There are many ways to tell that Autumn has arrived but my favorite is when the trees start to change.  I love this tree.  It's in one of my neighbors' yards but it's my barometer for how far advanced Autumn is at any one point.  It's iinteresting to me that each tree has its own schedule for putting on it's colorful coat.  This tree is a Maple (I believe) but so is the one in front of my house and my Maple still looks like this.

Just the edges are turning colors.  It's a bit strange this year because it usually turns only yellow but we are seeing some orange in there this morning.  It's beautiful.

The summer clothes are packed away and the winter woolies are now clean and hanging in the closets and folded in the drawers.  For the next month or so, the closets will look neat.  Then life takes over and we are less careful putting things away.

My pink rose bush is putting on one last show. It has been blooming all week with such beautiful and fragrant blossoms.  It's unexpected especially since we had to scrape frost off the windshield one morning last week.  These are hardy bushes.

I usually have at least one pair of socks going .  They are,after all, a highly portable project and can usually be worked on while talking or at lunchtime at work.  At this moment, I have 4 pairs otn.  This is in part because when I get my hands on a new skein of fingering weight yarn, I feel a desire (almost a need) to work with it.  And when I got in an order of Stroll sock yarn from knitpicks which included a few skeins of their neon sock yarn,  I wanted to start several more pairs.  

Pk has a pair of neon green socks which are one of his favorite pairs.  I got three other neon colors (red, purple and blue) and the blue is now becoming a pair of fibonaci striped socks.  I am only using 1,1,2,3,5,and 8 and then 8,5,3,2,1,1.

It makes for a vaguely random lookng stripe and makes the sock seemingly go quicker.  At this time, these are for me but with the holidays coming, these may go into the gift pile.  The last pair I made ostensibly for me, went to Kate for her birthday because they seemed to be for Kate.  I have enough yarn to make a second pair so maybe these will go into the gift pile and I'll make me a pair in January.    

(photo from kntpicks)

One of Pk's other favorites are his Fire socks.  That's what he calls them because they are yellows and reds.  He wears them to job interviews since he thinks they are lucky.  Well, they are wearing out so I went looking for a new yarn to make Fire socks 2.  I think this will work.  It's wool and nylon and feels a bit tougher than some other sock yarns.  Once I finish one of the other 4, I'll start them.  Unless I can't wait and start them later today.  The will is weak.....

Another sure fire sign of fall is the Flu shot (gotten 2 weeks ago at the insistence of my employer) and the arrival of pumpkin flavored everything.  One of the local self storage companies has  capitalized on this trend by saying on their sign "We have pumpkin spice storage units!".  

I am taking part in a research project.  It's being administered by a man in California.  It's about happiness.  You go to www.trackmyhappiness.org and sign up.  The app is free and several times during the course of your day, they send you a queery.  "How are you feeling?".  Right at that moment (or as close s you can safely make it), you answer a few questions about what you are doing and how you feel about it.  Once a week they do a roundup of all your answers and extrapolate when you are happiest during your day.  At the end, the data will be published but you get your own results on an ongoing basis.  It's been interesting so far.  I learned (after one week) that I am generally happy even when I am at work.  Who knew?  Check it out.  It's free and you can learn something about yourself.   And that's usually a good thing, right?

We're watching the Manchester Derby (or Darby as the announcer keeps callling it).  Pk is in a quandry because his team is Arsenal and in order for them to stay at no. 1 on the chart, Manchester United has to win.  He dislikes (strongly strongly dislikes) them as a team but has to root for them so his team can stay on top.  We have never watched sports together (not a sports family) but we do enjoy watching soccer games on the weekends.  

I have nothing I have to do today and it's a nice feeling.  We haven't had fried chicken for a while so I'm thinking I may fry some for dinner.  There may be a game in our afternoon plans or maybe we'll look for some sci fi movies from the 50's.  Yesterday we watched the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  It was great.  They are so different than our more modern movies.  

I'll leave you with this profound thought from the wall of my favorite chocolate store.  Eat chocolate.  It's good for ou!