Halloween decorations stay out all fall.

Each fall I collect acorns and pine cones, but only use fake ones within Bailey's reach, after the Great Fake Snow Debacle of 2016.  I'd made a winter display (within Bailey's reach) and scattered fake snow covered pine cones I'd collected from the yard.  It was up less than a day after that I heard a crunching noise and turned around to see Bailey chewing on one!  

My witchy stitchy bag, where all the Halloween projects are kept.

Halloween is my favorite holiday.  There's always a Halloween project on the go.  This one is Double, Double by The Prairie Schooler.   

The orange flames will be replaced with green beads.

Crescent Angel by The Primitive Needle.

The fabric I'm using is a bluish grey and there's a good contrast between that and the floss (it doesn't show on my photo) so the wings won't be filled in.

Monochromatic stitching is a lot of fun and so are alphabets.  Thinking about getting small silver colored buttons for the border instead of stitching it.  The fabric was thrown in a pot of black tea and left overnight to soak and is darker than it shows here.

It wouldn't be Halloween without Hocus Pocus.....

.....and something in my favorite mug.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!🎃 

 Finished the devil.  The meat flipper Grey made doubles as a pitchfork.  

In the pattern, he only had a collar, so I extended it to make it a cloak and changed his tail.  I think he's cute.

I was getting ready to go grocery shopping until I looked out the den window.

Then out the bathroom window and decided to wait.

As well as the flooding, the wind started howling and tree limbs were dropping, so the only real choice I had was to hunker down with a cup of tea and hook a few more flower centers!

No more kitting up floss for cross stitch projects in advance.  It's more practical just pulling floss as I need it.  

There's a few big projects I'm planning on starting next year.  This is one of them.  It's all black and quite striking.

Woodland Fairy by Joan Elliot.

Rapunzel by Teresa Wentzler.

Waiting For The Mists To Clear by Character Creations.

They're my motivation to get Grey's finished.  

Quilt wise....a log cabin quilt for our bed.....with no borders.  IMHO borders are a conspiracy by quilt fabric companies to sell more yardage!  lol  I do like the way quilts look without borders.  The only time I add them is if I've run out of fabric for the blocks.

 

Back to reorganizing in the craft room.  Decided to "eat the frog first" and put this pile of embroidery floss in the floss boxes.  It's not a terrible chore, just time consuming, as all the floss is in numerical order and what is in the box needs to be pulled out.  After sorting this lot, there wasn't enough room to spread out, so I shifted to the sewing table in The Den of Inequity.

That meant either shoving everything to one side, or sorting out the sewing project spread all over the table.  Sorting win out.  These are beginning blocks of a scrap house project.  Everything was pressed and bagged up in snaplock bags, so tomorrow's chore is almost finished.  With any luck, I'll be a day ahead in a couple of hours. 

The quilt is inspired by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co.'s Village.  It's a freebie that I found on Pat Sloan's blog and would be great in matching fabrics.  

Done.  Just needs to be sewn and stuffed.

 Hummus is my favorite food.....delicious and nutritious!

Forgot all about spraying the inside of  the sewing box lid until this morning.  One more coat if it doesn't rain tomorrow and it will be ready to start decorating.

It was cold and rainy yesterday, so the only sensible thing to do was finish the leg on a sock.

When I bought this book, I wasn't a knitter.  Before I'd finished reading it, I was planning the 166 mile round trip to the nearest  knitting shop!  

In my defense,  I was living in the middle of nowhere (the pic is the main street), in a town with 100 people and tens of thousands of sheep in the area.  I'm sure the lanolin fumes had a lot to do with it!

 

Started this one last night.  It's Prairie Schooler's Cats, Bats and Witches.  

 

Had every intention of weaving in the ends of these before I started.  It didn't happen.  lol. This is Red Heart Supersaver in Purple Tones.   It's more plummy purple in rl.

Became a US Citizen yesterday. 🇺🇲

 Registered and voted today.  

 Tried out different hook sizes yesterday.

Went down to a 4.5mm hook and made 12 or so flower centers for practice.  They're all on the ring in readiness for the next round.

Decided I really don't have a use for a crochet basket, so will be using the purple yarns for the blanket instead.

Added some more to yesterday's pile.  Only problem is, they weren't right.😱

This one is....maybe.  Now I just need to practice some more and try smaller hooks. 😄
 

 Put a few more stitches in last night.  Not sure if there's enough red to complete the project.  If not, I'll just dye some more.  It may end up slightly different, which will be fine.  I'm not entering it in the State Fair!

I'm pumpkined out just now.  Instead, I'm starting some practice flowers for Arne and Carlos' Primrose Throw (also calledGunnhild).  Its from their book Knit and Crochet Garden.  

 These are my first two attempts at the flower center.  The one on the left is the first one and is missing one chain.  It took me a few goes once I realized it wasn't right to figure it out.  I'll do a few more practice centers, then start on the "real" ones.  I'm pretty happy with it. 

I'm waiting to get some long cords for the interchangeable needles before I start on the body of the sweater (hurray for Amazon), so that project is on hold.

Another pumpkin.  It's not my favorite,  but not everything is going to be.  It's much more of a plummy purple in rl.

....and it looks fine up with the white one.

It was a bit of a break from what felt like the never ending second sweater sleeve.  My eye was starting to wander towards other yarn and projects and this was just what was needed to refocus.

A jar and spray can lid kept both pieces off the box.   

 

Putting off doing housework by caking up yarn for a crochet basket, three crochet pumpkins and a knitted spider....the only kind of spider I like.

Crocheting an amigurumi devil's tail is more important than housework,  right?

In case I forget...

hook - 5.5mm I/9

yarn - red heart super saver

Sometimes extreme measures are needed.  lol

 

Halloween is my favorite holiday and I love decorating with thinks I've made or found round the house...like the bread baskets and cloths. 

I dyed a bunch of aida scraps and am working my way through them with witchy cross stitch designs.  The bottles just need some beads poured into them.

More witchy stitching.

....and there's more!  lol 

 

It's a gloomy day, today, as you can see by this pic!  This is one of my favorite cross stitch pieces.

I

The fabric was tea dyed.  There's a ton of  YouTube tutorials for tea dyeing, which make it a longer and more laborious process than mine.  All I do is steep a few cheap large teabags in a dye pot with a bit of boiling water for a while.  Then swap them out for the fabric and let it sit overnight.  It's the same way I've been doing it for over 30 years.  Simple, but effective.

When I ran out of the orange floss I dyed from leftovers for another dyeing project, I rummaged round in the stash for green floss.  

Another favorite pattern.  

Magnus Mouse in his fall sweater.  The wreath was made 30 something years ago with grapevines which grew on the property our house is on.