wshaffer

My two nephews are participating in something called the "Pinewood Derby" as part of Cub Scouts. Basically, you build a little wooden car and roll it down a track. I did something similar when I was a kid, but it's all a bit slicker now. We started off the project down at the hardware store, where they had a guy with a bandsaw cutting out the shapes the kids had traced for their cars.

Youngest Niece wanted to ride in my car back to her house. "I like music in the car, not talking!" she declared. None of you will be surprised that I've given more than a little bit of thought to what things in my music collection are suitable for 4-year-olds. Unfortunately, I didn't remember most of those thoughts, so I threw on Katatonia's Last Fair Day Gone Night on the grounds that it's fairly melodic and doesn't have any screaming or swearing. (Well, not much screaming or swearing. I forgot that "Brave" is sung in a death growl and "Passing Bird" has a few f-bombs, but we didn't get that far into the album, so no worries.)

Youngest Niece declared "Yes! I like this song!" after the first few notes of this number, so I guess I didn't make a terrible choice:


She was of the opinion that it doesn't quite match up to the Frozen soundtrack, though.

We got to the house, and I helped Younger Nephew put his car together. What really got Younger Nephew excited were the transfer decals for decorating the car. He very patiently cut out tiny decals of flames, stripes, dragon claws, and a dragon tail for the back of the car, and I rubbed them all onto the car with a blunt pencil. Fortunately, he was entirely unbothered by any of the mistakes I made - those decals are fiddly. I got pretty good at them by the time we got to the last few.

Below I give you a photo of the two cars, which do an excellent job of expressing the personality of their creators:

Here's the "completed" back of the jacket. I put "completed" in quotes, because it's always possible that someday I'll cram a few more patches back there. But of the ones I've got, this is what's going on the back:
( picture behind cut )
That Vallenfyre patch was an interesting one to sew. In tribute to Vallenfyre's crust punk roots, rather than being an embroidered patch, it's silk-screened on to an unfinished square of black cloth. Basically it's a mass-produced version of DIY band patches made with stencils and fabric paint. It also started to fray at the edges the moment I took it out of the package. The frayed look probably adds to the authenticity, but I wanted this thing to last, so I used closer stitches than usual to sew it so as to keep the edges from fraying much more. It took about 4 times as long as any of the other patches to sew, but I must admit that I like the way it looks.

I've got three more patches to go on the front of the jacket, and one to go on the right sleeve. After that, I'll consider the jacket finished enough to wear, although the front will still look a little sparse. I'm hoping to score a Bolt Thrower patch when I see them at the end of the month, which would be a very nice addition to the collection.