the imperfections are beautiful!

For the past few weeks I have been engaged in the production of Halloween costumes for my nephews. Their outfit choices: a hurricane, and a QT (Quick Trip) Robot Vacuum. This endeavor has been challenging for a few reasons. First, these are not the type of costumes you will find at a Spirit Halloween store. And second, my nephews are "detail oriented" and know their meteorology and machinery. A generic "weather event," or prototypical droid, will not cut the mustard. So, I sketched up a couple of designs in my notebook, and made my pitch to the "clients" over an after-school snack. Their feedback: the hurricane needed less gray and more blue and a more prominent "eye" would be beneficial. The bot was missing a red button, the side panels needed to be green (they were yellow in my sketch because I'm colorblind), and there were concerns about where the water would be sprayed out and sucked back into the costume. At this point, we paused for a brief conversation about the differences…