Fall Is Here and So Are Some New Socks!

Signs of Fall are everywhere these days.  Just now we enjoyed a long walk under bright blue skies, trudging uphill and down through lots of leaves and pine needles. I love collecting Big Leaf Maple leaves as they truly live up to their name.  Here are some of the "smaller" ones. (Note the pencil!)

And here's my favorite find.

                                                               

BOO!

This pumpkin in our Chicago daughter's garden has an interesting story. They live on a small lake, and during the summer the kids found a strange plant growing in the beach sand.  They dug it up and planted it at home, thinking that it was a melon, but voila!  I think it will soon be carved, don't you?

While walking around that same lake, we stumbled upon the remains of a friend of Captain Hook and his pet parrot.  Don't you wonder what his story is?  There were lots of other signs of Halloween in the neighborhood, but this one was the most unique.

The squirrels, birds and other critters in our yard enjoyed this sunflower from our local daughter's garden.  No, they didn't clean up the shells.

These socks are finally finished.  I won't confess when they were started, but they were part of an "ancient" KAL at the Knitter's Brewing Company.  Sock #1 was done long ago, and then I caught the dreaded SSS!

Pair number four of the GKs' Sock Request has already been delivered and worn to school!  Just one more pair, and I'll be done with the "orders" placed in July when we were at Cannon Beach.  Daniel requested blue and green.  He got a few more colors as well.  As for that last pair of socks....they may take a while as that grandson's foot is my size!  How did that happen?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!

Rest Peacefully, Sweet Mocha ~

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We sadly said good-bye to this sweet kitty last Thursday. She had suddenly started feeling poorly, and the vet diagnosed end-stage kidney failure and said she was probably at lot older that we thought.  Mocha was a rescue cat that we brought into our house on Halloween in 2007. For about 3 weeks prior, she'd been appearing at our house, obviously hungry, and I finally started to feed her. One day she let me pick her up only to discover that someone had had her declawed, not a very good way to survive in the woods, so then we took her in even though we already had another cat. We also discovered she also had an unregistered microchip.  Why anyone would abandon any animal, let alone this sweet kitty is unfathomable. Now she has crossed the rainbow bridge, and we dearly miss her quiet presence. Rest peacefully, sweet Mocha. We loved you!

Some Finishes at Last!

Why didn't anyone tell me how busy our days would be once I retired?  Gosh, the days just seem to fly by at warp speed!  I have completed a few projects despite the madness, however.

You remember this one, right?  Well, with the leftovers of the 21 colors I completed another hat, and it had even more ends to hide.  I couldn't quite follow the pattern exactly though. I think it's hard to see how they're related, don't you?

Then Nancy did a post on helical stripes, and so I tried it with dpns.  It was fun, and I couldn't help wonder whether I could have used the technique on these two.  Thanks, Nancy!  It worked great on my little Christmas hat.

Meanwhile, I've been working on Nutkin for Dee's KAL.  It used to look like this:

(Did you notice my "bobbin"?  I finally found a use for all those bread closures! Someone else's cool idea)  And now it looks like this:

I am not using the short row heel though, and if I ever make this pattern again I will use an K1P1 cuff.  This stitch pattern is easy to memorize which is nice.

Our quilt group has made stockings for the local Ronald McDonald house for quite a few years now, and these two are my contribution this year. Quilting the fabric is what takes most of the time.  It looks like one is bigger than the other, doesn't it?  They are from the same pattern though, so I think my eye is tricking me.

We spent part of today with these two.  They suddenly appeared wearing some of the things I made over the years.   It's fun to see them used!  Have a great week!