Halloween (2008)

It came round again, didn't it? The night of Halloween, and the following day of Samhain. So now summer is officially over, and we must all tuck down for winter. Don't know what the weather's been like in your parts, dear reader, but here it's been pretty wintry for all of half term. One evening I went out with some friends and it was sleeting fairly hard. :-(

Following the success of Boris the pumpkin last year, my kids were keen for us to have another bash at the carving thing. I'd heard that the pumpkin harvest wasn't good this year, given the appalling summer we had, but good old Mr Tesco came up trumps, and for the princely sum of £1.49, (a 50% hike in price from last year - I only know that because I looked at last year's post where I'd mentioned it cost 99 pence) a pumpkin was ours. No.1 wanted to 'do the lid' again. After a brief flirtation with the idea of a pink and girly pumpkin (tsk) she decided on black as her colour scheme. No.2 and I concentrated on the face, he was urging me to make it look 'really mean'. Anyway, a morning getting pumpkin-y resulted in this chap:

They named him 'Snape the pumpkin'. Personally, I don't think it looks at all like Alan Rickman, but there you go.

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No.1 was invited to a Halloween Party this year, and went dressed as a very pretty black cat/catwoman type thing (except cat woman didn't wear a pink skirt or pink nail varnish, did she?); this was her mask:

I'm afraid I didn't make it - it came from that well known couture house - Maison Sainsbury. She had a great time, and I'd like to thank the hostess mother - B - for giving the girls such a good party.

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One of the most lovely Halloweeny things was receiving a parcel from Jennie of Falling Down The Rabbit Hole. She had a giveaway to celebrate 100 posts at her blog, for a Halloween Bunny she'd made, and guess who won? :-D We now have the pleasure of the company of Buffy the Bunny:

The fabric Jennie used for the dress is perfect - dark and glittery cobwebs in a sheer material, over an orange cotton. Buffy has a little white felt skull on the orange bow on her head, and another on the back of her dress. She also had her own little orange felt pumpkin 'bag' on a black ribbon handle: so much stitchy attention to detail. Jennie put so much loveliness in this parcel. A hand-drawn card, LOADS of sweeties for the kids, some Halloween stickers, a pop-up ball game, Halloween stencil, and a little puzzle. Thank you so much Jennie - x - it was very kind and generous of you. My kids were over the moon (as was I).

When the postman brought this parcel, he had a sort of grin on his face. He said

'Excuse me ... can I ask you a question?'

'Of course?' I replied.

'Who, exactly, is this Kitty Wrinkle person?'

'Ah ... that's me.'

'But you're not Kitty Wrinkle, you're Mildred Featherplucker'.¹

'I know I am, but I'm Kitty Wrinkle too ... it's my 'internet name'.'

'Oh ... I see. Well, you've given us all a good laugh at the Sorting Office. It's a stupid name, and every time we get something addressed to it, we hold it up and say 'look! Here's another one for Kitty Wrinkle!'

':-O'

So that's nice isn't it? I've provided a public service of laughter to the boys and girls at the local Sorting Office. Super.

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The kids were at their dad's on the day of Halloween, so I sat at the sewing machine, and made some little Wiggly Bags for Gina.

If anyone reading would like to help Gina out with this cause, just leave a message at her blog and she'll email you with an attached instruction sheet. They weren't complicated to make - If I can do them, anyone can.

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Lastly, I must apologise for not getting round to everyone's blogs over the past week. I have had ongoing *issues* with my broadband connection. I have been experiencing a dropped connection at least a dozen times a day, and it's been driving me nuts. Surely it's not normal to be asked to reset one's router that many times a day? I started to wonder if there was a problem with the phone line in general (even though the 'line test' facility at BT's website said there wasn't) or the general wiring of same? I was not happy. I called BT, and was warned that if an engineer came out and found that any problem was my equipment/fault, they would charge me £116 plus VAT. Well, an engineer did come out (they said to expect him between 1 and 6pm. He was here at 9.30am). A very nice, friendly chap by the name of Dean, who found that I had a wire loose at the exchange. That is not a metaphor for my being one sandwich short of picnic - I really did have a loose wire. Thanks Dean (oh, and I hope you win the bargain waxed jacket at eBay. I don't know why people tell me all sorts of extraneous things about their lives, but they do ... and where Dean was concerned it was the reversible Burberry jacket he's spotted on eBay).

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¹ If you had a name like Mildred Featherplucker, you'd use a pseudonym too, wouldn't you?

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