Photo Intensive Fall Decorating

For me, October 1st marks the official start of Fall.  It's also the day that I begin decorating for Halloween.

The month of October is my favorite month of the year.  Wanna know why?  It has my Sis-In-Law's birthday (Today - Happy Birthday Jennifer!), my parents anniversary (Oct 15th), my anniversary (Oct. 19th), my birthday (the 26th) and my favorite holiday in the whole world Halloween!

So this morning, out came the decorations!

I dressed my mantle (which has since had a burlap runner added all in it  You can see it in a pic below):

Look how cute these little guys from the mantle are:

The Youngest dressed himself:

He insisted on being photographed in his bad guy hero pose.


Here's another view of the mantle complete with coffee table:

I can't tell you how glad I will be when the striped wallpaper is gone.  Coming soon to a blog near you!  It's on the to do list, trust.


And I just realized you've never seen the living room from this view:

That's more burlap on the coffee table.  I intentionally left it all wrinkly.  I love the effect.

Guests in the downstairs powder room will see this:

In the the Hall:

In the Breakfast Nook you'll find this:

The tablecloth is actually a throw that was from Pier One.  It makes an awesome Autumn tablecloth, though when the kids sit down to eat it's moved out of the way.  They can't be trusted to eat neatly.

Check out the dog in costume (purchased at a yard sale for 5 bucks):

My family thinks he's weird, but I find him adorable.

And the springy things hanging from the chandelier:

Even the sink area gets the Halloween treatment:

 Most of these decorations were purchased end of season from Joann's, The Dollar Tree and thrift stores.  Can you tell that I just love Halloween?

Spinning My Wheels

Which wheels?  The Mommy van kind? no.   The spinning wheel kind?  again, no.  The lace project kind?  Why, how did you guess?

On Sunday I received the pattern for a lovely test knit.  The designer requested that the item be completed in one week and asked for fast knitters.  Now, I pride myself on being a quick knitter, and you can probably guess that this was where things started to go wrong.  The whole pride goeth before a fall kinda thing, you know.  I totally jinxed myself. 

The next thing to go wrong (because this is me we're talking about here and there's always another thing to go wrong) was getting confused about the pattern, three times.  This is not the fault of the pattern or designer, I will completely own up to that.  I messed up.  Short and simple. 

I recovered and moved along.  I actually caught up to where the other knitters were in the charts. Woohoo!  But wait, congratulations are not in order here and this time, it's not my fault.  I'm fully aware that this is going to sound immature and like I'm making up excuses, but it's true, I swear. 

The dog did it.

The almost completely blind and almost completely deaf 18 year old dog walked between my project and my ball of yarn.  I was in another part of the house making a cup of tea.  Said dog was clueless as to the fact that she had done this, so she continued on her plodding little way, pulling the yarn.  Could it have pulled from the ball?  Yes.  Did it?  Oh no. 

Stitch, by small stitch, the yarn came away from the needles.  Drop, drop, drop.  Approximately 10 stitches fell off the needle and began running in many different directions.  Have you ever been working on a lace project and have this happen?  For me, there was no recovery.  Too much of the lace became unraveled for me to even consider getting out the crochet needle and patching it up.  Meanwhile, the dog walked on, with me yelling all the while.  She never heard a thing. 

I caught up with her eventually and untangled her and then sat down and stared at what was left of my pretty lace.  Believe it or not, I was very calm at this point for a couple of reasons:  One, the dog didn't know she was doing this and is so pitiful already that it's difficult to yell at the little geriatric.  Two, I didn't do it.  If I had done this, the yarn would probably be lying in the bottom of a very deep, dark hole from the stress of it all.

The stretchy crocheted cast-on, with which I have already become intimately familiar due to previous mistakes, have become acquainted once again.  I'm on row three now for the fifth time.

Now how am I ever going to explain this to the poor designer who needs it in just a couple of days?

Lovin' Knit Yarn Shop

Saturday, on a hunt for some fingering weight yarn (I'm test knitting a new shawlette pattern), I went to a local yarn store for the first time.  It's called Lovin' Knit Yarn Shop and Studio.

I can't say enough good things about this shop.  The owner and (Pat) and one of her employees (Cindy) were wonderfully helpful and incredibly welcoming.  They had a great selection of yarns and their shop is very well laid out.  They even encourage crocheters and aren't a bit biased against them.  That's such a nice thing to see in a lys.  Most of the lys' that I've seen tend to cater only to the knitter and ignore those that crochet. 

Plus, to make this visit even better, they were having a sale on Noro (buy one, get one half off) and I just couldn't pass it up.  I snagged some Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic sock yarn in the most beautiful greens ever and two skeins of Noro Silk Garden at the sale price. 

With all this shop has going for it, I'll definitely be going back soon!