![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3935_costume_1.jpg\")
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Active Solution has a tradition of themed Christmas parties, and this year’s theme is Men In Black<\/i>, like in the movie. I expect the vast majority to turn up as agents in black suits and sunglasses, but it’s a lot more fun to be an alien.<\/p>\n
I made an alien costume for Ingrid for Halloween, oh, maybe ten years ago? I can’t remember which one of us came up with the idea of a four-armed alien, but it was an awesome one, so I’m reusing it. Apparently I took no photos of it at the time, or at least none that ended up on the blog.<\/p>\n
Two simple long-sleeved tops that (almost) match in colour and material, and a pair of gloves. Stuff it all and attach the one to the other, and when you wear it, bam, four-armed alien. Pieces of elastic at the wrists looselyl attach the fake arms to my real ones, so when I move mine, the extra two also move.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3935_costume_2.jpg\")
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This time I think I’ve managed to do it with almost zero waste. Both tops are from Skyddsv\u00e4rnet second hand, and the bottom one has a buttoned neckline so it fits around my waist without any cutting. I’m attaching them to each other with safety pins, which will make fewer holes than machine sewing would.<\/p>\n
The sleeves are stuffed with rolled-up wool felt that I had in the basement; the gloves are my mitten liners; the stuffing inside them is a few sheets of newspaper and some squares of kitchen towels for the fingers. I hope to be able to dismantle it all when I’m done, donate the tops back to Skyddsv\u00e4rnet, and put the gloves back in the glove box.<\/p>\n
What I haven’t managed so well is getting it done in time. I bought the tops two weekends ago, and had the arms all done this weekend. I totally forgot to take into account all the evening activities this week – two concerts and a major after-hours release at work – so here I am, putting in safety pins a half-hour to midnight. I’m sure the lighting at the party will hide all shortcuts and mistakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Active Solution has a tradition of themed Christmas parties, and this year’s theme is Men In Black, like in the movie. I expect the vast majority to turn up as agents in black suits and sunglasses, but it’s a lot more fun to be an alien. I made an alien costume for Ingrid for Halloween, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[767,18,768],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crafts-2","category-dailies","category-photography-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21547"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21551,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547\/revisions\/21551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}