Halloween and harvest

So I have finally gathered in all the pumpkin and squash from the allotment - don't they look pretty?



I made a table runner for Halloween. I am not a huge fan of orange and black, but adding the purple works really well! We don't go trick or treating but always light a fire, have a lantern and a special meal. (usually a Chinese - not very traditional I know but our favourite!) When I was growing up the lantern was always a swede picked from the field next to the house (my dad was a farmer). Boy oh boy they were hard to carve! I always kept the swede carving tradition going when I left home, but when I got an allotment I did decide that as long as I had grown the pumpkin myself I could use one! So the last couple of years we have had pumpkin lanterns, much to my relief :-)



Finally here is some vintage bunting I was lucky enough to find at a car boot sale in the summer. The youngest it can be is from the 1950's as one of the flags is an Australian flag with a red background instead of the blue we see today. Apparently the red background was used in Australia a fair bit during the first world war but by the 1950's the blue one had become the main flag. Fascinating stuff! I love to think that those little flags might have been used in a village hall to celebrate the end of the war, summer fairs, Christmas, the coronation.... the list goes on! The bunting was damp and covered in mildew when I got it, but after a very gentle hand wash it came up good. I am going to turn a number of the flags (some of them are damaged) into a patchwork cushion for my sister and brother in law. Watch this space!