Nothing's Scarier than Math

It's late October and that means three things in my house

1) Chili

2) Pumpkin Pie

3) Pumpkin Carving



We had four pumpkins at our house this year, one each for me, Nerdy Husband, Big Little Sister, and her friend. BLS is living with us while she goes to school here. The knickname borrowed from a relatively awful video game movie, since she's much taller than me.

She's also the one who picked out this pattern for me to carve.



She and her friend carved out these two





And Nerdy Husband had the easiest to carve, but one of the best pumpkins.

What do you get when you divide a pumpkin's circumference by its radius?



Pumpkin Pi

or, in this case pumpkin pi over 2, because he says that is always the answer. What a math geek! We're such a good match.

Fall is in the Air

Forget spring, fall is my favorite season. It's here, and this is how I know.



One branch of the trees behind the condo has turned a beautiful orange. Not sure if it died or is changing for the season. We're going to go with changing, as some of the other needles have a tint of orange as well.

We've cleared most of the boxes out of the dining room, and made some good finds at some pumpkin patches to make a nice centerpiece.


This is the Mario Mushroom gourd


and the Biohazard Squash


Here's the first round of pumpkins and gourds, set up all nice and pretty.



Then one of our pumpkins (the big one of course) started oozing onto our new, never-before-used table. Nice. So, we ended up going to a pumpkin patch while we were visiting my family, and found the Mario Mushroom Gourd. After we got back, we carved the pumpkins, and added our new squash, and this (and some pumpkin seeds) is what we were left with.



Here's My Nerd's skull Jack-o-lantern


and my Maleficent.

Not bad considering we used steak knives and a nail as our tools. We used the paddle from our rice cooker as well, it was great for scooping out the guts and seeds. The pumpkin seeds themselves are no where to be seen in the pictures, mostly becuase they don't last long enough to get pictures taken of them. And they're just seeds.

In the past week, I've made most of the first Coriolis sock of a pair I'm giving my father in law for Christmas. I've also been working on a dishcloth along with my knitting group. And it's a disaster.

The KAL in general is going ok. But I've made a serious error in judgment, one that I shouldn't have. Because I just wrote and recorded a segment on gauge for the podcast. And I've had gauge disasters before. I figure that since it's a dishcloth, gauge isn't that important. Well, instead of a dishcloth I have a bathmat. A small one, but a bathmat nonetheless. It's huge. I didn't realize this was a problem while making each of the five petals because it's the worst photographed pattern ever, and you can't see how large the petals are compared to the center. I thought the petals comprised most of the dishcloth, and that the center would be small. Then I saw a finished one at my group, and almost cried. It's almost all center, the petals are very small. I also ran out of yarn, and I started with a full ball. That should tell you something.

I never planned to actually use it as a washcloth, as it's made out of Lionbrand VelvetSpun that I had in my stash. I don't know how the polyester chenille would hold up to regular washing. I will probably use it almost as a doily, on part of my desk that I don't write on. Or perhaps under my computer monitor. Or maybe, if I ran some icord just inside the border where the petals are joined, I could make it into a purse. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who would wear a bright yellow chenille purse with petals around it.

Either way, I think this qualifies under "Disaster" on KnitWars.