Angels sang out, in an immaculate chorus

 Quest:  Jessie the yodeling cowgirl from Toy Story Halloween costume.

Outcome: It was a long and hard fight, but the beast is dead.

 I'm dedicating today's blog to my personal angel of the week The Radish King

Go read her blog A Fish With No Name, she makes the cutest bags.

Life in autumn always seems to be the busiest in Japan. I’ve been going non-stop for two weeks now.  Mostly it’s all fun, but still, it gets to be exhausting.  This past weekend I had two cultural festivals on both days, and smooshed in between there was the Halloween Dance party (2 hrs away by car) that I was racing to get my costume finished for. Normally after school events on a weekend, the school takes a day off the following Monday. Not entirely so this time.  Both of my schools are taking days off, but on different weeks, the weeks I’m not there, so essentially I don’t get a day off without actually skipping out on a school day, something I loathe to do. So I approached my supervisor and arranged to take my two days off during winter vacation when I would've needed to go into the BOE since school would be out.  In the short term it means that by next weekend I’ll have worked 12 days in a row and I’m already exhausted.  In the long term it means I don’t have to use my paid vacation to make a trip to Kyoto. Alright, that’s enough whining for now.    

Prepping for the Halloween party was pretty interesting.  I baked about 24 cup cakes on Thursday night.  On Friday I baked another 12, baked 10 braided pumpkin pastries, and one small pumpkin cake.  I also brought my sewing into school on Friday and attached full length sleeves to my Jessie shirt while sitting in the darkened gym watching the students practice their skits.   I have some command of Japanese, but the skits made a heck of a lot more sense the following day when the kids performed them in full costume.  Friday night I also finished up the yellow cuffs for the shirt.  At that point I was severely short on time (I need at least another 4 hours to the day) and turned to my trusty hot glue gun.  I was skyping with Radish King and a little before midnight she finished up with the bit she was doing on her latest project.  I begged her to stay on five more minutes so I could glue on the last bit and show her the finished shirt.  Thank heavens she did.  I finished gluing and gazed at my labor of love.

What?

I didn’t!

I did.

CRAP!

I glued one of the cuffs on backwards!  The fringe that was supposed to be facing out was turned  in towards the shirt.  My mind was racing, maybe the glue was still warm enough that I could pull the cuff off.  Maybe I could cut the sleeve next the cuff, turn it around and re-glue it.  Sure it would be a little shorter than the other sleeve, but I didn’t have time to make another sleeve.  It was mid-night and as it was I had to get up early to decorate the cupcakes.  Then I was saved by an angel. Radish King hesitantly suggested “I don’t know if this would work, but is there a reason you can’t just cut the fringe off and re-glue it on the other side?”

What?

I don’t have to make new sleeve!

HALLELUJAH!

So I was saved lots of needless effort and finished my costume only five minutes later. 

 And it was so worth it because I won one of the costume contests. My prize, MJ buttons, a scary MJ key-chain, and a green bowl.  Basically there were three different judges and each chose a winning costume. The other winners were a Usopp costume from a One Piece group, and a creep Rorschach costume.

And now it’s time to cut the threads of my chaps so I can have my favorite jeans back.

Looking towards the future I see more smocking and a grey jumper (the skirt with top kind, not a sweater.)