Halloween Costumes

I had to do my pre-trip Target run this morning, which was also an emergency candy run. I never get trick-or-treaters (possibly because you can't see my house from the street and I don't turn on my porch light), but I'm afraid that if I didn't have candy, that would be the one time I needed it, and I'd have had to resort to candy canes from last Christmas. I was lured while I was out by the adjacent TJ Maxx, but that worked out because they had the kind of tights I needed for much less than at Target, and they had a really cute pair of ankle boots that will be perfect wear for a steampunk convention.

In spite of the fact that I was on a Halloween candy run, I momentarily forgot what day it was and was therefore somewhat taken aback to find myself browsing the racks next to a woman dressed as a ladybug, complete with wings.

Last night, I worked at the church's community Halloween carnival. They had to move everything inside because of rain, so instead of the usual "trunk or treat" in the parking lot, they had people set up in the doorways of the Sunday school classrooms. Some of the people still went all-out in decorating their doorways, but it was a shame the police department and fire department couldn't go with their original plans because there's no way to make something indoors cooler than trick-or-treating at a fire engine or police car.

The most interesting cross-cultural costume had to be the Asian Indian little girl wearing a Native American costume, escorted by her mom in a sari. I wondered if there might have been a message in the costume, something like "I'm not that kind of Indian, you idiots," or if she just liked the costume (she might have been Pocahontas, but I didn't get a close enough look to see if it was a Disney princess thing). As large as the Indian population in this area is, and as long as the schools have been using "Native American," I doubt these kids are running into that misconception very often.

Just as there seem to be "sexy" versions of things to be costumes for women, generally done by finding a way to add a corset, the toddler girl version of costumes seems to be to add a tutu. There was a rather adorable Supergirl toddler, with a red tutu for the skirt and a little cape. There were no toddler Minions, much to my disappointment, because that seems like the perfect costume for a toddler -- the walk, language and trail of destruction are all more or less the same.

I think there were almost as many boys dressed as knights as there were girls dressed as princesses, though ninjas were also popular. There was one family where the two older boys were dressed as knights, and their infant sister was dressed as a princess (basically, a lacy nightgown and a pointy hat with a scarf hanging from the top). I think if I were doing a family theme costume like that, I'd have been tempted to dress the baby as a dragon. There was a cute baby Frankenstein's Monster, in a sleeper sort of thing with a hood that made the monster head.

I was working a craft booth, and we also had the station for getting the rub-on tattoos. The pastor teased me about running a tattoo parlor. I wasn't very good even with the rub-ons. I either got them too wet or not wet enough. I mostly volunteer for this thing because it's fun to see all the costumes, and then they usually let the volunteers take any leftover goodies from the cake walk.

And now I have to finish getting ready for this convention. I've reached the point of deleting things from the to-do list. I've edited enough of the book to be able to do a reading, so I'm not going to worry about that today. Mostly, I'll be knitting and putting together promo stuff.