Secret knitting and Pumpkin bread

I’ve been thinking a lot about secret knitting lately. I suppose because I’ve spent a bit of time deciding which pictures of FOs and WIPs I can post here. ‘Tis the season for gifts and already this season, I’ve blown it. In my excitement to show someone my Ravelry project page, I inadvertently gave away one gift that I was certain would be a surprise. The kicker was that I purposely did not blog about it and uploaded it to Ravelry only, specifically because I knew this person wouldn’t be able to see it there and I could talk about it until I was blue in the face. I tried to underplay the whole thing, but I am facing a Christmas gift opening with feigned surprise. The fact that I identified the recipient by name in the project title was kicker for a spectacularly boner move. I suppose I should just be glad that I know people who like me well enough to fake surprise in the first place. And who appreciate knitted gifts.

Remember the frogged mohair scarf? I’ve been stringing beads on it for the past hour, trying to determine if I’ll like the way the beads sit with this stitch pattern if I slide the beads into place rather than string them on with a crochet hook.

You’d think hooking beads on would be preferable because of the flexibility and because it doesn’t damage the fiber by subjecting it to the rubbing of the beads, but I just didn’t like how the beads were laying in a lacy pattern and hooking the bead on really slows down the momentum and rhythm of knitting. I decided the only real way to be happy about it is the tried and tested method. Just knit up a swatch.

I’ve also been doing a bit of holiday cooking which has cut down a bit on the photo taking. In the proud, lazy bastard tradition of our family, we bought our Halloween pumpkin after Halloween, when people practically beg you to take them away. We’d get one before Halloween, but since no one here actually has the energy to carve the thing it’s really a moot point. Besides even a small pumpkin is a lot of pumpkin. My mother bought me one because she likes the way I roast the seeds. So I roasted the seeds.

Now what?

I make really good banana bread, so I tried the recipe with pumpkin. I’m happy to say it turned out beautifully.

And it’s going quickly.

And this is how much pumpkin we still have left.

Oi. I see pumpkin pie and more bread in my future. And we’ll still probably have some left over to freeze.