Autumnal Acceptance

I gave up on summer back in July and found that I've been much happier with the weather since then. Never getting above 20C/68F is much easier to accept in autumn than summer, even if the calendar still says "August". Chris was sad when I gave up on summer, mostly I think because he wants me to be happy and I'm meant to spend warm afternoons on a deckchair, reading in my bathing suit but that's never going to be my life in Scotland. Happiness is in accepting your life for what it is, not railing for what it isn't, so I've decided to accept that I've moved from a land of three seasons (spring-summer-fall) to a land of three seasons (spring-autumn-winter). The good news, of course, is that I now live in a land where knitting is always appropriate and everyone can use a pair of mittens or a wooly hat or scarf for Christmas ("if you wanted a cable-knit scarf, I wish you would've said something in June!").

Anyway, Chris said it wasn't autumn yet and that we still have a bit of summer left but the trees agree with me - their leaves are starting to turn the colour of sunset and drop. There's a tiny maple(?) in our back garden that's always the first to turn: it gave up on summer the same time I did and now other trees are trying to catch up. The days are also noticeably shorter. No longer is the sky still light with twilight when we seek our beds at midnight. No, the sun goes down by half-eight/eight-thirty and a little earlier every day, and we have to turn on the lights, when we got to bed at ten.

Autumn is a time of hearty food so I turn to my crock-pot and the infinite variety of stews that "bung in whatever you have to hand" can bring. Last week I did a beef and scotch broth with celery, carrots, potatoes, garlic, and rosemary and sage from the garden. This week it's turkey with green/runner beans, carrots, onions, celery, garlic, and thyme and sage from the garden. I'm quite proud of my little herbs, the ones that haven't gone to seed (I'm looking at you coriander/cilantro and oregano). The nice thing about a big pot of stew is being able to freeze it and defrost two servings at a time, heated up with a fresh made dumpling/biscuit topping, and getting a week's worth of dinners with very little effort. Stew can also be heated from frozen, so even if you don't think to pull out a lock'n'lock/tupperware in the morning, you have a last-minute meal that doesn't involve take-away/take-out.

Today I knit a hat

Today I knit a hat while watching the Scottish Open, hosted here in my lovely corner of the Highlands. The golfer I was cheering for, selected randomly because I like his name, didn't do well but I think he's previously earned his invitation to the British Open next weekend, so I may or may not continue watching and root for him in an entirely distracted manner. It's worth noting that my only interest in watching today was to see coverage of my new home (and the swanky golf course everyone keeps talking about).

Did you hear about the freaky weather we've been having? I personally have no reference (I've wintered here twice but this is my first summer) but I'm told this isn't a place that gets oodles of rain or thunderstorms and this weekend we've had both - so much so that the golf course flooded and the surrounding hillsides slid down across the course. The thunder woke us both up shortly before 5am, Saturday morning, three or four miles off. It quieted down and we got back to sleep but it continued to rain and occasionally thunder throughout the day - especially over the golf course. We weren't going to watch the match but followed the news throughout the day as they kept postponing the start time before eventually calling it off altogether at 7:30pm. Very disappointing for the Highlands as getting this tournament is quite the coup. Fortunately the sun came out in the evening and things dried up a bit and, while it rained off and on at our place today, the course mostly stayed dry.

Yesterday, we went to the local garden centre and bought oodles of bird food, mostly b1g1, and an African Violet for me. We also got new water bowls for the cats as Chris is convinced that the reason they like drinking from the Christmas Tree stand (yes, we still have it out in July for Oliver and Libby to drink from, no we don't still have the tree) is that it's bigger and they can both drink at the same time. So we bought a really big bowl for downstairs, where the tree stand was (they seem to like it well enough even though it says DOG), and a slightly-smaller-but-still-bigger-than-their-previous-water-bowl bowl with polka dots for upstairs.

Today we slept in, cleaned (I hoovered downstairs and the stairs, Chris did the loos and kitchen) and watched golf. First I finished attaching sleeves to the sunshine sweater, knit the collar, and wove in the ends. I'm not a huge fan of assembling sweaters and think I'll seek out knit-in-one patterns for the foreseeable future. Then I cast on the matching hat and finished that over Top Gear. I started casting on the booties, modifying the knit-flat pattern to a knit-in-the-round pattern on the fly but I realized I did half the CO with the tail, not the main thread and frogged the whole thing. That'll wait till tomorrow.

Anyway, hat is finished, sweater just needs buttons, and the booties should follow quickly. Pictures will have to wait as they're a gift and the recipient should get them before seeing a lot of pictures on the web. I'm wacky like that.