23 Things Tumblr Has Thought About The Weasley Family – It’s clickbait, but it’s amusing clickbait.

Werewolf Licorice – I can’t vouch for the taste, but the packaging is pretty nifty. The company has a Witch Licorice too. (via Pixel Pixie)

Knitted Brain Hat – Pattern and tutorial for making a brainy hat. Perfect for attending the upcoming Science March in DC.

Is This the Most Awesome Library in the World? – The library at Mafra National Palace in Portugal keeps insects under control with a flock of bats.

Hyrax – I’ve talked about the hyrax–and its adorable li’l vampire fangs–previously, but I like this roundup of photos.

Agnieszka Osipa – Artist who makes gorgeous fairytale-inspired costumes. Marginally NSFW if your boss is uptight.

Beetle House NYC – There’s a Tim Burton-themed bar opening in New York.

Dial-a-Grue – This project to port Zork to work via rotary phone is delightfully bonkers.

Bat Robot Takes Wing – Bat bot!

Flick Candles – Offers scents like “Nicotine Pumpkin Patch,” “Freshly Signed Divorce Papers,” and “Grandma’s Last Christmas Tree.”

The long-running blog Nothing To Do With Arbroath has always been a source of amusement and WTF-ery. Its owner, Kev, went on short hiatus last November complaining of health issues, then returned to post occasional updates about his battle with cancer. Today, Joanne from I Have Seen The Whole Of The Internet announced that Kev had passed. If you enjoyed Kev’s blog, tributes can be left here.

It’s time for another bunch of random stuff I want to share but can’t hang a whole post on. Some of them have no attribution, so if you happen to know the source for any of these please leave a note in the comments. (Click to view larger.)

	Fairy Shoes These cute fairy-wing shoes are by Sophia Webster.
	Vampire Baby Onesie Available from TeePublic, amongst other vendors.
	Pumpkin Gown I’ve featured Nez of DarkSpectre’s work previously. There are additional photos of this gown on her Facebook page.
	How Frankenstein Should Have Ended God, yes. Tweeted by @zdarsky.
	Baby Spider Costume I can’t find an original source–all roads lead to Pinterest–but this would be a fairly easy costume to DIY if you have a baby you don’t know what to do with.
	Hearsecycle My pal Empress Pam encountered this in the wild and sent me a photo. I assume it’d be popular for biker funerals.
	Cactopi This is a sculpture by Ed Kroupa, but I really want one as a pet.
	“Beware” Sign This shows up a lot in compilations of funny “beware of dog” signs, but it would also be a great “beware of monster” prop. It’d be easy to DIY with foam board.
	Bats This is a sculpture by Scott Radke (whose site is annoying as hell to navigate). It’d be fun to do a similar Halloween decoration using baby dolls and felt.
	Lemon Cross-Stitch This made me giggle. The pattern is available on Etsy.
	Count Squirrel Found by my pal Richard, who commented, “I’m not sure which I find more theologically disturbing: The idea of Squirrel vampires or that Squirrel Jesus was crucified.”

The fabulous Pixel Pixie shared this with me, commenting, “This is pretty horrible. You should watch it,” which neatly sums up our friendship.

As a bonus, she also shared Price doing the Monster Mash. Yowza.

If you’re a U.S. citizen, remember to vote today. Don’t put it off. Don’t decide it’s too much trouble. Vote like your future depends on it, because it does.

Not voting will make Benjamin Franklin cry. You don’t want Benjamin Franklin to cry, do you? Look; his lip is already quivering. Go vote, you monster.

It’s time for the annual costume recap! Every year I spend entirely too much time making costumes for Shadowboy and one or two friends, then have professional photos taken. Sometimes I’m lucky and can talk them into matching costumes, and sometimes…not so much.

This year Shadowboy and one friend wanted to go as Mario and Luigi, and the other friend steadfastly declined to complete the trio by being Princess Peach and instead wanted to be Bloody Mary. Which, y’know, props for originality but you’re killing my costume photos, kid. Last year it was Doc Brown, Marty McFly, and…a frog. This year it’s two videogame icons and a hellspawn. Stahp.

The boys’ costumes were made by modifying a simple “loungewear” pattern, Simplicity 1605. The shirts were made from cotton jersey and followed the pattern with no alterations. The overalls were blue twill; I made the pajama bottoms according to the pattern and before inserting the elastic at the waistband I stitched on a front panel with straps that I made freehand (the big yellow buttons are nonfunctional). I toyed with making the hats from leftover jersey but found some online that were cheap, and since I get no joy from making hats I decided to cheat. The gloves were plain cotton parade gloves; Shadowboy complained that they lacked the cartoony black lines on the back, and since I was afraid that a black marker would bleed I wound up hand-embroidering cartoony black lines. Oy. The mustaches were cheap party favors and stuck about as well as you’d expect cheap party favors to stick; on Halloween I’ll be using spirit gum.

Despite being fairly simple, the costumes turned out pretty well. Here are the boys posing: Mario | Luigi. And here are a couple of “action shots” that the photographer managed to capture: Mario | Luigi

Bloody Mary’s costume was Simplicity 3725, view “C.” I omitted all of the recommended trim and instead used embroidered ribbon on the bodice and sleeves. The fabric was chosen the way I always choose fabric when I’m not entirely sure what the costume is supposed to look like: In a frenzy of indecision, throwing everything that looks vaguely promising into the cart and hoping I can figure something out. I wound up using everything; I had a yard of two different fabrics that I didn’t use in the dress, but I decided that she needed a veil and they worked perfectly. I stitched them to a fabric headband and then sewed a row of little silk roses along the top. After I finished the dress I realized that completely by chance I’d chosen a pattern that’s pretty similar to what Princess Peach wears so at least she can sort of match the boys’ costumes. It’ll be Mario, Luigi, and the malevolent ghost of Princess Peach, back from the grave and hell-bent on vengeance.

Here she is, with and without the veil. The photographer also did some action shots of her, running toward the camera and (my favorite) posing with a mirror. She’s definitely selling the spooky.

So that’s this year’s collection wrapped up. Maybe if I start lobbying now I can convince them to let me do something challenging next year, like Labyrinth or Beetlejuice or just about anything more interesting than overalls. Sigh.

The Secret Pumpkin gift exchange was conceived as a way to soothe those spooky souls pining for October by sending them a little Halloween in April. It’s similar to a Secret Santa exchange but the gifts are supposed to be spooky in nature; you can read my previous description and details here.

And now it’s time to open up registration for next April’s exchange! If you’d like to participate, go to the Secret Pumpkin site:

1) If you did not participate last year, click the “Join” link and fill out the form.

2) If you DID participate last year, log in, click the “Update Profile” link and change the “Activate My Membership” option to Yes.

(Just in case it isn’t clear–folks have been confused in the past–I’m the person who manages the site, so you aren’t blindly submitting your mailing address to some anonymous stranger.)

I’d previously suggested that participants should join one of the two Halloween listservs which originally spawned the exchange, but they’ve withered away so much that they may actually be defunct; instead I send occasional reminders directly to the participants.

You can sign up even if you aren’t in the U.S., and if you encourage friends from the same country to participate you don’t have to worry about exorbitant shipping. My script matches people in the same country preferentially, and at the end of the signup period I’ll let you know if you’re the only one in your country so you can decide whether or not to participate.

The deadline for signups is October 15. All that I ask is please, PLEASE don’t sign up for the exchange unless you’re serious about following through. We occasionally have participants flake out, and their Pumpkins are always sorely disappointed.

C’mon and join! It’s lots of fun, and getting something unexpectedly Halloweeny in April is a treat.

Oh boy, you guys; have I got a treat for you.

A couple of years ago the nice people at VIVO masks sponsored a giveaway with my readers, and they recently contacted me to ask if I’d like to do it again. Hells, yeah; their stuff is awesome.

Last time we arranged with them to ship directly to the winner, so I never got my hands on the mask. This time they sent it to me to ship out, which means I can comment more specifically on the quality of the mask and I can open up the giveaway to overseas readers.

The mask they’re giving away is the Teschio Black, a metal masquerade piece in the shape of a skull. It’s an absolutely gorgeous piece, and is perfect for the goth set. I could imagine designing a whole cosplay outfit around this mask.

VIVO has hundreds of different styles, all handmade in Italy, and they ship worldwide. Given the quality, the prices are surprisingly reasonable. Their Masquerade Blog is pretty neat, too; they have a lot of suggestions for things like decorating for Halloween.

If you’d like to enter to win this mask, just leave a comment on this post by Friday, September 16. A winner will be chosen at random.

Thanks again to VIVO for the lovely giveaway opportunity!

Update:

The contest is over and random.org spat back the magic number 10, which means Mim is the proud owner of the mask. I shall snail-mail it to her forthwith.

Thanks to everyone who played along!

So! I started this silly blog clear back in 2007, as a way to share my love of gothy weirdness with the world. Because I am an idiot I made it a personal goal to update without fail every single weekday, and although I’ve actually managed that for over nine years(!!!) I have to admit that things have been limping a bit of late. It’s time, I think, to pack it in.

I’ll probably still post occasionally–keep me in your RSS feeds (are those still a thing?)–but it’ll be sporadic. My archive, of course, will stay up for as long as I can pay the bills.

Thanks to all of the commenters who’ve encouraged me over the years. You’re welcome to look me up on Facebook; I’m still weird over there.

There’s a nice selection of spooky shorts up at ScoopWhoop, including this one from India.