Hallowe'en and knitting.

Happy Hallowe'en (sort of, it was last night after all). I hope everyone had fun with the ghouls and ghosts and princesses last night!

Hallowe'en was great at our house. We were all a bit sad that my friend Christina and her boys couldn't come as her oldest was very, very ill.... We've made it a bit of a tradition to go together and have only missed a couple of years since we moved to Calgary. This year was particularly sad because they are moving to Egypt and we may not be able to go again...... sigh.

On a more upbeat note, our decorations were a hit! Dale went all out and blacked in our front porch with black plastic. I told him it couldn't be too scary (there are a lot of tiny children in our neighbourhood), but wanted it to be a bit nerve-wracking. That worked. Particularly with the older kids. They would stop at the end of the garage and we could hear them discussing who would go first ("I'm not going first! You go first! I KNOW someone is going to jump out at us!")... then would then creep towards the porch, giggling nervously..... and then... nothing. We didn't have anything too scary, just some fog, a strobe light and a few decorations... it was all about the approach. Not knowing whether it was scary or not seemed to be the best part. The funniest event was a brief moment when Dale came in the house to re-load the candy (we're guessing 100-150 kids again) and a 8 or 9 year old boy came to the door.... we heard an enormous scream and a huge crash and then a burst of hysterical laughter. Apparently the storm trooper I had hanging in the window scared the begeezus out of him (I thought of a scary mask, but I wanted startled, not reduced to nightmares)... he was so scared he even dropped his huge bag of candy.... the laughter was his mother..... I thought later, that I should have asked her for her number.... I liked her sense of humour.




Chey decided to be a Dragon this year and told me I needed to be a princess ('cause Dragons eat princesses...... I tried not to take it personally) and Eli chose Pikachu. I don't normally make costumes for the kids... I'm a good mom, but not "Super-Mom", but we couldn't find a Pikachu his size (that was a price I was willing to pay) and so, I sighed and said I'd try.... Turns out, I'm not bad at making costumes...... No pattern, just a stuffed PIkachu (a Pokemon character, for those readers who don't have small-ish children, or who are lucky enough to have children too small to know what Pokemon are) to go from...... The costume went so well, I even offered to make one for Devin (the boy who ended up being to sick to Trick-or-Treat)... his also turned out exceptionally well, all things considered.

Here we all are. Dale was originally going to be the tooth fairy, but we couldn't find the fairy wings in the kids costumes, I must have thrown them out at some point, tattered and ripped as they were.

The weather was great and the kids had fun (as did we)..... I love Hallowe'en.


I also finished my test knit this weekend. It's absolutely lovely. I've written down my mods on my Ravelry project page, and so don't feel the need to repeat them here. But here is a picture.....