there's a light (over at Peeriemoot's place)

Particularly tough neeps this year!

Worth the effort though. I hung the jagged eyed neepie lantern outside the house while I took the kids out guising, carrying the other one with me and pausing to relight it every few minutes of course - there was hardly a breath of wind, but just enough combined with moving around I suppose! Every year I tell myself I'll get some of those little electric tealights, and every year I forget. However when we got back to the house the outside lantern was still burning, so that was pretty good going. Astonishing actually!

Neeps and apples

It's ten to seven on Hallowe'en, we've just run out of sweets and have taken the neepie lanterns back in off the doorstep. And switched all the lights off. Sorry, kids, it's all over for another year. I got a bit creative with the first neep this year. It turns out that cats' eyes are bit fiddly to carve though - for those who've never carved a neep they're much harder than pumpkins and it's tricky to get details, partly of course because they're that much smaller. Very satisfying though!

I went into Glasgow today and met up with a friend who I don't see nearly often enough.  We met up the Yarn Cake which is a very lovely yarn shop/cafe in the West End of Glasgow. Coffee was consumed as was apple crumble cake (my favourite) and we chatted and knitted*, and also caught up with Antje who runs the Yarn Cake and who I also hadn't seen for ages.  The West End was looking very autumnal. Very much a lovely day.

River Kelvin

* I finished that garter stitch square - wooh, achievement!

Ooooooowoooooooooo

Yay, go me - cramming another blogpost into October! It's not an exciting one, just a bit of Hallowe'en fun (I think I may be the last person left using that apostrophe) and some autumn colour. I made neepie lanterns again this year. No injuries at all, not even bruised knuckles. No injuries to me that is. I did get a bit enthusiastic with the bigger neep's eyes though and sliced right through to the top. I left the smaller lantern on our doorstep and took the larger lantern out with me when I took the kids out guising.

 In progress 

The weather was a bit wild today - at ten to four there was heavy rain followed by thunder, lightning and hail (briefly). I can't say I was actually looking forward to taking the kids out, but fortunately by the time we went out the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared - we even saw some stars. It was chilly and quite breezy so my lantern's candle kept blowing out, but at least we weren't wet.  We met up with my friend from over the road and her kids. The kids had some terrible jokes to tell, as tradition dictates of course. For example:
-Knock Knock
-Who's there?
-Europe.
-Europe who?
-No, you're a poo!

and

-What does a witch want in a hotel?
-I don't know, what does a witch want in a hotel?
-Broom service!

The first one had my friend doubled up laughing every time (it was her son telling it - with great relish!).


But enough of Hallowe'en and silly jokes.  I went out for a walk the other day  - on an intermittently wet day.

It was sunny for these pictures but chucked it down again five minutes later. Refreshing though.

I like this footpath:

It looks leafy and mysterious though it actually just leads to a children's play area and more houses. The white dot in the middle is a cat who was trotting purposefully away, on some cattish mission no doubt. Secret one. Ssh. Don't tell a soul.

NaBloNeeneeNoonoo

Apparently it's Blog Writing Month - NaBloNeeneeNoonoo or some such thing. I don't like Newspeak-style agglomerations, especially ones start with Na standing for National because there's never any mention of which nation exactly. So in support of the nation of Tuvalu who are fairly unlikely to be the nation in question, I'm avoiding the nasty word and I'm just saying that the plan is to blog every day this month. Last year I tried Advent Blogging in December - every day up until Christmas Day - and managed that so how hard can thirty days be? Well, the honest answer is that the some days it'll be quite difficult indeed but I'm allowing myself a few posts that are just a picture and a caption.

So we start with Last Night. That's a pile of bags of sweeties (also satsumas as a nod towards vitamins and stuff) I put together yesterday in preparation for hordes of kids at the door. In fact there weren't huge numbers of kids out and about, we always have too much (everyone does) and there are always leftovers.

And that's the Horrors dressed up for going out guising - the Boy is the classic sheeted spectre and Miss Mouse is 'Violet Vocabulary', a superhero known only to primary school-children so other kids her age thought it was cool and nobody else knew who she was.  The Boy, who is rather shy, had a completely fantastic time this year. As his face was covered he didn't feel nearly as shy as usual about telling his joke to people on their doorsteps ('How does the ghost like his eggs cooked? Terror-fried').  The rain had stopped by the time we went out and we met up with some other kids and parents to go round together - my friend's husband made a very impressive Darth Vader but nobody gave him sweeties, awwww....

And keeping up with tradition I made two small neepie lanterns. The neeps (swedes) I got this year were teeny which makes it a bit awkward but no skinned knuckles! One of my friends told me on Facebook this morning that she once ended up getting six stitches on her hand after a neep-carving accident, so I'm counting myself very lucky! We left one on our doorstep while we were out guising and I carried the other with me.

The aftermath - singed neep. Aren't tealights a brilliant invention?

My Powerhoop class has been cancelled this morning so I'm off to wind wool for my orange project - not really comparable exercise but it needs to be done!

Making Monday and Making Winter - neeps and knives

This is a combined Making Monday and Making Winter post. Making Monday is, I suppose, slightly on hiatus because our glorious leader, Natalie of the Yarn Yard who started it, is away on holiday, snowed-in in Boston last I heard, but it's a good blogging habit now. Making Winter is silverpebble's and thriftyhousehold's idea for this winter, in an attempt to embrace the winter. I don't really have a problem with the winter, which is probably just as well, and Hallowe'en is the first episode of winter fun for me. Anything involving fire is pretty much a good thing in the winter - neepie lanterns at Hallowe'en, bonfires and fireworks on Guy Fawkes night, candles at Christmas, and then the most incandescent of the lot, Up Helly Aa, enjoyed vicariously by webcam!

Yesterday afternoon was spent doing one of my favourite things - making neepie lanterns. I pushed the boat out that this year (at 50p a neep I think I can manage it just this once) and made two. One was for putting in the living-room window and one to take out with us when we went out guising.


A neep is much harder work than a pumpkin and I always have skinned knuckles or blisters or both to show for it, but it's really worth the effort. Hallowe'en isn't Hallowe'en without the smell of singed neep!

This is my preferred method - slice the top off and cross-hatch the flesh with a sharp knife. This makes it easier to start gouging it out.

After that it's a bit of a free-for-all - knife, spoon, swear-words, all have their place. These two didn't actually take all that long to do.

This year I managed to convince the Boy to come out guising with us - it's not usually his cup of tea but I pointed out that he only gets few years to do this as a kid so he should enjoy it while he can. And actually he got quite into the spirit of it once we'd cobbled together a hobbit costume for him (brown Jedi robe that My Beloved had made for him from a bit of scrap brown material ages ago, One Ring on a bit of leather, wooden sword). We were going out with my friend and her kids and we all dressed up. I was a pirate, nicking the waistcoat and velvet jacket my husband wore at our wedding and the Jacobite shirt he wears with his kilt. Miss Mouse was a fairy, my friend was a rather slinky red devil and my husband dug out his re-enactment kit and was a mediaeval knight. Last year it was a beautiful night - clear, not too cold, dry and not windy but this year unfortunately it was bucketing down, so Frodo and the fairy had to wear raincoats on top of their costumes. We had a great time though! Much silliness..


The one on the left, with the handle, is the one that came out with us, though unfortunately it was so rainy I couldn't keep the candle alight, even with the neep's 'lid' on. I like his cheery expression - I don't like to make them too scarey!

Neepie lantern

Traditionally in Scotland neeps (Swede/rutabaga) are used instead of pumpkins though nowadays most people use pumpkins because they are so so sooooo much easier to carve and are easily available. I tried a pumpkin one year but stick to neeps usually because to me the smell of slightly singed neep is a big part of Hallowe'en, and I want my kids to have that kind of sensory memory. So I don't care about the bruised knuckles - or not much. At least I didn't skin my knuckles this year!

I'm particularly pleased with the wire handle - it was just a bit of wire left over from a piece of fencing we took down in the summer (and I'd saved because, you never know, it might come in handy..). Miss Mouse and I went out guising with some of the other kids (and mums) in the area and I carried my lantern the whole way round with no bother at all. When we came home Miss Mouse had so many sweeties that she looked as if she'd been visited by St.Haribo of the Rotten Teeth :-D.