the holiday rush

It's hard to believe that the year is already in the second-to-last month. I've been building and building towards halloween, filling my days with decorations and crafts and spooky movies, and in one rather uneventful night it's all done with. Holidays are all like that, really. The anticipation and building towards them is almost always better than the day itself.

Then it's over, suddenly, in a span of hours. You wake up the next morning and realize that you'll have to take all of those decorations down. Throw away the jack-o-lanterns that have started to fall in on themselves. Take down the lights. Wrap and pack all of the little glass skulls and ghosts and pumpkins.

This time of year there is no rest to be had. I was in Target on Saturday and they were already playing Christmas music. The TV is full of ads for jewelry and toys, and they've started putting up garlands at the malls. Soon Christmas will become a relentless hammer of advertising and decorations, beating everyone into holly-jolly submission.

I am of course excited about the prospect of decorating for Christmas this year. It's our first house together, and I'm picturing where I'll put the tree, and how I'll put snowmen on the staircase and wrap the banister with garland. I've started stitching lots of little ornaments out of felt and beads and turning my eye towards gifts.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a break, though. To space things out a little more, to relax and breath in between the holidays. Instead the time from September to January becomes a constant bombardment of the senses, where we go from shrieking ghouls to laughing santas, with a turkey and some pilgrims thrown in somewhere in the middle. It's also a time where you start to feel, more than anything, what you do not have and must sacrifice in favor of necessary things. It's been a hard year for a lot of people, and for many it will only get worse.

On the other hand, perhaps having the holidays all bunched together like this is easier in some ways. In a three month span it's done with, over, gone for another whole year. You can pack away the decorations and forget about the whole thing, until Fall comes around again and suddenly the stores smell like cinnamon and cloves, and everything turns into a riot of color and want, want, want.

Today when I go home I'll pack away all of my halloween things, and eat whatever candy was left over after the horde of trick-or-treaters last night. I don't bother decorating for Thanksgiving. My only interest in that particular holiday is the dinner that my sister makes, and the introduction of pumpkin pie into my diet. Soon enough Thanksgiving will come and go, and the very next day I'll put up my first Christmas tree.

I'll miss my jack-o-lanterns, though.

The Pumpkin Queen

Growing up as a home schooled and very accident prone child, there were certain experiences that I missed out on. Carving a jack-o-lantern for Halloween was one of those things.

Now, I had a very rich and varied education with a lot of activites thrown in for good measure. I went places, and did things, and got to try as many arts-and-crafts projects as I wanted.

Except for anything involving pointy objects. I'm the girl who nearly cut the pad of her fingertip off on a catfood can lid. I once cut a chunk out of my middle finger with a pair of safety scissors. Yeah, that's right. Safety scissors. The sort that you're not supposed to be able to cut yourself with. I still have a scar from those things.

Over the years my injuries have been many, and the majority of them have involved my wrists and hands (and my head, a few times, but only bad enough to need stitches one time).

So pumpkin carving was something that was simply not done. That, and my mother was simply not fond of Halloween, having come from a country where such a holiday was not observed. She would dutifully take my sister and me trick-or-treating every year, and would even make all of our costumes by hand, but we didn't really decorate the house for it. I got to grow pumpkins as a kid. I had a whole garden full of the things, ranging in size from tiny to massive. But I was never permitted to take a knife to any of my home-grown pumpkins. I completely understand and appreciate my mother's reasons for this. Would you give me a knife for the purpose of disembowling a pumpkin and carving faces in it? Probably not, as the likely result would be a trip to the hospital and a halloween jack-o-lantern that was covered with real blood. I instead made my jack-o-lanterns out of construction paper (using the aforementioned not-so-safety scissors).

So I made it to the ripe age of 29 without ever having carved a pumpkin. I love Halloween and all of its trappings, so I don't know why I never just went out and bought myself some pumpkins one year and had at them. Probably some ingrained "must not risk fingers" instinct that was keeping me from ever considering it. My husband, however, discovered that my experience was sadly lacking, and decided to remedy this fact.

Last night we sacrificed one of our wedding pumpkins (I'd purchased some to use for decorations, and later re-located them to our front porch after the wedding was over) for my first jack-o-lantern experience. I let Adam cut the top off, and then I scooped out all of the guts. I'd forgotten how raw pumpkin smells..not like the delicious scent of pie at all, but something rather less pleasant. I chose the most basic jack-o-lantern design: Two triangular eyes, a triangle nose, and a gap-toothed grin. Adam added a stitched frankenstein-esque scar to the side.

It's not the prettiest jack-o-lantern around..nor the scariest. It's rather simple looking, but last night when we put it out on the front porch and lit the candle inside, I was terribly proud of myself.

I also managed to get through the experience with all of my fingers intact, and my friend and I are going to have a pumpkin-carving extravaganza this weekend. She and her mother are actual award-winning pumpkin carvers, so I fear my pride will be seriously squished by the end of it, but that's OK. One day, perhaps, I too will be the Pumpkin Queen..but for now, I'll settle for just being the Pumpkin Peasant.

Here Comes Santa Clause

About two weeks ago I went to Macy's on a quest for new pillows. Our current ones are getting to that "too flat to be comfortable" stage, so I figured I'd check out the sales and see if they had anything that appealed to me.

They keep the housewares on the third floor at the Macy's here, so as I rode up the escalator, I found myself at eye level with something that I did not quite expect to see.

Christmas decorations. Directly across from the top of the escalator, Macy's had set up their Christmas department. Artificial trees festooned with blown glass ornaments glittered in the glow of a thousand little twinkly lights. Tinsel adorned the walls and the railings. I think if you went into the Christmas department and stood still for more than a minute, you'd sprout a fine patina of glitter like mold growing on bread.

I am of course all for Christmas. I like it well enough. I can be holly jolly and dreaming of a white christmas while I deck the halls. But it's not even October yet. Halloween hasn't come and gone. Thanksgiving has yet to pass. Isn't it a little too early for the dizzying displays of Christmas cheer? I need the time to enjoy the smell of pumpkin spice and cloves before they start trotting out the freshly cut pine and apple cinnamon scents in stores. Give me a little more time with my gargoyles and pumpkins and rubber bats before you start assaulting my senses with Santa's plump and cheerful visage.

That being said, I have started to keep an eye out for Christmas presents. I've already found something for my mother. But I still want to look around and see grinning jack-o-lanterns while I peruse the stores. Give me garlands of felted ghosts, or give me..well. Give me garlands of tinsel, apparently.

In my etsy store right now:

Something Witchy This Way Comes...

In keeping with my earlier post about halloween, I decided to share some of my latest projects.

This is one of my small cemetery pendants:

The Jack-O-Lantern, complete with bats:

A two-piece cemetery necklace:

One of the crocheted witch dolls:

and a "witch-o-lantern" hair stick:

My new bottle of etching solution is on its way, so I'll be able to make some more halloween jewelry when it gets here. I'm also working on a standing witch holding a broom, and a pumpkin patch of crocheted jack-o-lanterns. I'm selling the jewelry in my etsy store, but not the dolls. They don't fit with my other stuff, really, and I don't have the time to handle two shops and making stock for them.

This Is Halloween

I know that it's a little early yet, but I'm feeling impatient for fall to get here. The stores have just started to get their halloween stock in, and it's a nice thing to see. Hobby Lobby is overflowing with garlands of silk leaves in autumn colors. Scarecrows sit beside pumpkins and black cats. TJ Maxx, which is perhaps my favorite store in the world, got their halloween goodies in a couple of weeks ago. Pumpkin spice candles are everywhere.

I love it when the season starts to edge its way into coolness. The mornings have been ever so slightly chilly here, though we've a few weeks to go before it truly starts to change. I want the colorful leaves and the crisp, apple-bite air.

In the spirit of the coming season, I've already started making halloween things. I've started etching copper more and more, and have created haunted graveyard scenes and grinning jack-o-lanterns surrounded by clouds of bats. I'm in the mood to crochet scarves with little pumpkin bobbles amongst the fringe. I've already started making my yearly coven of witch dolls.

This has been an unusual year so far with the weather. It's already cooler than normal, with more rain than we usually get. The fog has been thick every night. Our weatherman has been predicting a dire winter, as he does every year, but this might be the one year he's right.

But in the meantime, I'll continue to count down the days until fall is well and truly here, and I can decorate my desk at work with witches and jack-o-lanterns.