Happy Halloween!

Well, it's Halloween again.  How did it come around again so quickly??  After last year, when I spent a week and lots of money sewing fancy one-of-a-kind costumes for the girls and then they didn't even win the costume contest...I decided to go with ready-made costumes.  Less work, and less money.

So this year, Angel is an "Enchanting Princess"...

 Princess is "Dorothy"...

 And Kitty is Snow White...

And, surprise, surprise....Angel won the costume contest at church!  Go figure.  The time all I have to do is hem the costume and fix her hair, she wins.  Sticking with store-bought costumes from now on.  Our neighborhood contest is later this afternoon.  I'll really laugh out loud if one of my girls wins that one too.

So anyway, have a safe and happy Halloween, y'all!

The official start to fall...

The girls begged me to buy a pumpkin the other day.  Actually, they've been begging since the pumpkins appeared in the grocery stores.  I finally gave in.  But not to carve scary faces....to roast it!  I've never cared for jack-o-lanterns, and the girls don't either.  But we love pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread!  And I'm going to attempt pumpkin cheesecake this time, too!

♥

So anyway, I googled "how to roast a pumpkin", just to make sure I could remember how.  As I was cutting the pumpkin in half, Kitty was all excited.  When the two halves fell open on the table, she looked disappointed.  She said, "There's not a pie in it!" Hahahaha!  No, sweetheart, there isn't.  We have to make the pie ourselves. ☺  I discovered that I didn't have two baking dishes large enough to hold the halves of the pumpkin, so I had to roast one half at a time.  Next time, I will choose a smaller pumpkin.  In the first picture, the half on the right is done, and waiting to be scooped.  The half on the left is waiting to go in the oven.  Excuse my messy stove.

So after about three hours total roasting time, lots of scooping, chopping and pureeing....I ended up with only seven cups of packed pumpkin.  And a very messy kitchen.  Still working on getting it all cleaned up.

 And after the second half of the pumpkin was roasted, I turned up the heat and roasted the seeds!  Because we love roasted pumpkin seeds!  They're gone now.  Well, they're almost gone.  Hubby is going on a trip today, and he's taking the rest with him.  So, as far as the girls and I are concerned, they're gone.

I think I need to get another pumpkin...

Finished one project...

A friend commissioned me to make four sets of my "A Girl's Best Friend" mitts for her nieces.  I was going to use different yarn for each set, but my friend assured me all of her nieces would like the sparkly yarn.  So I went ahead and made them all with Hobby Lobby's "I Love This Yarn", which I don't love, but as acrylics go, it's not really as awful as Red Heart.  I had thought about using wool, but I don't like to make stuff for other people using wool, unless I know for sure that they know how to take care of wool properly, and that they want to.  So anyway, here's a pic of the four pairs of mitts!

The pattern will be available soon on http://knitpicks.com/ and I highly recommend using Knit Picks yarn, over Hobby Lobby acrylic.  I'll post a link to the pattern once it's up. 

♥

I'm doing some research these days.  Nope, not election research; got that done a while back, and voted early.  Now I'm doing research about flooring.  Hubby has finally agreed that we should rip out the carpet in our family room and bathrooms, and the linoleum in our kitchen, and the boring white tiles in our entryway, and get new flooring!  I am so beyond excited about this!  Soooo...

We're getting a nice neutral ceramic tile in the kitchen and bathrooms.....

 Wood in the entry and family room....

And a gorgeous granite tile for the fireplace surround and hearth.

♥

Back to knitting...

Once my deck was done, and I'd finished test-knitting my friend's design, I decided it was time to learn a new knitting skill.  Since I recently learned Magic Loop, and I've printed out a bunch of gorgeous sock patterns, I chose to learn two-at-a-time sock knitting.  I was going to go ahead and learn it with Bayerische, but I figured that might be tempting fate a bit, to learn a new technique on a very complicated design....so I'll save Bayerische for next.  I searched through all of my sock patterns, and picked "Popped".  I had printed it out months ago, when it was a free pattern.  Now it's available on Knit Picks: http://www.knitpicks.com/cfpatterns/pattern_display.cfm?ID=10178220

The yarn I'm using is Fortissima Socka(superwash wool/nylon), in a nice dark gray.  I searched online for video tutorials demonstrating the technique for knitting two socks at a time, on one circular....but I couldn't find any.  So I looked for photo tutorials, which are almost as good.  I found this one, and it was very helpful to me:

http://knittinggiraffe.blogspot.com/2008/10/magic-loop-2-at-time-tutorial-part-1.html

Once I got past the first few rounds, when everything was fiddly and confusing, it got easy.  It's not much more complicated than Magic Looping one sock.  You just have to make sure that you're working with the right ball or skein of yarn, and not twisting them up together too much.  So far, so good...

 Here's a closeup of the stitch pattern.  Looks very subtle until you put it on...

 Once you put it on, the stitch pattern really opens up!

Hmmm...that's probably why it's called "Popped".

♥

Anyway, I'm almost ready for the heels now; just a few more rows.  I think I'll try to get those few rows finished today, and maybe get the heels started.



My deck is done!

My deck is done! My deck is done! My deck is done! My deck is DONE!

Here's a picture from right after it was finished:

 And no, it isn't built on an angle; I guess I just wasn't holding the camera straight.  Oops.  The deck is perfectly level and straight.  And gorgeous!

Here's a picture with a few things on the deck:

We're gonna need a bigger table.  We got that one when Angel was a baby, so it was perfect for just Hubby and me.  We didn't think ahead.  I'm hoping to, at some point, get a table with six chairs, and an umbrella. ☺

Deck-In-Progress

Framing...

 Framing done...

 Digging post holes...

 Walkboards routered and put in place, but not nailed down...

Today we're going to nail down the walkboards, cut off the ends(see where they're hanging off the end of the frame?) and router them along that end.  And it'll be done! ☺

Before and After Demolition

I finished tearing apart the deck today!  I worked all morning, and most of the afternoon, and my muscles are protesting already.  But the deck is gone!  All except for one board that is trapped under that palm tree...

To refresh your memory(haha), here's the "before":

 And here's the after!

We still need to gather up all the boards and put them in the fire.  And we're planning on starting the new deck in the morning!  I'm pretty excited, can you tell?

We're going to get a new deck!

I told Hubby three years ago that I did not like the deck we had.  It's a strange shape, and has a lot of wasted space.  He vetoed the idea immediately, without even really looking at my suggestions.  Fine.  I'm adaptable.  I still hated the deck, and wished he'd let me build a new one, but I decided I could live with it.

♥

A few weeks ago, Hubby shot a skunk on the deck, and it crawled under it to die.  So it was stuck underneath somewhere, and we had no way to get it out without tearing up boards.  And our carpenter friend Kerry told Hubby he could build us a great deck for a pretty good price.....so Hubby agreed, and told me about the idea, as if he'd thought of it himself. (Can you just hear me rolling my eyes?)  Whatever.  As long as I get my new deck, I don't care who gets the credit for the idea.

♥

So yesterday, Kerry helped me locate the dead skunk by ripping up a few boards....

 And Hubby decided to participate in the project by tearing apart the first half of the deck himself.  Yeah, I was shocked.

 You'll notice that he didn't tear apart the step I had built a few months ago...

 And we put the wood in the fire!

Actually, that's only about half of the wood from the first half of the deck.  We'll burn the other half today, and hopefully get the other half of the deck demolished today too.

♥

I can hardly wait to get started building (with Kerry) on my new deck!  Woohoo!

A little knitting...

I mentioned in my previous post that I had bought a little bit of luxury yarns on my "day off".  Here's what I bought:

 I know it doesn't look like much, but it's good yarn, and good yarn is expensive.  The tonal pink on the left is ShiBui Sock yarn, 50 grams.  I'm hoping it's enough for what I bought it for.  It's for test-knitting a dear friend's pattern.  I'm so excited and hopeful for her.  Her design is beautiful, and really deserves to get published. ♥  The teal in the middle is Lacey Lamb, extrafine lambswool laceweight, about 100 grams.  It is incredibly soft!  I'm not sure what I'm going to make with it; maybe a cowl, or a scarf.  I just couldn't resist buying it, even though I didn't have a plan in place for it yet.  The gray on the right is Classic Elite Yarns Silky Alpaca Lace.  It feels really decadent.  I started knitting with it last night:

It's another cowl, same design as the burgundy one that I recently started.  But I started with fewer stitches this time.  I think that will work better.  If it does, I'm going to carefully frog the burgundy one and start over.  Anyway, this gray is going to really pop against my brown hair, much more than the burgundy one will.  I'm still searching for a name for this design.  For now I'm calling it "Waltzing" because it was inspired by "The Waltz" scarf.  But I'm changing several little things, and I'm beginning to think it needs a totally separate name.  Right now I'm leaning toward "Frost", unless that name is taken.  I love this color; it reminds me of my mom's hair, which is light gray, almost white, and just as soft and silky as this lovely alpaca/silk yarn.

Not knitting...

I haven't been knitting. *blush*  I've been working outside instead.  There's just something about Spring and Fall that make me want to be outside.  I've been helping a carpenter friend build a deck for my next-door neighbors.  It's almost halfway framed, and I'm planning on helping tomorrow afternoon, after church.  I didn't get to help today, except for unloading lumber from a truck.  I had my monthly "day off" today.  I went to one of the LYSs in my city, and bought just a little bit of luxury yarns.  Then I went to Walmart and treated myself, to two pairs of jeans that had never been worn by anyone else!  Haha...I usually shop at thrift shops, but I haven't been able to find any jeans lately that I liked and that fit, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay full-price($12 each).  I also got a very cool stepping-stone for my "shady spot" in the back yard.  Then I went to the garden center and bought 4 cubic yards(which amounts to a huge pile) of brown hardwood mulch for the same "shady spot" and other spots around the yard.  I spent hours this week, preparing the "shady spot".  I pulled up all the old landscape fabric, and killed all the weeds and ants that were under it.  I trimmed the trees shown in the picture below, and cut down two others.  Then I put the border pieces in place, and put down new landscape fabric.  And today, I got to put down the new mulch.  With help from Hubby, Angel and Princess.......

 And here's my very cool stepping stone...... I think you can guess what state I live in, if you didn't already know.  I'm also going to buy a very cool bench with a star on the backrest of it, and put it right back there against the fence.

And since we had plenty of mulch, we put some in the side yard, where I had previously laid stepping stones...

I'm pretty happy about how both areas turned out.  Now we're talking about tearing out our old(weirdly-shaped) deck, and building a new(rectangular) one...which I wanted to do three years ago, but Hubby vetoed.  It took a suggestion from our carpenter friend to convince him it was a good idea.  He(the carpenter) is my new best friend. ♥