Heading for winter!

Now that we've passed the high point of this year, it's on the downside and into winter! I can feel it coming already! Oh, I dread winters! Why do I live in this part of the world? I've been asking that ever since I was 12--- still haven't been able to change it.

Ted was remarking at how light it still is at 9:30 in the evening. Well, yes, silly boy -- it's summer! When we were young at home, Mom had a real hard time trying to convince us that it was time to get to bed on a school night when it was still perfectly daylight and we weren't finished playing yet! But that is how summer is "way up north". Hahaha... and I'm in the south of the province!

I took these pics at 10 pm out my window facing east and a bit north. You can still see the reflection of the sunset in some of the windows. It's hard to get a good pic with a digital of the gorgeous soft pastels of the skies at this time of day/night. It gets dark pretty fast after that, and by 10:30, it wasn't possible to get any pics of anything useful. It is still quite light out, enough that streets lights are only starting to come on. People from the East or South are always so amazed at how late the light stays with us in summer. We just accept that as normal around here. Of course, in winter, it's a whole different story! (won't go there)

Of course, we can't go thru a summer without extremes! So, just to show us that it's not all peaches and cream, we had a bit of hail only a couple of hours earlier. It came on quickly, altho I noticed the strange dark clouds forming at 6 pm, and only lasted a short time. It was about pea-sized hail, but I think it was heavier in the north end of the city; they seem to get the brunt of most storms. You will note that all the white on the rooftops is hail! It's quite fun to watch it come down-- when you are safely inside looking out! It can be quite painful to be caught in it outdoors! The plants will recover since there is quite a lot of growing season to come.

I know I shouldn't have continued working with that acrylic when I discovered why it felt so strange in my hands. I need to learn to trust my fingers more often! But I am stubborn that way: once I start, I will continue on to the very bitter end! So I did -- trying to tell myself that this is a practice piece to learn the correct way to increase and how to drop those stitches. And I did learn a few things! I just saw one live and in person at a LYS today... and it was very nice! It was knit with larger needles too, so it would go faster than this one did. With delicious yarn, it would be fun to do as well! Oh, well -- *sigh*

The LYS held a Summer Solstice Sale today and were open for a whole 12 hours. I hope they did well, and according to the number that were there within an hour of opening (me included), I think they did. They don't have run-of-the-mill yarns in their store, and I didn't buy much. The things I wanted were NOT on sale oddly! But some things were 20, 30 or 50% off, which is good. When I picked up a nice skein of Lorna's Laces in an interesting colourway and looked at the price ($69.95), I decided that I really didn't need it that badly. I did get some Noro Kureyon, but only because of the discount; I don't think it's really that great a yarn-- for my purposes, at least. A lot of the "fancy and expensive" yarns that are available today are not really my tastes, and I personally don't feel they are going to be around for long. They are fun and interesting (but way too expensive) and pretty garish -- a fad -- and will disappear in short order. I've been around a long time, so have seen many things come and go just as fast! All things come around again if you live long enough. However, the younguns need to have their opportunity to play with fun things while they can... and they ARE knitting!

So it's all a good thing.