Category: Halloween

Dancing on the edge

11/3/2024

This craftiest time of year is laced with pain

When you’ve recently lost a loved one, certain annual occasions are rough: Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries. For me, it’s Halloween. That’s when my brother was a full-steam-ahead creative force and crafty collaborator.
Right about now I’m missing his super-charged energy. I need the distraction from the dead-heat US election campaign. Whenever I’m in near fetal position watching the news of the latest misogynist spew, I wish he would walk through the front door and shatter that chatter with his usual greeting, Hey. What’s goin’ on?

My brother has been my biggest backer, my major motivator. His material explorations, unlike my mincing attempts, were bold. He took keen notice of my flirtations with trendy crafty products over the years and turned them up to 11, sponge-painting, glue-gunning, Mod-Podging and needle-felting the ridiculous and the outsized. One Halloween, in the days (weeks?) before, he and his two sons papier-maché’d two gigantic skulls that he illuminated and suspended at their front door to create all the charm of Colonel Kurtz’ camp in Apocalypse Now. He did it for the kids — all the kids.

He designed craft beer labels and websites, hand-built playhouses and kitchen cabinetry from scratch and baked up a scale-model gingerbread house of his own house. He decorated birthday cakes with panache and had a penchant for dinner plating. His Instagram account is (still) full of irreverent, self-deprecating and appreciative posts of various craftiness.

Nothing I made was too weird for his liking. Sometimes our unsolicited viewpoints clashed, which I liked because there was good takeaway there. He wasn’t shy about serving up some meaty feedback about my work-in-progress but scoffed at the notion that he was an artist himself. He often ran his well-rendered hand-drawn or Illustrator sketches by me. I would tell him that they were overly complex. He would give me the screw-you look and eventually edit his design.

My brother never saw himself as an artist.

Two years ago, as summer turned to Fall he was couch-bound and riding waves of excruciating pain. I would text him stoopid videos of us synchro-dancing at a house party or bloopers from our teenage nephews’ film projects.

A couple of days before that Halloween my brother was on a fentanyl drip in the palliative care ward when the younger teenage son showed up for his dad’s creative input, in an almost-finished Semi-Pro costume. He spent the evening bedside, drawing the logo with felt pens on the singlet fashioned from an old T-shirt. Meanwhile our niece, 12, had asked for my assistance in transforming her into a strip of bacon. I received the required hand-rendering of her idea and figured it out. She cut and sewed up red and brown strips of felt to a body-height casing of white felt. It was as hasty as her drawing. I took a photo and sent it to my brother.

The day before Halloween he critiqued it. “Needs some ‘distressed’ coloring around the edges,” he texted from his hospital bed. “Maybe some of that bacon scent spray that I always see in dollar stores… what about a sash or banner that says ‘Maple Leaf’ on it?” But basic bacon was all I could muster and when I forwarded him our sister’s Halloween-night reveal photo of three girls in character of butcher, pig and bacon he texted back: “You nailed it!” Liar. But I lived for his praise.

Three days before he left this world on Christmas Day I texted him a video of our crotch-rock front-porch lip-sync from Halloween the year before.

He replied with a heart emoji.

Leader of the pack

The horror... the horror...

10/22/2024

There's still time to re-think toxic and tasteless Halloween decor

I am harnessing both my irrational and quite-reasonable fears of two looming nail-biter elections — one provincial within days and that bigger scary one with the global impact — and funnelling them into Halloween. And why not? It’s the most craftiest time of the year with all the sparkle and none of the ho-ho-horrible Christmas-y treacle, that one night a year when you can lure tots to your home with candy without being branded a sicko.

True, Halloween’s not until the end of the month but who knows what kind of collective anxiety will be gripping us by then, what with the Divided States of America election just days after?
Instead, I am focusing in, drawing on my craftivist background to encourage some acts of resistance — at least when it comes to Halloween decor.

This is the time to resist that 12-foot-tall glowing Grim Reaper in Home Depot’s seasonal section. Just walk on by. Or allowing that pointy finger to drop on the ‘Place my order’ button for other petroleum-derived, environmentally-hazardous novelty crap for home delivery, made under who-knows-what kind of labour conditions. Because how can you be sure it wasn’t made in another one of those prison-factories, like that Oregon woman discovered when she opened her fake-tombstones kit to find a hand-written plea for help from a forced-labourer in China?

Also on the resist list: fake spiderwebs. The sight of dead, dangling hummingbirds, bats and moths caught up in fake spiderwebs is the kind of horror you don’t want in your display. I know; the description from the Amazon seller is enticing: “The white spider web looks like a real spider web, making your indoors and outdoors look even more creepy.” (More creepy than usual?) But is it worth all the dead fauna?

Facebook post image via snopes.com

And yes, the Amazon ad’s “office” option (as shown below) could inspire a fun prank on that useless middle manager at your workplace but is it worth all the effort? These are important considerations.

Amazon seller images

Craft tip: You want fake spider webs? Just rip the hell out of some dollar-store cotton cheesecloth. You can fold it all up after and use it next year.

My bias for homemade over purchased is clear but some minimum standards in skill and creativity are required. Just searching upcycle and halloween will take the googler to some sad and creepy places. For example, daubing black dots on Keurig-type capsules is not a spooky craft. I smelled a rat so I scanned the text: “Don’t feel guilty about enjoying those extra cups of coffee in the morning!” reads this Michigan-based retailer’s blog post. A-ha! Obviously this is all part of the Kuerig Industrial Complex. No, zero-effort-craft searcher; you really SHOULD feel guilty for getting sucked into that single-serving plastic Keurig coffee pod routine. (Fun fact: Keurig Canada paid a $3 million penalty in 2022 for misleading coffee pod recycling claims.)

Also, the instructions on the blog require painting the pods with white acrylic paint or spray paint and black acrylic painted dots when clearly you could just take a Sharpie to mini yogurt containers that everyone uses once and throws away. One-star rating from this Halloween crafter!

And while I appreciate the effort of re-using what’s on hand, such as cannabis stalks served up on Reddit at r/GrowingMarijuana, I fail to make out what these things are. My best guess is some homegrown-fuelled visions from a past life in rural Slovenia.

This brings me to another minimum standard: taste. I find no spooky fun in fashioning homemade body bags and slumping them against a front door, so close to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown when morgues were overflowing, and in the midst of a toxic-drug epidemic. I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer here, but even Halloween crafters need to read the room. (Although I appreciated the dedication to the step-by-step images and instructions. Solid one star!)

Maybe that’s me just growing soft with age, but it’s more likely to do with the reality of my neighbourhood. That first Halloween here five years ago we decked out the front door with dangling skeletons, fog machine, black lights, giant (homemade) spider creeping up the wall. On the big night the speaker blasted a Spotify Spooky Scary Skeletons playlist and when we got sick of that, Tom Waits at a too-high volume. Most of the encounters with the 45 million kids in from god-knows-where were completely transactional: knock, shout trick or treat in unison, present open bag, inspect measly sucker offering, sneer and race to the next door. But there were other kids, often without costumes, whose knocks were barely audible and who stood silent and frozen, staring up at me, mouths slack. Clearly my understanding of their faraway life experiences was as foggy as our front porch.

When we know better we do better so the following Hallowed Eve I ditched any obvious triggers except the giant homemade spider; I set that up every year to torment an arachnophobic friend. I omitted the wails and Waits. I learned to never ask kids why they don’t have a costume or demand they say the customary words to get a candy. I’m just glad their dads and uncles, moms and aunts are all here, braving this bit of strange so their kids can be kids. Now I greet them with a smile, wave at the adults looking on and hope they all remember that although the treats may suck (they’re literally suckers — hundreds of suckers) this household is a safe place, all year round.

But there’s nothing wrong with macabre crafts; last year my studio became a horror show of upcycled useless things, at the hands of two evil-minded 13-year-olds:

End of an era for Vancouver makers

9/7/2024

The one great store that fuels textile dreams is closing due to small-business struggles

Judging by the early deluge of reactions on Reddit last week, we Vancouver makers are stunned to learn that our mecca for material and more is selling off its inventory and properties and closing for good. And I’m dealing with it like the full-grown woman I am.

Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!

Vancouver has never had the big shmata (cloth trade) districts like Montreal or Toronto. In these parts, we have Dressew Supply, a sort of rough-around-the-edges department store almost bursting with bolts of liquidation fabrics, sparkly applique patches, headbanger wigs, thousands of buttons, zippers, feather boas, skeins of yarn, rolls of ribbon and every sewing notion imaginable to satisfy the city’s crafty counter-culture vibe.

Vancouver never had the garment district of Toronto, where “Uniform Measure/Stack" (1997), designed by Stephen Cruise (stephencruise.ca), monumentalizes objects of the trade, originally with painted path of yellow measuring tape.

I am with my people here: the grandmothers who sew Christmas-gift pajamas, the goths, the quilters, the film and theatre set designers, the dance-gymnastics girls, the fashion-school students, and more recently, Pride paraders, Halloween costumers and cosplayers. Moving through those jammed aisles of colour and pattern revitalizes the brain, especially in our soggy, dark mid-winters.

I have a long history of ruining homemade garments made from my purchases at Dressew. I blame this on the tedious, mandatory Grade 8 girls’ sewing class designed to turn us into skilled workers or housewives. So when my community-college-student budget demanded I make my own nightclubbing “look” and wedding-guest frocks, I took an improv approach, using the cheapest $2/yard “100% unknown fibers” fabrics that smelled as flammable as they looked. I was lured by the big books of “Make it tonight!” Butterick, Style and Simplicity patterns and when this timeline proved unlikely, I’d game the instructions by swapping, say, a long back zipper with self-adhesive Velcro, or cramming in some thick shoulder pads to try to give shape to my latest sagging acetate atrocity. I don’t have photographic evidence of the voluminous emerald taffeta dress with the watermelon-sized sleeves that I wore to a cousin’s wedding but I can see in the snapshot of the baby-blue Cinderella-style dress at another wedding that I didn’t see ‘fit’ as an area of concern.

Nevertheless I persisted! I dreamed big, undeterred by minimal skill and patience or my wonky sewing machine that I dropped on the floor more than once. These projects were doomed to fail, like the grey pin-striped double-breasted suit for my university boyfriend who actually wore the blazer for a while but who was also likely relieved that the trousers never materialized. And I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to all those unwilling children in my life who endured the double humiliation of being gifted one of my hand-sewn polar-fleece hats and posing for a photo in it for their mother’s thank-you note.

Evidence of ill-fitting, over-padded and plain cruel past projects.

The magic of that store is in the endless possibilities and I always left with hope in my heart that this time I will read the directions. I will take breaks. I will use pins. I will find scissors that don’t chew the fabric. I will not view interfacing as optional.
I eventually redeemed myself as the family-and-friends’ Halloween costume-maker, taking the bus downtown with one kid or another while conferring over their concept drawing that I assigned to weed out the uncommitted. They also had to help cut, sew, glue and paint as required, so I wouldn’t take all the blame for shoddy workmanship.

Learning to sew is more fun when it’s a costume.

I also got pretty good at reupholstering because I had the good sense to take some continuing-ed classes on the subject as a young adult (rather than a self-conscious, hormonal 13-year-old) led by a retired skilled professional. Still on a tight budget, I learned to revamp found vintage armchairs with Dressew’s bargain upholstery fabrics but moved over to making crib quilts for all the new babies. Eventually I got serious about fibre art and went to art school. When the pandemic lockdown hit I re-focused my plans for my stash of quilting cotton and sewed up three-layer cotton masks — so many masks — to fill the early gap in the supply chain. Elastic was a scarce commodity and that’s where the owner at Dressew stepped up, delivering yardage of elastic to me from the shuttered store’s back alley door, like a dealer doing a drop.

So many Covid masks, made possible during lockdown by Dressew.

The imminent demise leaves me — us — in the lurch. Shopping by the hand-feel (and smell) of fabrics, yarn, fun fur, trims, felt, wigs, and all the strange liquidation items is an in-person experience in the energizing milieu of other creatives. So now what? Will next year’s Halloween costume missions now take place around the ol’ iPhone peering at fabric images on Amazon, not really knowing what will show up as we hit ‘Add to cart’?
That’s a hard no. Sorry kids.

Halloween a reminder of fiery end to a neighbourhood hub

10/22/2022

Just a week before Halloween — prime creative costume time — we in these parts are again reminded of the tragic, toxic end to our local Value Village.

The general love-hate relationship came to a fiery finish one summer night four months ago yet I can’t shake thoughts of all the stuff that went up into black, acrid smoke that hung over the East End the next day. Those long aisles thick with petroleum-derived clothing, incinerated. The shelves on top of those aisles crammed with knicknacks, contorting in flames. The baskets would have burst first but would the candles, as accelerants, have melted the glass vases? I would like these images to stop.

The Hastings/Victoria Value Village linked the communities of Hastings Sunrise, The Drive, and the Downtown Eastside. Until it didn't. (Found photos)

I’d like to make peace with the fire, seeing it as the ultimate cleanse, a final decluttering. But there’s a bigger hole beyond the charred rubble that remains today; after 40 years we’ve lost a social hub that attracted a colourful congregation of non-conforming fashionistas, DIYers, vintage-hunters and regular folk of all ages and on limited budgets from all over Hastings Sunrise, the Downtown Eastside and The Drive.

Yes, the prices were crazy by the end — you could get the same wine glass for a buck cheaper at the newish dollar stores a few blocks away — and the recent switch-over to self-checkouts led to some comical performance-art moments. But the diverse, unpredictable clientele was generally served well by employees and security guards with the steely nerves of air-traffic controllers.

And yes, this was no mom-and-pop shop but one of more than 300 locations here in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. Savers, Inc. is an international, privately-held company far removed from its original San Francisco thrift shop that opened in an old Mission District theatre in 1954.

To fully appreciate our local loss you would have to go back to 1980 when this Value Village opened, the first one in Canada (near as I can figure; someone please correct me on this). Before that, the only cheap one-stop clothing/housewares store in the vicinity was Zellers, further east up the hill, which used to be Fedco. (Insert Napoleon Dynamite sigh here.) All that changed when the department-sized thrift store opened us up to a whole world of self-expression. We could actually afford to take fashion risks, and they could include long wool coats from the '40s or '50s, '60s glam boots or ’70s caftans — the opposite of the flimsy fast-fashion mall stock that fed the summertime fire. (“I took pride in being alternative,” my youngest sister says. “I was teased by some random teens though.”) It was also an escape of the day, the kids, the worries, where one can mindlessly flip through those racks of clothes like beads on a rosary, with no chance of encountering pushy sales staff.

So I guess this is an overdue obituary, the kind that would be written about someone who was quite the opportunist and just a little creepy but who also opened up the door for us to question the status quo, think creatively, fly our freak flags and mingle with the all-sorts people in the neighbourhood.

Above: The East Hastings Value Village was one of the few hassle-free spots left where a diverse community of regulars could find basics, fun stuff and common ground. (Found photo)

Nothing new on halloween, and that's a good thing

10/31/2014

Comments

What do you do when one of your closest friends is in the hospital with complications and the weather outside is the perfect visual for seasonal depression? You make!

And so I devote this column to the silly business of making and make-believe in trying times.

First, let me say that Halloween is my kind of holiday. It is an intoxicating cocktail of glue guns and spontaneity, material-hacking and thrift-store-hopping, laced with peanut-butter cups and just a smidge of anti-consumerism.

It all sounds a bit contradictory but after a lifetime of costume-making I've pretty much found the place I need to find a little meaning in this sugar-cranked occasion.

It starts in late September, that one time of year when the little people in my life are willing to share their full-throttle imaginations (before their emerging Inner Critic begins to outshout them).

Then I strike out for my usual haunts (thrift shops, ReStore) with an opportunistic eye. My rules for costume-making have been distilled down to one: 'nothing new.' Except for tools and fasteners (glue, thread, pins etc.) all the fabrics and bits must have already finished their first use. There is more than enough stuff already in existence without creating a new market; it's just a matter of moving goods from their past use (clothing, construction scraps, bolt-ends) to my costume purposes.

Finally, there is the fabrication stage, which may or may not involve the tykes in question, depending on age. I encourage them to at least draw something about the costume they envision, or be 'in the manner of' to help me conceive it. I will make a portion of the costume early on for them to play with (business types would call this a progress meeting) and revise as I/we go.

For the price of some semi-toxic treat from their loot bag, I will ensure the costume will be durable and comfy enough for dancing and leaping around during their sugary highs.

To wit, we have three-year-old Mimi's costume this year. She showed me that she needed to be a lock-kneed, arms-extended robot so I scoured the second-hand aisles in search for a way to create the all-important illusion of stiffness. A small bundle of metalic-polyfiber pipe insulation found at the VGH Thrift Store on Broadway and Main fit the bill, coupled with a metallic girls' sweater and silver shoes from the nearby SallyAnn. I found the other bits around the apartment: a couple of unlistenable CDs, metal washers, jar lids, orange wire nuts and silver buttons she selected from my button jars. (Not shown: the extendable treat can made from accordion air duct tubing.)

Dem bones get another daylighting, on another nephew. (Yandle family photos)

I invest some effort in my costumes so that they are durable enough to be passed on to some other kid and have even spotted my handiwork worn, often in new ways, by neighbourhood kids I've never met.

Not a Halloween goes by when someone (always a woman) will say to me, "You have too much free time." It's one of those jokey putdowns but now that I've embraced making full time, I see that throwaway comment for what it is. Mister Rogers sang it to me when I was a kid and I sing it when I'm making with kids: I like to take my time.

My costumes have nothing to do with perfection or approval but are a maker's way of engaging with kids to play in a whole new way before they are fully seduced by the marketing complex.

Like the Mister says, you can think about things and make-believe; all you have to do is think and they'll grow.