Esme Pumpkin Sprite

October!  Its Halloween month!  And it feels just wonderful to be in the season of autumn.  When the lighting in each day is softer.  When the early evenings give a golden glow to everything you see and feel.  It's simply my favorite season of the year.  And Halloween is my favorite celebration of the year.  Oh, I know.  Christmas is the big finale, but there is nothing to compare to joy Halloween brings to me!  

Fall is a time for the color orange.  It's my favorite color, and pumpkins on porches, pumpkins in patches, pumpkins in bins at the grocery store, pumpkins everywhere! - and pumpkin spice (not in my coffee, thank you very much!) brighten every day in every way.  

Pumpkins have long been a source of fairytale material from Cinderella's coach, to where Peter the Pumpkin

Eater kept his wife.  There's something magical and just plain fun and inspirational to that jolly gourd.  There used to be a pumpkin festival in Half Moon Bay, California every year.  Still might be, but I no longer live in the Bay Area.  In some areas of the country, I'm sure families can still go out to a real pumpkin patch and select one or two, then go for a horse drawn hayride.

Carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns is a Halloween tradition that originated in Celtic cultures where turnips and beets were carved to make human faces.  The name jack-o-lantern comes from an Irish tale about a man named Stingy Jack who tricked the devil. and was cursed to wander the earth with a lantern.  Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America and found that pumpkins were ideal for carving.  Hooray for the Irish!

I am just beginning to feel a little lighter these days after a very disappointing trip in September.  It just took the life, energy and creative spirit out of me.  Life.  Its happens sometimes.

But October arrived and with it, Halloween.  As many of you know, I've worked tirelessly some years to make super fun costumes for my dolls this time of year.  I'm taking it easy this season.  Sometimes we have to step back and just let the days flow and enjoy what we have, what we've done in the past, then buy lots of new Halloween dolls!  That's what I'm doing.

However, to not work on something, to not have something to pick up and poke around on in my studio, is simply not going to fly.  I read.  Voraciously and all the time.  I just finished The Light of the World by James Lee Burke, and it was fabulous.  Three more books left in his Dave Robicheaux series, and I'll be crying buckets that my heroes won't be having anymore adventures.  I just picked up Louisa Morgan's new book, The Great Witch of Brittany, and its superb.  I love her witch tales.  And I'm watching Halloween movies, and the first season of House of the Dragon.  I'm good to go.  Sometimes we just need 

to rest our minds and reboot.  

Still, the desire to do something for Halloween was nagging at me.  Esme is always the perfect little sprite to get me back into the swing of things.  So I made her a pumpkin costume.

I pulled out a sheet of orange felted wool and one of green, and started a little pattern for a puffy pumpkin costume.  Not everything we do has to be a masterpiece.  Not everything we do has to be a challenge.  It just has to be fun and inspiring.

Esme Pumpkin Sprite.

I used the existing little boots I made her for the mushroom costume and added a bit of bling to the bodice neckline with some orange beading.  It just looked too plain.  It needed something.

She has a pair of orange felt panties sewn inside the pumpkin bottom, which was tricky to design.  

Two green pumpkin leaves come off a three sided stem, which I did a little embroidery work on.  

Her costume is just for fun and will take her through the end of November.  She's a fun doll to dress when sewing with felted wool.  She's always a bright little spot on the shelf she shares with other dolls.

I've also been focusing my thoughts on Wednesday Addams and Nadja and her look-alike doll from What We Do in the Shadows.  Who knows?  Maybe there will be a special costumed doll in one of these themes.  They're everywhere right now and just looking at what others have done has been inspiring.

It's getting dark outside, and I've turned on all my electric lighted Halloween pumpkins and the little haunted house display I have in the living room.  I'm a kid again.  I'm an adult with the heart of a child that will never die.  The magic of the holidays, this special time of year, will always be treasured and celebrated!

Let's enjoy some pumpkins together!  I've selected some fun pumpkin imagery from long past and more current artists.  The super fun recent find, was that of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz celebrating Halloween.  On Pinterest, you seldom get to learn where these images came from, but this one's a winner!  Scarecrow is scooping out green Oz-cream for the party.  I hope you'll enjoy the selections.

Oh!  I almost forgot to tell you.  I was poking around the settings in this blog site to get the HTML language off the page, and found a place to check a box that just might bring the email notifications back.  I hope you're able to leave comments again, too, if you like.  

Until the next time, Happy Autumn!  Happy Halloween!, Melissa