Cresting the Hill

I have a real love-hate relationship with this time of year. I love it because of the weather, the leaves, the back to school activities, and the sense that a whole new year is open to us. I hate it because every year it goes so quickly. Each year it seems to go faster, too. Halloween seems to me to be the crest of the hill. Everything's fun, everything's beautiful, everyone's excited for Halloween....



And then we wake up and it's November, and before we know it Thanksgiving is here and then Chanukah, Christmas, New Year's, and before I know it, I feel like half the school year has gone by in the blink of an eye.

It doesn't help that one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving, has morphed into my least-favorite holidays over the last few years. I don't look forward to it, and I miss how it used to be.

This year I will try not to place so much weight on the holidays and just enjoy each day. Maybe that will help.

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The boys did not participate in any bike races this last weekend! Incredible, I know. So we took the time to cross some things off our house to-do list. We've been mulling over what we can do to the family room to make it more comfortable and welcoming. Do we get a bigger, L-shaped couch? Do we add more chairs? Do we rearrange everything?

We found a great big, leather L shaped couch, one that will hold me, my knitting stuff and every other member of the family. It's very comfy, not hideously ugly, and has serious snuggle potential. I can't wait for it to arrive.

Once we had done that, we decided to decide where to hang some of our artwork. We got some great stuff at one of the local art shows, but couldn't quite settle on where to hang it. Now they're up on the walls and looking good.

To top it all off, I finally decided on some window treatments for the living room and dining room and got those all ordered.

It's only been 5 years since the remodel. Do you think we moved too quickly?

And yes, all that decorating meant little time for knitting. I started the liner for the Fiddlehead Mittens. Here you can see how it's attached and being knit from the bottom of the mitten:


Here's a view of the whole thing:


Here's some pretty yarn:


This is the Plucky Knitter, merino/cashmere/nylon sport weight in Flannel Shimmy.


Plucky Knitter, again, in Honey Wilkes.


Wollmeise, in Jeton.

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Today is the big gubernatorial election here in Virginia. Virginia is an odd state, with city centers that tend to be pretty liberal and rural areas that are very, very conservative. As the population of the city centers has grown and pushed outward, the electoral face of the state has changed. The last two governors were very well-regarded Democrats and Virginia's electoral delegates went to Obama in 2008.

It would have seemed that the Democrats had a fair chance of holding onto the governorship, but a hard-fought primary left us with a pretty unappealing candidate. Creigh Deeds isn't very dynamic or exciting. He's run a terrible campaign. I see three McDonnell ads for every once Creigh Deeds ad. The Republican opponent, Robert McDonnell, is a hard-line Christian conservative wearing sheep's clothing. I remember his past campaigns and his mailings, and they're very different than what he's trying to portray himself as this time around. So, while I voted for Deeds, it wasn't with any sense that I want him to be my governor. It was more that I really don't want McDonnell to be.

Pundits on the right are trying hard to paint this election as some kind of referendum or harbinger on the Obama presidency. Nonsense. If Creigh Deeds loses this election, it's not because people are upset or unhappy about the Obama presidency. It's because Creigh deeds was a terrible candidate who ran a terrible campaign.

It's times like these that I'm thankful for Virginia's odd law limited governors to a single term.