Halloween, Fall, and What Comes Next

It's Halloween and we've reached peak color around here so I've got some photos of what fall looks like. 

This one isn't exactly picturesque but I was surprised to finally find our Spirit Halloween store just a few days ago! It always pops up in some empty store, usually in early September. (Here's how they do it.) We've got plenty of empty stores but I hadn't seen the Spirit Halloween store in any of my travels around town. I was surprised to find it on Friday in an old Pier 1, which then served as a Covid testing and vaccination center. I was tempted to go in but was in a rush, so I didn't.  

I have had to go into Walmart and have been mildly appalled at this awful headless decoration they have at the front door. The first time, I saw a young child crying was because they were scared and I could sympathize. It says something unintelligible, raises and lowers the ax in its hand, and is generally an unfriendly way to greet customers. I probably won't have to see it again as I bet they will be rolling out Christmas decorations tomorrow.

The rest of the photos show a little more of the fall scenery in the area.

And I got this in the mail on Friday as a reminder of what comes next.

I knew services like this existed, but I had no idea of the hefty price. It seems to me that part of the fun of the season is choosing and putting up your own decorations (but to each his own). 

I hope you have a Happy Halloween with all treats and no tricks and enjoy the rest of fall along with what comes next.

Almost ...

While I'm at Ryan's shoveling, wheelbarrowing, and raking topsoil, I thought I'd give you a shutter update. John got the bright idea to paint our house shutters blue and he's finished (almost).

They don't look nearly as bright on the house as they did up close, and he even painted the outside window sills blue to match. I still like green the best, but given the scary acrobatics he had to perform on the ladder to replace the second-story shutters on the side, I'm fairly confident they will remain blue as long as we own the house. 

I park my car down by the barn and walk up to the house and I noticed something when I got back from some errands yesterday.

That sill at the top is still red. That big grate is the outlet for our attic fan and not easily accessible from inside. That means John would probably need to perform more death-defying acts of bravery on the ladder to reach it and paint it blue. I'm sure not getting the ladder out (I can't even lift it without help) and I'm definitely not climbing up there to paint it myself, so I've decided that sometimes being a considerate spouse means knowing when to keep your mouth shut. That's just what I'm going to do. (Maybe the next time we have the tree guys here with their ladder truck I'll ask them if they might consider doing it.)

Unraveled Wednesday: 10/26/22

I'm happy to join Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday, especially because Kat was kind enough to host this Unraveled Wednesday at the end of her vacation. It's rainy, dark, and dreary outside here, so all I've got for you is a blob of blue sweater. I haven't yet reached the point where I separate the body and sleeve stitches, but I really hope to be there by next week. (We'll see how much the topsoil spreading project interferes with knitting!)

Even if I didn't get as much knitting done as I had hoped, I did manage to finally finish several books this week. I read Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng and while I enjoyed her previous books, this one was only two stars for me. Maureen is the third book in the Harold Fry trilogy, and thanks to Kat's recommendation and an eye-catching cover, I was able to read a pre-publication copy from Netgalley; I rated this one five stars. A History of Present Illness was a quick read that I rated as four stars because it was honest. And I finally finished Wolf Hall and An Immense World. I've been listening to these last two for weeks (and months in the case of An Immense World) but they were solid five-star books and I'm glad I read them. Wolf Hall was very long and I was interested in reading the second book in the trilogy (Bring Up the Bodies) but I think I'll have to wait until I build up my reading stamina before I attempt that one. The third book is even longer, so I'm considering watching it on Masterpiece Theater. 

What are you making and reading this week?

A Post About a Post

I mentioned that I was running out of ideas for blog posts and Ryan suggested, "How about a post about a post?" That made me laugh, so that's what I'm writing about today.

Ryan has this white vinyl fence around his property, a remnant from the previous owners who had dogs that needed to be contained. There's nothing wrong with the fence aside from a few missing balusters that we'll replace once we're done working on some projects. Soon after he moved in, we had to remove a big section of fence so they could bring his new shed in. 

His shed is the yellow and green one on the left and we had to take out the whole front section with the gate and a section on the side for access. The posts are set in concrete so we dug out one of them, but after much digging, John ended up cutting the other two off at the ground. He put a sturdy piece of wood back inside, slipped the cut-off posts over them, and screwed them back together. All the posts are now re-installed and sturdier than they were before.

But that is on the right side of the house. There is another project that we've started on the left side of the house that also involves a post.

Last year he got about eight inches of rain within a few hours and his basement flooded. We got things remedied in short order with three shop vacs and fans, but then we had to figure out how to prevent this in the future. After talking to several neighbors, the ones that had installed a second sump pump didn't have any flooding. So we did have a second sump pump installed, but the drainage from the original one was also a problem. It was only pumping water out a couple of feet away from the house and the sump pump drain is also at a low spot. Last Sunday we went over, cut off another post (you can see the white square at the bottom right of the photo above), and removed a couple sections of fence. 

Then we (and this is the "royal we" because I was not personally digging) dug a 30-foot trench from the house down toward the front yard. 

Then we laid pipe from the sump pump outlet in the trench and filled it in. 

Phase 1 of the project was completed on Sunday and it looks pretty good. Phase 2 begins on Thursday when we are having seven cubic yards of topsoil delivered. This will have to be spread over the side lawn to help create a better slope down towards the street and aid drainage away from the house. I didn't have to dig the trench but I suspect that I will be shoveling and raking topsoil on Thursday and Friday. (And then maybe I'll write another post about a post when we fix this fence post and finally complete the project.)

What I Watched This Weekend

I like to watch something on TV while I knit in the evenings. It doesn't have to be new or exciting, in fact, when it comes to knitting-appropriate shows, it's better if I don't have to pay close attention. I had read that the first two seasons of The Great British Bake Off (the originals that aired in Britain but not on Netflix in the US) were available on the Roku channel, so I decided to give them a try.

A younger and slightly less pretentious Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry are the hosts. (This season aired in 2010 so we were all younger then.) Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins are the presenters and I really enjoyed them. 

I've only watched several episodes in the first season (Cakes and Biscuits) but it was interesting to see what they did differently and what they still do. The first thing that surprised me was that they move the baking tent to different locations around the UK! Cakes were made in the Cotswolds, biscuits in Scotland, and bread in Sandwich. Stephen Noonan does a voiceover, but that only lasted for the first season. Mel and Sue do several interesting history pieces, such as the ties between religion and cake, the rise of women as bakers, the connection between railway travel and biscuits, and the history of shortbread. "Food historian" must have been a career choice for many in the UK a decade ago as they seem to consult a different food historian or food history expert at least two or three times in each episode. They've kept the same introduction and much of the same music so that was familiar. The hosts and the contestants seem more relaxed which I thought was refreshing. I've always wondered about the illustrations on TGBBO and was happy to find this bit about Tom Hovey. The illustrations in the first season are black and white and fairly rudimentary compared to later seasons. In the later seasons, the illustrations can oftentimes look better than the real baked creations!

Yes, there are interruptions by commercials, but I didn't mind them too much. For me, it was interesting to see how this show originated and has grown. I haven't felt the need to bake anything (yet) but there may be some scones in my oven if I watch more episodes.

I hope you had a lovely weekend and your week is off to a good start, possibly with some baked goodies of your choice!

A Gathering of Poetry: October 2022

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to our second Gathering of Poetry post. Several friends and acquaintances have died recently so I have been thinking about them. When searching for a poem about death that still expressed comfort and hope, I came across this one. Maya Angelou wrote this poem upon hearing of James Baldwin’s death and read it at his funeral.

When Great Trees Fall
by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile.We breathe, briefly.Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.Our memory, suddenly sharpened,examines,gnaws on kind wordsunsaid,promised walksnever taken.Great souls die andour reality, bound tothem, takes leave of us.Our souls,dependent upon theirnurture,now shrink, wizened.Our minds, formedand informed by theirradiance, fall away.We are not so much maddenedas reduced to the unutterable ignorance ofdark, coldcaves.And when great souls die,after a period peace blooms,slowly and alwaysirregularly. Spaces fillwith a kind ofsoothing electric vibration.Our senses, restored, neverto be the same, whisper to us.They existed. They existed.We can be. Be and bebetter. For they existed.====Angelou, Maya. "When Great Trees Fall." Celebrations: Rituals of Peace And Prayer, Random House, 2006.  You can read more about the poet here.====Thanks for reading and joining us for our second monthly Gathering of Poetry. Be sure to visit Kym and Kat so you can gather more poetry and you can add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!

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Unraveled Wednesday: 10/19/22

I'm happy to join Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday, with more Cloud Cover. There was a black cloud hovering over my knitting this week, and I had one of my worst knitting days ever last weekend. 

I was knitting along happily when I decided to count my stitches. I found that I was one stitch off someplace, but despite my best efforts, I couldn't figure out whether I had done an extra increase or forgotten to do one for the raglan sleeves. I figured one stitch wouldn't really matter that much and I could just add an extra one where it seemed to be missing, but since I've only knit one other sweater, I didn't know what I didn't know. And it bothered me - a lot. Enough that I decided to tink back and do it right. I ended up spending Saturday afternoon tinking back 42 rows before I got back on track. It wasn't the end of the world, and it was also a good reminder to count my stitches regularly, but it was still one of the worst afternoons I've spent knitting (or unknitting) in a long time. But all is well now in sweater world, and I'll soon be separating the body and sleeve stitches (provided I don't knit most of the yoke again for the third time).

Reading has consisted of much of the same as last week. I'm still listening to Wolf Hall (it's good but long), so for something different, I re-listened to Hamnet. It was just as good as I remembered, and maybe even better. 

What are you making and reading this week?