wallowing in witch crafts

Double, double, toil and trouble; inspiration burn and bubble...

Granted, I've taken some liberties to which the Bard might find himself momentarily aggrieved, but, if Shakespeare were here, I believe he'd eventually appreciate the aptly altered allusion to one of his most famous plays.

I cannot pin the blame on the Weird Sisters, not for the kitchen chaos I currently face. (Besides, I understand the witches' schedules are pretty booked up, what with their tireless commitment to messing with Macbeth. Every girl needs a hobby, I suppose.) No, the paints and varnish, the soaking brushes, the spattered and smeared mini drop cloth, the random embellishments and other supplies scattered about--even the shirt sleeve I managed to drag through wet, black paint--these are the disaster-zone remnants of my own conjuring. I don't own a proper cauldron. Nonetheless, I spent the last few weeks intermittently brewing up a brouhaha of artsy amusements. After many months of marketing madness, oh, what a welcome and magical ride it's been!

As many autumnal stories do, this one begins with pumpkins. Last year, at JoAnn's (R.I.P.), we found this unfinished ceramic, light-up pumpkin pile. All it wanted for was a bit of time, love, and imagination. I had the love. Imagination was no hindrance, only deciding which spooky-chic look to choose. But, alas, it was time that was lacking. Because of our exceptionally damp climate, if I'd undertaken this project the moment the pumpkin stack arrived upon our doorstep, its protective varnish still would not have cured long enough to safely wrap it up and pack it away come November 1st--when the annual Fantastical, Felicitous Fitzgerald Festival of Christmas commences. So I tucked it securely into a cardboard box, stowed it someplace I'd be sure to find it effortlessly, and waited nearly a year until--if I'm honest--that light-bulb moment when I finally recalled that we even had it. Then I waited some more until I managed to uncover which mystical location I'd deemed "easy to find". (I may now sheepishly attest that my past self had far more confidence in the deductive skills of my present self than was apparently warranted. Should our paths ever cross, we will most assuredly be having words.)

With the unrivaled zeal of Victor Frankenstein in the midst of his mad pursuit, I ransacked the closet in my own little sanctuary, determined to see this vision to fruition...however unsightly the cost. Staring at the shambles around me--the evidence of my failed endeavor--I released a heavy sigh of defeat before restoring the room to its formerly organized state. I needed help (debatably, in more ways than one). I conscripted into service the only assistant capable of scouring the loft for the treasure I sought. (Maisie's lack of opposable thumbs and inability to discern a box of ceramic pumpkins from a box of any other inedible items disqualified my usual helper from this particular quest.) When neither search resulted in my paintable project du jour, Dennie lumbered--with a disappointing lack of hunchbacked gait--to the storage shed, rooting and rummaging for a needle lost in a dangerously precarious haystack. Nothing. The pumpkins were nowhere to be found. Discouraged though I may have been, I remained resolute. I would not surrender.

Suddenly, lightning struck my brain, the ends of my hair crackling, sparking, igniting the flames of new possibilities within my mind. (Let it be noted that liberties may have been taken at this point in our tale as well.) Eyes wide with excitement--almost feral, really--I raced back to the original closet, to the space between the spaces, the one locale I could not fathom stashing anything I wished to find in the future. (I can only presume past me had an unusually wicked sense of humor.)

"It's alive!" I cried out in my most exultant and sinister voice--which made absolutely no sense, as the item was, as it always will be, undeniably inanimate. Also, there wasn't another soul present to hear me. Still, it felt like the thing to do in the moment, just as blending Shakespeare and Shelley feels sort of apt right now, like a ludicrous literary libation.

Dennie and I have hereby agreed to declare it adorable that, after our rigorous scavenging, the missing box turned up in the very first place I'd looked.

Yes, adorable. That's our story, and, like a fly in a spider's web, we're sticking to it.

Hand-painted pumpkin stack and a selection of close-ups of the eight miniature Halloween scenes depicted in random patches on the pumpkins. (The jack-o-lanterns also light up!)

I packed up the closet for the second time in a matter of hours and set to painting straight away, first the base coats, then--following a week's recovery from the Great Fall and the injuries still sore almost three weeks later--I moved on to the patterns for each of the three pumpkins. Before I could complete the stack, however, I diverted my attention to this Halloween pendant. It's fun, it's wearable, and I'm delighted it turned out, though it had begun merely as a test. Prior to adding miniature illustrations onto hand-painted pumpkins--pumpkins into which I'd already poured considerable effort--I wanted to see how this cat and general style looked first on something else. (Bonus: I've never had jewelry that matched the decor before. Why that's a bonus, I couldn't possibly tell you. We'll just call it adorable.) Happy with the results, I proceeded to work in a smattering of Halloween imagery around the jack-o-lantern trio, which then inspired another project altogether: a series of coordinated wall hangings to complement the pumpkins. For a single, solitary project I'd meant to complete within a few days of beginning, three weeks and multiple projects later, the mess I'd manifested continued to grow and grow and grow...and grow.

Hand-painted pumpkin stack and a selection of close-ups of the eight miniature Halloween scenes depicted in random patches on the pumpkins. (The jack-o-lanterns also light up!)

Double, double, toil and trouble; inspiration burn and bubble. Cool it without any blood; tack the charms now, firm and good.  (Sorry, Will. I've willfully mangled your Song of the Witches once more. Also, rhyming blood and good? Love your work, dude, but really? Yeah, okay, maybe if we were Scottish.)

Three handmade signs of witchy wonder are now ready to hang (to be clear, I mean on the wall, not from a noose), and our kitchen looks like the site of a badly botched potion, of a cataclysmic cauldron conflagration.

Try saying that ten times, fast.

On second thought, don't. We've all witnessed the dangers of uttering Beetlejuice only thrice. Better safe than sorry.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I have been breathing in paint and varnish fumes for weeks. Why do you ask?

The next reasonable step, I conjecture, is to clean it all up (and/or seek post-blog therapy), but, in an unreasonable world, I have an idea that strikes me as infinitely better: begin anew. Christmas, after all, is right around the corner, and we might yet find a tiny overlooked inch or two of space for even more handcrafted decorations. If you'd ever seen our holiday home, you'd understand how very unlikely that prospect is, but a lack of room is hardly a deterrent when it's not even Halloween and, already, we're crazy for Christmas.

Or just plain crazy. Po-tay-to. Po-tah-to.