I thought it was all supposed to be winding down...

Last week of October. Usually by this point life is settling down. Fall is usually so crazy busy for me and I'm usually kind of grateful for this time of year to roll around. Somehow, this year, it's not happening, and I'm not really upset. Weird.

Last weekend, that's where we'll start. Friday night was football, we lost, in the rain, far away, again. Have you picked up on the pattern this season yet? But that meant Saturday was free for apple picking. The Perry fam picked me up, in the rain, and we headed out to Patterson's. Got some yummy donuts, and then hit the play ground.
Didn't stay long, as it was raining, and we still had to go to the other farm to get the apples. But the boys were surprisingly photogenic. So we climbed back into the truck, doled out the donuts (I highly recommend the pumpkin - so good) and headed to apple farm.
It was hard to convince Mason not to pick up all the apples from the ground, but we succeeded. The boys enjoyed picking the apples, and even Miss Aubrey appeared to enjoy her bundled-up self.

Then we headed back to pick out a pumpkin. Or two. Elliott liked this one, for a minute, and then moved on.
I was a little too busy pulling the pumpkin wagon to actually snap a pic of the chosen pumpkins, but they were good ones. It was cold and wet, and not everyone stayed happy the whole outing, but it was fun. Hopefully next year the weather will cooperate and we can do the hayride and what not.

The rest of Saturday was spent watching football, ND was that close! Couldn't knit during the game, I was way too stressed. Afterwards, I started spinning the Fire fiber. Friday night, I finished it.
I love it so much. More than I thought I would. Just goes to show you shouldn't judge a roving, it's too hard to know what the yarn will look like. Plying will happen this week.

Sunday was Browns-Steelers. I started a new project, the Multnomah shawl out of some Malabrigo Sock. OMG. So soft. Would be wasted on the feet. Great pattern, quick and easy. So quick that Thursday night it looked like this:
Done, almost. See here's the problem:
See that, I ran out of yarn about 20 stitches away from being completely bound off! Crazy. So, I bit the bullet and ripped back to before the patterned bit.
I had increased to a number of stitches based on someones note on Ravelry, and ended up with 6 extra stitches on the first pattern row (which is 2 rows of increases). So in ripping back the 2 increase rows, I eliminated the extra stitches and gave myself enough yarn to finish. Which I did, today.
Yay! I'll block it tonight. Close up on the feather and fan pattern:
Monday night, I went to Ellie's and felted the slippers for Peggy. I'm going to put the finishing touches on them today, I hope.
Much better size now. I wore them around the house the other night to get them fitted to shape of feet, I'll think they came out pretty great, not sure I want to give them away....

This weekend was a bit crazy. Saturday was a marathon. Football game at 1pm (we won, against a Div. 1 team, which, in all kinds of crazy, means that if we beat the Div. 3 team we play this weekend, we're still somehow possibly going to the playoffs), boys soccer had a game at Newbury and had to be on the bus by 4:30 (game time was 6) I was planning on going, had thought to take my time, get some dinner, and leave when I needed to in order to get back to the rink for the hockey game at 8:30pm. Yeah, about that, as I was pulling out of the school's driveway, I got a panicked phone call from one of the soccer players because the ref was insisting on seeing the MD's note saying he was cleared to play with the brace on his wrist (just so you don't think I'm negligent, he's played with the brace on for the past month and no ref has required the note until now).

So I quickly turned around and went back to the office to retrieve said note, ran to main office to make copy of the note (in football the ref's have to keep a copy of the note, so I was being prepared) and got in the car and headed out. No dinner. Got to the game just before it started, only to realize that they did not have a trainer on duty. So I stayed for the whole game (only had to take care of the other team, funny how that works). But we won! Which means that they play again tomorrow, at home. Fingers crossed that it doesn't rain too much.

So after the game ended, I high-tailed it out of the stadium and back to my car, worried that I was going to be late for the hockey game. But the little kid game was still being played when I got there. I love it when the real games are late because the little kids go over, it was a theme this weekend, because that's how it went on Sunday too. Can you believe that it's hockey season already?! Neither can I. After the game on Sunday, I headed out west to hang out with Liz, and stayed out there until Ellie's plane arrived. It was a long weekend.

So, for this week, I've got girls soccer and volleyball in the playoffs today, the boys game tomorrow and the football game on Saturday. Those are guaranteed, any wins today or tomorrow adds something to the schedule, which was supposed to be empty. Huh.