Signs of the Season

I know there is a time of year that things are supposed to slow down, but when is it, exactly? Not summer--everybody's in a hurry to do! Do! Do! in the summertime, and in the fall the Mighty Craft Bug hits (just in time for Halloween--we're being the story of Little Red Riding hood this year!) and it's the Christmas-Present-Buying season, and Anja's birthday and then the Holiday Season..... definitely not slow. And after Christmas I guess things slow down a little bit, but that's when garden planning starts and I start wanting to get out to the yard earlier than I should and this year we're hoping to get Anja started in something fun for her like a tiny people ballet class (can you even imagine the cuteness?? Also, we're trying to get her to stop growling at strangers and we're hoping some kind of organized class might help....)

Anyway. Things are not slowing for us around here. In fact, just take a look at our nature table.... it is busy, busy, busy. Do you see the little fire we built for the gnomies? And Anja put all the creatures around it. And she hung her apple fairies (thanks, Little Red Whimsy!) from the Season Tree, which is also covered in some gloomy, grey fleece.

We are planning to go apple picking this coming weekend, which will be Anja's best memory for the year [again] and she will probably cry and cry and cry when it's time to leave [again] and say that she wants to live there forever [again.] At least I hope so.... the crying is not so fun, but I think she passion she feels for apple orchards is kind of beautiful.

And of course this past weekend was the 44th Feast of the Hunters Moon! These are my favorite purchases from this year:
A fabulous HUGE mug and these adorable little sheep, which were the funniest little fad of the Feast this year.... started by my nephew Carlos, we just kept accumulating flocks and flocks of these little sheep! And they are SO CUTE!! These are only two of them.... we have a total of five. Three littles and two parents.

And what would be the Feast without the Highland Games? Martin won me a nice crock which is now holding my pretty white wildflowers that grow at the edge of our driveway. Love it! Last year he got candle holders!

And Anja enjoyed playing in the straw. I'm not sure she ever realized or cared that Martin was participating. Oh well.

And can I just say..... my little girls were the cutest little 18th century french children EVER!!!!! And yes, I was pretty proud of my sewing excursions the week leading up to it. I made 8 skirts, 2 capes, two chamises and a matching outfit for the girls' little dolls, Salad and Annie. (Can you guess which doll belongs to whom? Okay, I'll tell you.... Salad belongs to Anja. And Greta is obsessed with the name Annie. And the name Alice.)

Here are Daisy and Miranda, always good to see every year!

And of course, I have to include a picture of Martino by his fire. HIS fire. He is very posessive.

So the Feast was a success. Saturday morning Greta woke up in a foul mood and so the whole day was a little stressful, trying to head off every tantrum, and I was afraid the next day would be more of the same. (We ended up not camping out because it was pretty rainy.) Surprisingly, she woke up SO excited to go back to the Feast! And they were tickled to death that we were going to Mass AT THE FEAST. So on Sunday, Greta called it Feast Church. Silly, silly. On Sunday we were all dirty and smokey and exhausted and cold and damp and the last thing I wanted to do was make dinner and the second-to-last thing I wanted to do was wash dishes that come with getting carry-out. So we went to Pizza Hut and gorged on their cheap, greasy buffet and it was perfect. And then we went home and collapsed.

Continuing our signs of Autumn, here is a perfect spider web hung from the center of our porch light with a big, fat, ugly spider right in the middle of it.

The picture really doesn't capture it's coollness very well, but trust me... it was creepy to the extreme.

And to prepare for Old Man Winter who is lurking just a few months away, I knit these hoods for the girls.

Greta's is red and has a button, Anja's is pink and has a tie. I think they turned out ridiculously cute for how ridiculously easy they were to make!! They begin at the seed stitch edge and are really just a rectangle sewn down the back. I got the idea from a pattern for a hooded scarf in a book, and I added the seed stitch and left off the scarf part. And I added the button/tie to take the place of the scarf, which (obviously) holds the hood on your head in the original pattern.

And that's it! MY BIRTHDAY IS COMING UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!