Hallo It Be Thy Ween

Goodbye October. Goodbye. The nor'easter took you out in fiery-lion fashion, and ushered in a little lamb of November. Oh, she's sweet and lemony today except for the shaded corner of the deck where, on the edge of the rooftop, the storm's evaporating snowy surplus hits the wood planks in a fury. We were powerless at the end—had, even, to temporarily move to Mother's place when temperatures dropped suddenly during the weekend's electrical outage. Monday morning I returned home to a chugging furnace and well lit kitchen. We were lucky, others still remain powerless.

Mother's is always a treat. She has Enrico Caruso 33 1/3 rpm vinyls stored in their original accordion case. But the children... well the children had to plug laptops and printers into real live sizzling outlets and crank out end-of-quarter schoolwork. Kids don't write longhand any longer, you know. Teachers prefer the typed word, which is an impossible endeavor in a candlelit house.  So we clanked the night away at Mother's. 

(I'll be back to Mother's for Caruso.)

I imagined that the kids would be too old for trick-or-treating this year, but there's the candy. There's the neighborhood where Tedy Bruschi lives (with real candy bars!), there's peer pressure and teen-All-Hallows-Eve worshippers who are in no way ready or willing to give up the quest. There's being on the streets, in the dark, void of parental oversight. 

Doors will be slammed in your faces! I said.

Ha, Mom, they love us!, the monsters replied.

Who loves you? I don't want to see six-foot tall teens at my door. Don't come to my door!

Besides, they hadn't costumes—I refused to buy them, refused to give in to the high commercialism of holidays and hallow days. Refused to believe that my little Lulu was too old for handmade costumes!

(And this is no way to depreciate the value of my two-year-old sewing machine.)

Mama, observed Lu, this isn't about store-bought costumes or me growing up. It's about you wanting to make another oversized ugly doll or an ice cream cone, isn't it?

The Ice Cream Cone 2010

The Ugly Doll 2009

Actually, my favorite was the floppy-eared hound dog with her litter. Come on, it's tradition, Lu.

All right, well maybe it is more about me and the machine and wizardry. But look, I do have to make my Singer Confidence pay for itself.

Last night, the monsters managed to piece together suitable outfits for the spooky occasion. Both came home with giant sacks of goodies. No one slammed doors in faces.

After school today, Lu announced that she'd reached her maximum fill of chocolate for the day (she'd snuck handfuls into her backpack), so I promised that I'd remind her of the same throughout the evening, that perhaps we should take the bonbon trough out of her room. Don't worry, Mom, she responded. It's NOT a temptation! It's under my bed and it's not like I'm going to get up in the middle of the night to eat a candy bar.

... Not a temptation.

... Not eating candy bars in the middle of the night.

Of course not. Mama shouldn't worry in the least.

I'm packing up the glow pumpkins, Draculas and rubber bats. Halloween has closed for another year, but its remnant confections shall remind us of the night for some time to come. At least they'd better.

Maybe it's time to start sewing up something for Christmas. (Poor, poor forgotten Thanksgiving.)

Lu & Max -- Halloween 2008

Bottom Lines

I picked up my daughter's school skirts today at our local tailor. I had the option of having the uniform company hem them, but decided I could get it done cheaper at our Downtown Tailor, and preferred to give him the business. Besides, I'd save on the shipping costs; but, it turns out that perhaps I should have accepted Donnelly's offer to hem the skirts. Perhaps, at fifteen dollars a pop, I should have done it myself. Yes, fifteen dollars per skirt. Per skirt, are you sure? I asked.

Yessa, we-a sure-a, the tailor said in his thick Italian accent.


I had thought about hemming the skirts myself. And I had been thinking about reintroducing my sewing machine—the very same Singer Confidence machine that I bought last October when my daughter announced that she wanted to be an Ugly Doll for Halloween—after a minor sabbatical, to thread and fabric.



Up until last year's Halloween, most of the costumes that I had made for my children had been fairly simple, fashioned with hand stitching, velcro, hot glue, or double-sided tape. Really, it's not such a big deal hand stitching fluffy brown dog ears onto the hood of a grey sweatshirt. I rationed that making costumes was less expensive (seriously?) and more unique than purchasing an outfit from a catalog; vastly more satisfying then seeing another trick-or-treater wearing the same costume smeared all over with chocolate.


Only, last October I realized that a costume based on those quirky but adorable Ugly Dolls was going to be a bit of an undertaking. And would also require a bit of an investment. So I did a quick cost-benefit analysis—thinking of all the things I could easily whip up, darn, hem and rework, and all the money I'd save doing it myself—and when the Little One shopped around for just the right felt fabric and notions, I grabbed the perfect sewing machine, promising myself that I'd use it more than once. So many projects, so little time... it'll be a snap with the Confidence... and it'll practically pay for itself.


And what fun we had making this costume!

And later reincarnating it as a giant stuffed Ugly Doll...

Did I say minor sabbatical? Well, sort of. The machine has been sitting idle on a basement bookshelf for only nine short months. Where does the time go?

Come to think of it, I'm not really sure that I did consider the sewing machine when I dropped the skirts off at the Downtown Tailor (the one with the uptown prices). I'm not sure if I even contemplated that rudimentary cost-benefit analysis. I vaguely remember that I wanted the skirts hemmed quickly, and skillfully, and at the right price.


Fifteen dollars?

Does this hem look perfectly straight to you?

Are you sure?


Because I must have complete Confidence that I'm getting my money's worth; that the bottom of those skirt lines are absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent faultless. That those cost-benefit calculations of mine are right on. And that I shouldn't have, under any circumstance, done it myself. Anyhow, I couldn't possibly have hemmed them as well as a professional, right?


Cost. Benefit.


Net result:  The hems have to be, simply must be, cheaper than last year's Halloween costume; the level edges of the skirts—pure perfection. And, after I dust off the Singer Confidence, this year's costumes will be a real steal.