First things first

Halloween is around the corner, so start knitting up some pumpkins with a pattern than works with any yarn, gauge, and needles you like.

After that, it’s time for Thanksgiving. And really, what is Thanksgiving without turkey finger puppets?

If you’re trimming a tree, don’t forget your own handknit-and-felted Flying Spaghetti Monster ornament. And if you’re not a tree decorator, well, I’m sure this little fellow can fit in just about anywhere.

Here’s another tree-trimming idea: knit mini-mittens. I bet they would look cute hanging from an I-cord across the top of a window, too.

The Jingles Bells hat comes in sizes to fit infants through adults, so you can torture delight everyone you know with the gift of festive headgear.

If you’re feeling particularly sadistic, whip up a knitted baby Santa suit and stuff a defenseless infant in it before he or she is told enough to resist.

I’m still wading through hundreds of pictures from our vacation and prepping for my daughter’s first day at preschool next week. Oh—and trying to figure out what to do with the incredible amount of produce that comes into my house every week, thanks to our CSA. (See this week’s haul? We’ve gotten that amount of green beans for three consecutive weeks now. Now I do like green beans, but really, there’s only so much I can eat in a given amount of time…)

Consequently, I’ve been somewhat neglectful of my little corner of Blogland. This weekend promises to be a busy one, too, so it may yet be a while before I get fully caught up here.

But I have news to share! Really, I do! You won’t believe how many finished objects I have to show you. So bear with me while I get my act together. Thanks!

We spent the the first two weeks of this month on vacation in Vermont, and since our return on Sunday I’ve been trying to get caught up. I had about 1700 posts in my reader, a gazillion e-mails, and of course gobs of vacation pictures to get through.

I hope to post about my trip in a few days, but for now I wanted to mention this week’s CSA haul. (My friend Beth enjoyed my CSA boxes during the two weeks I was out of town, so I don’t have pictures of those.) I now have enough cukes to make another batch of pickles (I made a double batch the day before we left for Vermont, too).

There’s a winter squash (which I plan to bake, then smother with butter and grade B maple syrup), summer squash, cukes, a ton of green beans, fresh portabellos (the county I live in is the mushroom-growing capital of the USA—there’s a very good chance your supermarket mushrooms came from here), a watermelon, onions, a red pepper, some potatoes, a quart of plums, and a couple of yams. And “a few” (ahem!) tomatoes. No eggplant, thank goodness.

We’re well stocked on the veggie front, but some items (like orange juice and cheese) aren’t available through my CSA. So I took a trip to my local supermarket yesterday, where I was just tickled pink to discover that it now carries (in the international foods department) The Greatest Candy Bar in the World. Please note that there is not a shred of hyperbole in this paragraph: Lion Bars really are the best candy bar ever. Until now, I’ve been able to get them only from friends who visit the UK or from import shops/sites. Now I can get them whenever I go grocery shopping. Woot!

(From Toothpaste for Dinner. If you don’t already read this, you should.)

Looking for something to ward off the evening chill? Or to keep you warm in ridiculously over-air-conditioned offices, restaurants, and stores?

If you’re feeling ambitious, try your hand at knitting this stunning Moebius wrap. The pattern is in German, but the author has very kindly provided an English translation.

The evening shrug at the Purl Bee takes simple stockinette and jazzes it up with some lacey trim at the wrists. The bamboo yarn originally used has a lovely sheen that definitely dresses up this piece.

The typical scarf shape (long, skinny rectangle) gets some texture in this gathered scarf. I’m not sure if my mother-in-law would be keen on it, but I think the bumpiness has definite appeal for lots of other people.

If you prefer a scarf that’s more wispy than substantial, look at the Nymphadora Scarf.

I’ve knit the Irish Hiking Scarf three times. The cabling isn’t challenging—just three easy ones that run the length of the scarf—so doing it without a cable needle sounds like something I could handle. Grumperina has lovely photo tutorials on it, for both the right-twisting and left-twisting varieties.

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It’s never a bad time of year to knit hats. If it’s summer now where you live, you can start planning for ways to keep your head warm when the mercury drops in a few months. And if you’re in a cold spot right now, well, take comfort in the knowledge that hats knit up pretty fast and you can be sporting new headgear in no time at all.

Like a retro look? Not afraid to toss your wool knitting into a washing machine full of hot water? This felted cloche may be just the ticket for you.

If you eschew head-hugging hats and yearn for something long enough to trip over, then give this stocking cap a try. The pattern is available for both kids and adults. They’re both based on the hat worn by Schwartz in one of my favorite holiday movies, A Christmas Story.

And here’s a whole page of free hat patterns, if you’re looking for more options. One thing I love about this page is the use of thumbnails and not just design names. So when looking at the list it’s easy to tell at a glance if something appeals to you rather than have to navigate to another page to see the images.

Last Sunday (just over a week ago), the three of us did a day trip up to New York (about a two or two-and-a-half-hour drive for us) to attend a one-year-old’s birthday party at Shea Stadium. We left our house at 7:30 in the morning and had parked at the stadium lot by 9:30.*

I love New York City. I don’t think I would ever want to live there (unless I were filthy stinking rich enough to afford a home larger than a closet), but it’s a magical place to visit. Coming into the city early on a weekend morning is my favorite: everything is so quiet, there’s no traffic, and the city has a lovely otherworldly quality.

We hopped on the subway and took it one stop to the end of the line, right in the middle of Chinatown in Flushing. My brother (who lives in Greenwich Village) met us there, and we had dim sum brunch together at a terrific vegetarian Chinese restaurant. We took the subway back to the stadium and got to the party location (a box for thirty people) about half an hour before the game started at 1:10.

Neither Jan nor I are sports fans, but we were able to explain the basics of baseball to Sylvia. Well, not all of them: we didn’t get past the part about the guy trying to hit a ball with a special stick. That’s all she wanted to know. She enjoyed watching the first inning and a half of the game, then mostly lost interest unless the organist was playing a song.

Mr. Met stopped by the box to say hello to the birthday boy and pose for pictures. Personally, I don’t know why all the little kids who were at the party didn’t freak out at the sight of him. Think about it: it’s a guy with a giant baseball for a head. If that isn’t horrifying, what is?

The Mets trounced the Cardinals in just two-and-a-half hours, so we were back on the road again by 4:30. Even though Sylvia napped in the car, by the time we got home around 7:30 we were all exhausted. We all fell out.

There’s a knitting connection to this post, though. The gray toddler socks I knit last month were a gift for the birthday boy (whose birthday isn’t really for another week). His mom’s birthday was on Sunday (though totally downplayed because it was her son’s party), and I gave her a pair of socks I’d completed the night before (racing against deadline!). I neglected to take a photo of them, so I’ll have to see if I can get one from her.

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*Of course it figures that when I finally make it to Queens (I’ve now visited all five boroughs—woot!), the one person I know there, Deborah (my awesome downstream pal in SP11), was busy running the NYC Half Marathon through Central Park and Times Square. I’m sure I’ll get a chance to meet her some day, though!

Here’s last week’s CSA box. Note the apricots and plums—just the right size for three-year-olds. I don’t quite understand how the pineapple got here. There were boxes of Dole pineapples next to a sign saying “Take a pineapple!” I did (my daughter is nutso for pineapple), but I don’t see how this fits into a CSA that’s supposed to be about locally produced food. Last time I checked, pineapple wasn’t grown anywhere near Pennsylvania.

Here’s this week’s haul. Corn and peaches make their first appearance this week—yum. With an imminent out-of-town trip coming up, we aren’t going to come anywhere close to eating all of this stuff. So the vast majority of this week’s box is going to my friend Beth. Fortunately, she happens to love eggplant: there are three of them this week!

I’ve been seeing this meme all over blogland over the past several weeks. Now that I’ve been officially tagged by my friend Gina, I guess it’s time for me to do it myself.

1. What was I doing ten years ago?

In July 1998 I was writing my M.A. thesis and preparing for my doctoral prelims* (the qualifying exams that officially launched me into ABD-land) in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Needless to say, this involved a not-insignificant amount of freaking out on my part. Writing the thesis was all right, but trying to anticipate what four different committee members might want to grill me on during the oral defense part of my prelims, well, that was nerve-wracking.

2. What are five things (not in any particular order) on my to-do list for today?

Brush Sylvia’s teeth.
Brush my teeth.
Write up packing lists for our upcoming vacation.
Pick up our CSA box.
Eat some chocolate.

3. What snacks do I enjoy?

Is it just me, or does anyone else think this question is a bit out of place among the others?

That said, I’m quite fond of those honey-sesame sticks they sell in the natural-food/hippie stores. Chocolate is a winner, too, as are Terra Chips.

4. What would I do if I were a billionaire?

First the selfish stuff:
—Plan for my family’s financial well-being.
—Help out my friends.
—Hire a personal trainer.
—Buy a modest house in Oregon or Vermont. Move there. Live in that house part of the year and travel the other part of the year.
—Build an in-house darkroom for black-and-white film processing.

And now the altruistic stuff:
—Donate a buttload of money to Doctors without Borders.
—Donate money to local charities.
—Volunteer more (now that spending time earning money isn’t an issue).

5. Where have I lived?

Taipei, Taiwan
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Eglin AFB, Florida
Fairview Heights, Illinois
Swansea, Illinois
Springfield, Missouri
Ependes (in the canton of Fribourg), Switzerland
Urbana, Illinois
Eugene, Oregon
Coos Bay, Oregon
Lansdowne, Pennsylvania
Exton, Pennsylvania

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* If you’re curious, my exams were on the following subjects: anthropology and the environment, sense of place (Yi-Fu Tuan, baby!), class theory, and life history and narrative.