This week’s Ten on Tuesday topic from Carole is Ten Things to Love about Fall:

1. Halloween: I believe that once upon a time this holiday was relegated to the kids, but no more. Adults have finally remembered how much fun it is to play dress-up. Plus, you get to carve a pumpkin and eat … er, I mean … hand out chocolate.
2. Thanksgiving: Another great holiday filled with eating, watching parades, and hanging out with the family. Plus, it marks the beginning to the Christmas season. But that’s another post.
3. Cooler days: While I love a hot day at the beach, I’d much prefer to count a year’s days that top 90 degrees on a single hand. Since this year I’d have to work through both of mine and then borrow six more friends’ hands, finally reaching several days of 60s and 70s in a row has been lovely. Plus, for the first time in months the a/c isn’t going 24/7.
4. A change in wardrobe: D.C.’s weather usually leaves us with all of our clothes strewn about the apartment, waiting to figure out if you’re really done with tanks and shorts until December. But at the same time, you do get to be reunited with your long sleeves and jeans and handknits.
5. Faster knitting production: While I do keep knitting year-round, you definitely slow down when your yarn starts to stick to you in June. I have a new pair of socks (pictures tomorrow, maybe) that I finished on Sunday night and am plowing away on several others, as well as a hat for a friend.
6. Cooler nights: With the window open, the Burrow cools off at night, which encourages cuddling, pulling up the duvet, and snuggling with the cats. Also, cozy pajamas, which I love.
7. The World Series: My team, the Mets, did not make the playoffs this year, nor did the hometeam, the Nationals. In instances like this, I root in favor of teams in the Northeast (Boston first, then the Yankees) and against the Braves. Finally, I root for the National League over the American League, because the designated hitter rule is stupid. Yes, it is a complicated system of sometimes conflicting allegiances.
8. Fall foods: Soup is no longer too hot to contemplate. Stews re-enter my life. Apples and their various baked dishes become a mainstay, as does hot apple cider.
9. My folks: October contains my parents’ anniversary (38 this year) and both their birthdays. It always seems like the month is a bit of a tribute to them.
10. Fall foliage: The colors of the mid-Atlantic are not as luscious as those of New England, lacking, as they do, the vibrant sugar maples. Yes, their golds are lovely, but it’s just not the same without those glowing reds. I’m feeling a little bittersweet about including this one because there is a possibility I won’t get home to see the New England colors this year for the first time since moving away. My heart breaks a little bit about it (particularly in combination with the previous item), but I saved it for last to minimize my likelihood of ending up in tears. Think it worked?

What do you love about the fall?

I had a hard time coming up with something to write about today, so I decided instead to share with you one of the songs I’ve been dancing around the house to lately:

Elsinore’s “Yes Yes Yes,” the title track to their second album that came out this summer:

If you’d like to dance around to it, too, or just listen to the superior studio recording, the song is available for free download from Amazon here or from not-Amazon here. (Both are legal copies.)

Down here in the mid-Atlantic, we still have plenty of end-of-summer produce mixed in with the fall fruits and veggies.

At the farmers’ market this morning, I picked up:

• The final nectarines of the season
• A couple of bunches of basil
• Fresh ginger
• The very last broccoli that hadn’t already been snatched up (this is just coming into season again and, apparently, was the popular vegetable this morning)
• A handful or two of baby Brussels sprouts for Rudi
• Che berries (In my ongoing quest to try all the great, weird things that grow locally, I picked a pint of these up; if I’d known they’d taste like watermelon, I might have passed.)
• A sweet potato
• A quart of apple cider
• Chestnuts
• A trio of dahlias
• Cheese and milk

Next week I need to remember to buy more butter, as I forgot I was out of commercial butter and had to resort to putting my good, expensive, farmers’ market butter in tonight’s apple brown betty. Granted, you could actually taste the buttery flavor in the topping in a way I doubt would have been achieved with a stick of normal butter, but, still, I think we’d better save that for a treat, rather than it becoming standard practice.

We’re two weeks into the new tv season. What are you finding worthwhile? What’s disappointed you? What are you still hoping to catch up on before too many episodes pile up in Hulu or on your dvr?

In our returning queue, we have Castle, The Mentalist, Bones, and Glee. The Good Guys will also be on our schedule when it starts up again this week.

Chuck, too, will join that list once we get caught up on the end of last season and the start of this one. The Big Bang Theory will have to wait for repeats of Bones to give us an off Thursday since CBS continues to refuse to stream it on the web and since we don’t want to watch their 8:30 show.

Among the new shows, we’re enjoying Raising Hope. I liked the first two episodes of Blue Bloods, which I watched while knitting last night. I’m always a fan of dramas that have a strong family connection in their subplots (like Castle does and Numb3rs did), so am pleased to find that family dinners will be a routine occurrence on the show.

I liked the two leads in Mike & Molly, but missed the second episode. I’m hoping the secondary characters will become a little less one-dimensional and that the fat jokes cease and desist. I’ll give it another couple shows before making a final call on it. The same cannot be said of Running Wilde, which I consciously turned off before Episode #2 could air. Not worth my time.

And we’re still hoping to catch Hawaii Five-O at least to determine if it’s worth watching online. Clearly we won’t be ditching Castle for it, but we’d be willing to pull it up on the computer if we liked it enough.

Huh. If you’d asked me how much television we watch, I’m not sure I would have guessed this much. And I really do find it fascinating that nearly every show I enjoy focuses on law enforcement in some way. Good thing I have Glee and Raising Hope to help balance me out!

October marks the annual knitting celebration of all things footie — Socktoberfest. Today is the beginning of the sixth annual month-long sock bash that Lolly has hosted, and we are all excited to kick it off on the right foot:

As you most likely know already, socks are my favorite thing to knit.

I knit them for myself.

I knit them for other people.

I knit with intricate patterns and I knit pretty plain pairs.

I knit with variegated yarn and I knit with solid yarn. Sometimes I knit with two different yarns at once.

And sometimes I even manage to finish multiple pairs on the same day.

I have a number of socks under way already, and many more exist only in my head (and in the form of potential socks in my yarn cupboard).

I’d like to finish a pair a week — one for each weekend of the month. How many do you think I’ll actually finish?

Or, how many new pairs do you think I’ll cast on?