time to boil up some hambone-flavored dry beans – they’d been soaking since late Wednesday night, so it was use ‘em or lose ‘em time – one of my favorite meals, and believe me when I say I ate heartily. With the usual results. Talk about keeping your mind off your troubles…

So I really needed distraction. Sure wasn’t getting it from Ghoulfriends Forever, that new MH e-book I snagged on sale. I’m starting to think that $1.99 was a bit much. I’m on Chapter 5, and I can tell ya, if I enjoyed it, I’d be done with it by now. So far, Venus, Robecca, and Rochelle don’t have characterizations, they have annoying mannerisms. Rochelle quotes rules and regs when she has nothing else to say, Robecca keeps popping up with ‘Heavens to Betsy !’ and ‘Bless my buttons !’ which is nearly as useless and annoying as subparagraphs of hall behavior recitations, and Venus is simply obnoxiously shoving her ‘Save the Planet !’ schtick into everything she does, which is really bad writing since most of it is spouting off ‘facts’ repeatedly proven false five years ago. I can already see the plot coming – it’s moving like a glacier – and the few appearances of main, older characters is as yawn-inspiring as 1987 tax codes. I have no real interest in finishing the book, because I’m shifting between annoyance and boredom. No way to write a narrative, seriously. BTW, it’s not enough to have a crowd of friends, the main ghouls have to have a sorority of their very own, so they can recruit and reject members ? Ick. Does every book for kids have to have a mean-girl clique in it or something ?

My bored eyes caught HooDude. Hmm. I’d been meaning to whip up a simple pattern for some pants for him – sorry, but he looks kinda nude in just a jacket, and I’d like for him to have a wardrobe, too – so with blissful ignorance, I grabbed him, some recycled paper, my MH pencil and ruler, the measuring tape, some new blue from the scrap fabric box, and sat down to work.

May I repeat that I have no idea what I’m doing ? The time I tried to make a pants pattern for the ghouls was a repeated failure that left me so dispirited, I switched to buying patterns and haven’t really stopped. I can add to existing patterns, like I did during ‘Boyfiends Week’ last year, but until I knocked off that dress pattern, I figured I didn’t have the knowledge or skills for creating my own patterns, and it was no crime to pay others that did.

But I doubt there’s a big call for HooDude hip wear, so if I wanted this, it was up to me, skills or no. A few measurements showed I couldn’t just use a pattern for the guy pants, his waist is over an inch bigger and his inseam is nearly a half-inch shorter. His crotch curve (aka : rise) was shaped differently. And the legs would have to be a lot wider to get past his thicker feet. So I did a lot more measuring and some tracing, and studied simple pants patterns for other dolls. It’s possible I simply over-thought my last efforts, a mistake I wasn’t gonna repeat today. I went with the very first drawing I made, cutting it from pants to shorts for initial testing. And that’s what you see on The Dude today. I didn’t hem ‘em, and there’s no back closure in, but the fit is very close to what I wanted. A bit too tight in the waistband, which I’ve already altered, but I’m pretty pleased with it.

Back to the drawing board – I think I spend more time there than anywhere else !