no pictures cuz it’s sort of dim in here but i

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no pictures cuz it’s sort of dim in here but i just sewed the second-tiniest bat costume ever and it is adorable. 

this is a triumph, because her nana bought her a costume of Elsa from Frozen and had her all worked-up about wearing it and when I asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween, I quote, the phrase came out of Farmbaby’s tiny mouth, “I’m not gonna be some old bat!” and I guaran-fucking-tee that was directly planted there by Nana, that is not how Farmbaby talks. (If she really didn’t want to be a bat she’d tell us, absolutely, she doesn’t give a shit about what people want, but she wouldn’t use a phrase like that.)

(Nana being Farmsister’s mother-in-law.)

And I know it boils down to a class difference, I absolutely do. For someone who struggled growing up, and bringing up her children, in the manner that Nana did, the shame was for a child to be stuck with a homemade costume. The status symbol was to have a store-bought costume.

For us, growing up, it was the opposite. A homemade costume meant you had a mother who could afford not to work, and make you nice things. To have a storebought costume was… acceptable, but kind of a shame, because it meant your mother worked, and didn’t have time to sew for you. I mean, it wasn’t like you’d be teased for it– among the kids, it was absolutely cool as long as you hadn’t accidentally come in the same costume as someone cooler than you– but the other moms definitely were kind of like, oh, well then. I see how it is.

In terms of cash on hand at any given time, we weren’t any better-off, but it was a more genteel, chosen kind of poverty. (We sure as fuck couldn’t afford storebought Halloween costumes, but it was because our mother was at home with us and not earning money.) And I *absolutely* do know that in her heart, Nana means well: she’s ashamed at the thought of her grandchild having to wear some dumb old homemade costume because her parents couldn’t afford to buy her something nice at Wal-Mart. 

But the kind of upshot about our upbringing is that now we’re the sort of people who hate buying crap at the store, and who express ourselves through creative crafting type things, and such. My sister is actively horrified at the idea of her child going as Yet Another Fucking Elsa. And she works full-time, and can’t sew, but. I’m here, and I can.

[Dude kind of sidestepped this, growing up; his mom worked, but as a tailor, so she made the most insanely bomb-ass costumes for her kids and there was never a question of it.]

Anyway. Last year Farmbaby went as a bat and loved it. She had this little hoodie with ears and tiny wings on it, that someone gave her, and so her grandma (my mother) added larger organza wings, and she blissfully paraded around in it. 

Coincidentally Middle-Little realized she’d bought a black hoodie in 4T back when one of the nephews was that size, and we uncovered it during her Great Apartment Cleansing Event last month, and so I took it, and found the rest of the organza that was here leftover from last year. I also had some black cotton twill, and coincidentally some sew-in interfacing that was among the effects of an estate sale some friend-of-a-friend passed along, along with a fantastic modern sewing machine, barely-used, computerized, 100 stitches and 2 alphabets and such, amazing. [Who gets rid of a great machine like that? Clearly, some old lady who’d loved her antique straight-stitch machine but it broke so someone well-meaning got her a very fancy new one that she literally used once, given the state of the thing. It’s nicer than my Singer!]

So I just knocked out a new larger bat costume like the one she had last year, and the hoodie fits, and I figured out how to get the ears on there so they stand up I think, and I sewed little rib things out of the computerized embroidery stitches on this sewing machine to be the bat-wing fingers, and it’s good to go. She has totally forgotten about the Elsa dress, and has completely forgotten the opinion she was coached by Nana to have about the bat costume. (We did offer her like, five other possibilities, any of which I’d’ve been delighted to make, and probably could have done without buying anything. Though, she asked for a ghost, and bizarrely I don’t seem to have a spare white sheet lying around. I also don’t fancy her chances of keeping that over her face, so it’s not likely to actually get worn. She was pretty excited about the bat, though, and happily tried on the hoodie to confirm the size. [She’s 5T below because she’s so tall, but 4T is perfect for the top half.])

So anyway. Pictures tomorrow, maybe, or we’ll have to wait.

happylilprompts: elodieunderglass: brittajj26: mrrrl: delladilly: do you ever see someone in...

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happylilprompts:

elodieunderglass:

brittajj26:

mrrrl:

delladilly:

do you ever see someone in some quiet intimate moment and suddenly love them so desperately you feel like you’re dying

#like when they pass a mirror and make a face and mess with their hair a little #or when you hear someone singing in their car with the windows rolled up as they drive past you #i don’t know how to express this i just. people are people and it makes me so sad and filled up sometimes

I love seeing grown humans setting about little creative tasks out of boredom and then looking quietly pleased with themselves, like maybe a middle-aged woman on her train home from work manages to make a tower out of empty coffee creamers and gazes at it proudly for a few seconds.

I love seeing other people make the overblown OOPS I FORGOT SOMETHING performance for no-one that most of us do when we have to turn around in the middle of the pavement.

I love seeing stony-faced people in queues unable to contain a smile when a baby looking over its mother’s shoulder in front of them locks eyes and does that astonished stare.

- when someone is standing in line and they don’t quite dance to the music playing, but you can SEE their head bop and them mouthing the words

- when someone thinks no one’s paying attention and they sing-talk themselves thru a task

- when they laugh or try to hide a laugh when looking at their phone

- when someone does the thing where they enter another space (such as a supermarket aisle) striding with total purpose, then suddenly forget what they’re doing/looking for, and stop there looking blank for a millisecond while they reboot. 

- when people are looking for scissors, in their home or in a store, and they make the scissors gesture with their non-dominant hand as an aid to remind them what they’re doing.

- when automatic social interactions glitch, like when you tell a waiter that you hope he enjoys his food too, or tell the stranger on the phone that you love them. 

- the hand gesture people make when they’re thinking at their computer, not typing, and their elbow rests on the table, and they feel the edge of their fingernail with their thumb. This is such a lovely little gesture and to my knowledge I have never seen it in fiction. You’d think it would come up all the time in fic.

- when you’re sharing an experience with a complete stranger (like watching a seagull throw up in public, or waiting for a late train) and you make eye contact, and some comment to each other, and then you guys are, like, ALLIES now. Like you would willingly ride to war to save them. You can’t make eye contact again, but you are very aware of them. 

- just evidence of other people’s rich, baffling and complex inner lives.

This… I want to see more of this in writing. They’re such giving details, I love it.

Lately Farmbaby’s favorite color has, very

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Lately Farmbaby’s favorite color has, very consistently, been yellow. 

(We spent the entire day at Rhinebeck looking for 1) yellow yarn that was 2) machine-washable and 3) in sufficient quantity [2 skeins] for a project for Grandma to knit for her. We went to every single vendor, and struck out entirely. Either it wasn’t machine washable, there was only one skein left, or it didn’t come in yellow. The entire festival! But I digress.)

At dinner she was eating carrots, and deliberating over what was her least favorite color. After she proclaimed orange to be both her most and least favorite color, it came out that she didn’t actually understand what “least favorite” meant. So her mother explained, “If you had every color and could pick as many as you liked, which one would be the very last one you picked?”

“Oh,” she said, clearly understanding, and gave it some thought. After a little while, she said, “Mom, I don’t think you’ll like to hear this, buuuut…” 

“What,” her mother prompted. 

“My least favorite color is pink,” she said.

“Why wouldn’t I want to hear that?” her mother asked, puzzled. 

Farmbaby reached out and touched her mother’s bare forearm. “Because you’re pink,” she said. 

Photo post, since Instagram doesn’t send over

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Photo post, since Instagram doesn’t send over multiple photos when I post them there. The Cutest Bat, first sitting on Grandpa’s (my dad’s) lap at his birthday brunch (we had a blueberry muffin with a candle in it, he’ll be 73 tomorrow and I couldn’t stay for Sunday night dinner), then posing on the Monument in the middle of the farmer’s market.

And then, just a random Troy street-front scene as I walked to my car to drive back to Buffalo, because the light was pretty and it’s a pretty street. (That’s 3rd St., I believe, across from the Atrium, featuring Kennedy Hall, center.) 

I’m pretty proud of those ears, I’ve never made anything like that before and didn’t look up a pattern or directions or anything. Two layers of black cotton twill from my stash, and a layer of sew-in interfacing; made a sandwich with the interfacing on one outside, then flipped it inside-out so the interfacing was in the middle, and pinched one side and sewed little pleats so the whole thing cupped toward the center, then hand-sewed it into little pinched slots on the hood so that the weight of the hood on her head holds the ears up. They do flop a bit if the hood falls loosely, but mostly they work!