World book day prep
Tomorrow is world book day and Alex (along with zillions of other children, I'm sure) has decided he wants to go to school dressed as Harry Potter, despite me lobbying for Tintin (much easier and many fewer people doing it!). So, glasses, check; face paint for scar, check; black goo to colour and style hair, check.

Robes definitely much more of a problem. I am not much in the seamstress line and I could do a cloak but definitely not robes. In the end I caved and bought a set off E-bay, nabbing it at the last minute while my Mum sat by and told me how I'd gone and broken some other child's heart by doing so. Fortunately it got from Wales to here in a day *and* I was working from home today and thus here to receive it.

Wand gave pause for thought. Alex pulled out his plastic black and white traditional stage magician's wand but that did not appeal, so I cut down some dowling, used my pen knife to give it a more appropriate shape and my pumpkin carving dremel to carve some grooves in it, stained and varnished it and we have a wand.

But then I got to thinking about how he would carry said wand around at school all day, and how long (or not) it would take for it to get lost, and started thinking about making a case for it to go in. And thus the case in this picture, which has a strap that will go over his head and one arm, so it hangs (hopefully) more or less at his hip without getting too much in the way. Given how long it took me to make this, it's a jolly good thing I didn't try and make the robes, or even a cloak! There's another picture on Flickr, plus one of the wand. I took it using the webcam on my laptop, since what else is tech for if not to gratuitously abuse?

There will be pictures taken of the full ensemble tomorrow, though getting them onto the net may take longer.


Edit: There are photos of Alex over on Phil's Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/39048245@N00/