Pumpkins!!!

It’s Halloween! The perfect time to share my pumpkin harvest! In April and May I planted most of my sizable collection of saved pumpkin seeds. Here is some of my harvest:

The pumpkins I collected the seed from were so varied in color, shape, and size. And there were so many varieties, I planted seeds collected from 20 different types of pumpkins/gourds which is why I’m surprised they mostly look the same. Plus the giant pumpkins didn’t grow at all, which was a big disappointment. I think the rest of my pumpkin seeds will go to the compost bin and I can order a few new varieties next year. I’ve had my eye on some black pumpkins for a few years so maybe it’s time to actually purchase those seeds. What pumpkin varieties are your favorite?

Have Not Been Knitting

My deadline to finish knitting the balaclava has passed and my thoughts of using part of the 6 hour train ride to Lapland to finish knitting the balaclava has also passed. The balaclava is so close to being finished, but it is continuing to sit untouched. This is my progress, I just need to finish binding off the face opening and sewing the two top slits closed. It shouldn't take me very long so I'll be finishing it this weekend since it is supposed to be very rainy and I like spending gloomy days indoors.

Painted Plant

I wanted to add a plant to my bedside table, but my room is mostly dark and I have two kitties that like to chew on leaves so I decided the plant needed to be fake. After lots of thinking I finally decided not to DIY some faux plant, but to buy one and then paint the leaves because fake plants never look real so why not embrace the fakeness with some very unnatural leaf colors. The leaves are not actually painted, I used oil pastels since I have them easily accessible, which was a pretty good choice because I'll be able to easily wipe off the color and change it when I'm ready.

More Finland Photos

These are some of the non-aurora photos from my trip to Finland. Mostly scenery, but also the two lead dogs that pulled a cart that I rode and a reindeer that I walked who liked to stop for snacks. Plus the snow from the day before we left!

The Aurora

I spent the last two weeks in Finland and was lucky there were clear skies a few of the nights while in the Arctic Circle that I could see the Aurora. I could also see many more stars than I normally do since there was very little light pollution! Here are a few of my photos of the northern lights. I took many more, but most were quite blurry because of the long exposure time and I didn’t use a tripod.