It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It is September and that means it's Halloween. (I am in the camp that believes it is a season, not just a single day.) I love, love, love Halloween: pumpkins, ghosts, witches, all of it. Okay, not ALL of it. I like it all except the dressing up. I know that sounds strange, but it comes from a very logical place. My mother HATED Halloween because she despised costuming my brother and me. Over the years, her dislike of costumes began to rub off on me, and something I used to enjoy became not-so-much fun. (Don't get me wrong, Mom is a fine person, she just hated Halloween.) The other issue with costuming was weather-related. Growing up in Pennsylvania, it was often cold at the end of October, and Mom, being a sensible, responsible mother, required the wearing of coats when it was cold. As you know, Dorothy Gale did not wear a yellow puffy jacket with blue and red trim when she was skipping off to Oz. The wearing of cold-weather gear messed with my sense of verisimilitude and put a big, fat damper on things. (Chattering teeth probably would have taken the fun out of it, too, but who could tell when one was all hopped-up on a Sugar Daddy and Dum Dum buzz.)

So, anyway, I am deep in the throes of Halloween preparations. There are skeletons, rats, pumpkins, black cats, spiders, and artfully draped pieces of cheesecloth (appropriately tattered) everywhere. (I always have to tell my husband when I have put out the rats so that he doesn't have a heart attack.) I haven't put up any of the crows and ravens, yet, but they're coming.

Halloween is a huge deal in my neighborhood. Many of the houses on the three streets to the east of us do it up big. There are graveyards, webs, giant spiders, and ghosts everywhere. My street, though, is a bit of a downer. When our neighborhood was developed in the early 1900s, it was done in three phases from east to west. The first phase, three streets over, had mostly large, single-family houses. As the construction moved west, more multi-family buildings were incorporated into the plan of each street. Our side of our street was the last part of the development, and is comprised of mostly two-flats, three-flats, and some larger buildings. The other side of the street was not part of the development and has an even higher percentage of multi-unit buildings. Long story short, most of the trick-or-treating takes place on the three streets east where the single-family homes are. Kids are bused in (no, I am not kidding, busloads of kids are dropped off) and they go from house to house loading up. It is wall-to-wall superheroes and princesses over there. I know one house that had over 1000 kids before she ran out of candy. How did she know exactly how many? She is strictly a "one-piece-per-person" candy-giver. (No reaching into the bowl at that house; it's a hold-out-your-bag-and-I'll-drop-it-in operation.) She knew, based on the number of bags she had bought and the number of pieces per bag exactly how many she had. That same year we had seven. No, not 700. Seven. See, the kids don't do the street with multi-family buildings because most people in condos don't answer their bells. Never mind that I sit glumly on my porch, a big bowl of Snickers and M&Ms on my lap, ghost-shaped candles flickering all around me...*sigh*.

All this decorating is cutting into my knitting time, but I have got to get moving. I have a lot of stitches to get in before the end of the year. I finished Mr. Greenjeans.

I'm fairly happy with it, though it isn't as fantabulous as I wanted it to be. I found and (sorta) fixed a mistake. (Nope, it's not a cable issue, and if you find a cable issue, DO NOT TELL ME.) I doubt that you could find the flaw unless you examined the sweater very carefully (yea! for the slubby yarn that aided me in my time of peril), but I know that it is there. I found it after the sweater was washed and blocking, and there was no way I would have been able to get to it without ripping out a massive amount of knitting. My OCD tendencies, however, will not let me forget its presence, and it makes me crazy. (I find myself touching the spot where the problem lies almost constantly. If you ever see me wearing it, you will be able to find the problem because I will practically be pointing to it.)

I've got a few pairs of socks going, and I am casting on a Cat Bordhi pattern for a bag to hold my Denise needles. No sooner did I order the yarn for that project than I found out about the new Denise organizer which immediately my must-have item from the current issue of Knitty. Oh, well, the organizer will go into the bag. I am also planning to make a vest (waving my big, fat, geek flag here) sporting the Obama campaign logo. I am going to go to Iowa to work the final Get Out the Vote push, and I wanted to have something special to wear while I am there. I feel so strongly about this election, and I've convinced myself that if I have enough Obama-wear, there is no way he can lose. (I guess I'm kind of into dressing up after all.)