i get great satisfaction from packing my laptop lunchbox these days.

i thought i’d use this blog to talk about the creative process while making, say, a trapeze piece. but i’ve been making a trapeze piece over the past month and it’s been too confusing and fragile a process to talk about publicly. i will share more about it here soon, but in the meantime, here’s the other thing i’ve been making: lots of laptop lunches.

i work in an office three days a week and i have packed my LLB 90% of the time. the one time i didn’t this month, i found myself extremely angry at not having had time and having to buy food out.

my favorite foods this year (as you can see) have been:

• greek yogurt with pomegranate arils
• citrus of all sorts, especially blood oranges. i’ve been craving citrus nonstop. and of course kumquats: half citrus fruit, half magic.
• walnuts. everytime i eat one i want to tell everybody in earshot how delicious it is.
• brussels sprouts. i made this epicurious recipe with some added turnips and would keep thinking about how yummy it had been for about an hour after eating.
• baked sweet potatoes, omg so satisfying, how did i not know until now
• quinoa salads are always ftw.

i’ve been enjoying delicious food and i’ve also been enjoying the ritual of planning and packing a lunch, snapping a photo of it, eating it slowly of the course of the workday, and then uploading it to flickr in the evening and annotating it. it’s good to have a new ritual.

next installation of the deconstruction of my unicorn halloween costume:

my front horse/unicorn hooves were wonderful because they were easy to make and looked like i’d imagined they would.

they went from sketch to creation so fast and accurately. sketch:

and the real thing:

(i accidentally put the wristwarmer on the wrong hand in these photos: the place where the cuff closes should face the front of the wrist, not the back).

to make these, i cut out two 10”x10” squares per wristwarmer: one of velvet and one of fur. i can’t really advise you on the construction because i’m sure i didn’t do it the best way. once it was all sewn, i handsewed these giant snaps on, and tada!

i could not find any sewing patterns for wristwarmers online, so i was extremely satisfied with my improvisation; after fighting the overcomplicated pattern of my spats for days and days, it was so nice just to cut out two squares.

as to whether they would work outside a costume-hoof context, i think so, but they could use more snaps or fasteners between the one i used here and the thumb hole; these tended to slide forward toward the tips of my fingers. also, since they had no stretch whatsoever, they gaped and puckered when i moved my hand around:

but i didn’t consider that a huge problem. they were very warm and SO SOFT (this fur fabric is lovely) and they would be perfect to wear in the dead of winter in combination wth a fur muff.

another thing the internet probably can’t give you a tutorial on (but now it can!) is how to make a rainbow unicorn/horse tail. everyone i talked to said it would be easy, but i was unsure how it would actually come together. it turned out to be the fastest part of the costume.

1. buy three+ colors of “bulk hair.” i used “jumbo braids” bought from beauty 35 on 35th st and 8th ave in manhattan.
2. divide each in half so your tail is not too bushy
3. make a girth hitch to attach your tail to the middle of a piece of white 1” elastic
4. attach some toothed metal buckles to the ends of your elastic to turn it into a belt.

when i was making my unicorn costume for halloween i kept thinking how disappointing it was that the internet did not have a tutorial or how-to for, say, how to make a rainbow horn. or how to make horse/unicorn ears (the closest thing i found were cat- and rabbit-eat tutorials, all of which used hot glue guns. shudder).

fortunately, i can set that right. how to make a couture lisa frank rainbow unicorn horn:

1. sew strips of velvet fabric and/or ribbon to a piece of paper (ideally use a piece of stiff interfacing). i used half a piece of 8.5x11 paper, cut to 4.25x5.5. i used 4 colors, sewing the fabric lengthwise.
2. roll the paper into a tight cone, fiddling with where you start rolling from in order to get a nice diagonal of rainbow colors. (i wish i could remember to tell you exactly where i rolled from and to.)
3. hold the cone in place with some straight pins and hand sew it closed along the back.
4. trim the fabric ends and then push them inside the horn cone at the bottom. sew in place if needed.
5. cut a piece of clear elastic, tie a knot in it (sew it if you’re fancy), then sew it to either side of the horn to put the horn onto a headband.
6. when wearing the horn, bobby pin it to your hair on either side of the horn so it doesn’t slide down your forehead

my unicorn ears were an iffier success, but what i did was:

1. cut out an ear shape from a double layer of fabric, with the fold at the base of the ear and right sides of the fabric together. leave 1/2 inch seam allowance.
2. sew the right and left edges of the ear closed, leaving a space to turn it right side out in the middle of one side (if you do it in the middle you don’t have to hand sew it after turning because it will stay put pretty well).
3. fold the ear in half (bottom right corner to touch bottom left) and use thread snips or another sharp-pointed tool to cut a small hole 1/2” or less from the bottom, equidistant between the ear edge and the fold, through all four layers of fabric.
4. thread a skinny tubular headband through the hole. the ear will flop/spin around the headband, but when you put the headband on, your head will hold the ear up. more or less. (i had to bobby pin the headband down to my head because if it lifted off a little, an ear would fall over.)
5. repeat for your other ear.

a vampire at the party i went to told me i had a “couture horn.” this made me very happy because “couture” was the word that kept going through my head as i made this costume.

materials, medium, and fiber content are important to me in all forms of art. my idea behind this costume was to be a lisa frank unicorn 80 years before lisa frank, before the invention of lamé. sure, lamé is shiny, but velvet is shimmery in an even richer way. i wanted this costume to be sumptuous. i wanted it to be made of materials i’d love to wear any time of year.

for my hooves i wanted a rose pink velvet (again, a color i love all the time) rather than a garish hot pink. after much fruitless searching, i came across this velvet in the exact color i’d hoped for. it’s silk velvet, which brought the project one step higher on the couture scale. (unfortunately, i chose to cut the velvet with the pile running up, for a richer color, and later realized the paler color i’d have gotten with the pile running down would have been closer to lisa frank.)

the white fur trim around the hooves is synthetic, of course. but ridiculously soft. after you touch it once, you have to pet it again, and again, and then tear yourself away.

if i’d had more time, i would have gotten colored, sparkly false eyelashes. (in fact, i bought some i was excited about, but when i put them on, the shape was all wrong, making my eyes look droopy, and the pink clashed with every other pink in my outfit.) i would have gotten pink lipstick to match my hooves. and i would have sewed a sprinkling of stars across the white part of the costume to evoke LF even more strongly.

if i were to do the costume again, i might go the other route. i might choose lamé. the truth is, LF is garish. if you’re not, you’re doing it wrong.

but that’s enough complaining! this costume was awesome. i got compliments from strangers. i got compliments from fellow partygoers. i feel like there are two types of costumes: drag (what a lamé costume would have been) and actualization (dressing as what you wish you could be or feel kinship with). i was aiming for the second, and i achieved it. it wasn’t a unicorn costume so much as an expression of my inner unicorn. it’s true, i have an inner unicorn.

this is the first costume i’ve ever put so much effort into (the hooves, horn, and ears were all handmade from homemade patterns, and the rainbow tail was homemade as well), and it’s the most i’ve sewn in at least a year, so i have lots to say about each component. expect more tumblr entries soon.

it’s funny how specific the lisa frank reference is. people of my generation immediately start talking about the LF trapper keepers and stationery they had in fifth grade. everybody else gives me blank looks.

it’s a little creepy to be sewing with white fur fabric that has the same color, fur length, and texture as that of your foster bunny.

made these spats yesterday with a modified pattern from thankyoufornotbeingperky.com. i think i’m going to end up drafting my own pattern for the pair i’m making with silk velvet, because modifying hers did more harm than good. but now i know what to expect and what to fix. plus these are pretty cute.

i have the fabric to make this scarf, but i need to find the time. i also need to work out a pattern to make a round head for the octopus. i also need to determine if it will have suckers on its arms (though this is a last step) and whether its eyes will be sewn-on buttons or part of the pattern itself. the thing i don’t think i’ll determine until it’s made is whether i’ll actually wear it.