Pumpkin Pleasure

First, I want to say Thank You for the encouragement, the well wishes for my wrist (it's so much better now) and the general merriment that many of you bring to this blog.  It makes me happy and content knowing you're all out there somewhere in your own cozy corners, keeping those home fires burning.   

Such glorious weather here again.  The rain dried up and the sun peeked out and it turned into another perfect autumn day.  With night-time temperatures dropping, the trees are changing colors quickly now.  I'm hoping, (and keeping my fingers crossed) for a nice long fall season.  It just never seems to last long enough, does it?  After such a busy week I stayed home most of the day and got caught up on a little housework; then managed to finish the wool pumpkins I'd started.  I'm really happy with how these turned out too and I think a huge part of it is due to the wonderful earthy colors.  ALL credit for that goes to this talented lady who hand-dyed this very wool using natural materials from her kitchen and yard.  Things like onion skins, marigold flowers, cherry bark, silver birch leaves and goldenrod...just to name a few.  In fact, Simmy spent most of the summer experimenting with various combinations and techniques and achieved some really amazing results.   If you want to try this yourself, she also put together a wonderful and quite comprehensive tutorial here.  Anyway, I can't even tell you how tickled I was, when several months ago I received some of these wool pieces from Simmy all the way from the UK.  I've had my eye on them ever since, just waiting for the right project to come along.  I only hope these pumpkin gourds are worthy. 

Due to time constraints and random circumstances, I still haven't made it down to visit the Heart of the Home shop, but I'm planning on it one of these days.  In the meantime, I just noticed SB updated her website with some recent news and even has a little online shopping section now that includes this darling crochet chicken pincushion.  Just how crazy cute is this!

Don't miss the Autumn Recipes here.

And don't we all need a pair of these too?