Happy November

Happy November!  We've actually had a real fall this year with cooler, but not freezing temperatures.  Virginia's idea of fall is normally alternating days between 90 and 45 degrees.  But this year, we've been having low to mid to upper 60's during the day and upper 30's to mid 40's at night.  It's been awesome!

I have been spending as much time as possible outside.  A lot of knitting has been getting done beside the fire pit.  Last night I worked on a plain garter stitch dish cloth knit with free, donated yarn.  It's the first thing I've knit for myself since early July.  I've been focusing on bazaar knitting instead of selfish knititng.  The bazaar is next weekend and I can not wait for it to be over so I can knit All the things just for me.  Actually, I have another show in December so I probably won't be doing much selfish knitting until after Christmas.  Or Christmas Eve.  I do love participating in #ChristmasEveCastOn.

Anyway...

Here are a few of the Christmas gnome ornaments I've made for the bazaar.

Sorry for the bad lighting.  The gnomes are hanging on the pegboard in my closet.

I can't imagine why the realtor thinks I need to clean/straighten/purge my closet.

She obviously doesn't knit/craft nor understand a bazaar vendor's lifestyle the week before a big show.

But yeah, even I can admit, my closet is screaming for help.  I can't even get to my shoes.

I hope you had a fun Halloween.  Hayden had a blast for the first few buckets full of candy but by the third or fourth, she was done!  Thankfully the rain held off until well after acceptable trick or treating time. 

Well, I'm off to go put more tags on more items for the bazaar.  Hopefully I'll have time to post next week but no promises.  My 'real' job takes up a surprising amount of my time and I still have an awful lot to do to prepare.  Thank goodness for the end of Daylight Savings and gaining an hour.   Wish me luck.  And focus!  😀

Sunday Supper - Halloween Trail Mix

 

photo courtesy of foodlion.com

I'm a little late with this Halloween trail mix recipe for actual Halloween but it will be a great way to use up any left over candy.  Like there's ever any left over candy. Ha!  Okay, so maybe we all need to carry ourselves to the store and buy out all the Halloween candy corn and Reece Pieces that are left so we can make this.  It sounds delicious!  And super easy!  And there's nothing that says you can't enjoy candy corn in November.

More Bazaar Knitting

 Knitting for the upcoming bazaars continues.

This week I'm focusing on creating Christmas gnomes.  I'm sure I'll share photos when I actually get a few finished.

The making is going slowly because the house selling ordeal continues.  No acceptable offers yet but interest in the house remains high and it feels like we have to leave the house almost daily for showings.  And yes, I am aware that I shouldn't be complaining.... but .... I'm starting to complain..., pretty loudly.  

Meanwhile...

Quack, quack, quack.

Hayden's duck feet worked well.  She went to a local trunk-or-treat event this past weekend and had a blast.  She remembers being a ladybug last year but she doesn't remember getting candy.  She is Quite excited about the Halloween candy this year!

On the needles

First, we finally have a house full of pumpkins and candy corn.  I just Love autumn!

I am so happy to have cooler temperatures and pumpkins.  My jeans, sweaters and boots have been dug out of storage and we've even turned on the heat.  I love fall!

I'm still frantically knitting for this season's Christmas bazaars.  The first one is on November 12th so I have some time but unfortunately, work takes up a lot of my time.  And then there's the whole house selling thing.  Cleaning up all my crafty mess, putting it all away, leaving the house for an hour or so, then coming home and getting it all back out again takes up a surprising amount of time.  I shouldn't complain.  Having lots of interest in the house is much better than having no interest.  Amazingly, according to Zillow, the listing has had 2,268 views in 13 days.  Thankfully not all those people have come to see the house, although it does feel like I've dumped the trash cans and mopped the floors that many times.  😄

At the moment, I'm focusing on knitting fur headbands.  They were extremely popular at Winterfest last year so I decided to make them again this year.  They don't look like much until you put them on  but they are super comfortable, soft and warm.

I wore one pretty much the entire time I was working Winterfest last year.

What have you been knitting?

The Birds!

 I've been doing a little more knitting this week but still not as much as I'd have liked. 

I'm almost ready to start decreasing on this hat.  Only a few more rows to go.

Wow, that's orange!  Hayden is going to be a duck for Halloween so I'm knitting her duck feet to go over her shoes.  I don't have a pattern and they didn't flare out and 'web' as much as I'd hoped they would, but they do fit over her shoes perfectly.  Now I only have the challenge of making the second one match the first. Hope my notes are better than I think they are.

I've also knit 40 billion chapstick holders for the upcoming fall/Christmas bazaars I'm doing.  

But the real reason I haven't gotten much knitting done...

My sister took her grandkids to the Richmond Metro Zoo and invited me to tag along.

I never pass up a chance to go to the zoo.  We saw the penguins,

And of course we fed the giraffes.

The wolves were awesome!  I had never seen live wolves before and was surprised how big they are.  I expected them to be large dog - labrador, german shepherd... size but they were much, much larger.

The black one is a "baby" and looks like a Hellhound.  The others seemed mostly indifferent to the visitors' presence but that black one looked like he'd like to eat us all alive.

 

The camels are always fun to see and thankfully they were in a good mood.  No spitting this time.

 

But my favorite was the birds.  I didn't think anything could surpass my love of feeding the giraffes but those birds....  I didn't want to go into their habitat. I had no idea I have a slight bird phobia.  I mean,  I'm fine with sitting on the deck watching the birds in the yard.  I'm cool with birds in pet stores.  But the idea of going into that giant cage with a zillion birds flying around... Yikes!  But I white knuckled it and went in.   And I'm SO glad I did.  After I got over my initial anxiety wig-out, I had a blast.  The birds landed all over me, and yes, they pecked me a little but the experience was worth the tiny bit of pain. At one point, I had three on my head, several on my back, one on my shoulder pecking at my cheek, three on my arm and another crawling up my jacket sleeve.  So much fun!

Oh, and let's not forget the pygmy hippo.  He was singing to us.

I can't wait to go back!

Ladybugs

The wintertime ladybugs have arrived. Which is actually pretty appropriate since Hayden was a ladybug for Halloween.

She obviously had a good time and mastered the art of asking for candy.  She leaves out the trick part and just walks around putting her hand out while shouting "Treat!"  

We've created a monster.

An adorable little monster!

Hope your Halloween was as joyous.

Sunday Supper - Ghost Cupcakes

Today's Sunday Supper Halloween treat is super simple.  I figured you'd be busy getting into that costume so I saved the easiest for last.

Ghost cupcakes from Eazy Peazy Mealz. 

Enjoy and,

Happy Halloween!

Halloweens Past

Since I figured you wouldn't want to see more pictures of the same three things I've been knitting over and over and over again for the past four months, I thought I'd share a few photos of Halloween Past.  I only have a few photos here at my mother-in-law's house that I've stumbled across stuffed in strange places.  Why was one of these in with my maternity pantyhose?  And more importantly, why do I still have maternity pantyhose and even more importantly, why did I feel the need to bring them to this house??

In 1982 I was the Jolly Green Giant and my boyfriend was some kind of monster.  I'm not sure which is scarier - the boyfriend, the weird reflection on the portrait in the background or that wallpaper.

In 1983 a few of us from the office dressed up as the Munsters.  The funny part was that giant, tall me was Little Eddie while tiny, petite Liza was Herman.  Good times!

And in 1985, I was a fire fighter.

As you can see, I have always leaned towards super simple, cheap costumes.

I won't be dressing up this year, but I can't wait to see Hayden in her costume.  I hear she's going to be a ladybug.

What about you?  Will you be dressing up?

Sunday Supper - Dracula Dentures

 

OMG!  How can a dessert be so cute and so terrifying at the same time?

The moment I saw these Dracula dentures from Delish.com, I knew I had to share the recipe.

You're welcome. 

Sunday Supper - Spider Cupcakes

 

Okay, y'all know I'm not into spiders, but these spider cupcakes from Texanerin Baking were just too cute to pass up.  

I looked at lots of photos of spider cupcakes and some were just a little too realistic. But these ...

I think the family will enjoy these spider cupcakes and I know Hayden will.  She has recently discovered taking Oreo's apart.  Our spiders will be fat and made with whole Oreo's so she can practice her new trick.

I'm also loving that the official recipe for these makes pumpkin cupcakes.  For one, I feel like everything needs to be made with pumpkin during October, and second, pumpkin is healthy, right?  That means we could have pumpkin spider cupcakes as a meal and it would be considered healthy.  Right???

Sunday Supper - Frankenstein Pudding Cups

October's Sunday Suppers will be a little different.  In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd share spooky foods.

Frankenstein Pudding Cups

It doesn't get much easier, or cuter, than these Frankenstein pudding cups from Cooking Mamas.  I can't wait to make these pudding cups for Hayden.  

Okay, let's be honest.  I can't wait to make these pudding cups for Hayden and Nana. 😊

It might choke Artie

 Any Little Rascals fans out there?

I'm head over heals with the color of these fingerless gloves.  They are knit with City Tweed DK in Artichoke.  And I cannot hear the word "artichoke" without thinking of Stymie's famous line, "It might choke Artie but it ain't gonna choke Stymie!"

Anyway, I'm loving that unusual green.  And the tweed.  What is it about tweed that screams Autumn to me?

And, shhh.... Last year that pumpkin was full of cotton balls so no one has thought to look in it this year.  This year, it contains Tootsie Rolls.  Sometimes you just have to hide your pre-Halloween candy in plain sight.

And because it's been a while...

Hayden looks so big until she goes out and stands beside Paw-Paw's truck.  Her giant neon green ball is casting a witchy glow onto the hubcap.  Apparently Hayden is going to be a soccer player.  She loves to kick her ball all over the yard.  

So, my question for the day is, have any of you done TKGA's Master Knitter program?  I want to take/do the course/program but....  What I really want is to have already completed the program.  I can't quite bring myself to commit that much time and money into something YouTube and a heck of a lot of practice could provide me basically for free.  If you've completed the program, do you feel it was worth it?  What was your experience?  Did you complete the entire program or just a part of the whole?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.