sunshine on a cloudy day

It must be fall -- there's a cool, crisp bite to the air, my Jeep's covered in leaves, and pumpkin spice lattes are back in season. I baked pumpkin cream cheese muffins yesterday afternoon, and they turned out quite well!

The recipe is here.  I added some extra spices in addition to the cinnamon -- nutmeg and cardamom. Ginger would be nice, too, or substituting 1 T. pumpkin pie spice for the 2 tsp. cinnamon.  These are pretty light on the cream cheese filling, so if that's your favorite part, I recommend making a 1.5 batch of the filling. What else... I used half olive oil and half canola oil, as my olive oil was perhaps a bit more full-flavored than would be ideal.

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other sunny things

A Whippoorwill shawlette (rav link), in the scarf size.  I'm using the rest of the grey Plucky Knitter yarn from the contrast edging of my Damson, plus Yarntini in "honeytini" for a splash of accent color. 

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These are from the Renegade Craft Fair here in Chicago last Sunday.  Sofia Masri makes these lovely porcelain earrings and pendants.  I picked up two pairs of her earrings at last year's Renegade, too!

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pumpkins growing in the vegetable garden at Chenonceau, an amazingly beautiful castle spanning the Cher River in France

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Capricha, looking as gorgeous as ever