I have been away from my blog for much of October, working on a project that shall remain secret till it is revealed next fall — oh anticipation! This much I can say: I am  delighted and honoured that the project I working on is going to be included in Leanne Prain‘s upcoming book Strange Material: Storytelling Through Textiles with Arsenal Pulp Press. Very exciting. All shall be revealed upon publication in 2014.

Now about the cowboy pieces: it was just halloween! And as you probably know, I make costumes. 2-year-old Gene wore Rudi’s cowboy costume from a few years ago and Rudi, at 5, obviously wanted to be Spiderman, so I went ahead and bought a second-hand Spidey costume that fit the bill. I think he was particularly excited to have a store-bought costume after always having had homemade ones. Sometimes you have to admit when it’s not worth making yourself!

So I thought I was just going to sit back and work on other things, but at 8:35pm on October 30th my lovely husband texted me at the end of my yoga class to say if I wanted something fun to do on the way home I could find him a cowboy hat and belt! A last-minute cowboy: challenge accepted. I could only find a horrible foam hat from a dollar store before everything closed, but it did the trick. I will not dignify it by including it here though, it was sad. Project get-a-much-better-cowboy-hat is underway for future last minute cowboys. No belt luck. So my costuming head started whirring as I drove home.

I cut out 2 cardboard ovals, drew a longhorn and some stud details in hot glue, let it dry and covered it all in tin foil. Ta da! From a reasonable distance it looks like a true, huge ol’ cowboy buckle. I added a foil loop at the back and and it just slipped over a regular belt. Sorted.

Lastly, I dug out a felt holster I’d made for a costuming gig in the summer, which I wrote about here. The budget for that job was limited so I decided to use my own materials and time to make a holster for the sheriff character and just lend it to the production since I figured (rightly, hurray for foresight!) that it might come in handy in my house full of boys. I just didn’t expect the adult boy to be the first one who used it! The pistol stayed home during the work day since hubby teaches grade 4, but we pilfered our son’s sheriff badge and handkerchief and found some emergency stick-on moustaches in my costuming stash.

Cowboy accoutrement sorted and in bed before midnight. Yeeeeeeee-ha!