Bluestockings & Orange Wellies: Welcome to the Degu Station!

[ifIwerenotanandroid]

Well, that's self-explanatory, I think.

Previously known as:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5176773-bluestocking-the-gerbical?page=1

The animals are all coming as...

I haven't had a trick of treater knock on my door in about the last decade. It's a total none event in my part of deepest darkest Peru.

I bloody hate Halloween it is an Americanism, nothing to do with me being a miserable old fucker

The local pumpkin crop has failed. Blamed on climate change.
I'll have to go trick or treating in my wellies and a bobble hat.

We used to get trick or treaters for quite a few years, at the time when dd was wanting to T&T too. But it seems to have tailed off (some years no one), and as we really don't want to buy sweets that don't get eaten, we turn off the lights at the front of the house and ignore the doorbell.

Seems around here now you have to have Halloween stuff outside your house to permit a door knock.

The pigs don't seem too fussed, just a request that they get first dibs if there are any leftover pumpkins.

We went to a local fete des plantes yesterday and I bought some succulents for my mini planters that I make, and one blokey had a cat based stall and I got a set of 8 cat cookie cutters. Which once I've made cat pizza and biscuits for this week's pit firing, I'll be using in the pottery.

The excitement was too much for me, but the pit is now dug and so now we wait. Awake at stupid o'clock thanks to the clock wankery.

Morning @AlisonDonut I'm awake too, one coffee down.
I am enormously jealous of cat shaped cutters and may have to go searching (Amazon) for some. Although could I bring myself to eat something cat-shaped?

I don't do Halloween, but love the pictures!

All the best for today - I wrote that yesterday but it didn't post so just amended it so that I didn't look totally out of it.

Clock wankery got me into the shower at 5,45 but I am back in bed and womanfully ignoring cattish claims of imminent death from starvation.

It's a bank holiday, but the crafters are meeting up regardless - we'll have to put the chairs and tables away ourselves as 'the men' will be away, but we'll cope.

All the best, puffling.

I'm going to make a fair few little cat dishes out of that middle cat face cutter. So cute.

Sending positive thoughts to @FuzzyPuffling this morning.

An hour to eye time...thank you all for the support.
All will be well. X

I'm sending you lots of good thoughts, @FuzzyPuffling - hopefully you'll be in and done in a timely manner.

Eyes fingers crossed for you ❤️

in a hospital somewhere...

Best wishes @FuzzyPuffling

You'd love my rant[s] over on Craicnet about this, Bannedontherun!

After millennia of celebrating Halloween/Samhain as the Celtic New year+harvest+otherworld festival, it suddenly morphed into this hideous Americanised ghoulfest of zombies and bats and bloody severed limbs and spiders. All made out of plastic, of course. And 'wicked' witches? when did that piece of misogyny become respectable again?

We used to dress up and go from house to house asking 'Any apples or nuts for the party?' - no threat of a 'trick' if we didn't get a 'treat' - and then there'd be an evening of fun and games, fortune-telling, apple-bobbing, barm brack, trying to break open the coconut which was only ever on sale in Ireland in October - great fun!
Later there'd be ghost stories for the adults and older kids, but it was 99% a fun party for the kids, not a severed limb or tombstone in sight.

I always open the door to the little kids around here, although I have to grit my teeth when they chirp 'Trick or treat!' - this is Ireland, not the US of A, kids😠

I give them sweets and money, because I want them to enjoy Halloween, but everybody gets a polished apple as well, for old time's sake

Perhaps we could have a proper Halloween get together up on Peak Woo for an hour or so, before swooping back down to the Bluestocking on our besoms (aka the zipwire) for a nice bowl of something warming? I think it'd be a shame to completely deprive the gerbils and the quokkas, they've been looking forward and at least one of the Sparticats has been getting into character for weeks.

I lived in a West Riding pit village in the late 50s. I don’t think we celebrated Halloween, but I definitely remember Mischief Night.

According to a quick online search it was Yorkshire tradition, although happening in other places too. It was on the night before Bonfire Night. I remember going out with my cousin who lived in the next village, no adults. I would have been aged 8 at most, and she is a year or so younger.

I just stuck my head round the door of the costume department. The final fitting is currently ongoing

The Sparticat’s whisker nearest to the scissors looks shorter than the ones to either side of it.

It is a very fine costume and cat, though.

The shortened whisker... Battle wound!

Well, I'm entertained.