Miss Butterfly dressed up as a unicorn this year.
Super cute and goofy! We headed back to our old neighborhood where the crowds are, hooked up with her old friends, and went trick or treating. She really did have a great time, as did we!
Unfortunately, this was also the year that she got the comments of “You are too old to trick or treat” from the candy givers. Now, in MY opinion, a 12 year old who does well in school, is dressed up, and isn’t egging your car is the PERFECT age to trick or treat. But what do I know? Mostly, I know that these scrooges somehow want my child to grow up faster than I want her to. And, I just do not understand that whatsoever. Probably the same people who say stuff like “Kids these days grow up too fast, I wish they dressed more appropriately, didn’t have phones, etc.” While they could have some actual influence by allowing children to just be children.
ANYHOW, we also had an odd and scary experience.
See that clown wandering the streets? In his other hand, he has a chainsaw. A real one. And, as it turns out, he’s a local not quite right guy who wanders that area every day. Except last night he was wandering that area with a chainsaw. Now, that area gets an incredible amount of children. It can be wall to wall people there, and many of the homes go absolutely over the top in decorations and haunted houses with live actors scaring people. So, this guy wandering around was mostly thought, by people not local to the area, to be harmless. So they’d chase him, and he’d chase them back. We, however, knew better and kept the kids away. Later on in the evening, I saw on the local police scanner twitter page that he’d been called in and Miss Butterfly told me that after I left her with her father this guy had been arrested. It was….unnerving.
In any case, that was our evening. I also managed to get a photo of my latest 2 ply batt.
It’s quite lovely! It was a fatcatknits batt, and it’s got some decent texture, and spun up very nicely. I’ve got 340 yards of this one. I love the earth/sky tones on this one, very fun!
I finished up the plying on the other project as well, so I’ll be able to get photos of that tonight. And now? I’ve got a wheel free, only one active knitting project that’s almost complete, and I kind of don’t know what to do with myself! I need to get situated and inspired this evening. That’s the plan. Chores around the house that have been neglected, and then check the crafty situation.
Because….I am going on my own little knitting/spinning retreat this weekend. I can’t wait! We’ve decided that I really do need to regain that wind down time I was supposed to have right after the conference finished up. To be honest, after this past weekend where I got some serious sleep, I DO feel much better. I was blathering on about something to Mr. Ink last evening, getting a little het up about it, and then eventually checked myself and said “You know what? It’s just nice to have the brain space to be thinking about social issues rather than being stuck in the stressed at work loop where I can’t give any thought or time to any other issue!” So, obviously I AM seeing improvement. But, I still think a retreat will do me some good.
Suzy Sells Sea Shells 
That is a shame that people said that to her! I think she should keep going for as long as she wants. And her response should be “how old is too old to have fun?” grouches – !
Yarn is so pretty – love all those blues. 🙂
Giving yourself a retreat? Brilliant idea. Is it an organized one, or are you and your yarn and wheels just taking off for parts unknown? I have been thinking more and more about a retreat – there are some reasonably local ones that I have been eyeing. It’s just so much money, that could be spent on fiber, lol! But maybe I just need to make my own.
I got very close to going all mother bear on her, marching up and telling her my opinion on it. However, I settled for telling the mom of one of Butterfly’s friends who was with me at the time, and she spent the rest of HER night handing out candy and telling teens to never let anyone tell them they are too old. So, I found that to be a nice karmic balance.
Not an organized retreat this time, though I might in the future. This one is a just me and my wheel, knitting, and bike. I’ll eat what I want when I want, and sleep when I am tired. I’ll watch netflix and listen to podcasts and go on long walks. I might go see a movie. And, I’ll try to go social media dark. It seems a good weekend for that really, as my voting was done weeks ago.
that sounds WONDERFUL! Are you going someplace special for this? I could so do that….
Media dark is good. I also voted weeks ago so I could forget about it all, so glad I did, this build up is too intense for me.
Glad you got the karmic circle going the other way. 🙂 no reason to stop trick or treating ever, I don’t think. It beats causing mischief and mayhem, right?
I have a 12 year old also, he’s my youngest. Unlike his brothers, who trick or treated well into high school, he didn’t want to go around last night. None of us were keen to hand out candy last night either, so we (my 12 year old & 17 year old) ended up at the movies, watching Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. When my kids were all young, I did get annoyed by bigger teenage kids trick or treating, but when the first of mine got to that age, I realized that those big kids are still kids and why rush them to be adults? Let them enjoy being a kid – we already put too much pressure on them in school as it is.
Enjoy your weekend retreat! I hope it’s restful but also satisfyingly creative!
The one other thing she complained about was that some homes were giving little kids multiple candies but her only one. I told her that was entirely fair, since they would have FAR more stamina for the task and would hit far more homes than those littles could ever hope to.
In any case, I think the movie solution sounds lovely for your family!