Whoo? Whoo?

Way after the fact (but really only a few days, if you consider that our town postponed Halloween by a week after a snowstorm left us powerless for several days...), but I just had to share some (terrible) pictures of Lucy in her owl costume.

(No glamor shots here. Random cooler? Peeling paint? Pile of farm totes? You get it all...)

It's not shown to its best advantage here, but I was really pleased with how this costume came out. I was inspired by this wonderful costume, by Lucy's love of birds, and by a recent visit to "see the hurt owls" (Lucy's summary) at a bird sanctuary. I used a felted adult sweater as the base (the sleeves long ago turned into longies), and sewed on lots of feathers from free-from-the-thrift-store pants. I tried four different hat styles before I made one I loved (thrifted sweater with more pants-feathers). The glasses were my mom's idea; she had a pair of Groucho Marx glasses and told us we could rip the nose off, so we added a beak cut from a plastic lid and we were all set.

At home, Lucy was the cutest owl, whooing all over the place (thus the face in the first picture). Out and about, she was more shy, but we still got a ton of compliments. Makes all the late-night sewing sessions worth it!

(I love the felted-sweater base for a costume, by the way, and will have to remember that for future costumes. She had several layers of clothes on under it with room to spare, and she was toasty warm all night.)