Helen and friends
Originally uploaded by yankinoz.

To be honest, I have no idea where the people who read this thing live, however, I will assume that there are a lot of non-australians(ha!), as there tends to be on the internet. In Australia, halloween isn’t really celebrated. It’s actually considered rather un-Australian and American Imperialistic, really.
Anyway, I am friends with some dear American ex-pats, or Amerifriends, as I like to call them, because I am cheesy, I am deeply honoured to be involved in their native tradition of Halloween. What’s not to love? Costumes, lollies(candy, ha!), gore, more lollies!
Although I had originally planned to dress up as a scarecrow, this year, I decided to go as Fenella, my star Blythe doll, as we already had nearly matching frocks! My outfit consisted of: The dreaded Hot Topic remake of an Angelic Pretty jumper skirt, several underskirts and a homemade headdress and sock tops. Other costumes of the night included Jack and Jill, President Sakai and Chairman Kaga, The Phantom, Fi and her friend had paper bags over their heads with faces on them(I didn’t get it, really, and it made me feel awfully young).
Anyways, there were lots of bloggy nerds there, Rob(the award winning photographer, who took the above photo) has posted some photos here, Amy’s are here, Kris’ write up is here, and the lovely Andrew, who I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time, has written about it here!
Phew.

rufus’ make over is complete(click to see more

Originally uploaded by spycore.

Here is Clinton’s toy dog, Rufus. Rufus had about 24 years of grime on him before his wash. It was so satisfying, to see him come clean. This is the Miss Helen method of refurbishing precious and fragile old toys:
1. Look for holes and sew them up. Rufus had an embarrassing one under his tail! Eep! HI ALEX VIVIAN.
2. Spot treat stains with Sard Wonder soap and a paste of soaker stuff.
3. Wack the fellow in the bath tub and soap him all over with shampoo, massage in with a massaging thinger.
4. Discover that I’ve used too much soap and decide to put him in the washing machine on the soak cycle(carefully checking his seams!)
5. Spin dry and take photos.
6. Leave to dry in the sun and groom with a flicker comb, viking combs and a regular hair brush.
I even saved the fluff that came off him to spin into a custom yarn! I’m such a nerd.
Washing Rufus was such a nice way to spend my Saturday. I’d love to know if there was a market for refurbishing people’s old toys.

Whoa, I totally had no idea that some knitting needles shrink!