Leaves, English, Yummies and Caps

Had a very nice weekend; you know, you'd think when you retire you would be less aware of weekends and days off and so on. And then your volunteer job starts paying, and there is a Change. And you appreciate weekends and days off again. Interesting. But I'm not complaining - I earn a little more than a skein of Cascade 220 an hour. And at 20 hours a week, that's a lot of toques.

So when we discovered that we had a Saturday with NO obligations, we decided to take off and travel north to admire the Autumn Colors. There's almost no hint of color here.

What you see here is a souvenir of our lovely day of motoring. That's (the remainder of) a piece of a fresh pie made by a crew of young Amish girls and kept whole and intact until we got home. I meant to take a picture of the whole pie, but because I was greedy hungry, we tucked into it pretty quickly after getting it home. This is NOT, however, the last piece. We're being reasonable.

I love the sight of the cornfields in the sere, standing like wands of gold in rows; I think I almost like them more than the beautiful rich green corn, heavy with the ears. Even though there wasn't much in the way of the russets and yellows, browns and reds and golds, the fields and the darkening forests were beautiful just the same.

On a whim we stopped at our favorite Amish grocery, which we love dearly and try to visit every few months at least. It's mostly a grocery store, but small, and they have a very wide variety of spices, plastic bags of soup mixes, jellies and jams, nuts and grains. They have almost a whole counter of bulk candy at reasonable prices, some which you don't see elsewhere. Remember those thick round pink disks that had three Xs on them and were wintergreen? THOSE! And, they had green ones in spearmint which I hadn't seen before - had to get me some of those. They also have LOTS of flavors of licorice twists (is there a term for those rubbery twisty candy when they're NOT licorice?); I got cinnamon and green apple. (The cinnamon ones are almost gone, but I have NO idea why. I mean, Mr Dearling doesn't like them.) They also had Anise Bears, which are really rich and delicious. You have to like "black licorice" flavor, but I am addicted really love it.

Incidentally they also have other very useful things: lantern wicks, thick cotton black knee-highs, terrific wooden spoons, sturdy black shoelaces and so on.

But I have to tell you - don't go on a sunny Saturday afternoon in leaf-peeping season.

The grocery was MOBBED! Seems like ALL of the "English" come out, and it was hard to find a place to park (I was relieved to see that everyone respected the parking slots for buggies only.) You sometimes hear fascinating things in the Amish market: "Gee, it's a little dark in here, don't they turn on the lights on weekends?" "I wonder why they don't use those scanners like regular stores?"

Of COURSE I knitted while admiring the Wisconsin countryside. Another ace quality of Mr Dearling's: he loves to drive, and always does, allowing me knitting time.
Here are my two current-and-simultaneous projects. The blue one is one of the Perpetual Toques, the orange is a Punkin hat for a grandson. Now then - the toque is actually going to be an experiment, and it's for ME (so that if it's a total bust it'll be MY total bust). My plan is to change from the blue to another color (red? green?) that I have in my stash, and finish it. I THINK the result will be a toque that I can wear in either color, and maybe with the the contrasting edge showing. I know, most people can envision exactly how it'll work out, but *I* have to try it to see for myself. Besides, I'm a Process Knitter, the end result is secondary!

As far as the Punkin Cap goes - it's kind of an experiment too. I've never started a cap at the bottom (believe it or not). I was inspired by Crazy Aunt Purl's darling caps. I'm just making a plain roll-brim cap, and the very top's going to be green and I'll put an I-Cord doodad on top. I've seen gazillions of free patterns for hats like this, but I'm winging it. I'm to the point of starting to decrease, which will involve my performing some dreaded maths. I'll let you know how that works. It's not that I'm generally stupid; I'm just Mathematically-Dyslexic. "Tewtally". So it's going to be a challenge, but I'm honest and I'll photograph the result. Maybe.

And finally - after the very long day, I took a page out of Lilliane's book -- I swear, that girl will win, paws-down, if they ever make Sleeping an Olympic sport.

Notice the graceful curl of tail over paws. The carefully-arranged limbs. The narrow, slitty eyes....oh yes, she knows she's being photographed. Think she sleeps like that all the time? Nawwww.

Oh! Lastly of all: this weekend ended Wisconsin Book Week, and we did take in a couple of the (many) offerings. Friday night we went to hear Davy Rothbart, editor of "Found" magazine, and we laughed ourselves...silly! Very entertaining idea, and he's keeping it alive and going. Now his brother Peter's in on the act, singing (very nicely) songs he makes up from the found notes. Check here: Found Magazine Then keep your eyes open! We also went Sunday to hear Erika Janek who has edited a collection called "Odd Wisconsin", which contains very entertaining tidbits. Someone in the audience said "We've just moved here from Tennessee - is it just me, or is there more peculiar stuff here in Wisconsin than anywhere else?"

Hmmmmmmm?!?!?!?

Edited: do NOT biggify the first and third pictures; I'm just learning to size them and forgot those two!