First of all, a picture of the stash-enhancement obtained Thursday:



Secondly, I finished the Cotton Fantasy socks. This is the first time I tried (by rolling out more of the yarn and cutting a chunk out) to get the two to match. I'm wearing the socks today:



(It's hard to photograph your own feet)


Finally, I'm not entirely happy this morning. I have (and it shortly will be HAD) the only white mailbox on the street. Bad idea. Turns out that it was an ideal target for someone with a little too much free time. This person stole a pumpkin off of my neighbors' porch and chunked it at my mailbox. So there are two unhappy people on my street this morning: my neighbor, who pretty much lost a pumpkin (well, if she wants it, I don't think it's cracked but it is scraped up) and me, who lost a mailbox. All for a moment of laughs on the part of some anonymous person. This obviously happened late last night.

If I hadn't already spent so much money this fall, I'd look into getting one of those brick-fortified mailboxes. This is the second time since I've lived in this house (it will be 3 years Monday) that I've had to replace a mailbox because someone thought it would be funny to whack it.

And this is how I am: as I stood out there early this morning, trying to hammer the mailbox back into a sufficient shape that it would still be useful for a few days, I thought irritatedly: for this, I shouldn't hand out Hallowe'en candy this year. I mean, geez. I try to be good and nice and friendly and neighborly and all I get for my trouble are stolen sprinklers and bashed mailboxes. (And yes, I know, in many neighborhoods it's worse, but I live in a tiny town with literally NOTHING, I have to drive 1/2 hour to get to a bookstore, so it doesn't seem fair that I have to put up with petty crime in my neighborhood, too). But then I thought: it wasn't the little kids who did this. It was either bored teenagers or bored and shiftless young adults like the ones who used to live next door to me. I shouldn't hurt the kids just because some jerk takes out my mailbox. (Besides, I already have six bags of little 3 Musketeers and Snickers bars and I don't want those hanging around too much longer).