happy halloween!

woots, etc! it's halloween!



peel's favorite holiday!



and mine! esp since there's pumpkin carving involved.



leff made the cyberman. i threw together the vampire one and carved the gr robot. here he is all lit up!



i also made a pumpkin pi.



yes, that's a math and confectionery joke. if you want to make one of your own, there's a small tutorial here. it's really self-explanatory though except maybe for the pie crust shaping.

while i'd love to sit around and chat, there's a "halloween" marathon going on and i heart michael myers......soooo, see you friday!

halloween weekend

oh my god, tyra. despite having to cut out sizable chunks of our weekend plans due to leff's migraine (sorry, s, c&c!), we still managed to get a lot done over the halloween weekend.

for some reason, there was a lot of vampirism.





which is weird because i prefer werewolves.

i also ate (pumpkin pie), drank (pumpkin ale)



and colored pumpkins



and still had time left over to gaze at the wildlife.





on our way to thrill the world, we took in the dia de los muertos celebration at the center. this year there was a huge frida kahlo altar.



AND you were able to make your own sugar skulls!!! here are two examples that were drying.





i don't have a picture of mine yet but i gave it a john mcenroe headband.

one last photo not of sugar skulls but of hanging skeletons.




it was also a great weekend to see people in costume. there was a zombie on the monorail giving out candy.



(sadly, i didn't get a photo of his vampire counterpart, "count trackula".)

here we see a pair of ballard bunnies in their native habitat.



and one of the lovely ladies from archie mcphee in her nun's habit.



i also had a few costumes of my own. me with eyeglasses



and again as spirit gum.



which, you know, is a type of adhesive. oh, never mind.

hopefully, there will be more tricks and/or treats this week since halloween isn't until wednesday.

which is good because soon it's the downward spiral into the "family holidays" that i despise so much. ah well, at least i'll get to have thanksgiving nachos soon.

the chips. they're made of maize.

super extra saturday bonus: thrill the world

leff and i made a special trip downtown this afternoon to watch a local group of people participate in the international "thrill the world" event. (seattle group info)



while it was really pretty awesome to see so many people doing the thriller dance, it was also a tad annoying at the same time as the location of the event wasn't publicly announced. (at least not where i could find.) additionally, the information that i found after digging on their facebook page was a bit misleading (i thought that the dance was being performed flash mob style in front of the ymca, not inside of it.) so we ended up missing about half of it.

but perhaps that's my fault for assuming a flash mob instead of an organized event.

still, it was entertaining. but don't take my word for it! watch some video!

bonus saturday video: wind up skullduggery

last night i bought a glow in the dark, wind up skull. here's blurry video of it doing its thing.

gore gore girl

can you tell that i've been watching too many horror movies?



'cause i have. today one of the many that i watched was "hellbound: hellraiser ii". oh, clive barker, how i've missed you and your puzzle based hell gate. you made me think twice before picking up a rubik's cube again for fear that i might accidentally open up an inferno.

anyway, back in the real world, last night leff and i went halloween shopping. we did not buy this fox



but instead purchased this black light bulb. or, if you prefer, this ampoule noire.



also in our basket were many types of makeup because we have to go in costume to c&c's party on saturday.

i was going to go as one of the comcast housemates since that was the scariest thing that i could think of but i've since changed my mind. i'll upload photos of leff and my costumes on monday.

until then, you know, watch monsterfest. maybe we can compare notes on "puppetmaster".

scaredy crap

hello, *insert term of endearment here*. my little world has just gotten a tad bit more hectic as of late. as such, my brain is fried but not in that good kind of way that i sometimes enjoy on weekends.

*cough*

the past few days i've played with candy. here is a photo of some children of the (candy) corn.



and a semi edible interpretation of a lilo hair accessory.



i also took a photo of my favorite skull. see?



but all i really wanted to do was laugh at the pumpkins.



(please tell me that i'm not the only person who's heard that old ween song.)

you wanna' know what's really scary? sideshow bob is running for snohomish county auditor!



i would totally vote for him.

anyway, the scariest thing by far this week occurred when i ate this.



i have to tell you, despite what other people have claimed, i did not find the elvis reese's to be tasty. scary in that "what the fuck did i just eat?!? fuck me, why is there fake banana in this!?!" kind of way? yes. but tasty? no.

ok, *insert term of endearment here*, my fried brain wants me to watch this or this over and over again. they make us happy, our preciouses.

pike place market ghost tour

what do you do when you have death at your fingertips?



first you go to the can can (which is haunted) and down a corpse reviver.



(trust me, the drink's in that photos somewhere. *wow* it was potent. (and leff's salad in a glass was quite amusing!))

then you stagger up some stairs and join the pike place market ghost tour! lookit! i actually saw a ghost!



the tour is pretty great. not only are there tales of sorrow and hauntings but there is also a sizable amount of market history. for example, this ramp? it's been around since almost the beginning of the market. AND...it's haunted.



the same holds true for post alley



but not for this smurf.



now that i know the story connecting princess angeline to the sculpture near this bridge um....well, i think i'm going to avoid walking that way. you know....just to be on the safe side. (haha!)



t claims that at 6 pm every day on the inside of the same bridge



you can feel the residual anxiety of people who fled from a fire there many years ago.

since i think i've experienced enough anxiety for one lifetime, i believe i'll skip that...

this has to be the creepiest thing at pike place.



yes, heaven's gate (remember them?) has a memorial tile at the market. seriously creepy.

our tour ended at the old mortuary on first ave where, apparently, many of the soup killer's victims were taken.



sorry, i can't find any info on the soup killer for you. i do know that she slowly starved her victims (who came to her for a cure) by serving them only a very, very thin broth. does anyone know the name of the person i'm talking about?

we ended the night at the two bells which is not haunted and which i'm pretty sure is about to become my second home.

unrelated to ghosts, tours and pike place market, tonight ursula le guin is at elliot bay books. she's a rather private individual and limits her infrequent tours to the west coast so, if you enjoy her books, you might want to make it to her reading at 7:30.

13 days of halloween, a sourdough starter, lots of fake blood

oh wow, i overslept. i guess i'm just so excited about halloween that it short circuits me. or something.

anyway, here is a small pumpkin.



too small to be carved but i did draw on it. unfortunately, you can't see what i've drawn yet because i can't find our black light bulb. as soon as i manage to locate it (or buy a new one) i'll post the photo.

i'm not the only person who's a halloweiner! (*groan!* i make that joke EVERY year.) metro market/née larry's has a planty freak-for-all.



strange, no?

off topic for a moment, i'm on day four of a sourdough starter.



i'm not sure if i've done it right. it seems a bit too thick and doughy to be a proper starter. maybe when i feed it today, things'll have started to bubble.

back on topic, i love fake blood. real blood (at least seeing my own in copious amounts) makes me pass out but fake blood is a whoooole different story! i made some last night with corn syrup and food dye!



here's what it looks like before it's mixed together. kinda' resembles a creepy red eye, huh?



the reason for the fake blood? (besides making myself giggle in a morbid way) the thirteen days of halloween!! (in which i post a creepy type photo on flickr every day until the end of oct. here's the set and two examples from last year.)



mwah-haa-haa!! that's a bucket of blood, in case you were wondering. (i heart roger corman!)

this weekend promises more creepy things. like, the ghost tour at the market (or maybe the one in cap hill. i'm not sure yet.) and the zombies in freemont.

damn, but i love this time of year!

monster panda, ocd on parade

mwah-haaa-haaa!! did that panda photo scare you? no? owl



bet that this next photo will if you're vaguely ocd.



that, dear reader, is the rat's nest of embroidery thread that i've been tangling and detangling for years now. not anymore!



see what you can do with a free afternoon, a pair of scissors and some scrap cardboard? yeah, not a hell of a lot. but at least i can now see what colors i have before i start a new project.

and, yeah, that's all that i've had going on here. well, no. there was some baking (more orange brownies) and reading (the grand complication) but other than that not much.

i think there's something in the air that's making things dull. i mean, even "heroes" has been boring lately. (i'm sooo over the cheerleader storyline. kristen bell, save us!!!)