Well, I did indeed put cobwebs on my garden — or the remains of it — as I threatened to do and we have the spooky shadow machine ready. #2 son and I baked a Hallowe’en cake. I put on a costume and read stories at the store Trick or Treat last night — there I was with a fairy princess on my lap and assorted Ninjas and superheroes at my feet, reading four great spooky stories (Old Devil Wind, Very Scary, The Soup Bone, and Pumpkin Eye.) I read them over and over as new groups of children arrived — and of course with all the voices – so I may not have any singing voice for church today. Tonight our director is having his party, at which he will show a classic silent horror movie and play the accompaniment on his pipe organ. So I thought we were ready for Hallowe’en.

But #1 son played the nostalgia card last night. It was too bad, he said mournfully, that we didn’t have holiday surprises anymore, the way we did when the girls were at home.

It isn’t that they were girls. For all holidays, all their lives, I have done just as my mother did, and made a special holiday breakfast. I use seasonal paper plates and such, fill the cups with things like seasonal pencils and candy, and put a new holiday book or two on the table. It’s fun.

But aren’t they getting a little old for that? It’s like Easter baskets, or Christmas stockings. When you have a bunch of kids, they don’t all get too old together. So unless you make an arbitrary cutoff — no one over 12 gets the breakfast-table goodies or somethng — then there will necessarily be kids who continue to get the kiddie treats till they are way too old. Like 20, in #1 daughter’s case, because that’s how old she was when she got married and left home, but her youngest brother was still under 12. So the younger ones feel that they should also get the same things till the age of 20.

And I suppose there is no reason not to do it. As long as they are not groaning “Mommm! Don’t treat us like little kiiiiids!”, I suppose I can still make a special breakfast table for holidays. For all I know, my husband might like it, too. Okay, I have just talked myself into it. I’ll make a quick run to the grocery.

It is too late to knit anything for Hallowe’en. Dweezy already made something, but I just looked at the patterns in The Witches’ Handbook (Dart and Bird) and decided they wouldn’t get enough use. There were a skull-and-bones scarf and hat,  a peaked witch’s hat, and some witchy fingerless mitts. Somehow I cannot see myself wearing such things on any other occasion, nor anyone else in the family. I have made Hallowe’en sweatshirts for the family in the past, but knitting seems too much of a commitment. I may finish the table runner in time — if so, that will be enough crafting for today. The Witches’ Handbook is unfortunately out of print, so if you want to do some Hallowe’en knitting for next year, you will have to look elsewhere for patterns.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Thanksgiving knitting pattern. This is as it should be. Thanksgiving is all about food, family, and gratitude, and it wouldn’t benefit from being tarted up with other stuff. Christmas, however, is another matter. You can knit matching snowflake and reindeer sweaters for your whole family. There is no such thing as excess when it comes to Christmas knitting. You can make stuffed Santas if you feel like it, and no one will fault you. And Christmas lasts for 12 whole days. There are 55 days left till Christmas, which is enough time to make a sweater — or 4, if you are a turbo-knitter like Mayflower.

This morning, I plan to write about health. Knowing that, you may choose to click the magic xanga buttons and find someone who is writing about sports, or sex, or you, but just in case you decide to stay and read on, I will make the whole thing more palatable by digressing a lot — like Sesame Street.

We all know what to do for good health. First, we have to avoid risky behaviors like smoking, using drugs, and driving without seat belts. There are a lot more risky behaviors available now than there used to be, it would seem. I had not donated blood since before AIDS, so when I finally got around to doing so again yesterday, I was surprised by the questions they now ask. It used to be that you had to step on a scale and prove you wieghed over 110 pounds, and maybe they asked if you had syphilis. Now they ask you questions like “Have you ever, even just once, had sex with a man who was born in Africa or visited there between 1977 and 1996?” and “Have you ever, even once, had sex with a man who has traded sex for money or drugs?” And stuff about medical treatments which I can’t remember because I didn’t understand them at the time. But I figured, if I didn’t recognize the words, I probably hadn’t had any such drugs. My mother includes all prescription drugs under “risky behavor,” and intends to live to 130, crowing over her contemporaries who gave in and took them.

And you have to handle stress well, and live a balanced life. On this topic, I have been conversing lately with Matt+ LotsofNumbers (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Matt62842003 ) about materialism versus voluntary simplicity. Allow me to share a link with you that I sent to him: http://www.simpleliving.org/catalog/Alternatives.html. This site has a lot of links and readings on spiritual choices that can make all the difference to your stress level and thus your health. A balanced life also includes sleeping enough, by the way, those of you who are reading this early because you stayed up all night.

The third thing you have to do for your health is to exercise. This is really non-optional. The list of good things that regular exercise does for you is so long that even I would not attempt to post it here. When you are young, you can be an utter slug without feeling too very awful, but as you get older, exercise becomes more essential to your well-being. And it is so much easier to get into the habit of exercising when you are young that you ought to just give a present right now to your older self and start exercising that essential 30 minutes a day most days, with weight training 2-3 times a week. Your future self will thank you. You cannot be sure, after all, that you will die young. That was my husband’s plan, but now here he is in sight of a half century, and he not only hasn’t died yet, but hasn’t even come up with a means of doing so. So it is good to have a Plan B, and that should include having begun exercising regularly back when you were young.

The last thing you have to do is eat right. We all also know what that means. While there have been occasional mad notions like all-the-steak-and-butter-you-want, it has been the general consensus for over a century that the healthy things to eat are these five: whole grains, fruits and vegetables, reasonable amounts of lean meats (including fish and chicken), non-fat dairy products, and seasonings other than salt, sugar, and saturated fat. In the days before this was recognized as the healthy way to eat, people didn’t have anything else to eat most of the time anyway, so the question did not arise. However, most of us can look into our kitchens right now (or our dorm fridges or desk drawers or what have you) and find many things not on that list.

Between March and October, having had a stern warning from my doctor, I cleaned up my act as far as my eating habits went. I say I was 90% perfect, and #2 daughter says it was more like 70%, but either way I was pretty good. When I got the results of my blood test last week, I took a healthy eating vacation, which is scheduled to end on Monday, so that I can have some Hallowe’en treats before returning to my attempts at perfection.

The serious attempt at eating perfectly, and the subsequent vacation, have led me to the following observations:

1. The five things we are supposed to eat (see above) are actually quite good, once you get used to eating that way, and if you had nothing else to choose from, you would not feel deprived by only having healthy things to eat.

2. It is very easy to eat unhealthy things when there are lots of them around. In fact, while eating a healthy lunch — say, vegetable soup, a whole-grain roll, broccoli slaw, and an apple – you are likely to get bored and not bother to finish it all. While eating pizza and ice cream and cookies, however, you are likely to eat more than you realize. I don’t know why this is, but I assume it is part of the food manufacturer’s marketing strategy to make all their foods as “more-ish” as possible. This means that we are unlikely to get more niacin than is good for us, but can easily eat more salt and sugar than we should.

Now that we all know what we ought to do for perfect health and happiness , allow me to revisit the question of long sleeves. I mentioned the number of women of my generation who are frustrated by the extra-long sleeves on current knitting patterns. Chanthaboune, a fan of long sleeves, has explained their appeal.She says it much better than I could paraphrase, so here is her comment:

“I am a monster huge fan of the long sleeves. What it does (in my mind at least) is provide the feeling of being cozy while bypassing the oversized sweatshirts and sweaters. So you have a fitted sweater with cozy arms! Also I have tiny, scrawny, ridiculous arms so it is the rough equivalent of bell bottom pants for your arms.”

Now we know.

Ahhyee (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=ahhyee ) says it is hard to learn to knit from a book, and that is true. I have three things to say about that.

The first is that there are a lot of books with beginning knitting instructions nowadays, and they are more complete than they used to be. For longtime knitters like me, this can be a little bit frustrating, actually. I went to check out the new crop of knitting books, and it seems that way too many pages are spent on basic instruction. Then there are some basic patterns that all the books have. And a bunch of projects whose instructions might just as well say “Make a rectangle in stockinette.” And finally, one or two original ideas — but not enough to make it worth buying the book. So, in a way, it is a good time to be learning to knit from books. If I were going to choose one book for learning to knit, it would be Kids Knitting by Melanie Falick. Not onyl does it have good basic instructions, it breaks the process down and has a project for each step. So you can make things as you go along, with each new skill, instead of just practicing.

The second is that there are lots of knitters out there, and most of them would be glad to show a new knitter how. Learning from a human is quick, and then you can go home and perfect your skills. There’s the local knitting shop, of course, if you have one, but what about calling your local nursing home to ask whether any of the inhabitants would let you visit and learn to knit? It would be exciting for the teacher and a great opportunity for the student.

The third is that there is a traditional rhyme which is used to teach children how to knit. Here it is:

“In through the front door [put the right-hand needle through the loop on the left hand needle],

Once around the back [throw the yarn around the right-hand needle]

Peep through the window [pull the right-hand needle with the yarn through to the front]

And off jumps Jack!” [pull the stitch off the left-hand needle]

If you recite this as you knit, or as you show someone else how to knit, you will find that it makes the whole thing very easy to remember.

This morning I woke up to torrential rains, rolling thunder, enormous claps of thunder with concurrent cracks of lightning.

I like rain, actually.

Then I had to go to the doctor, to discuss my blood. Actually, to discuss cholesterol. Mine is not bad yet, but he foresees troubles. My triglycerides are not good. The doctor wants me to take medicines which I consider unpleasant, expensive, and possibly dangerous. I don’t think of myself as likely to have to deal with heart disease. It doesn’t run in my family, I live right, and I’m a calm person. I don’t think I’m the type for heart disease.

Can you imagine the doctor’s face as I explain this to him? He points out that the side effects and dangers I am concerned about are extremely rare, while heart disease is very common. To him, I seem to be fretting about being struck by lightning and singing tra la la about car accidents.

But he agrees that I can have another three months to try to lower my triglycerides. He doesn’t think it will work. He thinks my problem is a genetic one. If it were going to work, it would have done so already. I told him I had been about 90% perfect as far as the lifestyle modifications went. But #2 daughter says she thinks it was only 70%. Even 70%, however, would have made some improvement — and my numbers got worse. So the doctor thinks that I will try to follow all the guidelines 100%, come back in three months, and need to take the drugs anyway. And, for that matter, still have to continue trying to be perfect. For the rest of my life.

#1 son says he doesn’t want to sound selfish, but he would rather I had high triglycerides than have to eat all those vegetables. #2 son says he really really really really really wants candy. #2 daughter says to make separate meals for myself and just not eat their stuff. She says that will be hard but necessary, just like her classes. She sounded very stalwart about it, at least over the IM screen. I haven’t asked #1 daughter yet. My mother doesn’t believe in cholesterol, and my husband doesn’t believe in doctors, so they are biased. But they say not to take the drugs.

I intend to wait until after Hallowe’en to be perfect.

Knowing that all of you rushed off to get a copy of Possession on the strength of my recommendation, I feel that I must tell you — in the interests of full disclosure — that I was alone in loving this book. Only one other member of the book club actually read it all the way through. The rest gave up early on, because they disliked the characters, couldn’t slog through the poetry, etc. One shut the book and watched the movie instead, and she said it was very good, too.

Cleverboots came in and I told her this sad tale, and she asked what the essential problem with the book was. “Well,” I frowned, “I guess it had too many … words… in it.” I think I didn’t express the problems well. I was going to jump in and tell Cleverboots all the wonderful things about the book, and offer to lend it to her, when she explained, “I don’t read.”

Well, that did it. I try to be restrained about books, and not to press too many of them onto unwilling friends. True, once Cleverboots escaped my clutches by admitting her non-reader status, it came out in the conversation that The Empress and That Man have a couple of books I have forced upon them. However, as I pointed out, I only make people take books home, I don’t follow them to make sure they actually read the books. (Are you wondering? The Pianist and Gullible’s Travels. And Partygirl has Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Hey, they’re all very good books.)

I had been intending to tell the Book Club ladies about another wonderful book — To Say Nothing of the Dog. However, since it was sort of an “If you liked Possession you’ll also like…” situation, and they had hated Possession, I didn’t get very far with that. If you liked Possession, though, consider To Say Nothing of the Dog.

Non-readers might enjoy the little item I found in my mailbox today: the new Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. Do you think I am going to be snide about the $89 jeans with holes and frayed edges? No, of course not. For another $100, you can have patches on the holes. I will put patches on your jeans for half that. And I bet you could get someone to wear your jeans for you for a year, too, for under $89. But A&F is faster. Or did you think I would be snippy about the half-naked models? No, no. I don’t entirely get what those two boys are doing with the belt under the tree, but it’s none of my business.

No, I just wanted to point out the length of the sleeves. Many adult knitters complain about the overly long sleeves on current knitting patterns. Some even describe themselves as having “stubby little arms” on the strength of their experiences with recent sweater patterns. In fact, you will notice that all the A&F sleeves are a good six inches longer than the sweaters. While they look as though they were designed for an El Greco-esque race of beings with strangely attentuated arms, it is in truth simply that this is the style. Fashionable sleeves hang artistically down around the wearer’s knuckles, or are pushed up.

This is what has happened with Siv, the Viking sweater I knitted this summer. I have worn Siv, since it has gotten a bit cooler, and I still love the pattern. But the sleeves are very long. I lifted them up a little and sewed them in high — “Those are captain’s shoulders,” said #2 son, who is sometimes too perceptive for his own good, and doesn’t seem to know the word “epaulettes.”. Even so,  the sleeves are too long. Pushing them up adds a horizontal pleating effect to the captain’s sleeves look, so the sleeves take over the lovely Siv.

This may be one reason that so many modern knitters stick with scarves.You get the droopiness without dragging your sleeves through the sauce.

Since I am doing a second DNA scarf immediately after finishing the first, it is natural that I should compare them, isn’t it? I don’t do this with my kids, of course. I love each for his or her own special qualities, without any possibility of loving one more than another. But these scarves are not sentient beings. They aren’t even entirely organic. They won’t care.

So here they are, the two DNA scarves. The fisherman’s Wool-ease has an immediate advantage in terms of texture. Natural color wool (and even its blended cousins) shows up the textures much better. The crunchy seed stitch, the lush ribbing, the eccentric cables all look so much better in the subtle color variations of the fisherman wool. On the other hand, the Signature is such a lovely shade of blue. The fisherman calls out for tweed jackets, but the blue could dress up a lot more. Becoming to a blue-eyed person, too.

The Signature also has a softer hand than the Wool-ease. There is a slight scratchiness to the fisherman’s-color scarf – not noticeable, of course, once you’ve got your tweed jacket on, but again a point in favor of the blue.

The fisherman’s has a finer gauge, so that scarf is a little smaller than the blue, which can be a plus or a minus, depending on preference.

The third DNA scarf is to be in a soft cream wool, not yet chosen or bought. But once I start it, won’t there be further variations I’ll want to try? Natalie’s is grey, though it has a look of green to it on my computer. I have some handsome grey wool that might enjoy being a DNA scarf…

I did finish the book. I skipped the gym, sent #2 son off on the bus, and ignored the housework, but it was worth it. An excellent book.

I unpacked French baby dolls at work yesterday. They announced that they wore baby clothes size 14, which does not exist, and that they were washable at 40 degrees, which was mystifying. After all, we are not going to throw these dollies in the washer. Are they suggesting that we can hand-wash them as long as the water remains at 40 degrees centigrade? Do French faucets have thermometers, or is this a meaningful number for those on the metric system? That is, everyone in the world except us.

But French labels are not the most fun. For one thing, I can read them in French, so even funny translations are not that funny. I may notice that “Mademoiselle Rose” is not quite the same in its effect as “Miss Pink,” but it isn’t really amusing. Chinese labels are much more entertaining. When I unpacked the Chinese toys last week, I learned the following “Installation Method”: “Attached to your belt, beltness slacks, skirt or training suit bottom using the clip.” A game said to follow the directions “with utmost care” and without departing from those instructions “in the slightest degree.” Both of these phrases are, of course, perfectly proper English, but seem a little dramatic for a game.

When I taught English, I had a student who had an English phrase book. It stressed the importance of using idioms with care, and then offered such common American idioms as “Are they adam and eving it?” and “Hang it all, she is a hang dog!”

I like these unusual approaches to English. They are like found poetry. “Upon upfloating, stir” is a charming phrase. And often they are sufficiently divorced from whatever it was that the writer had in mind that we can only guess at the possible meaning. Here is a website that collects this intriguing form of English:  http://engrish.com/

Speaking of poetry, here it is Book Club day and I am not finished with Possession. I read it at the gym yesterday, on the treadmill, and last night as I started the ribbing on the second DNA scarf, but I am only at the crisis of the plot, and truly have no idea how the thing is going to end. Having listened to several of my sons’ teachers telling me that the boys weren’t doing their homework as consistently as they might (it was parent-teacher conference day), I am feeling a bit cross with myself for failing to begin this book soon enough.

Possession is an impressive book. If it were only a novel, it would be worth reading. The characters are complex and interesting. The story is suspenseful. The settings are interesting and well-described. But the impressive thing about this book is that the author has created a world of other writings: the poetry of the two fictional Victorian poets, the critical writings of several literature scholars, letters and diaries. All the works are so different from one another that I had to google the poets to make sure they were fictional.

Will I have it read in time for Book Club? Possibly not. I procrastinated about beginning it, and then got busy and ran out of time. I may have to skim the ending and then go back and finish it later.

Over the weekend, #2 daughter told us about a fellow student who used “How is your walk with God?” as a conversational opener. She told it as a funny story, with her helpless reaction as the humor, and most of us saw it immediately: the conversation opener which is really a conversation stopper. Like the “How do I look?” which makes the listener run frantically through all sorts of possible responses, knowing that only one — but which one? – will not lead to hurt feelings. Or the little verbal clues that let you know that the person who has come in is not a prospective client, but an insurance salesman. We all know that feeling, when a conversation turns us into a deer in the headlights, trying to figure out how to escape.

However, one of our number was accustomed to this conversational sally. He knew what was supposed to come next. When someone asks you about your walk with God, he explained, you answer with the kinds of things that you have been struggling with in your spiritual life, or what you have been reading on the subject. Armed with this knowledge, we can now have a satisfying conversation with those who use this gambit, instead of shunning them.

Mary Alice was telling me, too, how as a therapist she was able to help kids who are bullied to change the body language they use so that they no longer walk around saying, “I’m a victim! Pick on me!” She was talking about my kids, and the level of confidence they have, which ensures that they can manage in new social settings, even if they are shy or small or eccentric (and I will not say which of my kids have these characteristics).

Possession shows amazing control over language. Hardly anyone has so much control over language that they can write poetry that seems to have been written by two different people. In our daily lives, very small additions to our stock of control over language can make the difference between social success and failure. Or between a sense of helplessness and confidence. Or a desire to escape people who are different from us and an enjoyment of their differences.

What a busy weekend! I’ve done nothing on the clogs, but the DNA scarf has grown a bit. Can you find the error? #2 daughter did, without even being asked to do so, but I feel that other, less visual people will not notice, or hold it against me if they do. I surely am not going to frog this scarf all the way back to that error!

We took Mary Alice to see the working grist mill, the lake, and the odd historic district. While I was glad that the scenery behaved itself and showed off to advantage, talking was the main entertainment. Then #2 daughter and friends arrived, and we spent the evening playing silly games and discussing serious issues. And eating Hallowe’en cookies, of course.

Sunday we went to church and then to one of the local battlefield parks, where we hiked and talked, and the kids threw horse apples (the fellow from Oklahoma calls them “snake apples”). Afterwards, we talked about visiting the fleshpots of our little town or some other energetic activity, but #1 son was enthusiastic about playing more games, so that is what we did. I think our guests needed a weekend of home cooking and family fun before they went back to their more stressful lives.

Mary Alice’s job is to decide who should get the spaces available in psychiatric hospitals in the L.A. area. There are not enough spaces to go around, so she has to determine which of the many candidates are the sickest. I think I would find that very stressful.

The Jewells of Knowledge have midterms coming up, so they are at a stressful point in the semester, regardless of what other stressors they may or may not have. I think Key Lime pie and scuffling through plenty of leaves probably helped.

I was sorry that I wasn’t able to arrange for more music for Mary Alice. We had a house full of musicians, but couldn’t even come up with a decent jam session, although there was one Bob Dylan song that half of us knew. Different folks did a few little performances, but like most people who perform for larger audiences, were disinclined to living room performances. Playing together would have been fun, but with an age range from early teens to mid-50s — and musical habits ranging from garage band to opera– we found that we had very few songs in common. (Although, while playing Cranium, I was surprised at how many of the old “humdingers” songs the Emo King knew. “Girl from Ipanema”?)

Here we are in an area famous for its folk music, and I am so totally not in touch with the local folk scene. All the musicians I know are professional and/or classical musicians, and we just don’t get together for a little spontaneous Barber. Mary Alice, on the other hand, conducts most of her social life within the Folk Scene back in her town. and here she came to the heart of the tradition, and heard nothing but Franck and Dashboard Confessional (I may have that wrong, but I know there was a dashboard in it somewhere). She might have enjoyed coming to rehearsals, I suppose, but we don’t rehearse ont he weekends — the church choir director was out of town, even, so there wasn’t even a little Sunday morning one).

We went to a Baptist church, in hopes of getting to join in with some gospel music, and the hymns for the week turned out to be by Beethoven and Vaughn Williams. They also had an excellent sermon on the importance of the division between church and state. Since both of the visiting guys were Baptists, I was eager to hear their thoughts. As soon as we got out to the car, everyone started talking about how surprising and un-typically-Baptist the service had been. Since Mary Alice generally attends either a Zen Buddhist temple or Friends meetings, it was still a new experience for her, but I had expected that she would get to hear “Jesus is Coming Soon” or “I’ll Fly Away,”  and join in on eight or nine choruses of “Just as I Am” for an altar call. Ah, well.

It was a wonderful weekend.

The new DNA scarf is well into the second repeat. Cables always look their best in natural color yarn — although I do not look my best in it, so I will continue to cable in colors. This one is intended for someone else, who will I think look very nice in it.

I haven’t yet settled on a new clog-knitting personality, but I did run upon a very fun website that made me feel as though perhaps my real personality might be precise enough for the job.

Another Knitting Blog, which always has surprising and cool links, sent me to this one: http://www.x-entertainment.com/halloween/2004/october13/   This particular entry is about making Hallowe’en cookies. But it is by someone who does not know how to make cookies. Who, indeed, does not understand cookies at all. You can tell that he is having a lot of fun, though. In fact, the whole site is full of craft directions and recipes, but in the voice of — well, not the kind of person you usually associate with crafts and recipes. As he puts it himself, “I stand tall in knowing that few shrunken apple head guide writers used curse words.” He does not seem to have any actual skills or knowledge when it comes to cooking and crafts, but he has step-by-step photos and is more fun to read than most of the actually useful sites of this type. I think you will just have to go to this site yourself, since I cannot describe it usefully.

Please do not follow the directions for making those cookies, though. I am making Hallowe’en cookies myself, today, so I can tell you how if you need this information.  

Gather some suitable cookie cutters. We have about a dozen at our house, including bats, cats, skulls, ghosts, and of course pumpkins, but I will tell you shortly how to manage without any. You also need cookie dough. Ideally, you would have pale dough (sugar or almond) for your ghosts and skulls, medium dough (spice or orange) for your pumpkins, and dark dough (chocolate or chocolate pepper) for the bats and cats. You mix these one day when you feel energetic and put them in the refrigerator. You can also buy cookie dough, as the fellow at X-entertainment, did, but it will not taste as good as real ones. Here is a recipe: http://dessert-recipes.info/cookies/pogens-gingersnaps.htm . I leave the shortening out of this one (increase the butter a little if you like), and chill it and roll it out instead of following the directions exactly, and it makes a truly great spice cookie.

Later, when you feel playful, you cut them all out and bake them. This is the point at which you will be able to get helpers to join you. They will lose interest and give up after the first panful, but take advantage of the opportunity anyway. The more cookies cutters you have at this point, the more cookies will be cut before your helpers get bored and leave.

Roll the dough thin on a cutting board, adding flour if necessary to keep it from sticking. Cut shapes out with a cookie cutter. If you do not own any Hallowe’en cookie cutters, you can use a glass, and call it  a pumpkin. Or a spider web (the feathering described below works very well for spider webs). Or you can cut the dough with a knife into rectangles and pinch them in near each end to make bone shapes.

Now, here is where X-entertainment really went astray. You do not have to bake all the cookies at one time. You can do it in shifts. Fill another pan with cookie cutouts while the first ones are in the oven. Note that smaller cookies will bake faster than larger ones. You can therefore make sure to fill pans with similar-sized cookies, or you can mix sizes and know that you will have small crisp ones and large chewy ones, thus satisfying both crisp and chewy preferences.

Then you make icing. Put a bit of powdered sugar in a cup. Thin it with egg white if you are not scared of salmonella, or with cream and a little vanilla, or even with lemon juice. Alternately add sugar and the liquid to reach the consistency that you prefer. This is the creative part, so don’t let anyone tell you what to do. (Unless you are nervous, in which case use 1/2 c powdered sugar, 1/2 t vanilla, and 2 T cream. And relax.)

Make several different cups of icing and tint each one with a different color, if you want to get fancy. Paste food coloring works better than liquid, and is more economical in the long run. If you intend to be very lavish with the icing, you should be aware that black food coloring tastes terrible. The best use for black icing is to put tiny dot eyes onto your cookies with the end of a wooden matchstick. Ghost-shaped cookies dipped into plain white icing and then dotted with black eyes make a very elegant effect, and are quick.

If you feel more creative, you can put the icing into plastic bags and snip off a tiny corner, to make an icing bag. Pipe icing around the edge of any shape, and perhaps add some geometric patterns on the inside. The same kinds of patterns you use for quilting will work well for cookies. I also like to do jazzy squiggles. Another good thing to do with icing on Hallowe’en cookies is to make lines or spirals with icing and then draw a knife through the icing, up and then down, alternately. This is feathering, and it make wonderful designs on the cookies.

Allow the decorated cookies to set completely before you stack them. If this sounds like too much trouble, you can read the link above, and then cut up carrots and celery and apples, which are better for you anyway, and also look very festive. Some people ice their vegetables by mixing cream cheese and cream to an icing consistency and then coloring it, but these people are fooling themselves. Little piped cucumber rounds will still not appeal to guests the way cookies will. If you do not intend to serve cookies, you might as well be honest about it.