Halloween 2015: Bookish Pumpkin Carving

Happy Halloween! We're hanging out at home tonight and I'm about to make some cocoa and dive into my rather fitting-for-Halloween book, "Lair of Dreams" by Libba Bray. I think we've seen the last of the trick-or-treaters (my favorite of which was a toddler dressed as an adorable little skunk). We have quite a bit of candy left over -- but that's inevitable since I always seem to over-buy. And that's why I get candy that I like too! (Reese's and Sweet Tarts and Butterfingers, oh my!)



Jarrod and I had fun carving our pumpkins last night. His minion -- carved totally free-hand -- looks awesome, and I'm really pleased with the way mine came out. I wanted to convey something along the lines of "reading is magical" and I think I achieved that! And, totally coincidentally, it's a great compliment to my Hermione costume, which I wore at work today. Between the literary costume and the bookish pumpkin, I think it's pretty clear that I work at a library!



Do tell: What did you carve into your pumpkin this year? Hope you're having a spooktacular Halloween!

Happy Halloween, Love Hermione Granger

Halloween is almost upon us, and I've been lucky to get to dress up for work at the library twice already. I'll don my Hermione costume one more time when I work on Saturday before it gets packed away for another year. Let me tell you, I love working at an awesome place filled with people who like to dress up for the holidays! Today we had a Jack Sparrow, a Sherlock Holmes, a Captain Hook, Peter Pan and Wendy, a Fancy Nancy, a Link from The Legend of Zelda, and a Snow White!

I made myself a wand to compliment my costume this year. It was super-easy and you'd never guess it's made from a wooden dowel and hot glue! There are tons of tutorials for this kind of wand-making online, but here's the one I used. The DIY instructions use chopsticks, but I used a wooden dowel cut to size and I sanded one of the ends down to be narrower and rounded. (FYI, my wand is vine wood like Hermione's, but with a [pretend] core of boxer dog whisker.)

I also enhanced my outfit with a hand-knitted Gryffindor scarf -- complete with S.P.E.W. button. Did you know that Hermione's Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare is only in the books, not the movies? I didn't realize that until I was looking for a S.P.E.W. button online (no luck there). I could tell the true Potter-lovers by who got my badge and who didn't! (More on my scarf here.) I think the only thing I need to make my outfit perfect for next year is a time-turner necklace. Etsy, here I come!

Do tell: what are YOU going to be for Halloween?

Yarn Along: "The Thirteenth Tale" in the Smoky Mountains

Yarn Along is a wonderful link-up -- hosted by the Small Things blog every Wednesday -- about two of the best things in life: reading and knitting!

Hello from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee! We're here celebrating my 30th birthday (it was yesterday; today I come to you as an official adult -- woo. hoo.) and I didn't bring any knitting along. So I'm showing off my Molly hat, my most-worn knitted item. I love that slouchy, soft teal beanie with its big, fat cable!

I'm totally engrossed in "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield. It's spooky, eerie and dark -- absolutely perfect for reading in the woods in late October. It's one of the best books I've read so far this year! It had been on my to-read list for-ev-er, and I was sorta saving it for just the right time. I wanted to read it in the fall because it's an atmospheric sort of novel, and  I'm so glad I waited. Reading in the shadowy woods next to a rushing river surrounded by falling leaves and raindrops is just the right setting for something gothic!

Literary Fall Decor: Recycled Book Pumpkins

I love books and I love pumpkins. Combine the two and you've got some really awesome literary fall decor! The second I stumbled upon a tutorial for crafting pumpkins from recycled books, I knew it would be my weekend project. (Here's the tutorial I used.)

The library where I work has a book sale cart, and I selected three sad, lonely, dirty, worn paperbacks to get new life as Halloween decorations. Yes, of course I felt a little guilty about destroying books, but I'm 99% sure they would never have been purchased -- and even as I felt bad, I was happy to be recycling something that may very well have ended up in the trash. And now they're serving as fun fall decorations at the library, so their lives as books have come full circle.

The stems are sticks from my backyard, the curly-cue vines are floral wire from Michaels, and  I colored the pumpkins orange by diluting paint with water and dipping the edges in, as suggested in the tutorial. I tried the ink pad method for my first pumpkin (the bigger one in the above photo) but I achieved much better color with the paint. And I used up my whole orange ink pad rubbing the pages, which was a bit of a bummer.

Some tips if you decide to make your own bookish fall decor:
*Choose older books whose spines are already worn and broken-in. This will make it easier to bend the book into a circle shape.
*Use a really sharp (or brand new) Xacto knife blade.
*It took a while, but eventually I found a good method for cutting the pages. Cut about 15 pages at a time with a cutting mat separating those pages from the rest of the book (This prevents cutting pages partway and having to trim them up with the Xacto knife. And if you're only trimming one or two pages at a time, it's much easier to tear the paper, which is no fun!)
*It's ok if your cut edges aren't perfect -- you can even them up with scissors.
*The two smaller pumpkins were from the same book. I cut out a pumpkin from the bottom half of the book, making sure to keep the spine on the upper half in tact, then just tore it in half after I'd Xacto-ed my pumpkin from the bottom.
*It's ok to really bend and smoosh the book to force it into a pumpkin shape. It's not going to go willingly and you'll have to manhandle it a bit!
*After I dipped my pumpkins in paint, I used a paper clip to hold the two ends together. This helps keep the wet pages from sticking together and helps end the spine into a circular shape.

Knitting FO: Rainbow Twist Cowl

Rainbow Twist Cowl
My Ravelry project page
Pattern: Rainbow Twist by Thao Nguyen
Yarn: Malabrigo Rasta in Arco Iris

I looooooove my cowl! I love it so much that it might just be my favorite thing I've ever knitted. The yarn is amazing -- so colorful and squishy and soft and cozy. I've never knit with super-bulky weight yarn (on humongous size 17 needles!) before and I couldn't believe how fast it worked up! There will probably be many more bulky knits in my future.

This would be a perfect last-minute gift knit. I could have made the entire cowl in a couple hours, but I dragged it out over three days because the yarn was such a pleasure to work with. If you've never used Malabrigo Rasta and you want to feel like you're knitting with a strand of clouds, give it a try! And the pattern as wonderful too -- so simple and fun! Instant gratification + rainbow yarn = win!

Yarn Along: "Girl Waits With Gun" and Rainbow Twist Cowl

Yarn Along is a wonderful link-up -- hosted by the Small Things blog every Wednesday -- about two of the best things in life: reading and knitting!

Reading: I'm about 150 pages into "Girl Waits With Gun" by Amy Stewart. It's a mystery set in 1914 New Jersey with a pretty badass heroine, Constance Kopp, a woman unlike just about any other of her time. I have a few other books by Amy Stewart on my to-read list (like her non-fiction works "Wicked Plants" and and "Wicked Bugs"), so of course I had to check out her first novel -- which is actually based on a real-life story. So far I'm really enjoying it! (And that cover! I love it! It's hard to see in the photo, but it's set up to look like a newspaper article. And it's embossed. And the flyleaf is bright red with a glorious texture to it. Sigh... I love books.)

Knitting: I really, really should have been finishing up my BlueSand Cardigan (one of these days I'll finish sewing up the second pocket and weaving in my ends... right?!) but I couldn't resist casting on for a new project, a quick cowl (seriously, it only takes a couple hours) that I'm just in love with! I've never knit with super-bulky yarn before, but this Malabrigo Rasta (in Arco Iris) is just scrumptious! It's squishy and oh-so-soft and cozy and thick -- and the colorway is gorgeous! The pattern is Rainbow Twist by Thao Nguyen.

Over the weekend I finished up my Harry Potter scarf, which was on last week's Yarn Along post. Here's the completed project if you'd like to see! I'm really pleased with how it came out, and I finished it just in time to wear to work at the library when we all dress up for Halloween!

10 Wishes For The Book Genie

Today's topic for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is 10 wishes we'd like the Book Genie to grant us -- "You dream it and the Book Genie can do it!" Why, oh why, can't the Book Genie be real? Because I'd really like a couple wishes; I don't even need a full 10!

1. I wish that... J.K. Rowling would write more books set in the Harry Potter universe.

2. I wish for... every bookish product I've saved on Etsy and Pinterest to magically appear on my doorstep.

(source)

3. I wish for... a local public library that looks like this:

(New York Public Library)

4. I wish for... an advance copy of "Morningstar" by Pierce Brown (the last book in the Red Rising trilogy, due out in January.) Bonus points if it's delivered to my door by Pierce himself!

5. I wish for... more hours in the day to read! My TBR list is overwhelming, and the only way to make it less so is to read more!

6. I wish for... a home library like this:

(source)

7. I wish that... Paula McLain would come the library where I work to do a reading. (Not totally unrealistic; she lives in Ohio too!)

8. I wish for... new books from Deborah Harkness and Gillian Flynn.

9. I wish to... be an extra in the movie version of one of my favorite reads ("Ready Player One" or "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" would both be ok).

10. I wish for... a big ol' stack of old wooden library card catalog cabinets! (My birthday is coming up... hint hint!)