I hope you won’t judge me too harshly when I say that the child drove me crazy with this project.  While it is absolutely true that he made almost the entire thing himself, he planned it out in such a way that I had to teach him about 20 new skills and walk him through it step by step.  So not exactly a work-free project for me.  Which I normally don’t mind.  I love teaching them.  I love sharing my skills and my own passion for creating.  But we are in an extremely busy period of our life at the moment (more on that in the future.  maybe.), and this year I found myself asking over and over again, why??  Why can’t my kids be the ones who are perfectly content with costumes thrown together from the dress-ups box?!?  As Galen hands me the 664th picture he’s drawn since oh, maybe June of the costume he expects an exact replica of… (there were only approximately 322 of the one he wanted for Màiri, “this is what you want Màiri, right?  right?” )

So, yeah, I’ll admit, I wan’t overly thrilled when the exact plans for this project started slowly trickling in.  “What do you mean we need two different fabrics for the robes?!?”, “Why do you need an outer robe and and under robe, what’s wrong with just one?”, “the beard has to be how long?”, “I really don’t think it matters a whole lot what kinds of shoes you wear under it…”, “they must be buckled boots, eh?  really??”

In the end of course he got almost exactly what he wanted.  He had to settle for cardboard “buckles” taped on to his brother’s cowboy boots and glasses that weren’t quite half-moons.  On the other hand he did have a sledding accident right before Halloween that bashed up his nose a bit, so that helped add to the authenticity.  (by sledding accident I mean that he was sitting still somewhere when he’s brother crashed into him in a sled)

The details:

He borrowed the pointed hat that I made Iain several years back, and added the hair to it.

Borrowed glasses, the borrowed boots, of course.

He borrowed a silk cape from Galen.

The under-robe was just a whipped up based on his general idea of a shape.  I modified Kwik Sew pattern 2705 (It’s a bathrobe) for the over-robes.

We both worked on knitting the beard from a pattern that I improvised.

He insisted on having a picture taken with his beard thrown over his shoulder (“that’s how Dumbledore eats, you know…”).  But it lets you see the fancy frog clasps he hand-stitched on.  Oh, a lot of time and effort went into this one.  And for all of my frustration at the time, I’m so very proud of how hard he worked.  It was his first sewing project from a pattern.  It was his first for a lot of things.  And he did great.  Really, really great.  He took so much time and care with the whole thing.  Very, very proud indeed.