Pumpkins

This is really a Stitches story. It's also a sisters story. And possibly one about how willing I am to follow along like a sheep in the wake of the stronger personality.

It might have been Stitches Midwest 2011, but I only think that because that was the first year I didn't write about Stitches.

Whatever year it was, Yarn Mountain  came to Stitches Midwest that year.  I noticed the knitted pumpkins in their booth right away.  I kept walking by and thinking how cool they were.  But the yarn was huge - roving wrapped with a thin nylon strand.  The yarn and the thought of the size needles I would need to knit it, between them, talked me out of it. Repeatedly. Then I walked into the booth with MySister.  MySister was also charmed with the pumpkins.  So charmed, that she bought a couple skeins of pumpkin-appropriate color yarns, and one purple and green combination that looked like Frankenstein's Monster to me. But she was planning one for each of her girls, and any girls there got to pick their own yarn.  I'm not quite sure how it happend, but I left the booth with three skeins of the yarn myself and the link for the pattern.

Then I somehow ended up with a set of US 15 circulars from the HiyaHiya booth.

And then I got home and stared at my purchases and wondered where my brain had gone during Stitches.

The needles got buried.  The yarn eventually worked it's way down to the bottom of the stash.  MySister knit her pumpkins. They came out fantastic (she even figured out a pattern for leaves). But mine stayed theoretical and I was happy to have it so.

Until this past fall.  I don't know why I decided I needed these this year, but I did. The construction is really quite clever.  You divide the skein in half and alternate skeins in the same row to make the lobes.  The inside looks like a spider web.

They need to be stuffed.  I got all green and ecological and used plastic grocery store bags.

The pumpkins are different sizes based on the number of bags I crammed into each section.

Details.

Yarn: Kraemer Yarns Bear Creek in (counterclockwise from the left) Peach Cobbler, Spice and Pumpkin.
Needles: HiyaHiya circulars and ChiaGoo bamboo DPNs in US 15/10mm (ouch!).
Pattern: Bear Creek Pumpkin by Clara Masessa for Kraemer Yarns (scroll down to Miscellaneous, it's free!)

For the record, these were every bit as much not fun to knit as I expected them to be.  On the plus side, the misery doesn't last long. And now I have these cool knitted pumpkins that can come out for Halloween and stay out through Thanksgiving.

So there you go. Pumpkins