Before it gets to be this weekend, I should write about last weekend.

Last Saturday morning I went back to the French conversation brunch in Dunwoody. This time I was one of the best speakers present, so I felt a warm little glow of happiness. Z was awake for this one, and I got to show him off. :)

Saturday night we went to an Addams Family themed birthday party. The request was that everyone dress as a member of the Addams Family (improv was expected), or "at least gothy." Last year I was pregnant for this event, and wasn't really in the spirit of the whole dressing up thing (yeah, imagine that!), so this year I made up for it by hauling out the spider costume I made for the Halloween parade in 2006, and going as the Widow Addams. ("How many husbands have you buried?" I was asked. "Oh, a lady never tells!") This one the prize for best costume, and now I have an entire season of Addams Family episodes on DVD to watch while I feed Z. His education is expanding!

The much-anticipated Black Widow costume was a great success, and the weather was perfect for being outside. What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than walking down a street lined with hundreds of people, all taking my picture? :D (Ok, there were other things to take pictures of, yes, but I bet I'm on a whole lot of metro Atlantans' digital cameras today.)

Chantelle's float with Boris the giant spider was lovely. We also had a huge lot of marching bugs, including a couple of butterflies, another spider on tall stilts, and a load of flies with gauzy wings and curly proboscises (and yes, that's the correct plural, I looked it up). There was a couple pulling a white-clad baby in a web-festooned wagon. I asked, "Did your little fly get caught?" and his mom replied, "He's a larva!"

The spider arms were fun for a lot of things--I spent some time conducting a marching band, and did the Macarena with the band front of a local high school band. Stalking the butterfly was fun, too. *grin* I had a grand time menacing people and giving come-hither gestures with the claws, too...small children would back away, their eyes all round, with nervous grins on their faces. A whole group of preteens wanted to high five me, and two little girls dressed as hippies shrieked, "peace! peace!" so I gave them the peace sign with two claws. I also crept up and stalked one of the cops on duty at the parade; the crowd loved this, especially when he suddenly noticed! (Luckily he had a good sense of humor.)

Aaron came out with vatavian and rslatkin to watch the fun. Lots of pictures here! The lighting is a little weird, bc they were standing in the shade and everything was backlit. I've brightened them up some with Photoshop. (And if you think five pages is a lot of pictures, let me just note that that's triaged down from over 250 shots!)

It's all skellington's fault.

I was describing the black widow costume, and he asked if it would have spider eyes. Hm, hadn't thought of eyes...back to the craft store.

So last night saw me up past midnight gluing down 20mm faceted cabochons, and then painting them red with glass paint (I couldn't find red ones).

But first, I had to run Google image searches on spider eyes, to see how they were grouped. Ew. The things I do for my art. And it's all skellington's fault. :P

Some construction pictures of the black widow.

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.