Happy Hallowe'en!

I love Halloween, a season where no one expects me to cook, buy presents, or decorate my house. Even before we had kids, I always carved a pumpkin and bought some candy, even though the only kids that have ever braved our driveway were in the car of a friend of my husband's.

Now that I have a kid, I have an even better excuse. At our son's behest, I bought one of those pumpkin-carving kits, and every year he picks a drawing out of it, and I carve it. After all the lifting, pounding, drilling, and snipping I did, pumpkin-carving was about the last straw for my sore hands.

He and his dad went to a "Great Pumpkin" event at the farm market down the road a couple of weekends ago. For $2, all the kids got to pick a numbered pumpkin out of the patch and win a prize. They ran through a corn maize (actually it was sorghum). Big bins of apples and squash were for sale, and corn shocks decorated with orange and purple lights were tied along the edges of the parking lot.

The pumpkin they picked was an excellent carving pumpkin, with a nice thick shell. Hard to carve, but stable, so I didn't have to worry about hacking paws or tails off. In years past, we've grown our own, sometimes even those white pumpkins, but this year we didn't. (White pumpkins, by the way, are orange enough inside that they glow beautifully when you carve them and put a tealight candle inside.)

After I gutted it, my son said, "And save some of the seeds so we can grow next year's," so I guess I better not roast and eat them all.

In fiber-y news:

Tomorrow night is my Lakeshore fiber arts guild meeting, and this Saturday I'll be at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum's Festival of the Arts (12-4pm, following the parade), along with other members of the West Michigan Lace Group.

Sampler M: Pattern 16 is up, but I have not worked it yet. Maybe today!