In which there is a little ode to Halloween

Uma Thurman as Medusa in The Lightening Thief. That's a costume to try.

I really love dressing up. I've always loved it. I've always chosen to host fancy dress parties at any excuse. I dressed up as a Native American at a 'Cowboy and Indian party' I had when I was eight (we were very friendly cowboys and Indians who liked climbing trees and playing pass the parcel together). And ten years later, my eighteenth was a huge costume party, and my twenty second was themed on 'things you'd find in a forest' (red riding hood, fairies, Big Bad wolf and Princess Mononoke were among the costumes), I have been to comic conventions in cosplay, but most of all I am always excited by Halloween. It's the time of year when d it is acceptable to get all dressed up, to make an effort, and to revel in it.

I thought I'd share a few Facebook snaps of me in costume from some past times at uni and such. Neither the pictures nor the costumes are all great quality, more snaps in the hallway on the way to the party! What you can see is my progression from first year university student to now: graduated three years ago and still loving to dress up.

And now? This Halloween? What's next?

A little while ago I funded a Kickstarter called Take Back Halloween. It was a response to the over-sexualisation they saw in a lot of Halloween costumes, meaning Halloween costumes for girls. There's a beautiful cartoon that illustrates this concept:




 Jillian Tamaki has an awesome webcomic at mutantmagic.com.

Personally, I quite like looking sexy and am not adverse to wanting to wear things that make me look good. What I also like though, is imagination in costume concept. The idea of the 'sexy broken doll' or the 'sexy Alice in Wonderland' is part of an idea that women always have to be conforming to a patriarchal beauty standard. It's also really boring. I want to do more like my Death outfit, more fully realised characters. Take Back Halloween offers surprising ideas for new, interesting character costumes for women. It also gives detailed advice on how to make them and where to buy the material's. It is also incredibly informative and fascinating. There are so many names on there that mean nothing to me, so many awesome women of history and legend that I've never learnt about, reminding me of just how much more there is to know. They fill in that gap by providing alongside the costume ideas, a mini-biography of that woman. So they are worth checking out, even if it is just to learn a little more about women who have been pirates and philosophers and genius nuns. The site isn't perfect and I find it lacks some of the scarier characters that might be fun to spook people with on Halloween, but it's definitely fun for ideas.

In the mean time these are my current favourites:

The Morrigan




Anne Bonny/Mary Read



Hypatia

So, do you love costumes? Do you dress up at Halloween? And if so, what are you doing this year?

In which I meet Neil Gaiman

 

I have had one of the busiest weeks ever at work and so every night I said I would do some blogging, but I just watched Criminal Minds instead... oops. It's a shame because there are so many things to blog about, so much stuff to photograph and to share.

Last weekend I watched Skyfall, did our declaration of intent to marry (it's a legal thing) and bought some new Lego. In the week I worked my socks off, made some delicious food and played lots of games. This weekend I met Neil Gaiman at his Camden residence to interview him, had a pumpkin carving party and made an Other Mother (from Coraline) pumpkin face, ate lots of party food, went to a firework display and played a Lovecaft-ian board game. So it's been a pretty good time since I last did a blog post.

And yes, you did read that right. I interview and filmed Neil Gaiman. If you know me, you know I have been pretty obsessed with him for a long time. Own most of his books, read his blog, wrote my dissertation on the Sandman - that kind of thing. I should be absolutely utterly over the moon about it -and don't get me wrong, it's a pretty darn cool experience- but I just feel like I was so awkward. It turned out he'd been up really late and was sleepy, we hadn't prepared for the interview/filming as much as he would have liked us to and I was a shy bean. It was the first of a set of films we were doing for work and I really hadn't expected Neil Gaiman to be our first. I was also incredibly nervous. This was someone I admire immensly, but in a situation that was not appropriate for fan-girlism. I fidgeted with my scarf, chewed my lip and stood around thinking 'why don't I know more stuff?'. And Neil Gaiman himself was very nice, but he did not put me at ease like Mike Carey did. I even mentioned my Mike Carey experience to him in a kind of hint that I was feeling super-nervous. I think he is just kind of intimidating, even at 11am on a Saturday without any socks on. Perhaps he doesn't intend to be, but it was defintely there, and I just felt so young and inexperienced about it all in the face of his potent Neil Gaiman-ness. I'm still pretty new in my job so I just found myself wishing I knew so much more on my topic and could have actually impressed him. I managed to slip some stuff about fairy tales and suchlike into the conversation -I was even at a talk he had done earlier in the week so getting to talk about Cupid and Psyche with Neil just for a moment was wonderful.

But funnily enough I found myself worrying far more about the work aspect -was the video good? Did we get good content? Was the camera angle right? I'm proud of myself for that. Because Neil Gaiman can have a bad impression of me if he wants, but I don't want him to have a bad impression of the organisation I work for.

The other thing is, despite meeting my hero and getting to chat to him, I had more fun just carving pumpkins with my friends and eating prawn toast in the afternoon.

I couldn't find my camera last night so I could take any pictures of the pumpkins, but I'm going to take some photos again when it is dark now I've found it.

In the mean time here are some photos of me in my second-favourite dress:

Ok, so you can see the car in the background which possibly ruins the shot but I do love my little bows poking out of the booties. :)

This is the first dress that appeared in this blog, when it wasn't even a fashion blog at all. It become one entirely because I love the dress so much and wanted to share it. Back then I was in my Origami Girl hero persona and didn't show my face. It also had awful photographs. However, my love for this dress has not abated.

In which I am late for Halloween

This is a little late Halloween post. I am kind of sad that all my favourite blogs are full of Halloween outfits but I have none. I was stuck in my rural town knowing no one and with no excuse to dress up. This is particularly strange for me as I have, for the last few years, planned my costumes months in advance and spent time building up all the different correct accessories. It’s almost cosplay. This year: nada.
However! I did do one Halloweeny thing. I ate pumpkin. I bought one giant pumpkin and made lots of food out of it. I made a scrumptious pumpkin curry, but that was eaten before there was even time for photos. Trust me though, it was good.
I then used the second half of the pumpkin to make pumpkin pie. Nom nom. Here we are, one big pie and one mini-pie for the experimentation.

The thing in the middle that now looks like the Apple logo was actually meant to be a pastry pumpkin. I will also defend myself that although these pies look kind of dark and weird this is because I used muscavado sugar which is really dark. Trust me, they were tasty.Oops. Turns out pastry carving is not my strong point.

My only other Halloween indulgence was Slytherin themed nails. I bought some ‘cracking’ polish in silver and did a green behind. It is a little brighter than in these photos, but I couldn’t get the colours accurate. I quite like the general effect and I hope it is smart enough for work in the future. I do wonder what the line is with coloured nails for work. How bright can I go? I might play around with different ways of being colourful and still smart.

Anyway, I may have missed out on the full fun of Halloween, but it is Guy Fawkes Night on Saturday and I am having fireworks on matter what!

In which I am happy about halloween

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Happy Halloween Everyone!

I realise everyone in the blogosphere (especially the fashion camp) are talking but Halloween. But I don't care! I love Halloween. I'm going to talk about it too, so there. It is a date in which everyone dresses up and even the people who normally feel they are too mature for costumes join in. It is also the date when the people who love costumes and cosplay can put that much effort into an outfit and instead of being mocked get to win prizes and be the envy of their friends. It is the time when that guy who shows up in jeans and a t-shirt saying proudly 'I came as myself' looks like an idiot. Josie Long does a lovely bit in one of her stand-ups about how people become proud and happy in a costume. So all in all I manage to find a lot of positives in a festival that essentially celebrates the monsters I aim to destroy.

I have always been an absolute sucker for dressing up. Back when I was wee in primary school we had world book day where you had to dress up as a book character. I went as Asterix, Willy Wonka and Mary Poppins.

Yes. I was a guy twice. However guys always got to have the most fun in stories. My Asterix costume was awesome! I had the hat with wings, the gourd and everything.That was when I grew to despise the people who came as 'Alice in Wonderland' year after year. Put some effort into it!

The past few years I have dressed as Death from Sandman (the dress took hours of sewing)

Sailor Jupiter

and as Sakura from Naruto. I apologise for the hastily drawn in mask. You know how it is with protecting secret identities.

This year I am going to rewear my Princess Mononoke outfit from m

y birthday party so I'm sorry for the repetition. That's why I won't bore you with more photos of that.

However, I can show you my joker inspired pumpkin carving!

Me and my awesome friend made this last night from the last pumpkin in the town:

There are so many fantastic pumpkin carvings out there (I mean things like these)

that mine pales in comparison. All the same I like my creepy jack. There may even be some pie from his remains later.

We also watched Mirrormask, a fantastic creepy children's story by Neil Gaiman. Did she? Yes I definitely mentioned Neil Gaiman again. I just can't get enough of the guy. I seriously recommend m

Mirrormask to pretty much everyone.

I realise I haven't told you the story about the pyromaniacs. I'm afraid you are going to have to wait for that. This is Halloween and so it comes first. Have a great night everyone!