Finished the blue cowl, and after a trip to Cottage Yarns yesterday for some of Malabrigo’s Glazed Carrot merino, started one of several pumpkin hats to come.

(I think I’ll add a sideways 1×1 two-colored brim at the bottom afterwards–this one’s coming out big brother sized, not little sister sized.)

Looking for jack o’ lantern motifs tonight, I stumbled across something I’d never heard of. Richard, looking over my shoulders, figured out on the spot how to write a program to have your yarn machine-dyed to do this, to which I said, But she actually thought it up–and she actually makes this: self-striping sock yarn that knits up into jack o’lanterns. (Ravelry link.) And sushi. And snowmen, complete with scarf. The ones I like most appear to be sold out for now, but AbiGrasso (link to her own site) does fabulous work and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Meantime, back to the Halloween motif. With four to do I can learn as I go. For the first I’m knitting it with wide ribs and in plain orange: I can make face pieces separately, run the ends through to the inside, tie loosely behind the scenes and make it so they can undo the ties and pull the facial features off come November first to be all ready for Thanksgiving. So they can use them for more than a month. (The thought hits) –actually– I could make a bunch of pieces and let them have fun creating faces and then run the ends through for them or stitch them on so that they can be part of creating their own hats. Hey. I like that!

(New photo added at 10:15 pm.)