The Great Pumpkin Carve Off

From Team A:

The Wolf Pumpkin

And from Team B:

Evil Pumpkin Who Eats Pumpkin Babies

My Brother's Socks

Pattern: K2P2 ribbing and K7P1 leg

Yarn: Zitron Trekking Tweed

Color: Cadet Blue (260)

Needles: Circular, 2.25 mm

Orange Supper

The orange supper is a prelude to the Great Pumpkin Carve-Off, held during the last week in October each year, but hosted for the first time by Rosie Beaucoup, who was content to prepare the meal and complete the clean up while others used their artistic talents to produce Jack-O-Lanterns for the competition. Rosie Beaucoup likes to save her skills for knitting, gardening, and paper decorating.

No matter how formal or how casual the meal, we always seem to have something on the table from France. This evening in late October, we are having a very relaxed supper of carrot soup, velvety meat loaf, mashed potatoes baked in ramekins, oven roasted beets, and broccoli. Followed by cheese, homemade apple pie and ice cream. And today's French connection - the napkins, which we purchased at an open air farmer's market in Lille on our very first visit to the country.

Yarn Hunting

Malabrigo

I located three yarn stores in the few days that we were away and despite being a member of SABLE (Stash Accumulated Beyond Life Expectancy), I returned home with only a single ball of Fortissima Socka, in a sensible light brown, and this gorgeous skein of Malabrigo Sock in the Ochre colorway. I've not used Malabrigo in either fingering or lace weights but it seems to get rave reviews from other knitters. I think this skein is going to be a scarf.

Fly By Painting

An enjoyable short holiday break combines a bit of sightseeing, exploring new neighbourhoods, meeting old friends, trying out different restaurants (Korean, Portuguese, Chinese, Indian, and Greek!), and just a little shopping. It is even more fun when we can paint a room or two and help the hostess dramatically change her surroundings in a very short period of time.

The first step in any painting project is getting color samples and looking at them in different light at different times of day. We found out very quickly that every shade of grey selected turned a pretty shade of blue in the east light of the kitchen. But some people never give up trying to find the perfect color. It is 9 p.m. on the last night here and our hostess is still painting squares of color - and she now has so many in the kitchen that she has just run out of wall...

Some rooms are easier than others. The living room shade was picked in one day and painted the next. It is clean and crisp and looks classy with white trim. Unfortunately, we can't stay long enough to see it come together even more with the gorgeous new wall hangings and a large, new mirror. The walls are plaster so the mirror hanging is going to require a drill, plastic wall plugs, and careful math!

Yellow Golds

My garden today is hung with curtains of yellow, brown, orange, red, and gold.

Halloween Bags 2010

Every year since we built this house, we have decorated and filled Halloween bags as treats for the neighbourhood children. The first year, we only had three little ones! And in the twelve years since then, we have seldom had more than thirty. Besides the candy, we always add a couple of stickers to each bag and a number of little tykes over the years have proclaimed that we have the best treats EVER! We've enjoyed watching all the little lions and bunnies and batmen and fairies in the neighbourhood grow taller and taller.

The front bags started off as simple orange ones from the Dollar Store and the brown bag in back is just a basic paper lunch bag from the grocery store. Add black, orange, and champagne gold stencil paint, along with a black ribbon and voila! - glitzy little parcels for Halloween treats.

The Daffodil Knoll

A package of daffodil bulbs is really a bagful of promise and hope.

This morning, I scanned the gardens for the perfect place to plant daffodil bulbs and settled on a small knoll not far from the house.
The Dunkleys brought us a special garden treat when they were here this summer - three bags of incredibly rich mushroom compost. I have been hoarding them for special garden projects. I hauled one over to the planting area and the manure-like aroma was reminiscent of what Valley farm folk used to refer to as "Mary's perfume". It does a gardener's heart good.
I worked the compost into the area, dug out a trench that was a good eight inches deep, applied a few fistfuls of bonemeal and arranged the bulbs about two inches apart. As I worked,  I was thinking about Wordsworth and his beloved Lake District with its clouds of daffodils in an English spring. We had visited his birth home, his first house after marrying, and his final home when we were Cumbria and I have to agree with him that it is one of the most heavenly spots on earth.

Red Is Best

What do you put with a deep, rich red baby sweater as a gift for little Sarah? - Why, Kathy Stinson's Red is Best !! As you can see, this is the 25th anniversary edition, so I think it has stood the test of time!

Kathy is a good friend of our own writer daughter so it seems even more appropriate to include it in the package.

A Great Addition To The October Garden

In my garden today, I had a sister from British Columbia. It surely was nice to see her in that setting.

My brother, who is a great gardener, was here yesterday and saw it for the first time. He really seemed to like this woodland setting. I am sorry now that I did not think to get the camera out for that visit.

The Green Day Sweater In Red

A Sweater For Sarah Catherine

Pattern: Green Day Cardigan

Designer: Elinor Brown

Yarn: Lamb's Pride Naturespun Superwash Sport

Needles: 3.25 mm and 3.50 mm

There is a delightful family on our street with three dear little boys. When I found out that baby number four was on its way, I asked the rather solemn eldest boy whether he wanted it to be a boy or a girl. "Oh, a boy", he answered, with no hesitation. "But poor Mummy", I said. "Then she would still be the only girl in the house." He gave me a look that expressed a bit of wonder at the condition of my short and long term memory and said pointedly "There IS the dog!"

Well, unfortunately, their lovely female golden retriever passed away several weeks after that conversation but Baby Sarah Catherine arrived a few days ago. And I think she will look swell in this sweater and a little pair of red rubber boots!