As the Summer Winds Down ...

As laid back and quiet as the first part of my summer was, the second half has been busy, busy, busy!  Not much time for anything fiber, unless you count taking some yarn and weaving a barrier in the deer fencing that the little darlings were squeezing through so they could eat all our delicious vegetables ... they did an interesting trim job on the beans!

I've been enjoying the zinnias and emerging pumpkins, which apparently deer don't eat.

And beginning to put up the first of the buckets and buckets of apples that are ripening a bit early ... apple pie, apple crumble, fresh apple juice, apple butter, apple sauce!

I'm also accepting that this year I will not be getting an early jump on my Christmas projects - Christmas in July came and went and Christmas in August is going to follow in the same direction.  I'll try to get some Christmas patterns up in September!  It is hard to imagine December with the unusually hot weather we've had this summer in the Northwest.  We're calling them the "cat days" of summer as we seem to have plenty of those and no dogs yet.  For regular readers of this blog, you may recognize Felix (the gray and white one) as one of my Phoenix attic cats (see this post and this one).  He is now an Oregon cat after his brother, Tiger, succumbed to an unusual blood disease that had labs in two states scratching their heads.  Up here he has lots of feline friends and seems very happy.

When I do get a little unplanned time, I've been working on a shawl in a fantastic colorway - Northbound Knitting's Metallurgy.  It looks like spun metal, but is merino and silk and is soooo soft! 

And on a weekend trip to Seattle, I discovered a fantastic little yarn shop about a block away from Pike's Place Market, So Much Yarn on First Avenue.  They have so many yarns I've never seen before, like this heavily textured one from Universal Yarns, Bamboo Bloom Handpaints in the Dragon colorway.  I can't wait to get this on my needles and see how it knits up!  I'll be sure to post photos!

Happy Creating!  Deborah