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Hats are a project that, unless I’ve fallen madly in love with a particular pattern, I grow my own patterns.  Most of the time, this works mostly okay, especially since the intended recipients are usually underfoot in my house, and can be forced to try on the works in progress as I go.

I have a huge head, so when I first started making my own patterns, all the hats I made came out ridiculously too large, because I was using my own sizing as a model, and that just didn’t work.  Once I realized the flaw in that plan, things got better.

Now, instead, I’m finding I’m consistently getting hung up in the other direction.  If I can’t try it on you as I go (and even sometimes when I can), you hat is going to be too short.

The latest victims of my failure as a hat maker were my favorite twins.   Before their birthdays, I started hats for them both.  I carefully picked out delicious, soft yarn from the stash; a gorgeous MadTosh red for E and a yummy green and blue Spirit Trail colorway of Sunna for S.  I found a lace pattern for E’s hat, and then found a seed stitch pattern that had a similar shape and feel to it for the hat for S.  I measured their heads and set to knitting.

When Carrie came back and told me S’s hat didn’t fit, I was astounded.  That hat was SO stretchy, it nearly fit me.  No, she said, it fits around his head fine.  It’s too short, she said.  She showed me, and folks, that hat fit him like a damn propeller beanie.

She said E’s fit a little better and that it didn’t need fixing.  I believed her, until she sent me a photo.

There is no way that is enough hat to keep that dear little head warm enough this winter.  I am totally going to have to steal it back and add another inch onto it as well.

And then I’m going to need to do some careful studying up on hat proportions.

How about you, what mistakes trip you up over and over again in your knitting?

To say that the past few days have been a rollercoaster would be, as they say, an understatement.

I’m so grateful that the election wasn’t a nail biter last night;  I think that might have broken me.  As it was, the staying up for the concession speech and still having to go to work almost did.  I can’t remember the last time so many races and referendums went the way I was hoping they would, and I especially love the marriage votes in Maine, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota that make me hopeful that the tide is finally turning on this issue.  Believe me when I say that I rode cloud nine to sleep last night.

My ill friend continues to hang on.  Yesterday, we weren’t sure he was going to make it all, and our boss told us that if we wanted to visit, we should leave work and go.  He was convinced that if we waited, we would miss our chance.   And yet, he’s still with us, and his doctor said that at this point, the fact that there’s no change is enough to hang a small bit of hope on, because if they can keep him stable, it buys him time to heal.  I don’t know if I’m deluding myself, gripping that small bit of hope so tightly, but in the face of being completely powerless, there’s nothing else to do.

Tonight it is astonishingly stormy outside.  Not cold enough, quite, to snow, but you can feel that it wants to.  The wind sounds like a living thing, rattling the windows and sending tendril of cold snaking into the house.  It suits my mood, listening to the wind and watching the rain stream down the windowpane.

Today’s 10 on Tuesday is “Ten things that are on your mind right now”.  There’s always so much on my mind, it’ll be hard to limit it to just ten.

1.  The aftermath of Sandy on New York and New Jersey.  I’ve stopped being able to look at the pictures and read the stories; it feels like every new one I read brings more and more bad news.  I burst into tears Sunday night reading about the marathoners who went out to work at aid stations on Sunday when the race was cancelled.

2.  One of my co-workers is in the hospital, in the ICU with a grave prognosis.  I won’t go into detail here, but if you are the praying type, he could use some.  We’ve worked together for almost 15 years, and he’s as good an egg as you’re going to find anywhere, and the world won’t be the same without him, which I can’t even bring myself to think about.

3.  It’s election day today.  I care deeply about the outcome.  I will be a bundle of nerves until this one is decided, and the thought of it NOT being decided by tomorrow morning makes me want to throw up.  Here in Massachusetts we had a couple of interesting ballot questions – legalizing assisted suicide for terminal patients and legalizing medical marijuana.  I know how I feel on both of those issues (unabashedly pro on both), and I’m really curious to see how the rest of the state votes on them.

4.  More stress and pressure at the job.  Coming to realize that I really have no patience for being a part of the sausage making process and the endless discussion that it entails.  I’d much rather be out there actually doing something than doing the planning for other people to do stuff.

5.  Wondering about the plan for Thanksgiving – gotta call my Mom and find out what my assignment is for food contribution.  Looking forward to seeing the family and the cousins!

6.  Figuring out schools for Miss H next year – we deferred the decision last year, not loving any of our options, so now we’re back to Square One.  We’ve got a few good contenders, and hopefully, the right choice will make itself known before long.

7.  I had a long list of things I was supposed to do before our next financial planner meeting, of which I have done none, and our meeting is tomorrow.  Do I try to cram them in before the meeting, cancel the meeting or just admit that I suck?

8.  NaBloPoMo – am I really going to have content for an entire month and the gumption to actually stick with it?

9.  30 Days of Yoga – I signed up, we’re on week three, and yet I have not even managed to unroll my mat a single time.  This is feeling like a deep personal failure – I’m breaking a promise to myself, and that’s the one that matters.

10.  Christmas knitting!  Grand plans as always, whittling down the list to the do-able from the hopelessly optimistic.  I think there’s only one have-to-do on the list this year, which makes me breathe a sigh of relief.

How cute is his speckled little face?

Right after the shearing party came Rhinebeck.  Oh Rhinebeck, how do I love thee?  Kay over at Mason Dixon Knitting described Rhinebeck, saying “[It] is right up there with Passover and Thanksgiving on my list of favorite ritual observances of a seasonal, spiritual nature. “   It has become that for me too, a ritual of marking the last gasp of fall before we descend into winter.

The group I have gone with for the past few years  has fractured, and the only one of the group that wanted to go was my dear Carrie.  She missed last year, what with the whole just-gave-birth-to-twins thing, and she was determined to not miss out this year.  Since it was just going to be us going, we decided that this year, we would bring the kids – Miss H and her oldest daughter K, who is 6.  Her mom came along, and our merry band of 5 drove out Friday night to the lovely little house we had rented in Saugerties.  We had driven out in a terrific storm, but Saturday morning the weather was beautiful, the perfect New England fall day of your dreams.

Bringing Hannah to the fair was awesome.  She’s old enough to be great company, and we had a really fun time wandering around meeting animals and petting yarn.   (It helped that she’s old enough that I could say “If we get separated in the barn, we’ll meet up at the end”, and know that she was going to be fine by herself for a few minutes.)  I had promised her that we would pick out yarn for a sweater for her, and she spent the first hours of Saturday carefully pondering her many options for yarn, finally settling on a lovely blue green Philosopher’s Wool from the Noni booth.  That was (gasp) the only yarn or fiber that I bought this year.  Never fear, though – I did my part supporting our crafting economy, buying a new spindle from the Bosworth booth, some delicious sheepskin slippers that I’ve been pondering for three years running, and a charming sheepy nightlight from Paws and Reflect.  Hannah used her spending money to buy a fairy necklace, sheepskin earmuffs and the most ridiculously fluffy alpaca teddy bear I have ever seen.

Because Hannah wanted to see them, I finally made it to see both the Leaping Llamas and the herding dog demonstrations on Sunday.  Both were entertaining, and my favorite by far were the llamas who would run for the hurdle and then just plant right in front of it, refusing to make their jump.   I had great fun introducing her to my favorite fair treats – pierogies and kielbasa on Saturday and artichokes on Sunday.  She was highly skeptical on the artichokes, but I promised her we could stand in another line if she hated them.  No one will be surprised that she ended up wanting the entire bowl to herself.

By Sunday, we were all exhausted, and we poured ourselves back into the car for the long drive home.  One more weekend, wonderfully spent.

For many of our recent summers, we’ve participated in CSAs.   I haven’t for the last few summers, for a few reasons – mainly the repetitive nature of the boxes (which is a natural outcome of eating what grows in X season, in your climate) and that I hate to cook in the summer, meaning all those veggies requiring cooking just made me sad instead of happy.  Now, I just go to the farmer’s market and buy what I want in the moment, which generally means a lot of tomatoes and cucumbers and not much else when it’s really hot.

We have replaced the overflowing summer boxes with weekly deliveries from South Shore Organics.  We’ve been getting their boxes since the early spring, and I’ve been really happy with them.  There’s more variety, and generally, the quantities are better sized for our family of three.  That said, three weekends in a row of being away with very busy weeks in between and forgetting to cancel / downsize our box for the duration left us completely overwhelmed with produce.

I finally settled in to deal with it yesterday morning, and it was not pretty.  One of our vegetable drawers in the fridge probably should have been nuked from orbit, it was so, so full of grossness, I can’t even tell you.  I threw out a staggering amount of produce yesterday, and that just kills me.  I hate wasting food, even more than I hate wasting money.  Wasting both sends me right into a rage spiral.  All the fragile veggies and fruit dealt with, I was left with this week’s greens and the hardy vegetables that were good from the previous weeks.

Determined not to waste what I had left, I spent this evening cooking up as much as I could.  Roasted a spaghetti squash for my dinner, and four weeks worth of sweet potatoes for lunches this week and cleaning and chopping the greens to use for quick lunchtime salads.  The final project was to make a giant pot of butternut squash and apple soup for dinner tomorrow night.  Chopping those squash took forever, but I know tomorrow-me will thank tonight-me when I have almost no dinner to deal with after work.

My inspiration for the soup was this recipe – but despite the warning not to tamper with the recipe, you know I had to tinker, right?  For me, the recipe as written actually comes out too spicy (I am a MASSIVE spiciness wimp, so don’t judge the spice level  based on my say-so) and I generally tend to treat soup recipes as suggestions, anyway.  Changes for tonight’s batch were that I started with bacon – crisped some up in the pan, spooned it out to add back in later and cooked the onions in the bacon fat.  I added a bunch of fresh sage and left out most of the other spices – I may add more in when I heat it tomorrow night.

The best addition to this recipe, though, comes from a co-worker.  When he made a similar soup for a company potluck, instead of adding a little sour cream at the end, he made a mixture of marscarpone cheese and honey, whipped together with a little black pepper.  Stir a generous spoonful of that into your bowl of soup, and you will be in heaven, it is so, so delicious.

I love the onset of late fall, when the weather finally gets cold enough to indulge in recipes that need to cook all day on the stove to be delicious.

What are your favorite recipes for fall?

Shearing at Juniper Moon was scheduled right after I came back from Italy.  Sandwiched in between that trip and Rhinebeck, I convinced myself that I couldn’t go, right until I decided that i really, really wanted to be there.  I couldn’t take any more time off work, so I scheduled the world’s shortest farm visit, flying in Saturday morning and home Sunday afternoon.

Totally worth it.

Where else is a city suburban girl like me going to get to hang out with suspicious, sleepy ducks?

or curious goats?

Or a calf with an itch in the middle of her back?

As usual, Susie had pulled out all the stops, and it was a lovely party, complete with a cookie tree – you can find the instructions for making your own cookie tree in the first issue of By Hand magazine.

We gathered outside, talking and laughing until long after the sun had set.

It was wonderful to visit with friends I see far too rarely.

Totally worth it.

Olives

(from my still life class)

First off, a little bit of housekeeping!

Remember that skein of yarn I was giving away?  I actually didn’t forget about doing it, I just forgot to tell you all about it!  The random number generator picked Chelsea, who was happy that day that “… a few chores are done, the baby is napping, and I get some quiet computer time!”  I remember how precious those few minutes of baby naptime were – I hope you get lots more of them!  Anyway, I e-mailed her back in June and sent her the yarn, which hopefully she loves as much as I wanted to love it.

Now, Halloween.

When Hannah was little, I made her costumes.  She would come up with the ideas and I would execute them.  My execution was usually crude, but it doesn’t take much to make a three year old happy.

This one was my favorite of those early costumes – she wanted to be a tiger, but a MULTI-COLORED tiger. So we found the polka dot fabric and she dictated where the stripes would go, and insisted that the tail be from the multi-colored fabric. Lord knows what the neighbors though of this odd little tiger coming to their doors. (Halloween, 2005)

Given that procrastination and I go way back, the process nearly always ended with me losing my mind the night before, trying to get the costume finished in time.  So, as much as I loved the idea of making her costume, when she spotted the beautiful princess dress in Marshall’s the following year and begged me to let her be a princess for Halloween, I agreed.  Even though we’d already made a plan for a homemade costume, I handed over my credit card with a small twinge of sadness and a huge sigh of relief that Halloween was going to be so easy that year.  In the years that followed, we bought costumes – it was what Hannah wanted,  it made me WAY less crazy, and it wasn’t any more expensive than buying the supplies to make our own.

Then came the Wishcraft catalog.   And dear, sweet baby jesus, those costumes are gorgeous.  And expensive.  And for two years, I bought them anyway, because she LOVED them, and if you were buying the Girls sizes, it wasn’t *too* painful on the wallet.  This year, though, knowing that we would have to buy an adult sized costume, I just couldn’t make myself do it – but I also knew that convincing Hannah to buy a “crummy” costume somewhere else was going to be tough – as would avoiding the whole “Sexy-whatever” disaster that is women’s Halloween costumes (she’s 11, she already thinks “sexy” is something to strive for and we really don’t need to be encouraging that. )

I broached the idea of making a costume.  She was reluctant at first, but I kept tossing out ideas for fun costumes I knew we could manage.  When I suggested zombie prom queen, her whole face lit up, and I knew I had sold the idea.  We scoured thrifts store all over Boston looking for just the right prom dress to destroy (introducing her to the joy of thrift stores in the process) and found a great one at Goodwill.  I bought some makeup and a prom queen sash.  Last weekend we set to work.  We shredded the hell out of that dress; tore the bottom into pieces and cut open the bodice.  I tea-dyed some muslin and we sewed skin colored patches into the bodice slashes and painted them with fake blood.  She took the dress outside and rolled it in the mud and messed it all up.  We covered her in grey body makeup, mixed with a little green for that grave pallor.  Massive black eyeliner circles, grey and brown eyeliner for lipstick, and a couple of latex fake wounds completed the look.

Fully in character as well as costume.  We might have overshot the creepy mark a little bit, as she apparently scared one little boy enough that he ran away from a house without taking any candy, he wanted to get away from her so badly.

We had so much fun working on the costume, and she made up a whole backstory to her character – how she came to be a zombie, what happened the night of the prom, how she got all of her injuries, what brains tasted like (and how different types of people had different flavored brains).  She was just much more engaged in the entire process, which made it so much more fun.  She’s already talking about what she wants to be next year.  God help me, she wants to figure out how to be a cat-mummy.

Did you do anything awesome for Halloween?

Today’s Ten on Tuesday is 10 things you did last weekend.

I get to cheat, just a little, because last weekend, I was in Italy, so my list gets to be rather more… exotic than it would be for my normal kind of weekend.

This weekemd, I

Dipped my toes in the Adriatic Sea

Ate gelato on the beach

Made wonderful new friends

4.

Learned how to make pasta from an Italian grandmother

.

Harvested olives

Ate grapes right off the vine, in a vineyard redolent of the sweetness of ripe fruit

Started learning how to take gorgeous still life photos

Explored a 14th century monastery

Ate delicious food

Reflected that my life is far more charmed and blessed than I have any right to expect.

SquamItalia was amazing.  I almost didn’t go; I am so, so glad I did.  It was unlike any other Squam experience, with the only constant the wonderful people and community that grew out of the barest of connections in only four short days.