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Halloween-eve-in’ It

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Yay! It is now officially socially acceptable for me to dress the way I do!

Unfortunately, the odd looks will resume on Thursday. ‘Til then, I am trying to make the most of it by going to two Halloween events. Tonight I am planning to go to the Students’ Union…and tomorrow I am intending to do the same!

My wings are coming along alright, they’re better than I expected them to be knowing my clumsy craft skills, but not as good as I imagined they should be. I’ve basically chopped up a purple feather boa and added a few more feathers in red and black and pink so that it’s not all purple. But it is mostly purple.

If you haven’t already got a party to go to tomorrow, I have a few suggestions for you!

1. If you’re in London, go to Swap-a-rama Razzmatazz‘s Halloween Swap Or Die (discovered via Daily Candy). It’s a clothes-swap party themed to the occasion and I imagine some quite monstrous outfits will result from the proceedings!

2. If you are not in London you just might be in a country where you can actually buy Pocky locally, in which case you can make ordinarily-delicious desserts spooky a la Not Martha at design*sponge. I think it’s a much more sensible idea than buying themed cakes and biscuits from the supermarket, which are invariably rank.

3. Now that the Buffy Sing-Along tour has been cancelled (Woe! I was so hoping for it to arrive on these shores soon!), the only option left for Buffy fans is to invite all our friends over, turn up the volume, and annoy the neighbours. I think October 31st is the perfect time to hold such an event, and if I was not otherwise occupied, I would run out, buy the DVD and do it! My parents are getting a new TV tomorrow (for free! Yay for winning raffles!) as well, so the temptation is definitely there! The team behind the event have produced a DIY kit to help your mini sing-along go with a bang (literaly – there are party poppers in the kit), but most of the items can be bought from any party shop, if you fear postage from the US!

4. Buy yourself a Halloween present, or make yourself a costume, just to wear around the house! I’ve been wearing costumes just to amuse myself for years. Once I wore wings everyday for what was probably at least a week, and my shoulders felt really strange when I’d taken them off, like they were still there in spirit!

Now I’m off to glue on some more feathers, and don my tiara.

What Is Wrong With Darning One’s Socks?

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I have a confession to make.

I darn my socks.

I do not, as is more socially acceptable, throw them out when I get a new pair.

My mum doesn’t understand why I bother. Neither does Camilla Morton. I can’t remember exactly which book of hers I was flicking through in the bookshop a couple of weeks ago but it was either A Girl for All Seasons (please read the lone review on Amazon.co.uk and tell me whether it is a joke or serious, I am unable to tell) or How to Walk in High Heels. I turned to a section about repairing clothes. She explained how to replace a button, but under the heading for darning socks, wrote dismissively that no one darns socks any more.

At that point I closed the book and put it back on the shelf, rolling my eyes.

I darn my socks.

The fact that I can get five pairs of new socks for £3 at Marks and Spencer means nothing to me.

I like my socks. From the short socks in a multitude of shades of purple, to the knee high and beyond in various versions of stripes. I have a modest collection (I mostly wear tights) but one of which I am proud. I don’t want to throw away my pale blue, cream, and silver metallic striped socks just because they get one tiny, pathetic, hole. No! I want to make that hole history with some thread in the right colour, and carry on wearing them.

I also like the planet. I don’t want to waste resources just so I never have to dent my thumb on the eye of a needle. I haven’t thrown away a sock for years. Some have gone through multiple darnings in different colours (in emergencies, any thread will do), and have joined the retirement collection of socks for emergencies when all others are in the wash. Will I ever throw them away?They can always be used for cleaning, like any scrap fabric, or I can send them off to be made into Stupid Creatures. Eventually I hope to knit my own socks, and those will never be entering a bin!

Why has it become such a social crime to darn one’s socks? Surely in this age when it’s oh-so-fashionable to be, or at least to pretend to be, environmentally conscious, the real faux-pas is failing to do so?

And who could ever throw socks as lovely as these away? Holes or no holes!