happy halloween, signed, pizza rat

so, voting is now open over at amy’s bloggers’ quilt festival. i’m specifically linking to the hand-quilted category because that’s where i entered my big paper-pieced home quilt. go check it out, maybe kick a vote my way? thanks!

since i finished the quilt, i have been taking a breather from sewing. i cut out another renfrew (i decided to make a bunch of long-sleeved versions to wear under sweaters & hoodies through the winter), but ran out of steam before i started sewing. i finally mustered up the gumption to make my halloween costume this morning. jared made costumes for himself & ramona: they are dressing up as slices of pizza. i drew up the pattern for him, but he sewed it all himself & decided how to represent the cheese & toppings. i decided to dress as a rat. specifically, pizza rat. though the only thing that makes me a pizza rat is that i am going to be accompanied by two people in pizza costumes.

i decided to intentionally make my rat costume pretty homemade-looking, so it would match jared’s & ramona’s. i could have whipped up a pretty detailed rat costume, but instead i just made a headband with some rat ears & made a stuffed rat tail to pin to the back of my pants. i wrapped the tail in pink yarn left over from my quilt to create the segments on a rat’s tail, & it came out so convincing that it’s kind of grossing me out. also worth mentioning: getting rat ears to stand up on a headband is not the easiest thing. you have to kind of curve them. just a little tip in case you ever make a headband with ears on it.

the most ridiculous part of my costume is that obviously drawing a nose & whiskers is the crucial finishing touch. & obviously just about anyone else would use eyeliner to achieve this. but i don’t wear make-up, i have never worn make-up, & therefore i don’t have any eyeliner pencils laying around! obviously i could go out & buy one for like $3, but i’m too lazy. i’m just going to use a crayola washable marker. ramona draws on herself with them all the time.

speaking of ramona, she & jared were playing soccer this morning, & she kicked the ball to him & yelled, “watch mo devastate daddy!” need i remind you that she is two? two years old & trash-talking at a first grade level! (mo is one of her nicknames.) she is really getting to an age where she says some hilarious things.

let’s see what else is going on around here…

• last weekend i went out for brunch with one of my mom friends. we went to the waffle iron, which is a new-ish waffles-only restaurant in lawrence. i am bowled over by what a genius idea this is. i couldn’t pick which waffle i wanted, so i ordered two: maple bacon (which comes with crumbled candied bacon) & pumpkin pie (the waffle arrives on a bed of drizzled toasted marshmallow, with four different dollops of pumpkin pie fillings). so delicious.
• i just found out like three days ago that carrie brownstein wrote a memoir. i mean, it just came out like three days ago, but i am shocked that i didn’t learn of its impending release sooner so i could hotly anticipate it. it’s now on my library hold queue.
• in the meantime, i am reading strangers drowning, which is non-fiction about extreme do-gooders. like people who live a subsistence existence so they can give all their money to charity. it’s pretty intense, & one of the profiles is of a guy who used to do food not bombs in boston in the late 90s. he’s an extreme animal rights activist. i keep meaning to ask jared if he knows who this guy is, as jared also did food not bombs in boston in the late 90s.
• i had a movie morning with ramona yesterday. i gave her a selection of a few kids’ halloween movies. she chose “hocus pocus”. i made popcorn & we snuggled under a blanket on the couch & watched it. but since she has barely watched any TV/videos in her life, she doesn’t really have the attention span for a whole movie, or the ability to follow a 90-minute narrative. when thora birch’s witch hat falls off like 20 minutes into the film when the witches come back to life, ramona was all set. all i heard for the rest of the day was, “her hat flopped! it flopped in the witch museum!”
• speaking of witches, you better believe i have stacy schiff’s book about the salem witch trials in my library hold queue. pretty stoked about that one, though i do think it’s a stretch to expect salem residents today to carry any guilt about the witch trials. as jared put it, “sure. ask a bunch of descendants of polish & irish immigrants who arrived in america 150 years ago to feel bad about something a bunch of english puritans did 300 years ago. that makes sense.”
• october kind of got away from me because i was so absorbed in finishing my quilt. & november always stresses me out because it turns into this weird whirlwind of getting ready for ramona’s birthday (she will be three on november 30! how did this happen?!) & thanksgiving & realizing that we’re a month away from christmas, etc.
• i’ve had bad insomnia since the miscarriage. like waking up at 4am everyday. the sleep deprivation in turn triggers migraines, so i’ve been a mess. i’m thinking about asking my doctor to prescribe a sleeping pill. a few years ago, i read about a woman who would go hog wild ordering shit off fabric.com while on ambien. that doesn’t sound too terrible! i’m still kicking myself for not stocking up on vinyl when it was on sale a few months ago.
• here is a photo of me working on the paper-pieced home quilt. i didn’t use a hoop or a frame or anything. just my lap!