Click on any of the thumbnails to see the full picture.

 Wow! Free Comic Book Day was a blast this year!  I just want everyone who I took pictures of to know that I am trying really hard to get your pictures up on this blog. But over 400 pictures were taken on Saturday so please have patience with me as I sort through all of them and make sure I have at least one good picture of everyone.  I should have the next post with all the pictures by the end of this week.  Until then, I hope you enjoy this look back at the great cosplay characters that volunteer their time to make your day more fun.

Yesterday was my day for errands.  Although it is September, here in Glendale the temperatures are still hovering around 104 degrees. A couple of everyday practices, such as keeping the blinds closed to keep the house cooler and getting out early before it got too hot, collided with my intended fashion sense. Having used the headboard lamp in order to see the grocery ads in my bedroom, I was temporarily blinded when I flipped the light off and grabbed my shoes. I wandered the house for a few minutes while I gathered up my essentials for my outing and headed out the door. 

I had to make a couple of quick stops, so I decided to have my prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy first. The drug store was busier than I had normally encountered it because it was now lunchtime. After turning my prescription over to the pharmacy technician, I decided to cruise the store and price some items.  Eventually I wandered my way out to my car and drove to the next stop.  As I was leaving, I noticed a young man looking at me with a slight smile on his face.

The bank inside the local grocery store was where I was going next.  As I was hopping out of the car, a flash of color caught my eye.  I looked down to notice that I was wearing one each of the same shoe in different colors.  I was horrified that I was in a public place and people could see my mistake.  What would people think? That I am an idiot, someone eccentric trying to make a fashion statement or a person who really doesn’t care what she looks like?  My first thought was that maybe I should hurry home and change into the correct shoes.  I decided to abandon my ego and just laugh at my error whether anyone noticed me or not.

The bank teller was alone so when I approached her, I mentioned how I was laughing at myself because I had left the house with two different shoes on.  I tried to explain that my bedroom was dark and I hadn’t noticed the difference in colors.  She laughed and tried to be sympathetic by asking, “One blue and one black?”

My response was “Not even close, one black one red.”

What a humbling experience this was.

Two days later, I noticed a couple of my indoor cats hovering around the back end of the arcadia door. I shooed the cats away to see about ten flies flitting around on the inside of the glass door.  I grabbed the can of insect spray and blasted them.  The cats had now found something else to grab their attention in the nearby window.  As I pulled the blinds away, there were several more flies.  What is going on here?  Where are all these flies coming from?  There were lots of flies outside, but how are they getting into the house?  With this many flies in the house, I would think I would have seen one buzz by me.

When my son, Todd, came home later that day, I told him the creepy story of the flies before I went to lie down.  My head never hit the pillow when I heard, “Hey Mom, come here and see this!” As I rounded the corner, I could see my son over by the arcadia door.  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  There were about twenty more flies crawling on the glass.  As the last fly succumbed to the insect spray, I cautiously moved towards the living room window.  The wooden shutters were closed with a couple of slats open.  A scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds crept into my mind as I slowly opened the shutters.  I slammed the shutters closed and ran for the bug spray.  When the toxic fumes cleared, I had annihilated over thirty flies just in the living room.  We estimated the body count was somewhere around sixty plus altogether.

So are flies lucky?  Well obviously not for them, but the next day I received the papers in the mail telling me the loan that I had tried for over fours years to refinance was now paid in full.  Somehow through all the goofs and delays, I managed a five percent interest rate.  My monthly mortgage payment has almost been cut in half.  Along with the papers was a big check I wasn’t expecting.  A week later, I got another big check from the escrow account.  Where did all the flies come from?  We never found out and they never came back.  Be careful when you ask God for a sign, you just might get one (or sixty).

In September 1977, there was a book published called “The Amityville Horror.” I wanted to read this book, but with daily care of a young child, that seemed impossible so I passed on buying it. By 1981, my oldest son was two years old and I was pregnant with the second one. I found myself often tired and not wanting to get out of bed much, but it was around the holidays so I eventually needed to go shopping for Christmas items.  It was now a couple of years since the book was published in paperback and it was no longer prevalent on the store shelves, so I had quite forgotten about it. As I was standing in line at the cash register, I caught a glimpse of the book on a bottom shelf and decided to buy it.

George and Kathy Lutz moved into the house in Amityville on December 23, 1975.  This was close to the time I had actually bought the book…just a coincidence perhaps.

With my son playing quietly beside me in the bed, I was able to find some time to read.  As I was making my way through the chapters, I thought about the unusual stuff that had happened to us in our own house.  I kept thinking that if this Amityville story was true, then these people went through some weird experiences. One chapter talked about the house being plagued by flies despite the winter weather; another, about the Lutz’s five year old daughter who developed an imaginary friend, a demonic pig-like creature with glowing red eyes; and then, the priest who blessed the house would run a high fever whenever he would think about the house.

Naturally, these incidences made for an interesting story, but they didn’t really make an impression on me until the crisp December morning when I walked into my kitchen and found dozens of flies congregating on the inside patio doors.  It freaked me out to say the least as I managed to swat to death the last fly, only to come back an hour later to more flies.  A week or so later, my two year old told me he saw a pig looking in his bedroom window. I never talked about this book to my young son.  By now, all I could think about were the strange demonic happenings in the Amityville house.  I began to run a fever and got very sick with flu-like symptoms.  This lasted about 24 hours and no one else in the house got sick.  I wasn’t sure at this point whether I wanted to finish reading the book, but continued on.

One of the last lines of the book read, “On January 14, 1976 George and Kathy Lutz, with their three children and their dog Harry, left 112 Ocean Avenue leaving most of their possessions behind.” As I closed the book, I realized that the day’s date was January 14, 1982.

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY

www.freecomicbookday.com

AZspidey and friends are really trying to get some mileage out of their Halloween costumes this year.

This dedicated group of over-aged trick-or-treaters spent more time getting dressed than they actually were at the gig.   The spectators (young and old) seemed to have really gotten a kick out of the whole thing!

These clowns are pretty creepy, so I could see how they would work in a haunted attraction. Although I have been known to make a clown costume, it was never as scary as a killer clown.       

The closest I have come to a spooky costume was when I made Frank the Rabbit from the Donnie Darko movie (another cult classic) for AZspidey’s friend, Ron.

Of course the part I was sewing was the fluffy bunny body, which if worn separately from the mask, couldn’t scare a bunch of carrots (Hey, I live in a world around animators; of course carrots can be afraid. They can even scream!).  The mask was purchased online, but was not painted.  AZspidey completed the final touches on it for that special ‘don’t even think you’re gonna to make it home’ look.

How could Ron see (or pee) you may ask?  Let’s just say somehow he found a way!  See you in an another universe, Frank!

For the sheath, David painted the upper half gold to match the sword handle.  I drew a pattern on some vinyl for the cover, cut it and sewed it with the sewing machine.  After sliding it over the plastic sheath, I didn’t quite like the way it looked so I decided to whip stitch along the edge by hand.  I finished up the top of the scabbard with another strip of black lacing.  Now all we needed was a belt or something to hold the sheath so it could be worn.  At Goodwill, I found this great old leather belt that I thought would be perfect for a pirate because it was laced together in sections.  This gave me an opportunity to be able to expand its length while still keeping the integrity of the belt intact.  With a scrap piece of leather, I created a frog and attatched it to the belt and the scabbard with the same lacing technique.  In the end, I think we managed a pretty decent accessory for David’s costume.

•  What tools are needed?
•  What type of thread works best ( I know some threads come apart in the wash)?
•  How do you know when to hand stitch something versus sewing with a sewing machine?
•  How much could it cost if I were to try to make a costume from home?

What tools are needed?

Well this really depends on what your project is.  Are you making a hat, shoes, a garment, props that go with your costume, or all of those things?  I hope as I cover each of the projects I have on my plate, I will be able to give you specifically what tools will be needed.  If you really want to tackle costuming, a sewing machine is essential.  Singer has some nice inexpensive sewing machines.  I tend to like brands that I know have been around for awhile.  Do some research on the internet of various brands and styles and look for feedback from customers.  You might be able to find a sewing machine at a thrift store, but buyer beware.  Just because they run when you plug them in doesn’t necessarily mean they will sew.  I had a friend who picked up a working sewing machine at a thrift store for what he thought was a reasonable price only to find that the timing was off.  To have it serviced plus what he paid at the thrift store, cost him more than if he had bought it new. If your mom used to sew, maybe she would be willing to let you have her machine or at least use it.  Don’t forget to oil it or have it oiled if it hasn’t been used lately.  I suggest if you want to buy a new machine that you don’t get one with a lot of fancy stitches.  I have a few different stitches on my machine, but basically I need straight stitch (backwards and forwards) and zigzag for stretch fabrics/edge finishing.

Where to start? Part II  What type of thread works best?  Upcoming post!

Okay, so I thought about this all day yesterday (even as I was mowing the lawn). What would be a good title for this category?  I wanted this to be like a daily journal where I could exercise my creative writing skills and basically be about nothing in particular.  The thought that I latched onto for most of the day was to call the category “Kitty Litter.” Sounds strange, I know, but when you live in a household with 8-9 cats, thoughts of kitty litter never quite leave your mind (or your feet, the bed… or anywhere else).  Anyway, my reasoning was a little skewed, but it was so perfect that this is where I could deposit all of the “crap” that didn’t quite fit into Kitchen Costuming.  The rest of the day was spent on trying to come up with a cute acronym for CRAP. As my mind worked overtime with things like “Cookster’s Ranting Against Passivity” or “Central Repository About Props,” I gave myself a massive headache (of course, that could have been from the huge dust bowl I funneled into the air mowing the lawn earlier). At one point, I considered doing a blog like the new “Daily Wag” on Martha Stewart’s website written by her two French Bulldogs.  I have lots of cats that would love to get in on the action and let their voices be heard.  But then I remembered how opinionated they all were.  I can see them fighting over who gets to write for the day, and I would get bumped to subscriber of this blog.  CRAP would now stand for “Cats Rule Amongst People” and the only content would be cats in tiny Harley Davidson garb or pirate costumes.

I decided the category should be called Blog Shorts.