Halloween 2026

Guess what, y'all!  I finally made that there squash pie!  

It turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.  

I don't know what it is, if my ovens are consistently off temperature wise or what, but it always takes so much longer to bake pies than the recipes say.  I always have to add at least 15 minutes to the cooking time for them to get done in the middle.  Even the pumpkin pies I make do this, despite me following the recipe exactly.  

No matter.  It's done, and that was the last thing on my list of stuff I wanted to cook.  Now I just need to finish eating up all of those canned goods and I'll be good to go.  I opened one of the cans of pulled pork for lunch, and I must say I didn't really like the BBQ sauce they had in there.  Oh well, I'll probably still get another can or two, just in case there is a power outage or something and it's not long enough to drag out that generator and hook it up.  

Other than that, I haven't really done much today.  After watching It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, I spent a little time working on cleaning up this mess a bit.

I know you can't really tell, but I am slowly making progress.  I suppose I could have done more, but I'm already feeling all the work I did yesterday, so I figured I probably ought not to overdo it.  Still, I got a little bit added to my firewood pile, 

and a bit more raked into what will eventually be a compost pile.  The in-between stuff -- you know that's too small to be firewood, but to big to be compost -- is going to get put into the brush pile I started in the woods a few years ago. 

It will provide shelter for small animals and beneficial insects over the winter, and will eventually break down to enrich the forest floor.  And I'm using that term forest very loosely, since it's just a thin line of trees back there now.  

Besides, if I need it for anything -- like starting a fire or filling a raised bed -- I can always go back there and get some.  

In knitting news, the orange hat is coming along nicely.   

Yarn:  Mainstays

Colorway:  Orange V

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8

Mainstays has some decent yarn, and this orange is so much brighter than any of the Red Heart or Caron they had in stock.  I figured my cousin would like it better.  He said he starts his treatment in December, so I want to have both hats finished and mailed by then.  That should be very doable.  

That's pretty much all I have for today, so I'll just leave you with my traditional Halloween prayer:

And say good night and Happy Halloween!