Pumpkins!

Here are two pumpkins I’ve made over the last few days. The small one is for PlanetJune’s Fall CAL, and the big one is for Itsy Bitsy Spider’s Pumpkin Patch CAL. 

I almost couldn’t finish them because of wrist pain, but I only had the stems left, and I decided to do them anyway. Carefully, and only one stem a day 🙂 I think the pain (beginning tendonitis) is because I’ve mostly been tatting for a long time now, and the sudden and intense crocheting was suddenly very straining on my wrists…

PlanetJune’s pumpkin is crocheted with a lovely soft acrylic yarn (Idena Twins, now unfortunately discontinued) and crochet hook 4.5mm. The pattern was easy to follow and the pumpkin could easily be made in a few hours 🙂 I had plans for making a couple of the Pocket Amis as well (the witch and ghost), but because of my wrists I think I’ll be satisfied with just the pumpkin. I would really love to make more of those and line them up in the window for Halloween 🙂 We’ll see how it goes… The big pumpkin was crocheted with the same bulky wool yarn I use for my Great Big Bugs, also with a 4.5mm hook:

This pumpkin could easily be mistaken for an ordinary pumpkin, albeit a very pale one… Let me tell you that he is not 🙂

This is Archie. He is a very special little albino pumpkin who needs glasses because his eyesight is a little poor. He feels like all the other pumpkins are looking at him and teasing him for his glasses. Not cool! If anything, glasses make you smarter, and your nose doesn’t look so naked 🙂 Archie is a really sweet little guy who’s going to be an ophthalmologist when he grows up. He has one really good friend, and they stick together like – well – pumpkins! 

Have a good weekend, and don’t make fun of people (or pumpkins) with glasses! 🙂 (In case you are wondering – yes, I was inspired by this post..)

Chestnuts roasting…

Well, not quite… Yesterday I discovered that a lot of chestnuts had fallen from the trees in a small park I pass through on my way to and from class. I took a few home with me to get a better look at them, because I realized that I really don’t know much about chestnuts. I suspected that they were Horse chestnuts, and after poking around on Wikipedia, it looks like I was right. I also discovered that the Horse chestnuts are not really chestnuts at all, but a different species of tree, and the nuts are not edible. I feel a little disappointed about that, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen real chestnuts, the ones you can eat. I would like to try some one day. The Water chestnuts you get at Chinese restaurants aren’t really chestnuts either, so… Anyway, I think I’ll have to try and crochet some, maybe experiment with different kinds and everything 🙂