We had a beautiful night for trick or treating, with a full moon and temperatures in the upper 60s. (A big shout out to the Halloween gods who have been most gracious to us Bostonians over the past 6 years, favoring us with unseasonably warm and dry weather every Halloween. You rock!) Before it got dark though, we had a trial run with the costumes.

The boys got to slip into their Mario and Wario outfits early for a trip to some shops in the neighborhood who were handing out treats to kids who showed up in costume. The overalls fit great, B's pillow belly was perfect and the shoe covers were just right to finish off their costumes. They were Mario and Wario from head to toe! And as we visited the shops, all the adults recognized them right away: "Hey, it's Mario and Wario! Cool! You never see Wario!" We hit about seven or eight stores, just enough to get an early sugar rush. Wee was with us too, of course, and even I wore "a costume".

look, I'm a Muggle, but only on Halloween, you know

We came home, ate some dinner (we always try to make the kids' favorite meal for Halloween night so we can get as much real food into them as possible), and then got ready to go out for what the boys called "real Halloween." Real Halloween included the last accessories for the boys' costumes: the white gloves and the moustaches!

We were all cracking up when they first put their moustaches on. Then they had so much fun getting into character that wee one couldn't help but join in. She's flapping while they act all Mario-y ("yeah!") and Wario-y ("heee-heee-heee"). The last laugh was on Wario though, as he got called Luigi all night long: "No! I'm Wario!" Thank goodness he got all those kudos in the afternoon. The game store and book store folks really showed themselves to be way more in the know than the moms and dads of non-Wii obsessed kids in our neighborhood. In their defense though, they did say that the Luigi costume was great!

And wee one - we can't forget wee one!- was a very pretty butterfly (even though some of the same neighborhood moms and dads thought she was an angel), thanks in part to hubby who played wing-man most of the night, flipping her wings back up when they flapped over.

Everyone was very generous with the candy this year. People were giving wee handfuls of the stuff! (Wario was helping himself to handfuls all on his own. No surprise he won the family candy count!) Thank goodness we had that extra hour last night from the time change for them to spend brushing their teeth! And then, it was over. The kids went to sleep and I didn't sew anything. Another successful Halloween - costumes, candy, craziness, and a dark, spooky and very good night.

One snowman hat and, get this, my twelfth Itty-Bitty Hats hat overall! I can't believe I've made so many of these and there are still more I want to try from the book.

This one was lots of fun. I was amazed at what a difference it made to add the scarf and the black brim of the snowman's hat. It really transformed a cute vaguely penguin-y looking hat into a fabulous snowman-in-a-hat hat. Just to drive the idea home though, I added a little coal mouth. No mistaking that for a penguin!

I think I'll try a Stripey Stocking Cap next! Now to raid the stash for a couple of fun yarns....

Audiobooks. Why did it take me almost nine years of knitting to get hooked on audiobooks?

My gateway drug, so to speak, was the sweet sweet voice of Richard Armitage (from the BBC series "North & South," "Robin Hood," and "Spooks"). When I saw that he'd done an audio version of Georgette Heyer's Sylvester, I had to have it as soon as it came out. (To hear an audio sample for yourself, go here.) I enjoy Heyer's Regency novels (think Jane Austen lite) and loved this version. (In fact, I think I'll click over to the audio sample myself for another hit of that voice.... ahhhh, niiice...) Suffice it to say, it's left me wanting to hear more.

Erm, read more. With my ears, that is. 'Cause it is so freaking cool to be able to knit - and sew - while "reading" a book! I generally watch television while knitting, but there's usually only like one show a night I really want to see. The other shows I watch are pretty much just time-fillers until "my" show comes on and with a DVR, I can watch the good shows whenever I want. Of course, I can't watch anything while sewing because I really need to be watching the needle to be sure I don't run it over my fingers. But I can listen to a book! In fact, when I finished with Sylvester, I felt like I needed another audiobook just to help me get through the Halloween costumes!

So I checked my local library and found an audio version of one of Georgette Heyer's mysteries (she also wrote several murder-in-an-old-English-house style whodunits). I've spent the last seven hours of sewing/knitting/workout time trying to figure out who done it in her novel, Footsteps in the Dark. (If you want to hear the opening of this book, click on the "Chapter 1" link on this page.) But now I'm almost done! What next?!

Well, what book would a knitter read if a knitter could read a book? That is to say, if my knitting and my reading were no longer mutually exclusive, what would I read? Hmmm... maybe The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Or That Old Cape Magic. Man, I love Richard Russo!

Or I could even "reread" New Moon before the movie comes out this month!

can you tell, I enjoy these preview thingies?

I'm actually reading The Mysterious Benedict Society aloud to my boys right now and they are loving it! Somehow, in the back of my head, I felt like reading it aloud to them would justify my reading so-called juvenile fiction. Juvenile or not, it's great stuff:

hey, we just read this exact chapter!

The third graders in the boys' school spend a lot of time in their literacy units reading aloud and listening to audiobooks. In the shift from learning to read to reading to learn, they emphasize reading aloud to help the kids slow down, focus on what the author is trying to emphasize and on how they are setting a scene. Well, I say, if it's good for them, why not for us grown ups? Why should being read to end just because you're 8 or 38? When I lived in New York, I went to a few Selected Shorts shows with my mother. Noted actors would read short stories all related by a certain theme. It was fabulous! (You can hear or subscribe to a podcast version of these shows here.) I'd forgotten about how much I enjoyed them until now.

win a copy of of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society audiobook!

So, do you audioread? Wanna audioread along with me? Leave a comment here about what you're listening to, what you'd recommend I listen to, or just tell me what hell audible.com is so I can get my hands on more audiobooks and you can win a copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on CD! Yes, I've got one extra copy to give away and it could be yours! I'll keep the comments open until the end of Saturday (EST) and choose a winner at random on Sunday. Wheeeee... fun!

(Hey look, we could even listen to No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting while knitting!)

UPDATE: The giveaway is now over. Congratulations to Regina! Send me an email with your info and I'll send you your audio book. And happy reading/listening to everyone!

I found this striped Mandarin Petit sweater in the stash while searching for something else entirely. In fact, this find was so exciting, I forgot what I was originally hunting down! What I found was just the first three inches of this sweater - all I had knitted before I shoved it into the stash three years ago. I instantly remembered loving this sweater pattern, pulled it out and continued knitting.

three and a half years ago

That was this sweater over three years ago, May 2006 to be exact. We had a sample of this sweater at the store that I had fallen in love with and I was planning to make it for a friend's baby-on-the-way. But then I found out I was pregnant with wee one and very excitedly replanned it for her! I must have knit an inch past the red section above, right to the point where one of the color stripes repeats, and then my pregnant self decided it couldn't deal with all those yarn balls hanging off the sweater and all those strands being carried. Or else it was the fear of the other option, weaving in all those ends, that overcame me. Either way, I abandoned it. And as wee one grew and my stash was pushed further into the back of the closet, I forgot about it.

Until now!

body to armholes complete - that wasn't too hard after all

I freaking love it! And by some miracle, it will still fit her. I had cast on for the one year size, which is rather generously sized, like many of these Scandinavian sweaters. I held it up to a sweater wee wore last winter and it was still two inches wider! So there's no need to rip anything out. Yes! The pattern even goes up to a size four, which means I can follow the numbers for the four year length while keeping the one year width. It's like it was meant to wait three years for me to finish it. If I'd finished it before, it would have been way too wide, because she's a slender girl, and too short, since she shot up like a weed between one and two years.

When I think that I pretty much started this sweater right when wee one was conceived and now she's two and half and I can see how it is so totally her, well, I'm getting a little verklempt finishing it. Sniff, sniff.

do you audioread while knitting?

Congratulations to Regina, who won a copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on CD! Regina, send me an email with your info and I'll send you your audiobook.

Happy audioreading to everyone else who shared suggestions and played along!

'Cause this hat is getting ripped. Here's the very sad story. Wait, knit yourself a hanky first then come back....

Okay, so my favorite knitted hat of all time - my Malabrigo Le Beret has gone missing.

Loved that hat! Loved that yarn! Perfect color, perfect fit. It was the perfect hat. Well, it did have a hole in it after 4 years of wear, but I was gonna fix that, I swear. As I went to pull out the winter wear (hats, gloves, scarves, etc.) I could not find the hat anywhere. THE hat. After going through the various stages of grief - denial took a long time since I kept going back to search through the same spots over and over - I decided to move on and make a new one. I have the pattern still and I even have a skein of Malabrigo. It's not the same perfect sky blue shade that was in THE hat though. And I'd done something with the numbers in the pattern to get it to fit so perfectly, but I didn't jot that down on my pattern. Bugger.

I made several cast on attempts, found a stitch count and needle size I liked and went for it. I knitted away, telling myself that as soon as I finished this replacement hat, I'd find the old one. And then I'd have two! Apparently you can't say that sort of thing out loud and after eight inches of knitting I was punished by having the hat just look horrible and all wrong on me. I think I left out some increases. I think I knit it too tight. I think I jinxed it.

It's time to frog and try again. But first a little whine because I just want my old hat back. Waaaah and ribbit.

My Malabrigo beret, second version, third try. I still don't know what exactly went wrong with my first attempts to make a replacement for my lost hat. I am equally clueless about what might be so different about this third try, but, for whatever reason, I'm getting a good feeling about this one. It even feels like my old hat in my hands, on the needles. So I'm knitting away, daydreaming about Goldilocks: 'this one is just right.'

I hope it's not just a fairy tale. I don't want to make v 2.4.

I found it!

I'm so happy, I can't hold the camera straight!

On my way to knitting on Sunday, I made a desperate decision to dig through the kids' winter hats & gloves basket ONE LAST TIME and, lo and behold, there was my Malabrigo beret buried at the bottom! I couldn't believe it when I spotted the little bit of light blue stuck inside a handful of red, yellow and black winter wear. I actually gasped. And only partially because of the brown sticky gunk I found on it (which you can see in the above picture and leads me to ask just what the hell else is at the bottom of the kids' winter hats & gloves basket?!). So, it needs a good washing, but first I had to close up that hole I found in it last year. The yarn in one stitch had broken, leaving a dangerous hole, which was thwarted from unraveling in all directions only by the practically felted nature of the 4 year-old Malabrigo yarn. A little duplicate stitch in a similar yarn on the inside did the trick.

seriously, that is a totally different yarn I used - hell, I coulda used it on the front, it matches so well!

And she's back! Now all I have to ask myself is, which of my two favorite hats do I want to wear?

note to self: don't do the plain rounds between the decrease rounds because otherwise your hat will be ridiculous looking and you'll run out of yarn

Because I finished my replacement Malabrigo beret last night! It fits great, now that I've worked out the changes I made (and noted them on my pattern and here for the next time I lose my favorite hat and need to make this pattern again!).

"...the hat came back, I thought she was a goner,
the hat came back, she just wouldn't stay away."

Kim Hargreaves sort of dropped off my knitting radar after she started selling her patterns only online in yarn kits, but I spied her new book, Precious, the other day and was left regretting all the beautiful designs I've been missing. I love so many of her sweaters, but I seem to be on a hat kick right now, so I'm getting my Har-groove back with her Lucky beret.

kinda looks like a giant mushroom, doesn't it?

I just love this subtle shade of Malabrigo worsted. It's called "Simply Taupe." Isn't that delightful? I bought the yarn on a trip to Seed Stitch in Salem, Mass back when wee was just a baby and had kept it stashed for a future scarf or hat. But now I'm convinced that all Malabrigo should become hats. Thing is, it just never itches my forehead like so many other wools eventually do. And its tendency to felt makes the hat even warmer. It's perfect!

What is not perfect, however, is that darned silly hang-up the Brits have about knitting everything flat and seaming it. Oh, Kim, seam a beret?! Really?! A little too precious, I think.

I've had this misshawklet handspun yarn for a couple of years. I think someone picked it up for me at a craft fair. Maybe even Bazaar Bizarre, but it was so long ago, I've forgotten. I rediscovered this sweet little hank while searching for my lost hat. It is all pastel-y pink and blue with a subtle sparkly fiber too. Fun! And it looked like just the thing for a little hat for my little girl. I wanted to choose a simple pattern that would show off the colors, so I chose the Tweedy Pie hat from the cover of Monkeysuits. Great pattern + great yarn = great hat. Right?

Wee seems convinced, but I'm not. I don't know exactly how to explain why I'm disappointed except to say simply that I kinda liked it better in the hank. When I look at the hat so far, I wish it was just that one bright blue color. Wouldn't that be fab?

I popped out to the yarn store with wee in tow to find a bright blue yarn to make the hat I'm imagining and justify unraveling this one. We spotted some Lobster Sox yarn, dyed in awesome bright-as-a-fluorescent-highlighter colors. I picked up the blue, but wee insisted on green.

Looks like I'll be having some green tweedy pie for Thanksgiving!

Lookie how pretty my lucky beret looks now that it's all done and lying all flat! I've never had a beret that looked perfectly round and beautiful when it was merely sitting on the floor. It seems almost a shame to put my head in it! I really enjoyed this pattern (except the silly knit-it-flat-and-seam-it bit that I ignored). It was super simple and fun. The pattern called for a poofy pompom on the top, which looked good in the picture, but my yarn color choice was perhaps a little unfortunate.

Eggs sunny side up, anyone? I fear that red would look like the cherry on top of a sundae and pink could turn it into a cupcake on my head. Soooo, no pompom for me. S'alright because it looks pretty darned good without one.

And check out how awesome the so-called "wrong" side looks!

I may actually end up wearing it more this way than the other! It's so much softer on this side too, since it's all knit stitches in that yummy Malabrigo.

I probably won't end up wearing it this next way, but it is funny how, if I pull it up just right, it kinda looks like chef's hat.

(Or, I know, could be a chess piece for next Halloween!) Seriously, folks, I love love love the hat. It's soft and warm, goes with everything, is reversible and just a little bit silly.