October's End

The above photos were taken by my daughter for a visual arts project at school around the theme of "together we can." She visited my after-school knitting club and tried to capture how learning to knit often involves one-on-one instruction-- sometimes with "teaching hands" and "learning hands" wrapped up together with yarn and needles. This knitting club has been one of the bright spots of my October.

October also brought several challenges. This entire school year has been a rocky ride that has eaten up what used to be little bits of free time. I used to blog several times a week! Lately, I only seem to manage a few posts per month.

All of October's challenges, however, were not daunting. Some of the pleasant opportunities were:

• Taking a weekend trip to Birmingham for the Writing and Illustrating for Kids conference of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (Sarah Campbell, a writing buddy and fellow traveler from Jackson, wrote a wonderful description of the conference here;
  
• Learning how to cook Chicken Tikka Masala, Baighan Bartha, Naan, and Aloo Gobi Masala with some good friends;
• Reading Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder with my daughter and thinking about "common magic;"
  
• Watching both of my children participate and progress in their Tae-Kwan-Do classes;
• Reveling in rain after a long time without.

With less than three days left in this month, I'm anticipating:

• Enjoying cooler, more fall-like temperatures;
• Carving two, large pumpkins and three, small pumpkins to welcome hallowed haints and saints;
• Strolling through the neighborhood in search of fall colors peeking out here and there.