It's the season of mists, gifts and ...cat butts

There must be something in the air

I’m not a huge fan of Halloween in the sense of dressing up and trick or treating, but I do enjoy the dramatic change in light and atmosphere at this time of year.

31 October to me is Samhain - marking the start of the winter months, of embracing the dark with candles, blankets and all things cosy.

And I do appreciate an accidental yarn bombing from a black cat 🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛

This photo is a few years old now but it still makes me smile every time I see it. All the more so because I know that if I had tried to stage that photo and persuaded Ebony to pose for me he would have treated me with icy disdain.

By the way, did you know that Hallowtide is a word? Thanks to

Claire Amritavani Brown

for introducing me to it via this beautiful post from

liz | wsc

. I won’t go into it all here - please do read this seasonal treat of a piece but the idea that we have a specific word to encompass the 3-day period of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls Day is immensely pleasing to me.

What’s making me smile this week

🍁I’m really enjoying re-reading my copy of Wintering by

Katherine May

- have you read it? It’s the kind of beautiful writing that you want to pull out and immerse yourself in periodically. And at this time of year when we are hovering between seasons it’s really comforting - a bit like sitting down for a catch up with an old friend. This quote is one that I remind myself of often.

Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt.

🍁If you are making a head start on Christmas knitting you might want to read this tongue-in-cheek post from

Hanna Gough

🍁I talk a lot about slow living here and yet it’s an area that is still open to a lot of assumptions and misinterpretations. There is often a sense that you can’t embrace the principles of slow living and at the same time be busy or productive. This article from

Emily Male

is one of the best I’ve seen on this subject. Really diving into what it means to live more slowly in a very practical and real sense.

🍁I can’t remember if I have shared this recipe before - apologies if I have. But I finally got around to making these delicious chocolate cookies and I was so glad I did. Very, very moreish.

🍁I’ve also been getting excited about a bit of sock yarn stashbusting. Every so often I go through a bit of a use-it-up phase with the leftover sock yarns I have accumulated. It must be a kind of seasonal, fluffing up my nest sort of thing.

I have been planning a new pair of scrappy socks and I thought this this couple of articles from my blog archive might be helpful:

How to do the clasped weft join (and never have to weave in ends again)

Ten uses for scrap yarn that don’t involve knitting a blanket