You know it's fall when...

...you're buying yarn at the Woolgathering, the chestnuts are falling, and the chicken coop is in place!  yay!  the mister put together our chicken coop this weekend and its' just fantastic!  now we need to paint it to protect it - and I'd certainly rather have a colorful and cute coop!  

oh, i just love it!  I can't wait to get chickens in the spring!

The chestnut empire continues this year - I think we've collected nearly 200 lbs so far!  I roasted up a bunch this morning to freeze for use in recipes later.  I got this tip after talking to one of the Chinese ladies at work who bought a lot from me this year.  Apparently chestnuts are really big in Chinese cooking - in real chinese cooking - not the chinese that we get at the restaurants, which is not really chinese at all!  haha!  Anyway, aren't they beautiful?

I got a pumpkin and a warty gourd from a guy who runs a little farm stand just down the road from me - it doesn't get much more "fall" than that. He also had bird's nest gourds - the green crook neck ones - that will dry out and be hollow!  Those were $1 each so I got a bunch!  i want to make a couple toad houses from them - we seem to have a lot of toads here and I just love them!

This giant guy, who I call Fritz, likes to sit in the track for the sliding glass door at night when we have the light on - I guess it attracts a lot of insects and he has a feast!  

On the crafting front, I've got a pair of socks on the needles for my mom for Christmas.  After that, it'll be a pair of socks for my dad, then hopefully I'll have time for a pair of thick worsted weight ones for the mister, and maaaaybe a hat for him too!  yowza!  it's not like any of that takes so long, but I've realized that having 2 kittens in the house makes knitting really difficult!  they inevitably want to be in your lap and then it all goes downhill!