We had a great weekend with College Guy and his friend Illinois Guy. As you might imagine, he was “oh so happy” to pose for this picture “for the blog”. But I said, “I have to take a photo – otherwise they won’t believe you actually came home!” Ok, that’s not true. I just like getting at least one photo of him when he’s home. (Well it IS true that I told him I needed photo-evidence for the blog. But mostly, I just wanted a picture for me.) He grew up with a scrapbooking mom – he’s pretty tired of photos, I think. (But boy does he have great albums of his life. Someday he’ll appreciate that, right? Or maybe someday his future wife will appreciate it.)
I did a little shopping today. Never mind that I have waaaay too many emails in my in-box to answer. I paid bills AND scheduled a dentist appointment today, and if you know anything about me, you know that those are two of my least favorite things to do. Susan (The Awesome Assistant) told me I deserved to go shopping. And who am I to argue? So slowly, I’m starting to turn the house over to fall. 
Fall is my absolute favorite season of all and I love doing up the house with all things autumn. It would be smart for me to decorate with what I have first, and then see if there are any holes that need filling. But what fun is that? So today I bought this great gourd, and candle. Tonight I’ll get the rest of the stuff out that I already have (after dealing with all of my emails – I promise). Maybe later in the week I’ll go shopping again to fill in the holes. Don’t tell WH. (Who, by the way, really really appreciated all of your birthday wishes last week! And who, by the way, really really hated that I put a picture of him on the blog in an apron. I got in trouble over that one.) š
Just so you don’t think it was all about fall today, I also got this beautiful pottery mug in the mail today from my new favorite pottery place. The pie plate was a gift from a friend, and I immediately hopped right over to the website to see if he had any mugs. (Actually, my friend was going to buy me mugs, but knew of my “mug problem“. Obviously that didn’t stop me. Obviously that is why I have a mug problem.) John does amazing work and is featured in several museums. I’m happy to have these two pieces from him.
I also found this fun bag today. (Did I mention that I have a bag problem, too? I’m addicted to great bags. sigh. Surely there are some of you out there who share this affliction??) I love the way this gal tied on a bunch of fun ribbons. I tried to get her to make them for us at Loopy, but she is having a hard time keeping enough in stock at the shop where she works. She kept my card, so maybe in the future.
I’m thinking we won’t have an official Sneak Up this week. Only because Susan felt the need to take off to San Diego for the rest of the week. (She needs a vacation from the yarn. Go figure.) And while the other Loopy Elves and I could probably handle a Sneak Up without her, it just wouldn’t be as much fun! So we’ll take a little breather and be back next week with more fun stuff. (“What stuff?”, you ask? Well, we have Yarn Pirate, Yarntini, more Fiesta, more from Schafer, and the new Classic Elite Alpaca Sox yarn, for a start. Plus more of Wendy’s Patterns. And oh BOY, wait until you see our two newest indie dyers! They won’t be here next week – but they’ll be here in October.) Also, we are heading out of town on Friday morning to visit College Guy for Parent’s Weekend at his college. (I know – I’m spoiled, aren’t I?) So orders placed Thursday night and into the weekend, will start shipping on Monday morning.
And now, the September Loopy Loot contest. Since Fall is my favorite season, I’d love to know something that you like about the Fall. Do you have certain family traditions for the season? Special recipes that you make? Decorations that you love? A favorite Fall memory from your childhood? What makes the Fall special for you and your familiy? Leave your answer in the blog comments and we’ll randomly pick one winner. This month, the winner will receive two skeins of highly coveted yarn – a skein of Wollmeise in Raku-Regenbogen (I kept one of these for myself!) PLUS a skein of the beautiful Pumpkin Spice from Yarntini. Woohoo!
Sheri whatbetterwaytocelebrateFallthanwithnewyarnfortheseason?
ice cream! š no, seriously. the local ice cream shop around my place makes everything fresh and by hand and once Fall arrives, they bring out their specials like apple pie ice cream and pumpkin pie ice cream. SO yummy!
The last few years, having kids in high school, fall means high school football. I love to go and watch all of the kids interact (and some of the game, too.) We watch the daughter play her bass drum in the marching band, and when the moon comes up across the field on a clear night, it’s just beautiful.
When I was (very) young, I would walk home from school with my brother. Once the leaves fell, we would take a different route home — the one by the slightly busier street, which had leaf collection. Most of my childhood memories of fall involve walking home along that road, tromping through the crisp (or soggy) piles of leaves, many of which were nearly as tall as I was. I would invariably come home with my shoes full of leaves and dirt and twigs, which my wonderful mother dealt with with minimal complaint — but at least it was only store-bought socks which got abused so bady!
I love the colors of fall, all that beautiful orange, rust, and cinnamon colors. I always burn the pumpkin spice candle and get those wonderful smells in the air and no calories with candles. š
I have a collection of acorns and squirrels and keep them out all year long because I like to look at them through all seasons.
Growing up in Texas we didn’t have the changing of the leaves or crisp air but somehow we always knew when football started it was fall and maybe some cool air would soon follow.
Happy Fall Everyone
Fall for me seems to be a time of change. School starts, the weather gets crisp, the leaves change, our wardrobes change. . . we buy and sell houses š The last time we bought a house it was fall, and we’re getting ready to do it again. Which means I’m sitting on my fingers trying so hard not to buy yarn (so I don’t have to move it)!
Fall has a special meaning for us. We live in southern California and fall means that we can open the windows, turn off the fans/air conditioning, and step outside without frying our feet. Now, if I only had some socks.:-)
Fall activities go back to early childhood. We raked 1 1/2 acres of leaves, oaks and maples. Then we would pile them high and jump into them for days or until the first rain after the gathering. We lived in the country and burned them slowly. I remember the smell even today. Fall is my absolutely most favorite time of year.
Pumpkin pie baby!!! I buy them (yes, I can and do eat multiple pies) at Costco. I can’t make them any better and I just love them.
I love the crisp air in the morning, wearing a jacket, and then having it be warm in the afternoon. My wedding was in September, the 18th, and we had an outdoor wedding in Highland, IL. We held it at the Laetzer House, and they have a craft fair there the second weekend in September each year, so that is a great way to celebrate and bring back memories. (Sorry, you just missed it this year! You’ll have to wait until next year to check it out!)
Lisa Kay Wilson
I love the nip of cold in the morning and evening. ..the rush to get the garden chores done before the rains start, clean the gutters and fertilize the lawn. Put away the summery decorations and drag out the Fall and Halloween boxes.And we so look forward to driving to the nearby farm to get fresh ears of corn. We usually travel over the mountains to Eastern Washington to get fresh apples and pears – and on the way stop at Leavenworth for OKtoberfest.
Fall for me is the sound of dry leaves blowing down the street. Days of cold before I break down and fire up the heater for the year. (Every year I say “not until October”. That will be the day. ) Making hot chocolate for the kids for breakfast. Delighting that when the school bus drives by in the morning we are all in our jammies, happy as can be.
Fall is my favorite time of the year too! It could be because my birthday is in October, or, could be because of the nice crisp fall weather, the leaves changing colors, the smell of apples, and pumpkin pie. My favorite holiday is Halloween!
My favorite childhood memory of fall is raking the leaves into a pile at the bottom of a hill, then rolling down the hill into the leaves-what great fun!
Love Fall – cooler temps, the landscape colors, the smell. One of my favorite things about fall is Stayman Winesap apples. We can only get them for a few weeks and have to make my favorite dessert, apple crisp, with them at least once. And real apple cider, which is getting harder to find all the time due to food safety laws and regulations. One of my favorite family traditions is carving pumpkins with my boys. Not a regular jack o ‘lantern, but the detailed halloween scenes (we use bought patterns) that allow hours of sitting together and chatting.
My favorite thing about fall is leaf peeping… some of my favorite memories of growing up is when the family would pile in the car and drive north… and just take pictures of the trees. We’d stop periodically for food… and to stretch our legs… but it was just so beautiful. I love living here in Maine so I don’t have to really travel to see such amazing colors!
My favorite thing about fall is the trips my family used to take in late September (right about now in other words) to the northern edge of Minnesota to see the fall colors by the shores of Lake Superior. The drive up is amazing as you watch the trees become steadily more colorful over the course of a 5+ hour drive; by the time you reach Duluth or Grand Marais it’s like an explosion of color. We would spend a few days up there, my Dad would skip rocks for my sisters and I and try to teach us how, we would visit a ski resort and ride gondolas up the side of the “mountain” (most people would say it was a really big hill) with the colors spread out below us. We had to stop going when I was far enough in school that my parents couldn’t pull me out for a week, but I can’t wait until I come out of the other end of the school system, and maybe we can go again.
My favorite thing about fall is baking again! I try not to bake all summer since it gets so hot, but the first day our air conditioner gets turned off, I am a baking machine! My favorite are my own recipe for chocolate chip cookies, and Amish Friendship Bread! I also like to get back into knitting more in the fall – right now, I’m trying to figure out what sweater I want to knit this season!
The following is a blog I posted two weeks ago about fall. It is kind of a long blog, and you have so many comments posted here, so if you would like to skip ahead to the real meat of the subject, see paragraph # 6. Also, at the botttom, I am going to include my favorite pumpkin recipie. Happy Reading!
~Marlena
I was sipping my perfect Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte while on my way home this evening when a collection of thoughts were unleashed in my mind. A combination of things began my passionate thought process and made me want to write tonight. I haven’t written for a while, but my thoughts have been such a constant, forceful hemorrhage swelling to the point that I can’t sleep at night.
It was idiotic of me to go to the mall over Labor Day weekend. Bath and Body Works was having an outrageous sale and I bought some gifts for my husband that he won’t see for another 7 months due to his current residence in the swirling sandy land. Harmony and I pushed through the crowds and waited patiently in long lines and managed to accumulate a couple of heavy bags to take home.
Before we even reached the glass doors of the mall, I saw the rain pouring down outside. It never fails to rain when I am leaving the mall in this town. Being Labor Day and all, I had parked the car over the river and through the woods away. Harmony and I had a nice sloshing wet journey ahead of us. It’s a good thing I come from Seattle and I love the rain like I do. It just doesn’t get to me like it does to some other people. I even think it is blasphemy to use an umbrella. It’s against my religion.
So Harmony and I make our way through the rain towards the car. It didn’t take long before my pants were soaked up to my knees and the rest of me resembled a drowned rat. Still, I didn’t mind and we were in no hurry. But we should have been… The bag that held my many Bath and Body Works bottles became soggy and every bottle fell into the middle of the parking lot and rolled around, spreading like a burst bag of marbles. I could have felt embarrassed as Harmony and I scrambled to pick up our yummy, smelly goods from the wading pool parking lot while several hoopties full of disgruntled black people glared at us. Instead, I felt good. Logic found me and told me that I should laugh at myself, so I did all the way to the car as the other larger paper bag was now weighed down and about to tear open.
We were in the car and not a spot on us was dry and the feeling of the soaking wet clothes against my skin reminded me of so many times I had been soaked like this back home in Seattle. I used to have to walk to school in the rain and my clothes would stay wet all day long while I sat in school. All these memories made me crave Starbucks like a junkie craves cocaine. Lucky for us, there was a drive-through Starbucks on the way home.
When we pulled up, there was a sign announcing the seasonal special Pumpkin Spice Latte. I knew what I was going to get. And when I got it in my hands, the first thing I did was smell it. They topped it off with a few shakes of Nutmeg that greeted my nose and again, I was lost in memories and a freeway of ideas and thoughts. It tasted perfect, and just then I knew that hypothetically, if I knew I was going to gain 300lbs if I drank another latte, I would have to take the latte anyway.
I LOVE Fall with a passion that compares to sexual bliss. If I had to use a season to describe myself, I would BE Fall. (If that makes no sense to anyone but myself, I am okay with that.) The latte was the catalyst for my Fall tangent. I started to think about the cold nights of my life that I have spent wrapped up in comfy sweaters and thick socks, nuzzling into my husband and a warm beverage to save my bony hands from freezing. I remember taking walks outside in this season all bundled up, with the wind blowing through my hair and in the trees. When it rushes through the trees, it makes the most amazing sound and causes the leaves to fall as if they were giant snow flakes. Just writing about it makes me want to be there now.
My parents used to take me out to the country in the Fall and we would cut our pumpkins off the vine in a pumpkin patch. I like the green veiny and oddly shaped ones as apposed to the annoyingly symmetrical round buttery orange ones. But that was a long time ago. Before I moved here, I made a point to take my daughter to the same pumpkin patch I used to go to as a child. I take even more pleasure in going now, pulling my daughter in a red waggon through the pumpkin patch and dwarfing her with my huge hideous pumpkin selections. I always pick a small one to bake and eat. It’s my own tradition.
I LOVE FALL. I love the colors, the smells, the food, the holidays within the season. Don’t think I would forget to mention the clothes! I love the coats and scarves and boots that come out just before the season, during the waning days of summer. I love the Fall with all of my soul. Which brings me to a possible direction change in life that I have been thinking about.
My dear husband called me the other day from Afghanistan. He mentioned his intent to re-enlist with the military to become a recruiter. They are offering him a bonus and this career choice would make it less likely that he will get deployed again for at least a couple years. It was a difficult idea for me to accept for the first five minutes. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from those lying sack of shit recruiters that signed him up when he went back in. In general, I lament those people that sell their souls to get people to join the military and will do just about anything necessary to get their precious commission. I don’t want my husband to be one of those guys. But the figure he gave me for the bonus they are offering in combination with the possibility of getting the **** out of this horrible military town I currently reside in makes my mouth water and the wheels in my head spin.
There is never a guarantee when you deal with the military. Until my husband actually signs the paperwork, I can’t get to excited. But if it works out the way I hope, we will be able to request a few places we might want to relocate to. There is no guarantee for that, either. But……. The state of Maine is breathtaking in the Fall!
I am currently obsessed with the idea of moving to Maine. It would be next year before any of this would be possible. And I’m sure that my husband has his share of places he wants to go too. But even the smallest possibility makes my heart skip. I was looking at pictures of places in Maine last night online and almost cried because of how beautiful it is there. And that is where I have had another revelation…
I no longer want to go back to Washington. I love it there. I have family and friends there, it’s beautiful there, I know my way around and the culture and class are unbeatable. There is never a shortage of things to do… But I never thought I would feel this way. For the longest time, I have held on to the Northwest, thinking my heart was there. But I am realizing now how possible it is to fall in love with a new place. I thought I wanted to settle down and retire back at home in Washington. I think I have been limiting myself. I also think that all this time away from both home and from my husband has liberated me slightly. It has made me less afraid of moving somewhere new. I know I will survive no matter what. Especially after living here!
All the thoughts about moving have made me think of where I want to go and not just physically, but with life in general. I have really felt like this last year has been really stagnant. I haven’t had much adventure or excitement. There have been a lot of difficult things to deal with, the hardest being the absence of my husband. He has always balanced me out and brought stability to my life. So I have been left with a lot to desire and have been day-dreaming lately about the life I want.
Most importantly, I want my husband in my life. I want to be more in touch with nature. I want to have the wilderness as my playground, be it the mountains, forests or sea. (In Main there is all of those things) I want to live comfortably. I do not want an enormous house or the most expensive vehicle and all of the finest things. I want to have the time for hiking, fishing, hunting, kayaking, rock climbing, snowboarding and a rewarding career. I don’t want my career to be about making obscene amounts of money. I want it to be rewarding on a personal level. I want a dog, a jeep and some property in the woods. I want the wind back in my hair and the chill back in my bones.
I feel like I have been asleep for the last 8 months. Just waiting for my life to change, waiting to feel passionate about something, anything again. It won’t happen overnight, but there is a clarity that I am beginning to have. I am really starting to get a sense of who I am and the kind of person I want to be. I have more to write on this subject, as my thoughts are like a free flowing stream lately…
MARLENA’S FAVORITE PUMPKIN RECIPIE
Stuffed Baby Pumkin (for dinner or desert)
Ingredients:
One small “pie pumpkin”
desert version:
Frozen Berries of choice
Brown Sugar
Honey
Butter
Cinnamon
Whipped Cream
Or:
Wild rice
flavored cous cous
nuts
butter
Instructions:
Carve around the stem and scrape out the insides of the pumpkin as if you were going to make a jackolantern.
(save the seeds for baking)
Decide weather you want to stuff the pumkin with fruit and turn it into desert, or with rice or cous cous and serve it for dinner.
put a couple teaspons of water inside.
wrap with aluminum foil and bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour, or until almost cooked. (you should be able to stick a fork through the pumkin and have it go through easily)
Take the pumpkin out of the oven and stuff with desired filling, replace the stem on top and wrap with foil again.
Bake at 375 degrees for 1/2 an hour or more until the pumkin is fully cooked. (nice and soft)
Remove from oven and cut it like a pie in fourths or eights. Serve the desert version with whipped cream on top
Hi Sheri, This is so far down in the comments but still wanted to share. My favourite seasons are spring (Easter) and Christmas. But I married a Halloweenie! We love the Autumn season and do a little natural decorating (gourds, pumpkin candles, etc). But the All Hallows week, my Hubby goes wild! Graveyards, moats, bubbling cauldrons appear. If it’s scary, squishy or weird – it’s probably on our lawn. I think the kids thought their Dad was Jack Skellington for a while there :). We have a fondness for Pillsbury Halloween sugar cookies (ugh!) and use my Great Gran’s pumpkin pie recipe alot over the season. My own specialty is pumpkin cheesecake with praline topping – getting hungry just thinking about it!
Fall means Indian Summer (though I”m sure that’s not politically correct now), apple picking, apple pies, watching the leaves blow on the wind, snuggling in the bed at night after long hot summers of throwing blankets OFF the bed, and comfort food. Soup, chili, roasts, anything that needs to cook for a long time, all those rich and savory flavors. YUM!!
I absolutely love the spicy scents associated with autumn – mulled cider, pumpkin pie. I also love having “soup” and “tea” weather again.
One childhood memory that has really stuck with me is going out to gather leaves and ironing them between sheets of waxed paper. I can’t wait to do that and leaf rubbings with my daughter this year. This will also be the first year that she will really care about her pumpkin.
Each year, my parents would load us up in the car and take us out of the city to go apple-picking. As we got a little older, we both hit a phase where being with your parents just wasn’t “cool”, so we would often ask to bring a friend along. One particular fall, my younger brother brought a friend along (of course the most rambunctious boy on the street – those are the fun kind, right?) to keep him entertained. The boys went off searching for that perfect tree and after a while, we noticed they had been missing for nearly an hour. Our bushel basket was full, so we headed back toward the entrance, only to find my brother and his friend sitting on the fence next to the owner, looking awfully smug. It turns out the boys had started an apple-eating contest and were causing quite a scene! That was the last time the “rambunctious” boy was allowed to come apple-picking!
Fall means…. FOOTBALL!! , no more humidity, crisp air, beautiful colors, no more ants :), fires in the fireplace, wearing hand-knit socks and scarves, cuddling with hubby and son, son’s first birthday (10/28). Fall invigorates me… Even though everything is dying and going into hibernation… I feel most alive in the fall. it is my favorite season without a doubt!
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend~
Fall, how I love it. Married to an Italian, late September meant we headed for a few weeks to his birthplace, the isle of Capri, when all the obnoxious tourists were gone for the season, the heat was over, there were no cars, and that special wind began to stir. Mists over the islands, one could almost hear the Sirens singing. The heartier fall foods started to appear, the fruits of the summer were being preserved, wine was being pressed and we were offered tastes of the new wine from every private maker. Everyone on the island knew us and stopped us to talk at each curve in the path. How is your mother? father? uncle? children? Have you tasted the Pepperone CampoLazzaro at the Arco Naturale? Come in and let me fix you a quick pasta a la Putenesca? Sitting on a quiet terrace drinking that last espresso under the stars. Life as it had been for thousands of years, a slower time sequence. It was very close to heaven.
We (my husband, my 2 boys, and myself) go apple picking every fall. We make a day out of it, and eat more apples than we can stand while we’re picking. (We usually come home with a belly ache from eating so many apples.) The following day, I make apple crisp and serve it up with vanilla ice cream. It always makes for great scrap booking pictures every year š
Sheri, I’m a scrapbooker too!!!!!!! ( Aside from being a yarn collector, I’m also a collector of scrapbook supplies. :o))
Okay, my favorite fall thing is the colors I see in the changing leaves — I find them so inspiring. I just love seeing the colors of fall. And next to the colors, I love Pumpkins and Halloween. I pretty much like anything with pumpkin in it!
BTW, I had a Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks the other day and thought of you!
Fall is my favorite season! I love everything about it. All the pumpkin-scented (and flavored!) items that are available this time of year, and visiting the pumpkin patch, and getting to pull out all the fun fall decorations. There is just nothing bad about fall!
Well Fall brought good and bad for me… It was beautiful to see all of the leaves change, but then they would fall and guess who got to rake them all up š Fall weather did bring relief from the heat and I remember that mom seemed to bake more. The weekend were filled with popovers, special peach coffee cake, pancakes and once Thanksgiving came around mom made the best pumpkin and apple pies!! Yummm…
Pumpkin, yum… pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and now pumpkin lattes =).
Though, to be honest, I am much more of a warm weather type person (I wear sandals for as long as I possibly can through the fall)… too bad I don’t live in Austin anymore
Fall is hands down my favorite season. The only tradition we have is the annual apple picking day. It is always very special to me.
Faith
An old Celtic belief in Scotland is that the new year starts on midnight of Samhuin, Halloween for us. This date celebrates the end of the old year and the coming of the new and the hopes that the sun will return again in six months. For them, autumn is a fresh start, and so it is for me as well. I’m a student still, so one part of autumn that is still my favourite is the start of a new school year. I anticipate with excitement my new classes, smelling new textbooks, and opening up a crisp new notebook and filling the pages full of notes and equations. It also means the return of friends and new students to school and the beginning of sleepless nights spent studying and hanging out in the kitchens of the dorm (usually filled with the scent of freshly baked cookies) and preparing recitation notes for teaching. Fall term is always a special one because the university is filled with the bouyant energy and excitement of a new crop of freshmen who have not yet fallen prey to the hours of physics and math and chemistry sets.
I go to school in LA but am from Connecticut originally, so autumn now means that the smog clears from the sky and and I can again see the mountains from my campus. It also means that the temperature dips below 80 degrees, which in my opinion, is a fine reason to start wearing my favorite sweaters and corduorys and socks. The return of autumn is also usually accompanied by a wave of homesickness for fall colours and pumpkin patches and the actual smell that accompanies autumn back home. It is the season that always makes me feel most in tune with nature, which is something I really enjoy while it lasts.
I miss the autumn colors of New England.
I enjoy watching my husband go back to school every year to teach college students, some of whom I get to meet. Despite being fall, it always seems to be a fresh start for us.
I hope I’m not too late to have a chance to win!
My family(when I was a kid) always went apple picking, I jsut loved it, being able to eat them as you pick and the clean crisp air…mmm
This year I did it with my family, my kids love it too!
I love fall and miss it dearly living in Texas. I lived in Connecticut as a child and remeber fall from there. We had Macintosh apples, the leaves changing colors, dad cussing in the backyard because we kept jumping in the piles he just made, mom’s apple pie.
I always try to get the fall spirit in the house now, but because it’s usually 90+ F, it just doesn’t feel like fall. And I do silly things like put away my shorts and start wearing jeans despite the heat. It’s September, by gosh, and it’s supposed to be a little chilly!! I start getting ready for Halloween, too, dragging out the decorations and putting them up. And I start knitting the kids’ annual sweaters. They don’t get to wear them much, except at the in-laws, but that’s my fall traditions.
My father taught at a small liberal arts college and one of my favorite fall memories is going to football games with dad. I would run around with my friends, sit with my dad, watch the cheerleaders stunts in awe, and just generally have a good time. I realize now that it was a ploy to get my mom some time alone… but I loved it!
I love watching the leaves change! I remember raking up tons of leaves with my dad when I was a kid; we would load up the back of his pick up, and it was my job to trample on the leaves and pack them down so we could fit more in. Even with all of that, though, we had to take at least one truck full a week to the community compost pile for most of fall.
I love the crisp, cool air that turns my nose pink and takes my breath away.
I love the crackle and smell of a real fire in the fireplace (well, as real as you can get with a Duralog, anyway!).
I love snuggling on the couch under one of many throw blankets with a good book or my hubby (not necessarily in that order. Most of the time.).
I love the warm, tingly feeling of holiday anticipation, the kind only Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s can bring.
And I love wearing all the fun, fabulous, and even some not-so fabulous things I’ve made since learning how to knit last year! š
Fall means football and marching band it also means that it is getting time to turn indoors and spend more time with family and friends. It also means that the rush of summer is over and you can have more time to knit the things that you have put off because it was too hot and sticky. I just love to gather all of my knitting supplies and snuggle up in the couch and knit something warm. My mom loves fall because that means more warm socks to get her though the winter, and i enjoy every bit of it. I also love fall because of all the colors we get to see in nature and I just want to turn it all into beautiful yarn to knit and capture the moment for all year long.
Fall has always been my favorite season…all of my favorite colors are fall leaves – green, orange, brown. I love the crazy variety of fresh apples that are available in the fall. Mostly I think I love the back-to-school shopping season – new notebooks and pens, new sweaters and shoes, new “school” bags…and I don’t even go to school anymore (and I don’t have children who do, either).
Since I’m from San Francisco, some weeks in early fall is when it gets kinda warm! Warm for the SF Bay Area that is. (In July I was still wearing flannel PJ’s!) I enjoy my last chances at wearing shorts then I welcome in the sweater weather.
I grew up in South Florida so there was virtually no change of seasons. But 14 years ago I moved to North Carolina and found the smells of fall. That’s my favorite thing. I love the smell of the fresh crisp air in the mornings , the fireplaces, stews and soups cooking. I even love the smell of leaves burning – although I could do without the raking part. Another great things is being able to open all the windows in the house in the afternoon and let in all that fresh air. Fall hasn’t quite arrived here yet but just writing this has got me dreaming about it.
My favorite fall tradition is Mountain Day. I taught for a year at a small college in western Massachusetts where the college president would wake up one fine fall morning and cancel classes. Literally. No classes. You were supposed to go hiking or horseback riding (it was an expensive college) or to one of the local orchards or a nice patch of lawn somewhere, just to take in the loveliness of the season. I went hiking. It was such a gift, a whole day, unplanned, when the weather was beautiful and the trees were at peak color, that I’ve tried to observe it annually even though I no longer live in New England or around anything that could be remotely considered a mountain. My personal Mountain Day, though mountain-less, usually involves hot cider, a good hike with a canine buddy or two, butternut squash ravioli garnished with fresh sage, and knitting (of course). I’m a sucker for fall veggies (especially pumpkins and squash) and the marvelous variety of local apples that abound this time of year. Watching the nephews and nieces choose their Halloween costumes is a highlight too. : )
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, so I love that this is the time of year that my mother and I start planning the Thanksgiving menu. Hopefully this fall will also include some good quality apple-picking–who doesn’t love apple-picking?–that will lead to some delicious baking–baked apples, apple pie, apple bread. This Rosh Hashanah I discovered how delicious honey-butter can be with my apple-nut muffins! Yum, autumn!
I love the Fall because of the change of season. The crisp cool feeling and smell of the air. Football season. The fall smells of apple cinnamon or pumpkin spice. My mom would always burn candles with those types of scents, and now I do the same. The nights get darker earlier. That’s fall to me. Plus it’s close to Christmas. My favorite time of the year.
When falls comes back around, I remember being in college. My favorite moment – the trees had turned those beautiful shades of red, orange, and bright yellow. I went to bed thinking, “Wow, I’m at the best college ever!” I wake up the next morning to begin my trek up the mountain to class, and lo – it had snowed (yes, snowed!) overnight. Too wonderful. At times I think I don’t deserve such a great life. š
One of my favorite times of year is the fall. It’s football season and the apples are ripening — and that means homemade pie. And we can’t forget the sounds and smells — especially when running through the just-raked leaves.