The blog has felt a little quiet and neglected lately so to get myself back into the habit of more regular writing I signed up for NaBloPoMo.

Halloween was full of silly drunken partying, pretty much as it should be. Jamie came round in the afternoon and we got ready together, I re-did all of that Zombie make up possibly with even more gore. After much scrubbing with bicarbonate soda in the shower I managed to get most of the red off of my skin, now I just need to clean up the trail of fake blood I left in my wake as I wandered round the flat getting ready.

Today has been hideously un-productive, I did some knitting, but then I fell asleep. Although the month has begun with a day spent mostly napping I do have some more productive things planned.

Mostly I’ll be working on patterns for my existing designs and on some new things.

The Elijah pattern is just waiting for pictures of embroidering the eyes and for me to take photos of this little guy that do proper justice to his cuteness.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the ways that my yarn choices are no longer solely about what’s convenient or on sale. In my patterns I try and give as much information on the yarn I used as I can because I really do want you to make your own substitution choices. I understand too though that quite often knitters do want to use the same yarn I used and I’ve been thinking about how that, obviously, results in sales of the yarn. Since I’m basically promoting the yarns I use I’m going to try more conscicously to use yarns that I really love by companies that I actually want to support, for whatever reason. Recently I’ve been ordering shade cards, there is something so inspiring about these. All of the promise of new projects.

While writing this I’ve been turning leftover pumpkin soup into pumpkin and prawn risotto, creamy soup leftovers are so good in risotto - just add the soup instead of or in addition to stock or water. In bed with the laptop, I’m going to eat that, knit a little on the second Arabella and get an early night, ready to begin working on November’s projects.

Oh and as Danielle commented the Halloween knitted figures in my last post are from Jean Greenhowe’s Jiffy Knits.