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 Daniel decided he wanted to be chamo man for Halloween. He doesn’t really do trick-or-treating any more but they do dress up at school. We spent much of Friday afternoon searching these stores for matching chamo shirt and pants and after many false starts finally found some desert chamo items that would do. A chamo belt was also acquired as well as a dog tags from the costume store. We had to sort of wing it on the face paint but managed to get gold, grey and brown at the costume store as well. He doctored the dog tags in art metals class so that they now look quite realistic. He asked me to get him up early this morning and apply paint. I’m not sure I like the final effect but he seemed happy enough with it.
The local market has quite a lot of local produce this month and yesterday the beets were calling my name. I picked some up while I shopped for dinner and made myself a quick lunch. I simmered the beet roots in salted water for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile I sauted a bit of sliced garlic with the beet greens, a handful of dried cranberries and some pine nuts. When the roots were tender I peeled and chopped those and added them to the pan as well. It made for a quick and light lunch. Yum!
 Last but not least, I’ve been working on a Koigu version of the Orange Twist sock to verify my scribble-scratch notes. The twist is even more pronounced and the heel is even nicer with the shorter stretches of color you get in Koigu KPPPM.
 With a little daylight after Saturday’s deluge and some help from Jason on the photography, I managed to get a picture of me with the scarf on. It matches my new boots and my favorite light sweater perfectly. My winter coat is pretty similar to the color of the chair I’m sitting on so it goes nicely with that as well. Makes me wonder if Ingrid went back in the archives and found the photo of the boots so well does the scarf match. Pretty swift, eh? It was the perfect thing yesterday morning at knitting when it was a little cool but not cool enough to wear a jacket. We passed it around where it was much admired and all agree the fringe and beading are just right.
  There was also some baking going on. Jason was going on about cupcakes but I have planned to do in a few weeks so I wanted something different. Then I got an e-mail from Fine Cooking with a recipe for pecan squares and that seemed just the thing.
The forecast for yesterday was very blustery wet weather so I thought I’d do a little baking for breakfast to get everyone off to a toasty warm start for the day. This spice cake is very lightly sweet so if you’re after something sweeter then you might want to add some frosting.
Vermont Spice Cake
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoon molasses
1 cup walnut pieces
Preheat the oven to 400 F. Butter a 9-inch round baking pan with removable bottom.
In a small bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In the bowl of a mixer, beat the butter with the molasses 2 or 3 minutes or until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well incorporated. In a small bowl, mix together remaining liquid ingredients and add to the butter mixture alternatley with the dry ingredients beating well after each addition. Transfer mixture to the baking pan and top with walnuts. Bake 35 minutes at 400 F. Cool ten minutes on a wire rack in the pan before serving.
 We had quite an amazing sky Wednesday just before dusk and some noise outside caused me to peek through the window and see it. I grabbed my camera and managed a snap or two before the light changed.
I spent yesterday afternoon preparing a package for mailing. Not feeling there was quite enough to included I grabbed Kokoro no Te and decided on this little persimmon pincushion to add.
 We also had our first meal using our newly acquired pork. This is sausage and potatoes, something we make fairly often. Brown the sausage with some onions on the stovetop. Add chopped potatoes, cover, and bake at 400 F for about 30 minutes. Add to the pan whatever veggies you’d like, in this case I added mushrooms, green and yellow bell peppers, and local carrots. Bake a further 15 or 20 minutes or until potatoes are soft. Sometimes I add leftover wine to the pan just before the potatoes and sometimes I add a bit of balsamic vinegar or chicken broth. You may also need salt if your sausage is not heavily spiced.
 Here’s the beginning of the sleeve for Arrows. I’d completely forgotten about doing two round things on circs so I could indeed do two at once but I think that’s a bit too challenging for me on my very first Fair Isle sweater so I’ll be content to do one. I’ve also not got more than one ball of anything and I know I don’t want to knit from both ends of the ball as my knitting gets really twisty and that would make me crazy. I’ll keep it in mind for future sweaters where it might work though, glad you all mentioned it! The sleeves will progress fairly slowly as I do really need to pay attention when I’m knitting them to be sure I do my increases every 3rd row. Once I get past that point it’ll be mindless again. This first sleeve now is about 1/3 of the way through the increase section and then it’ll be straight knitting from there.
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        ![Barefoot in the Park: A Comedy [UNABRIDGED]](
http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1267431950s/2999999.jpg
"Barefoot in the Park: A Comedy [UNABRIDGED]") 
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Daniel decided he wanted to be chamo man for Halloween. He doesn’t really do trick-or-treating any more but they do dress up at school. We spent much of Friday afternoon searching these stores for matching chamo shirt and pants and after many false starts finally found some desert chamo items that would do. A chamo belt was also acquired as well as a dog tags from the costume store. We had to sort of wing it on the face paint but managed to get gold, grey and brown at the costume store as well. He doctored the dog tags in art metals class so that they now look quite realistic. He asked me to get him up early this morning and apply paint. I’m not sure I like the final effect but he seemed happy enough with it. 
Last but not least, I’ve been working on a Koigu version of the Orange Twist sock to verify my scribble-scratch notes. The twist is even more pronounced and the heel is even nicer with the shorter stretches of color you get in Koigu KPPPM. 
