Oodles and oodles

A scary story for Halloween

I've been meaning to scan in this image all week - it's the children's book illustration I have framed and sitting on my shelf. Scary, isn't it? Not nearly as scary as what I'm about to show you.

                                                                                           photo courtesy of NASA

These are wild boar. I've been reading up on them on Wikipedia. Here are a few interesting facts about wild boar.

1. Wild boar live in groups of about 20, but groups of more than 50 have been seen.

2. A boar will eat almost anything, including grass, nuts, berries, dead animals, garbage, insects, small reptiles, young deer and lambs.

3. When surprised or cornered, a boar, especially a sow with piglets, will defend itself with "intense vigor." The male lowers its head, charges and slashes upward with his tusks. The female charges with her head up and mouth open and bites.

4. "Such attacks are not often fatal to humans, but may result in severe trauma, dismemberment or blood loss."

5. The farmer who lives a few miles down our road just shot and killed A 270-POUND WILD BOAR.

6. I like living in the country. I like trekking through the fields. Until this week, it had not occurred to me that on one of my walks I could encounter A 270-POUND WILD BOAR.

Pumpkin, I know how you feel.

  

Our family's slogan

That's not frost on the pumpkins. It's snow. The first of the season.

We only got a little. An hour north of here, there's 20 inches on the ground and it's still snowing. That's one reason I don't live an hour north of here.

Nonetheless, even a little snow threw us into a tizzy. You'd think we weren't expecting it to ever come. Mittens? Boots? Snow brush? All missing. Woefully unprepared: I think it's our family slogan. Learn from my example. Go find your winter stuff.

A new hat for fall

It has been months since I've made anything except dinner. I am so rusty that the other night I was trying to put together some simple little Halloween decoration, and I puzzled over how to attach two pieces of paper. Then it dawned on me. A glue stick. I could use a glue stick to glue the paper.

 
It was clear I needed to recharge, so on Saturday, I took my parents on a drive, and we went to a nearby quilt store. If I couldn't find anything inspiring there, I knew I was in trouble. I left with this book. I don't quilt, but I had to have the pattern in it for a hat-shaped hatpin holder. There was one on display at the quilt store, and I couldn't wait to get home and make one.

Mine is sort of similar yet somewhat different from the one in the book. (I'm not great about sticking exactly to directions.) It was a great pattern, and the hat was easy to make. I particularly loved decorating it.  I got out my millinery flowers, the box of doo-dads with the spun cotton mushrooms, the chenille bumblebee, the buttons  ... great fun.

 
I've got another one started, to decorate in a different way. It feels good to be making things again.

Here's how I'm voting. What about you?

Nobody in my family is arguing politics this year. We either agree, or we're smart enough to keep our mouths shut. What is provoking heated debate in our house, however, is the bowl of ornaments. They're Halloween ornaments. Mostly orange, with a touch of brown and green.

I put the ornaments on top of my bookcase just for the photo - otherwise, they're displayed on the bottom shelf. The other night, my son, looking around at the Halloween decorations, said, "At least you didn't put out those stupid Christmas ornaments this year."

We were off and running. Harsh words, unfair allegations, negative attacks. He does not approve of the bowl of ornaments as part of the Halloween decor. What's worse, my husband is in complete agreement with him. I suspect my daughter is on their side, but she needs me to drive her sixteen places a day, so she stays out of it.

The ornaments made their first appearance a few years ago. They were instantly controversial. I was subjected to a barrage of criticism and questions about my judgment. Then my friend Lillian, one of my most trusted advisers, stopped in for a visit. She spied the bowl instantly and said, "Halloween ornaments! That's so cool!" I hoped her endorsement would convince others, but I was wrong.

So I'm asking you: Do I have to be bound by conventional thinking, doing the same thing that's been done before, or can I embrace change and fresh new ways to decorate? Am I going to let fear dictate my choices, and bring out the ornaments only at Christmas, or am I going forward with a sense of hope and optimism, boldly displaying my fall-colored ornaments at Halloween?

I'm willing to abide by free and fair voting. Christmas or Halloween ornaments?  You decide. Any parallels to real-world campaigns are entirely coincidental.

Autumn gathering

Welcome! Kari at Artsy Mama is hosting an Autumn Gathering today, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's fall decor.

The book "Pieces and Plays for October Days" is probably my first Halloween collectible, and an accidental one at that. We found it in the first house we owned. It's filled with charming old poems and plays.

A few pieces of china are recent additions to the Halloween decor. If it's got a little orange, it's good for the season.

Halloween napkins from days gone by.

 

Two favorites: Gurley candles and honeycomb pumpkins. I like honeycomb pumpkins whether they're tiny ...

or big, or anywhere in between.

I like honeycomb cornshocks, too. I wasn't wild about the cardboard scarecrows that were attached to them, though, so I snipped them off. My apologies to any vintage purists out there. Usually I'm a purist, too, but the scarecrows reminded me of scary clowns.

I know some of you have seen this picture before - lots of favorite vintage candles, party horns and what-nots. (There are more pictures here and here.) Thanks to Kari for hosting!

Quick, before I lose my nerve

One thing leads to another. My parents are visiting, and so my aunt and uncle are coming here to see them Friday. I feel the need to clean up the house for my aunt and uncle (but apparently not for my parents...hmmm) which means tackling the table where I put all my stuff in the dining room, which means tackling the overflowing basket of fabric.

Which could mean tackling the fabric stash in the attic, because there is no more room for anything, so I took a deep breath and decided to de-stash. Well, a little. So some of my fabric is on eBay now, and some of it will appear like magic Thursday.

Mostly little squares and remnants. It's tough to part with, but on the other hand, I've felt way too overwhelmed with stuff lately. Not that getting rid of a Priority-Mail size box of fabric is going to make much of a dent around here, but it's a start.

 
These scottie dogs are killing me. But I only got this piece a few weeks ago, not long enough to get too attached.

 

On the other hand, I've become very attached to this piece. But I can always come back and visit it on my blog, can't I?

How many Christmas ornaments do you really need?

My most recent purchase of super-cheap Christmas ornaments made me think it was time to take stock. Literally. I had no idea how many ornaments I had, how many I really wanted or needed, or even where I had put all of them. I found this slick ornament calculator that tells you, based on the size of your tree, how many ornaments you need. It said I needed 160.

I thought it was a pretty safe bet that I had 160, since there were 46 in the boxes I just got. What I wanted to do, though, was put every ornament I owned in a big pile, and pick out the ones I liked best for our tree. Like most collectors, I think I've reached that point where I don't want to keep every ornament I find. I want to pick and choose.

Which turned out to be a little more daunting than I thought.  This is what the dining room looked like halfway through.  And I'm sorry I didn't take more photos, but really, it was overwhelming. My mom helped me sort. We're guessing there were about 500. And after a few hours, we had them divided up into what to keep and what to sell. (And a few for a giveaway in November.)

 

And so in the interests of simplicity, here's one from the new batch. Pink stripes and mica. It's a keeper.

Every day

Every day it's the same routine: get dressed, get the dog outside, walk down the long drive and get the paper.

But some mornings, like today, it occurs to me that what is routine is pretty great. Every morning I see the sun coming up over the hill and the deer browsing in the field across the road. Every morning I hear birds. This time of year, it's surround-sound waterfowl, the ducks on the pond to the west, the geese on the pond to the east.

Maybe this morning it was the frost coating the leaves, or the cold air snapping my senses to attention, or waking up remembering that my parents just arrived and the five people I love best are all sleeping under the same roof. Or maybe for no reason at all. But today started out with a reminder that the best days aren't extraordinary but everyday.

Toil and trouble

After a week of dithering and rearranging, I think I've got the Halloween decorating done. If I had unlimited funds, I'd get a massage every day, a manicure every week, and I'd buy every vintage Halloween postcard I could find - and not necessarily in that order.

It's sitting with the pumpkin-colored tea set (and washing out in the flash - sorry about that.) I've retaken these photos three times, and I give up. Talk about toil and trouble.

Everything except the party hats on the shelves is vintage. Here's a bat story: not the beat-up cardboard bat in the picture, but the bat on the ground in the flower bed. Yep, I'm screaming with you. Those of us who live in the country are sometimes called upon to take on distasteful tasks, but no way was I picking up a dead bat, not even with the longest-handled shovel in our shed. My husband got that job. He returned from the job laughing. Good thing you didn't try to pick up that bat, he said, because it wasn't dead. It was sleeping. If that thing that I thought was dead suddenly sprang to life and flew into the air, I'd be on the ground in my flower bed. Shudder. Double shudder. Back to decorations.

The picture with the disturbing window reflection is from a tattered children's book.

My only other Halloween postcard.

The jack o'lantern has a battery and lights up. The skinny orange thing is a party horn.

Candy tin and honeycomb pumpkins. You know the best thing about honeycomb pumpkins? You can keep them out right through Thanksgiving.

Linen love

When I first started going to auctions, I would bid on every single box of linens I saw. Thankfully, I hardly ever won. Sometimes I did, though, and that's how I learned a valuable lesson: A little recreational laundry is fun, but it goes a long way. I also learned that there's a limit to how many dresser scarves and doilies one household needs. Every once in a while, though, I'm at an auction, a box of linens comes up, and nobody bids on it - nobody! - and the auctioneer says "Anybody? Coupla bucks?" Well, what can I do?

The box I brought home a week or so ago had a lot of goodies, like a pair of these towels. It's tough to improve on damask. Especially pink damask.

 
A dresser scarf has to be pretty sweet to get my attention now, but this one did. There's probably a name for this technique, with raised, appliqued flowers.

Sometimes I look at old handwork and think it might be fun to learn. I don't think I'd ever have the patience to make these tiny flowers, but I'm glad someone did.