Week three's topic a day late

What's the oddest/strangest/weirdest Halloween decoration you have ever gotten for your home? Or, if you've never had a "wow, did I REALLY buy that?!" moment - what's the strangest Halloween decoration you've seen somewhere else?


I don't think I have anything too odd (but that doesn't mean that someone with less refined taste might not find something ;) )! I do think the vintage grinning black cats and pumpkins are a bit creepy. They look more maniacal than happy to me. I am into the black silhouettes and apothecary jars for Halloween right now. Hallmark had a line out a couple of years ago that I loved (Hauntington).

This weeks topic

- What are your favorite parts of fall? How do you know it's truly arrived where you are?

I love fall! The crisp cool air, the smell of the damp earth, the brilliant colors.... What's not to love? There is something comforting about fall. It invokes images of curling up in a sweater with a good book or wrapping a fantastic hand knit scarf around your neck and taking a stroll. The thing I don't like is that it is fleeting. For me summer lasts too long and winter seems to never end but fall is like a "blink and you miss it" season.

The Big Read

I found this on the blog of AmberF. while working on this week's assignment for the All Hollows Eve Dish Cloth Swap and thoght it would be fun. If you've only read 36 of the 100 are you really well read?

The Big Read is an National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.

*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE .

Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas in French
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery in French
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo in French

What a Summer

This has got to be the oddest, most stressful year I have had yet. Life just seemed to derail and it took a bit to get it back on track.
I am officially divorced. I still can't quite wrap my head around it. It happened so fast. I decided to file in April and we were almost divorced by the 4th of July except for a stupid parenting class we were forced to take. Once we got that out of the way it was over shortly there after.
I normally deal with stress pretty well but I think there was just too much this time. On top of the breakup of a 14 year relationship I had work complications as well. I love what I do, and most of the time I don't find it stressful at all, but the property I was at for six years was sold twice in about eight months. And then they tell me it is up for sale again....
Now do you think I could just get headaches or not be able to sleep or something annoying like that? Of course not. My stress decides to manifest in back issues. I ended up in the ER twice and had weeks where I couldn't hardly move and wasn't supposed to work. Needless to say I started looking for a new job. It happened so fast I wasn't quite ready for it. I applied on a Sat, interviewed on Wed and was offered the job on Thur. Two weeks later I became the GM at a new property.
It's hard to believe but I haven't had a bit of pain since I switched jobs! (I am knocking on wood right now)
The school year has started so now I have to include all of Wyn's activities into the schedule but even then I feel more relaxed and on top of things than I have in months.

It really doesn't surprise me......

You Belong in 1959

You're fun loving, romantic, and more than a little innocent. See you at the drive in!

What Year Do You Belong In?

All Hollows Eve Dishcloth Swap

Questionnaire
Knotting Yarn
1. Do you knit or crochet? For how long? Both for about 15 years.

2. What sort of needles or hooks do you enjoy using the most? Are there some you've been dying to try out and haven't? I am not picky, I love Harmony needles and I like Brittany as well.

3. What kind of projects do you most enjoy? Small things you can take with you, or big complex ones that are just gorgeous when they're done? I like small ones I need the instant gratification! I am trying to make myself start a large one.

4. List one pattern for a dishcloth that you love to make, or just tell us about one you've made or received that you loved.
5. What are your 'must have' notions? Are there any notions you need or can never have enough of? Any that might make you cry if you owned more? I just found a cable needle necklace that I am in love with and I love wooden tapestry needles though I have a hard time finding them.

Petting Yarn
6. What are your favorite yarns to work with? Any you hate or are allergic to? I love natural fibers and do not have any allergies.

7. What colors do you like to use in projects? Any we'd never catch on your needles? Blues and Greens are favorites I like muted colors over super bright ones.

8. Any cottons you'd like to try you can't find by you, or just haven't gotten around to getting? We do not have a LYS near us so anything that can't be bought at Wal-Mart is great!

Halloween, Fall, and General Stuff
9. Do you like to use bar soap or shower gel more? What kinds of scents do you love? What kind do you hate? Either, I like spicy or herbal scents over fruits and florals.

10. What's more 'Halloweeny' - Ghosts, Pumpkins, or Witches? Pumpkins

11. What's your favorite Treat to get? Sweet or Salty? Anything you're allergic to or just hate? I love Black Licorice and Dark Chocolate I don't like salty things as a rule.

12. What was your favorite Halloween Costume as a kid? As an adult?? As a kid I dressed up like Madonna a lot (typical child of the 80's) now a Witch is standard.

13. Are you on Ravelry? What's your ID? Rhea

14. Anything else you'd like to be sure your pal knows? not right now.