Gone Feral In Idaho

A haunter's garage is a beautiful thing.  Cars never get to see the interior, especially if the haunter lives with a tool fanatic, yay me.   I just thought I'd share some photos of my late summer/fall refuge.  I usually announce "Hey sweetie, I'm headed to the garage of evil" when I head out unless it is the witching hour when I get home at midnight after he's asleep for a little creative time with my three ladies: Whoo hoo! Party time!  Wow, they seemed so stoked even with out heads. These are static props, so my goal is a sense of motion.  We'll see if I fall flat on my face with these in about 30 days.   Silliness aside, I am learning patience with my work for the first time ever.  Years and lifetimes ago I was an art major at the Art Institute in Chicago- and left out after one semester.  Who could blame me, we never got to do stuff like haunts.  Anyway, for years I used to work on one piece from beginning to end, I'd call in sick...

Sad flower, hanging head in shame:) I've become a terrible garden blogger.  With is being September and all, I am really busy with my other blog about the Halloween yard display or rather haunt.  Things in the gardens are doing fine.  The sunflowers have produced some massive seed heads, although I will probably not grow the Burpee Super Snacks because they had a big problem with toppling over (that may be my fault).  The mammoth variety seemed to be stronger although the heads drooped. We harvested a bazillion tomatoes this weekend, one massive zucchini, some peppers, crooknecks, and a couple a cukes.  The zucchini ended up getting gutted of seeds and made as a sort of meatloaf holder.  We had a bunch of game meat from K's folks that he is trying to power through.  I must say it was quite tasty.  Sadie had a taste test for herself the last time he made massive zucchini loaf boats, actually she devoured most of one that he...

A spooky mess , originally uploaded by sparth . Maybe I can find a way to make my garden remains part of my haunt after all.

I’ve wanted to write this post for quite a while.   One of the things that makes a great prop is an animated face, not with animatronics, but with engaging design.   Although we make otherworldly creatures, they all have faces like us mere humans and I often see beautiful, articulate work, with a blank face.   We all know who is a master at twisting corpse faces in to seemingly limitless expressions of terror, anger, pain, and sometimes I have detected a hint of a smile or humorous confusion.   I was aware of this need in design, but my early attempts on my prop heads were falling way short of expectation.   I looked at Rot’s stuff   which made me want to throw in the glue and paper towel, but I persevered.   He had to start somewhere too, right?   I decided to take action and searched the net for images with facial expressions that I wanted to recreate on my three witches.   I settled on Dick Cheney sneering, “Johnny” from the shining in th...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/sep/23/forensic-science-murder Cool.

I've got three lovely ladies to coiffure in the next week or two.  I had a vision of partially dreaded, funky hair as witches don't wash their hair right?  That would wash away their awesome powers.  I went to Fuzz, the local yarn, knitting, weaving, amazing little store where really nice women have a knitting circle/weaving meeting in the afternoons who have happily welcomed me in and show interest in my strange inquiries into how to use their medium of choice in different ways.  The store sits atop a fancy fabric place and is chock full of all sorts of natural fibers in natural and dyed fibers.  Its a little like going to a living history museum- full of soft, glorious fibers. Things went like this: I walked in and all the ladies were all sitting in their knitting circle, happy to answer my questions.   I asked " I want to make some hair".   The clerk/ random customer got up and asked "what color".   "Grey" At which point ...

I love the Haunt Community; a bunch  of folks that I idolize have been checking out my meager little blog.  I got caught with no makeup on and the curlers still in my hair when Mr. Halloween A.K.A. Pumpkinrot blogged about my new tombstones.  My post was just a filler post as they aren't even finished.  Oh shwells, I got up this morning (1:00 PM for the D.I.), made a nice brekkie, hopped on the net to check the forums and the blogs.  My day started out very nicely.  Then I checked Rot's blog because he isn't on my Google instant update blogroll thing (just 'cause he's elusive that way, and I save the best ones for last) and there was my Mr. Kreeg tombstone!  I hope if Mike Dougherty saw it he didn't cringe. The coolest part is that when I called Kyle to tell him about it, his reaction was of total excitement.  He's so sweet in that he really enjoys watching me make these crazy things.  I'll come home after midnight from work and he'll be fu...

There are two movies referenced here, one should be super easy for haunters, the other should be pretty easy.  These aren't finished, but are coming along nicely.

I've got a Midnight Syndicate CD, the original Halloween, Trick 'r Treat and Session 9 plus these guys I picked up from You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=FA74A8FDA3A9F255 I'm not that really into Midnight S.  But I figure most will expect some.  Don't get me wrong, they are really good at what they do. I hope the link works.

Shellhawk has announced the latest show from Hauntcast is up and playing.  Just in case someone comes along this blog that hasn't heard of Hauntcast, please read on, this is info you must have.  Those of you familiar with the show, go ahead an move on because you already know what I'm going to write.  I have never really listened to podcasts.  Kyle listens to tons of them and but most are a bunch of guys with inside jokes I usually don't get.  Hauntcast is my new fave, the show is really well done, it has a sense of humor that reminds me of the Son of Svengooly Show that I used to watch as a kid, but with more potty humor.  It is pure Halloween fun. It has turned the internet full circle to me as I prepare to sit in front of the speakers like the the kid in Christmas Story listening to the Little Orphan Annie Show on the radio.  Check it out right now!

This is last year: Stink Fest 2009.  These are pics of my first new witch (one of three) for 2010.  I promise they won't look like old ladies in babushkas.  Although I think she looks like she's making an obscene gesture, I am pretty happy.  I may need to saw off the left arm and raise it up a bit so she doesn't looks like she's propositioning someone like a crack ho.  

I finally got a Gorillapod  to help me with prop shots.  I made the mistake and got a knockoff from Target.  That piece of junk went back to the store the next day.  Then I found this guy: Even though I'm a green thumb as a gardener, I have a black thumb as a photographer, as in smelly old black rotten thumb (trust me with my line of work I know).  They even had my favorite color with one of my second favorites.  Don't tell the Frog Queen that I rock electric pink pretty well, she is my closest haunt neighbor that I know of and I'd still like to meet her and not have her hate me.   Now back to this video link  Rot posted on his blog earlier today.  If you ever loved the movie Trick 'R Treat , you're bound to want to see this.  I just finished and really enjoyed it.  

I've just finished carving the lettering on my first tombstone, for one Mr. Greeg, and damn! making these things is tough.  No wonder there are so many crappy tombstones out on the 31st.  You'd have to be a nut like me to put up with all the work and have the patience of someone waiting around for somebody to die.   Herman Webster Mudgett and Ed Gein, respectively (not respectfully) After I got home from work tonight Kyle was helping me come up with names for the now many other tombstones thanks to his finding me a sheet and 1/2 of the pink stuff at his work (who's my baby?).  He asked me about Gacy and I told him I'd like to use very old serial killers that have an aura of boogyman about them and not a fresh in the memory creepy homicidal pedophile.  As a death investigator I think that the families of the more recent Gacy killings would not be happy with my little haunt as their siblings are most likely still with us.  Of course there will be one fo...

We are trellising our melons and are using knee high pantyhose slings to keep them safe and sound and not get too heavy for the vines.  I added three pantyhose slings today.   Here is the single Chantarais-type melon getting bigger every day.  We may get only one of these guys.  It's almost the size of a store bought cantaloupe.  

We are still getting lots of tomatoes and the peppers are really starting to ripen up for us.  The two long ones are Carnival Salsa Mix from Burpee seed.  They are a perfect flavorful mild salsa pepper.   We got our first two ripe Burpee Zavory mild Habaneros as well.  They are a beautiful orange/red and sure are a true mild Habanero.  The two peppers diced with seeds and spines added a nice flavor to our fresh salsa. 

No pretty pictures here, just the garage/shop progress.  I have the first witch's upper torso set up and ready for paint.  Then its on to the lower half.   She looks like she's wearing a shrug at this point.  Not my ideal goal.   She got a neck as well.  All will be painted black and the neck and wrists will get some green.   Last up is my first attempt at headstones.  The hot knife from Harbor Freight for 13 bucks was a steal in my opinion.  These are my smaller, simpler headstones to learn from before I make the other 6 or 7 more complex ones.  I need to bring my respirator from work home the next time I use heat on the pink foam.  Luckily I had a good strong breeze today.  I need to put epitaphs on them and do a little embellishing, but all in all, I am one happy haunter today.  

I found this list on Amazon for Haunt music.  Very cool starting point.  

My search for the Macbeth witches in MP3 format was very short. http://www.scottbrunell.com/halloween/witches.htm

Kyle's Sister, Brother-in-law and cutest nieces EVAR went to England to visit with Her hubby's family.  These are the most thoughtful things ever that they could have brought back for us from across the pond: I love them and they will be in the herbs this weekend.  So cool!

Here is Harvest Monday ( really late ): J for New Mexico Big Jim.  He was really tasty in a breakfast burrito. Eggplant, what we call squish, a zucchini, and two- count them two cukes! The Squish and cukes already accounted for, let me add a ton of paste tomatoes, a few beefsteaks, a bucket (almost) of cherry tomatoes, and one sunflower head full of Burpee Super Snack seeds.  YUM!

Also known as my favorite prop picture to date While one of my faves- the Frog Queen has been rubbing elbows with Rob Zombie, I've been plugging away at my three sisters witches a-la Macbeth/ Pumpkinrot .  I finally have all three heads finished except two that got weather sealed need matting so they aren't shiny and one needs sealed,... the basic heads are done.  I want matte finish skin with shiny lacquered eyes, eyelids, teeth, gums, and lips, think Alien style.    These girls will be frothing at the lips in ecstasy while they try to raise the dead.  Note: I don't plan to have any risen dead this year due to time constraints, my haunt story will follow soon.   After I got home from the morgue I tried a little "photo shoot" with the girls and an idea I am tossing around about hair.  Pumpkinrot's witches are hairless (and ear-less as are mine), but I am a big hair girl.  I like some of the photos I've found ...

...was a suburban Chicago legend of a ghoul that (in my neighborhood) hung out near the refreshment shed at the local baseball fields when I was a kid.  Most of the older kids passed on the story to us much younger kids to most likely keep us away from the shed.  The "green hand" was a manlike thing that was green and would pluck unsuspecting children away if they got too close to the shed at night.  I remember being deathly afraid of the shed once the sun went down. I never knew how the story originated as there were no known child disappearances in my neighborhood at the time.  It wan't until years later that I found The Green Man  on Wikipedia and figured that this Pennsylvania Urban legend must have made it's way to suburban Chicago and that so many kids had told the story that it evolved into The Green Hand. I love the idea of how certain games and stories are passed by kids to younger kids with...

... which girl got a new fog machine today?  >>> This girl :) Now I'm reading up on fog chillers:) I also got a bulk box of unimbossed paper towels from Costco, a can of flat black latex paint, and a plastic rat from the (BOO!) Spirit store. Next up, a ton of cheesecloth, and black dye! Happy haunting!

I made two more flicker circuits, hot glued over the LED bulbs and Kyle helped me remove the bottoms of the other two lanterns to make a set of three.  They won't be this close together in the yard haunt and will have spots on them, thus the reason for the insane brightness.  I want them to cast flickers on my witches and tombstones this year and not be overpowered.  

Happy Halloween!!!!!!! , originally uploaded by XOZ (HATE THE NEW FORMAT) . There is a house near mine that I have to drive behind to get to the gas station. At the rear of the property are a few dilapidated sheds. One spring afternoon I drove by and saw someone sleeping on a mattress in the corner shed. Over the winter the Tyvec sheeting had been ripped exposing the inside of the shed. A few days later I saw the same person sleeping on a tattered mattress. There are a lot of homeless people and drifters in Boise due to the generally mild winters. I figured some homeless person had been sleeping one off under cover of the roof to keep out of the rain. The next week, on the way to work, I saw the same person again in the shadowy shed, in the same position. In my line of work it isn't uncommon to find homeless people of folks that partied too much end up freezing to death outdoors. I got to work and told my boss about what I saw and decided to go back and check things out...

Here I've pinched the parchment over the LED's to create a full diffuser. I am really happy with this one for this year.  Yup, that is the sound of a washer and dryer going at 3 AM.  That's what happens when you work the swing shift.  

I wrapped the 10 LED's in electrical tape to hold them in a bundle and then wrapped the exposed LED's in parchment as a diffuser.  I like the look of the originating "flame" at the bottom of the glass.  I am going to tinker with more parchment to diffuse more, but I think I will hot glue a flame shape over the exposed bulbs to make a sturdier, more weather resistant diffuser. Oh and DANG! the HD setting made a huge difference in the video.  Still not the best, but compare this to the last clip.  

This is blossom end rot.  I've only noticed it on one plant, the Super San Marzano hybrid paste tomato.  Of the gardens I am familiar with ours was the most amended, we had new composed manure with gypsum as our base, the topsoil of the raised beds worked in with some substrate sand, Canadian peat moss, and vermiculite.  I also have given all our veggies a hit of Zamzows Thrive.  Our plants are massive, even compared to the ones we gave away as seedlings to other gardens.  For some reason though, the Super San Marzanos weren't happy with all that.  I then dressed around the plant with a top fertilizer with 4% calcium in hopes to correct the problem.  So far so good, so it isn't necessarily a big fail, but we are definitely in the dark as to why this guy got so fussy.  After I took this shot I pulled all the end rot tomatoes and disposed of them.  There were about ten in all.  So far we've harvested about 20 and there ...

Maybe the whole world knows this story, but I didn't until well after it broke.  I think of this story often.  It started with a very well written human interest piece in the Tampa Bay.com  St. Petersburg Times I came across while surfing the web.  I was instantly riveted.  The story has all the elements of a journalistic piece of gold.  It is compelling, it shows the worst and best in people, and both worst and best of all- it really happened.  I check up on the story of Danni and her new life, and I reread the original horrifying beginning once about once a year.  She is an inspiration (at least her new family is) and she is a warning of what human beings are capable of doing to each other, even their own flesh and blood. This is Dani's Story , her website.  It is so good to see she found such wonderful people to live with.  I'm not sure why she stumbled into my memory today, but it was great to be able to see what she's up to.  ...

This is my prototype LED flicker lantern.  I still have a lot to do, but I think I found a cheap and simple circuit that just about anyone could make, trust me, I am no electrician.  Sorry for the poor quality, but I am simply trying to get the atmosphere across.  I blocked out the base of the lantern because it is sitting on the wiring and a ton of light leaks through the bottom until I get everything the way I like it.  Please, give me some feedback.  I plan to have three lanterns, one for each witch in the yard haunt this year.  The base plan is Spooky Blue's   "Spookyfire" LED blob , but with resistors and slave non-blinking ultrabright LED's that blink in a circuit with a cheaper blinking LED after referring to an LED   circuit wizard .  

I have three strikes against me with haunting our yard.  We have a chain link fence.  We live on a well light corner lot.  We live in a little, yellow, vinyl sided house with white trim and a cheesy half round window with bad 80's style brass "stained glass" over the front door.  Don't get me wrong, I like the house and all, It's just not ideal for a yard haunt.  There is no fighting with the street lamp.  I am a "sworn" County Deputy and could never tamper with it.  So I have to look to Skull and Bone  for lighting tips, although I only have a four flood string and a bunch of little LED floods that Pumpkinrot turned me on to.  I am wiring up some LED flicker circuits for three aged lanterns as well.  Anyway, the house is very light and kinda cute and homey looking in a low budget sort of way.  It is in no way a haunted mansion, or old Boise North End sort of place.  Sill, if they could make Mary Brown's trailer look creepy in...

This week's haul included cherry, Roma, Super San Marzano, and Super Steak hybrid tomatoes, a bunch of jalapeños, and a Flavorburst Hybrid sweet pepper.  It looks like we will be getting a ton of salsa peppers soon as well as a bunch more eggplants.  Of course there are gazillions of green tomatoes still on the vines.  The low tonight is 38 degrees Fahrenheit, I hope it warms up a bit.  

I'm not sure what to think about Brussels sprouts.  This is our second year trying them and we aren't getting the little cabbage sprouts, just open leaves.  It seems to be a lot of effort for little to no yield.   The generic cantaloupe plant we picked up from Zamzows on sale is doing really well on the fence trellis.  I am very happy with this picture BTW. This Burpee Sugar Girl Hybrid Chantarais-type melon is doing nicely in it's knee-high stocking sling.  All the melons will get these so they don't get too heavy for the vines.  The Burpee plant is smaller and has less melons though.   The Burpee Zavory mild habeñero is doing really well.  The two in the raised tomato beds got crowded out and are only producing a few pepper, but the one in the neighboring raised cold frame bed is going nuts!  The plant is huge and is covered in peppers.  I can't wait 'till they ripen and turn orange.  They look just like regular habeñero...