Get thee to Little Five Points this Saturday afternoon for the Halloween parade! And look for me marching with the giant "Spider and the Fly" float built by the amazingly creative Chantelle of the Grateful Gluttons. (I'm not actually on the float, just walking with it.)

I'll be dressed as a black widow spider. Yes, another costume. No pictures yet, bc Aaron wasn't around when I tried the whole thing on, but it's looking to be really cool! The costume base is a black satin miniskirt, spiderweb tights, and this top, with a red felt hourglass shape pinned to the stomach.

The spider arms are made of three pair of black spandex tights, attached to a sort of flat backpack, so I can get it on and off easily. The top arms are attached to black armbands (the cut-off tops of the boots I bought for the White Witch costume--I feel so thrifty!) with hooks and eyes sewn in to attach to the shirt sleeves. The whole idea was that I didn't want to damage the actual sleeves of my top, so the armbands take the weight and pull of the hooks and eyes, and I can slide them on and off over the shirt's sleeves in case I want to de-spider. (After the Unseelie Faerie and the Elizerator, I've learned my lesson about ease of wear!) My real hands will have the claw gloves from the Unseelie Faerie costume.

The niftiest part, though, is the headgear: I got a pillbox hat on eBay, mainly for wear with my 1950s dress, so I could dance in it (unlike the cartwheel hat I originally wore with it), but it turned out to work with this outfit as well. Combined with a voluminous veil made of black netting and spiderweb lace, it makes for a slightly 30s noir-ish look. Hair will be up in chopsticks, both to keep it out of the way, and because the chopsticks give the veil some shape.

Red eye makeup and fangs will also be present, but you can't really see much of my face through the veil. I'm working on a way to add some big spider eyes, maybe to the veil itself.