Okay, maybe the finger puppet thing has gotten out of hand, so to speak. Perhaps I’ve come unraveled, as it were. Confusing fantasy and reality.
For those new to this blog, my finger puppet family was born a couple of years ago when my own kids gave me grief about posing for a family photo. You can read the original post here. Since then, my finger puppets have traveled the globe, documenting their adventures on Instagram under the hashtag #knittedtogetherforever.
If I'm posing with my finger puppet at a tennis tournament, or atop a mountain in Yosemite, I don't think it's much of a leap to make Halloween costumes for my finger puppet kids.
The cessation of Halloween hoopla is one of the aspects of an empty nest that I find difficult. I loved sewing costumes for the kids when they were little. When they got bigger, we put on elaborate spook houses in our garage or my sister's garage. But that's all over now. My friends with young kids sometimes ask me for help with costuming but that is the extent of my Halloween wardrobing. The Halloween boxes in the basement gather dust alongside all the other crap from raising children. It really can be depressing.
But the finger puppet therapy works. Making costumes and posing my finger puppets was almost as fun as making kids cry in our spook house. It'll hold me until I get hired at the local Knights of Columbus to take charge of their spookhouse.
Wherever I went with my finger puppets, random people enjoyed helping me pose them. Yesterday, the woman working at the farm stand wanted to art direct. She loved Jane and Nick as the Tin Man and the Scarecrow but she was quite disappointed that I didn't have the whole cast represented. And she kept hollering at her customers to get out of the frame of the photo.
I took the above photos at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan. They have all these miniature stone buildings in their courtyard that are perfectly scaled for the puppets. This night was really dark and windy, so my friend Wendy used her camera phone to light the scene. She was disappointed the authorities didn't question us or that we didn't have to scale a fence.
Okay, the Walter and George finger puppets were challenging to costume because a) Walter has huge hair and a knitted cap and b) George has headphones knitted permanently on his head. I know that ghost and mummy costumes are cheap and easy, and I used to scorn the parents who resorted to such unimaginative shortcuts but hey, I'm open to suggestions.
I shot this one in the greenhouse at Monche's Farm. It didn't occur to me until later that I was posing my Atticus puppet up in a tree, wearing a superhero cape and mask. A few years ago, he fell off the top of a building in France, landing in a courtyard four stories below. He fell through the branches of a tree that broke his fall and probably saved his life. I think the finger puppets are therapy tools.
What is it about making Halloween costumes that fills me up with such a deep swell of satisfaction? I don't really know. It harks back to childhood, no doubt. I could write a novel about the silly plays we staged in the basement, every chance we got. In the words of Mickey Rooney, "Hey gang! Let's put on a show!"
Thank you for humoring me and my finger puppets. You can see more of their antics on Instagram, by typing in the hashtag #knittedtogetherforever in the search bar.
Did you know that besides playing with finger puppets, I also put out a very meaty newsletter every Friday morning? Subscribe below: