Archive for October, 2012

Woody the Cowboy Shirt


2012
10.14

So I cheated a little on the shirt. I saw a yellow shirt on the super-super-sale rack at the department store and bought it for $6. It isn’t perfect, but after extensive internet searching I couldn’t find the yellow with red square pattern that he wears in the movies, so this was an easy fix.

 

I just sewed on extra-large buttons to make it more cartoony and match Woody’s shirt a little better…

Jessie the Cowgirl Shirt


2012
10.12

To make Rose’s Jessie the Cowgirl Shirt, I started with a plain white longsleeved shirt with a collar.  Jessie has some yellow paneling on the front and some big cuffs, so I thought it should be pretty easy to mod a thrift store find.  I sketched the shapes for the yellow fabric onto a paper grocery bag, and cut out the material.

 

I thought I was going to do fringe on her sleeves, (the white fabric above) but it just didn’t look quite right and also had the potential to be a pain in the neck, so I decided to skip it.  I also cut out some interfacing so that the cuffs would stand up a little more and look cartoony.  Then I stitched on some red cord resembling the pattern from her costume in the movie.  I freehanded it, so it isn’t perfect.  And I bought three yards of cord (usually I am a chronic overbuyer, and have two giant bins of fabric from other projects in my basement, which enabled me to only spend the four bucks on the cord to make this shirt) which was only barely enough.  I would have liked to have a little more for the cuffs, but as I usually craft well after the fabric store closes for the night, I didn’t want to break my momentum so just used what I had.

 

I really like how it turned out.  Then I sewed everything together and attached some giant buttons to complete the look.  I need to find another ring for the back, since she’s a pull toy.  (See the Woody vest post here and here.)

jessie shirt completed

 

We ordered the hat from the Disney store.  Rose is going to look awesome.  I am so excited for this set of costumes, since we will have Woody, Jessie, Buzz, Sid, The Prospector, Ken & Barbie, Zurg, Mr. Potato Head, a Pizza Planet Alien, and the Pizza Planet Delivery guy.  Should be pretty epic.  Now I just have to work on Rose’s Harry Potter robe for when we visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  She wants a quiddich robe, even though Hermione never played quiddich and Hermione is her favorite character in the book.  But I made one for Dillon last year, and so I could probably muddle through again.  Should have blogged it better, or at least kept some notes, but I’ll figure it out.

Radio Lab


2012
10.08

We got Dillon tickets to Radio Lab Live for his birthday – they were in Milwaukee last week and he was REALLY excited.  The show was at the Riverside and we met Rachel at Mo’s for dinner first, and allowed D to order both soda and dessert, which I never do (special occasion dispensation).  But the food was pretty good, and since it is a block from the theatre you can’t beat the location.

Small parental pet peeve – when the ticket says ‘doors open at 7pm’ but does not inform you when the show will actually begin.  So we got there a little after 7pm but ended up waiting in the hallway for forty minutes.  Then, they open the doors for real, we get to sit in our seats, and the usher gives us a package containing a button-cell battery and an LED.  It took D all of a minute to figure out how it worked, and we had another 20 minutes or so to play with it before the show actually started.  I know I am more uptight about this than I used to be, but it was a long day of soccer games and running around, and knowing that we actually had an extra hour to get to our seats would have been useful.

Going into it, with the show starting at 8ish, it was already a late night for the 11-year-old.  And they started the show with a hilarious (and according to Dillon, inappropriate for kids) set by Dave Foley.  It was great, but I feel like a number of people in the audience were there more for him than for Radio Lab, most of the questions were about him during the Q&A at the end of the show…  but the overall show was really wonderful.  If you get an opportunity to attend, you probably should.  It is just like the radio show/podcast, only with a visual dimension which at least in this case, really added a lot to the experience.  I am not even going to try to describe it because I know I won’t do it justice.

The local NPR affiliate had a fundraiser and sold tickets to an after party, which I heard about and asked D if he wanted to attend.  He did, and he put a lot of thought into what he was going to say when he met the hosts of Radio Lab, Jad and Robert.  He was really funny about that, how much he considered it and kind of worried about it in a way…  and when he did have the opportunity to talk with them, he got a little tongue-tied and shy.  But he said something to them and we got a picture with them, though I wasn’t really close enough to hear what happened.  He had a favorite show all ready to ask them about, and a ton of questions, but it was really noisy and crowded and I think he used up all of his assertiveness just figuring out how to get in line and speak to them.

After he got to talk to them, he didn’t want to stay at the after party to talk to any of the other performers (though I tried to get him to talk to the dancers from the really excellent dance troupe that performed in the show since that is another of his interests).  He wanted to go home.  It was after 10:30pm and he was clearly beat.  On our way out, we ran into Thao Nguyen in the hallway, and D was fabulous.  She’s a really lovely singer/songwriter who played the music for the show, and Dillon was adorable, telling her in his genuine little-kid way how much he loved her parts of the show.

Overall, it was a memorable evening and we all had a great time.

Traveling


2012
10.04

I am at the National office for my work this week in a series of seminars and meetings.  It is great to visit New York City, and to do it in a professional capacity is a very different experience than I have had before.  But I really wasn’t looking forward to this trip at all, largely because I know that Rose was going to be very upset about it.  She’s had this in her mind since I first mentioned it months ago, and has asked me for countless details as we’ve gone through the schedule a number of times.

When it came time for me to leave, Rose and my dad drove me to the airport, and she fought so hard not to cry.  It completely broke my heart to leave her.  Later that night, when I called to say I arrived (and to check the soccer scores from the games I missed that afternoon) she told me that she almost scored a goal (the goalie caught the ball) and then when we were hanging up she started crying again.

This isn’t uncommon behavior for Rose, she still doesn’t like it when I go back to work in the evening for a meeting or something, and she might tear up a little in that scenario.  I think part of it is that she loves her mom, but more might be that she’s a routine-oriented kid who likes to rehash the schedule for the next week every night as she lays down for bed.

So I miss her like crazy and can’t wait to be home…