Today’s Ten on Tuesday topic is Collections I’ve Had over the Years.

To my surprise, I was able to hit the mark without having to resort to collections wholly in storage.

1. Books. I dream of the day when I live someplace with built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and of the day I’ll be reunited with the books stored in my parents’ attic.
2. Music. This is an inherited hobby, as my parents (and my dad, in particular) have an extensive collection of records, tapes, and cds. Rudi also collects music, so it’s one of the first things you notice in our apartment. (No, there’s not really an order to any of it.)
3. Yarn. For such a new collection, it has grown vigorously.
4. Related: Hand-knit socks.
5. Nail polish. (If I call it a collection, will that make Rudi less irritated about the bottles that fall out of the bathroom cabinet when he’s hunting for something in there?)
6. Plastic Smurf figurines (of the ’80s version, rather than the ’10s film version). There is also an extensive collection of glass/ceramic (non-Smurf) figurines also in storage at my parents’ house.
7. Christmas ornaments. I’ve bought them as souvenirs while traveling. I’ve inherited/stolen them from family collections. I’ve made them. I’ve received them as gifts.
8. Stickers. I like to add them to real mail I’m sending out.
9. Jam. Another thing that tends to return from travels (and trips to the farmers market). Also another thing I have in common with my parents.
10. Photos. Mostly they aren’t displayed, but I’d really like to rectify that.

The weekend included:

• Pumpkin Fest (clearly the highlight)
• Reading
• Hanging out at coffeehouses
• Shopping at the farmers market
• A short bike ride
• Knitting
• Working at the garden (I planted some cold weather seeds with hope, moved around some mache, and yanked all but one of the tomato plants)
• Cooking with Rudi
• Listening to a final episode of Car Talk

How was your weekend?

Early in the fall, Rudi began buying pumpkin beers, eager to try those he encountered. He mentioned this to our friends John and Nicole, and John expressed interest in trading a few from his collection for some in Rudi’s, and I suggested they should do have a tasting evening.

Somehow this grew into much more.

While we were on vacation, Rudi hunted high and low for new pumpkin beers, and by the time we returned home, we had a total of 19. John had another seven.

Clearly they were going to need more people than just the two of them to drink them all. (Nicole is not a fan of pumpkin beer, and I’m not a fan of beer, period.)

I ran into John and Nicole a couple weeks ago and suggested we expand beyond beer and make it a whole pumpkin-themed evening, with food focused on squash, as well, which she and I would enjoy, too. They agreed and Pumpkin Fest 2014 was scheduled.

I bought a ton of winter squash in the last week. There were canned varieties, as well as the actual thick-skinned varieties—delicata, butternut, carnival, longnecked, blue hubbard, and, of course, pumpkin (two kinds). Clearly, scale is not my strong suit.

Our plans were grandiose, but got scaled back as today went on. John and Nicole are dog-sitting, so offered to host (a total mitzvah), so we were just responsible for bringing a couple dishes (preferably vegan, so Nicole could try everything) and the beer.

A plan for pumpkin-ale pretzel rolls was tabled after the dough failed to rise sufficiently (old yeast was probably at fault). A pumpkin curry got sidelined. Ingredients for pumpkin juice never made it off my web browser to my shopping list.

We did each manage a dish, though. Rudi made a squash chili, which was tasty and hearty. And I made pumpkin pasties (with dough from here and savory filling inspired by this post). I am inexact, though, so I sort of broke off dough pieces that looked like they’d be the right size and rolled them out to ovalish shapes and just squeezed the edges together instead of crimping. The filling had maple syrup added to it, I subbed soy sauce for the amino acid, and I mashed the pumpkin instead of cubing it (it was really hot and I didn’t want to touch it any longer than necessary!). Also, I had no soy milk, so I skipped the wash.

They were very tasty.

Nicole made pumpkin muffins, a quinoa-pumpkin-kale-almond salad, and a pumpkin bread pudding. One guest made a spicy butternut dip, which she served with sweet potato chips, and another brought a pumpkin pie from a local pie shop. Nicole kept me supplied with a Grenadan-inspired drink of lime, pineapple juice, and seltzer water and Earl Grey tea.

Everything was delicious, and judging by the fact the party lasted until past one, I’d say the guests had a good time, too.

The guys definitely had a favorite pumpkin beer, but I can’t remember which one (hopefully Rudi will chime in in the comments with that info). Between everyone, 13 beers were sampled, with an average consumption of a gallon of beer apiece over the 8 hours we lasted.

We brought home tons of pumpkin beer, but Rudi assures me this is not a hardship. He assures me they’ll be gone before our Christmas party in a month.

This weekend included:

• Halloween: carving pumpkins, chasing down trick-or-treaters who overlooked our basement denizen, dozing through Young Frankenstein
• Sleeping in both days
• Washing the whole can of orange hairspray back out of my hair (except for where I dyed my scalp orange (oops))
• Brunch with friends
• Harvesting the last handfuls of tomatoes and the basil plants from the garden before overnight temps dipped into the 30s
• Watching the first season of Black Books again
• Eating delicious vegetarian stew that Rudi put together from the random veg in our fridge
• Consuming more Halloween candy than was wise
• Hitting up the farmers market (highlights include honeynut squash, quince & pear jam, and what may be the last raspberries of the season)
• Biking up to Petworth to check out a new bookstore on its opening weekend and visiting a well-liked coffeehouse on the way home
• Laundry, including the first load of handwashing of the season
• Knitting and reading

How about you? What were you up to this weekend?

Weekending along with Karen at Pumpkin Sunrise.

Did you have a nice holiday?

We did.

We carved jack o’lanterns. Mine’s on the left:

I decorated my office:

I got dressed up (and, no, you’re right; I’ve used this idea before):

It requires a coat hanger and an entire can of orange hair spray (and the ability to remain calm when half-asleep and unable to remember how to braid after doing it regularly for 33 years):

But it all adds up to a lot of fun!

Did you do anything for Halloween?

I had a pleasant weekend that began with an outdoor film in the park at Dupont Circle.

As is proper, they began with Loony Toon cartoons and then moved on to The Maltese Falcon. I’ve seen the end several times, but had always missed the set-up, so it was nice to see that part this time. The weather was a little cool and I hadn’t brought a warm enough layer, so I dozed a bit in the later sections. We followed that by coming home to our cozy apartment and pulling up a French animated film on NetFlicks: The Painting.

On Saturday, we biked down to the Yards to meet John and Nicole for VegFest. We had some tasty vegan doughnuts and some dairy-free ice cream, and I followed it up with a veggie slider a local restaurant was debuting. The festival was enjoyable, but the sun was beating down on the parking lot the event was being held in and after a couple hours, we were all glad to grab a cool, shadowy Metro. John and Nicole headed home, but Rudi and I stopped in Shaw to hit the D.C. State Fair. (No, D.C. is not a state, but we have aspirations and crafty, farmy folks.)

Here you can see the entries into the crochet and knitting categories (there was the D.C. flag category and the baby hat category). Aren’t the first-place mittens lovely?

The Coffee Bar was only a few blocks away and I cajoled Rudi into going there instead of home. He was glad once we had drinks and chairs, and we ended up staying until they closed.

On Sunday, while Rudi was riding his first 100-mile bike ride of the year, I slept in, hit the farmers market, came home to veg for a while, and then remembered the Corcoran Gallery is closing for an indeterminate amount of time beginning next week. I biked down there and spent a couple hours looking at art. I took a bunch of photos, so maybe I’ll post about that in more depth later. In the meantime, this is Giuseppe Croff’s The Veiled Nun, and that veil and her face under it is a solid piece of marble. Impressive, right?

I finished off the weekend with an ice cream cone; a trip to the garden to water, harvest, and plant lettuce; and the premiere episode of Madame Secretary, which we both liked quite a bit.

It was a full weekend!