To Thee, Alone, Will I Be Faithful.

Project monogamy is a wonderful thing. I have finished the centre panel of Print o' the Wave, picked up all 640 stitches around the edge, and knit the first row. I've only been knitting this thing for 10 days. It's coming together super fast - I think the final total will be around two weeks.

Yesterday I went to Fun Knits with Karen to pick up my first ever Addi Turbo. It's one of their new lace needles - 3.5mm in diameter and 120 centimeters long. This is one big needle. I have to say, I am completely wild about it. The cable is so smooth and just the right amount of flexible, without being too floppy. The join is everything it should be (although I can see a little gap in there, which could prove problematic if you were knitting with a very fine or splitty yarn) and the tips.....oh, the tips. They are fairly sharp (not as sharp as my Boye 14" straights, which easily draw blood) and despite the smoothness of the needle, are somehow grippy. I am not sure what dread hand or eye framed that fearful symmetry, but it was genius...this needle is ideally suited to its task. It was well worth my $25.

So I am now quite sympathetic with all those people who blog about the futility of photographing lace in progress: get a load of this very educational picture of the Print o' the Wave stole centre panel, on the new Addi Lace needle with 640 stitches picked up around the edge, corner markers in place. (Thanks for the markers, Natalie!)

Clear as mud.

Although it's only the end of August, fall seems to be here already. I read this beautiful paragraph from one of my favourite bloggers yesterday, and it made me shiver.

The summer is gone and the wool-sweater months are here once again. For the last few nights the temperature has dipped below zero for a short while. In the mornings the fog has been lying on the lake. Most of the leaves are still green but here and there are few early-birds where you can spot colours changing and a few have fallen off. The moment of standing outside in the very early hour today by the lake drinking the first cup of coffee and breathing the foggy morning air felt very good. When I stepped into the warm kitchen the contrast between the warm inside and cold outside was clear and I loved the feeling of rubbing cold hands against eachother to warm them up a bit. It is definately a wool season again.

I admit I actually cried a little bit when I read it. I don't know what it is about Lene, but I think I get teary-eyed more often reading her blog than any other. Partly I think I romanticize life above the Arctic Circle...and who wouldn't, the way she presents it. She has a quiet, introspective style that seems perfectly suited to her life there in northern Finland, with her lake and her caribou and her smiley dog. Partly, too, there is a truth about her words because, though she blogs in English, it isn't her mother tongue. Somehow her emotions emerge more clearly because of this...there isn't a lot of verbal clutter in her sentences. (Unlike, say, mine.)

Anyway, I think wool weather is almost here on the west coast of Canada, too. The nights have been cold lately...nothing like Lene's lakeside home, where it has gone below zero already, but I've needed St Brigid a couple of times this month. The garden is still thriving, though I can tell things are slowing down quite a bit.

The rose bush, complete with elegant garden spider taking her chances in her new web. It's almost egg-laying time for these ladies - they are all over the place outside. The rose bush is the one thing that will bloom until November if properly trimmed of dead flowers...last year it was quite beautiful. These particular roses smell lovely, too - after three years I am finally reaping the rewards of putting every banana peel we generate, around it.

Every June I agonize over spending Mr HalfSoledBoots' hard-earned cash on annuals, and every August I wish I had spent more.

The bamboo has come back, at last, after almost being wiped out by a February cold snap way back in aught-five.

Tonight Charlotte goes for her first ever friend's-house-sleepover. I have a feeling the phone will ring sometime between 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM and selfishly, I rather hope it does.