Vacation Preparations!!

 We did not have a vacation for nearly five years.  We have a timeshare and "banked" the weeks we should have used. Now those weeks are going to go away if we do not use them, so now we have scheduled a second vacation.  This time we will be about half an hour from my sister.  That will be so great to spend time with her and her family.  Plus we will be able to help with the Cherry Point MCAS Thanksgiving dinner by making pies.  Dear One will help serve the Marines at the base.

Well, getting ready to go happened in a week that was already completely full.  So hard to get things together.  When we arrived at the vacation condo we found I had left some things at home...This may be because the night before, I awoke before midnight and was awake until 6 AM.  Have not had a night as rough as that for a while.

Around 4 AM I had already used up all the quiet, in-the-other-room projects, so I moved into our bedroom where the Brother KX 350 knitting machine is set up.  I had seen a YouTube video by Anna Haferman about knitting a pumpkin.  I followed her pattern and made this pumpkin:

Anna's pattern called for casting on 80 stitches.  I wanted a smaller pumpkin so I cast on 50 stitches then did a bit of math to figure out the spacing of the pattern stitches.  It did turn out.  Well, I seem to remember that I set the tension at 3.5 which is pretty tight, but there was not a lot of trouble with the fluffy stuffing showing through those stitches.

So, it was not fabulous but it could have been worse.  I wanted to bring a gift to my sister and this is what it turned out to be.  Plus a dozen little orange boxes with green pompom stems on top and Hershey's Kisses and Peanut Butter Cups inside.