Happy Halloween!

It's rainy and disgusting here today, though I doubt if that will keep the neighborhood urchins from coming to beg for candy. I can wish though, right? Because that would mean a lot of candy for me.

I made the mistake up opening up the bags of candy this morning to get our candy bowl ready. I'd done such a good job of keeping myself from eating all the candy before Halloween -- but once the bags were open, it was all over.

I just hope there's some left when the kids show up.

But anyway...I'm not here to discuss candy. So let's talk about the weekend. On Friday afternoon, I took Mark on his first Yarn Store Adventure. I'm sure you'll be reading about it on his blog soon, so I won't give any of it away (BTW -- did you see his first FO? It looks great!). Then I headed back home to get ready for the Blue Jackets game. One of our fellow film critics was invited to the Party Tower for dinner and a game with the 20+ Club -- those who have been at the university for 20 years or more. Since John doesn't do hockey, he invited me as his hockey tutor.

I'll admit that the whole thing was a little intimidating, hanging out with a bunch of college professor types (just for the record, though, none of them wore a tweed blazer -- and pipe-smoking isn't allowed indoors here in C-town). But after munching on a sandwich in my nice schmoozing duds, I quickly changed into my Blue Jackets jersey (which, I believe, totally amused the professor-types). But let's face it -- I had a gin and tonic in my hand, and I was watching hockey. I didn't care.

After the first period was over, I called Mark, who I suspected would be somewhere in the building, since he'd been talking about getting himself a last-minute $10 ticket. As it turned out, he was about two sections over from where we were -- so we got him to come and join us for the game and the general merriment.

And when it was all over, guess what the final score was...


Yes, Ohio, there is a Great Pumpkin. Halloween miracles *do* happen.

So anyway, the rest of the weekend was spent running errands and mindlessly working on miscellaneous knitting projects. All of my projects right now are bigger projects -- so they don't really make for good photo ops. I'm well into Sleeve #1 on the sweater, though I'm seriously thinking about ripping some (or...gulp...all) of it out and making the sleeves a little bigger. And I've been working like a madwoman on the lace. An opportunity just arose this week to go to a fancy-schmancy event next weekend, to be attended by a bunch of the tweed-jacket-and-pipe crowd (how on Earth have I gotten myself into this crowd? I don't own a tweed jacket, and I haven't smoked a pipe since college...), and I keep imagining how lovely my lace stole would look with a black dress of some sort and my cool new boots that I bought especially for the occasion. But can I finish 21 more repeats and finish blocking by next weekend? Probably not -- but I plan to obsess over it for the next week or so anyway.

And finally...yesterday was knitting with the girlies. Miss S the Smaller was back from camp, and Miss S the Larger returned with her. Miss A also returned, after suffering from a case of the sniffles last week. It being the day before Halloween, all heck broke loose, and there was much singing and dancing and giggling. In order to get the girls to stop their freakin' singing, I came up with a challenge.

"You know, I think our group needs a name," I told them.

Miss S the Smaller came up with The Golden Needles, which, I believe, makes them sound like a bunch of blue-hairs. Miss S the Larger suggested something to the effect of The Stitching, Measuring, Knitting Machines. Or perhaps the Yarn Clan. Miss A came up with The Yarn Hoppers. We didn't come up with anything we liked, so here's the plan: we're all bringing a list next Monday, and we're going to vote (there's actually talk of someone creating a voting booth for the event).

So I need help in creating my list. Any suggestions for a good name for a group of knitting kiddies?