Our family tradition is to make donuts on Halloween and this year I took a shortcut and used a King Arthur baking mix.
The Big Grand and I overfilled the pan so we had some strange looking donuts but they were good.
After eating a tub full of candy on Halloween, I had to force myself to go into Ikea on the way home from Daughter's to get my Christmas cookies. They didn't have my usual small tin of holiday gingersnaps so I bought a big tin and two boxes of them along with a chocolate Advent calendar.
It's a bit of whiplash to go from Halloween right into Swedish Jul but Daughter had already declared it the first day of Christmas that morning. After we left to head home she was packing up her boys to go to Home Goods for their Christmas decor before it was all gone.
Betty's not exactly sweet but she's not sour either and in order to keep her that way she can't be put in the fridge. That means I have to pack her up and take her with me so I can feed her. I bought her this new heated travel case that she absolutely loved. She made beautiful bubbles all weekend in it.
The night before we left I made another one of those easy peasy two loaf pan loaves and proved to myself it wasn't a fluke. Betty may not be sweet but she's a real sweetheart. Along with a couple of avocados, she kept me fed all weekend while everyone else was eating Goblin Franks (hot dogs).
We spent Halloween up at Daughter's house again this year so I could give out candy while they went trick or treating.
Trick or treating was from 5-8 and it was off to a slow start while it was still light. Pup and I manned the porch. I did some knitting. I ended up giving out 3 huge baskets of candy. I was worried I might run out. There were So. Many. Kids.
'
There was a lot of oohing and ahhhing over Daughter's immense pumpkin display.
Of course, there was drama. The little rash I thought was a touch of contact dermatitis kept spreading. I spent 2 hours in Urgent Care the night before making sure it wasn't something worrisome. It's an allergic reaction, that's certain but to what, who knows. I'm suspecting it's to a new medication I just started and so did the doctor so I'm discontinuing that until I can find a new primary care physician. When I called his office to try to get an appointment, they said he'd left the practice. Jeesh. You'd think they'd have given me some warning.
Jack is done but he's actually not. I ran out of the plain brown wool I was using and had to switch to a variegated brown in the corners and I like it but now I need to do the same in the bottom corners and under Jack, I think. So he'll be back again next year which is fine by me. I always am happy to see his smiling face come October.
I lost the game of yarn chicken with just a few more inches to go.
That's not going to do it. I spent an afternoon online trying to find fiber that might be a match. I've got several on the way so fingers crossed.
I had hoped to be wearing that one by now but it's not like I don't already have too many handspun Pimpeliesses as it is. Here they all are getting a good soaking. I've been washing all my fall knits in hopes that the weather may warrant them but so far....nope. It's not sweater weather here yet unless you go out late at night and I don't do much of that anymore.
I always hate myself in the morning after I've been up late watching YouTube videos and see something I just have to have. I was feeling pretty bad about this impulse buy until it showed up. Look at how pretty it was wrapped. All is forgiven.
So what was so enticing? It was the Roy and Pip YouTube channel. When I found out they sold kits I had to have one.
I've never been completely happy with my punching skills so I thought I'd try the materials that are used in the videos. The kit comes with the recommended fabric, yarn and needle. There's also a hoop under it all.
Since I had just finished my latest mug rug, I had an empty frame.
I also had another empty frame because I had also just finished the little veggies.
I didn't know how long it would take for the kit to get here so yesterday I started an Elmo mug rug. I was thinking the baby Grand could use it for the water bottle he carries around all day. He loves Elmo.
Unfortunately, between the mug rugs and the Jack O Lantern rug I'm hooking, I did some serious damage to my wrists. The frames are covered in teeny tiny spikes to hold the fabric and I'm forever dragging my arms over them. I gave myself a very uncomfortable case of contact dermatitis on both wrists so now I'm taking some punching time off while they heal. When I do go back, I'll be wearing these wristbands I just bought for protection while humming "Let's Get Physical". Great shades of the 80's. Next it will be headbands and leg warmers.
Clue One is finished and the MKAL looks like this now. It's not as impressive looking after being shoved onto a long cable needle. Clue Two started with picking up and knitting along the top edge. It's about 300 stitches. I had to rip that first row out when my count didn't add up. It wasn't as simple as just adding a stitch here or there because of the increases you make along the way.
The top blue section could have been a fancy Brioche design but I tried it, ripped it out twice and then opted for the easier Knit and Slide modification that is offered. I feel like I wimped out on this detail but you can't learn Brioche over 300 plus stitches. It's too risky. Trust me.
The first Chestnut sleeve is finished and the second one started. It's hard to believe that this is what I consider to be mindless knitting these days. The MKAL really put everything into perspective.
I wish I could say that the socks were smooth sailing but those ugly Hawthornes are not behaving. I can't get the colors to match up in the heel section and it's making be crazy. All the stitch counts are the same but the colors are not where they should be. There's been a lot of trial and error resulting in a lot of ripping back. Since the Hawthornes became too difficult for travel knitting, I cast on another pair from Arne and Carlos' new collection that thankfully, are doing everything they should. At the moment, anyway.
The top dots are done. I hate to admit it but I think I'm going to have to add the dots that go around the house. Next year.
Betty Boo has the back end of a sheep. She's getting packed away along with Matter's House. I really have to pick Patchwork Automne back up in November and get that last bit done before it's time to haul out the Christmas stitching.
I'm afraid Stephen West is to blame for my lack of progress on the needlepoint project. I usually work on this late at night while watching re-runs of old sitcoms on the iPad. For the past week or so I've been using that time to watch the MKAL tutorials and more often than not, rip back quite a lot of stitches. I'll have more on that tomorrow.
Thanks to a couple of extra long Datelines, I managed to make it to another corner. I'll be heading down end border #3 this week-if the pursuit for a new front doorknob has concluded. We've had no luck here in the local hardware store so I guess a road trip is in the near future.
.jpg)
.jpg-large)
