yarn over

a ball of cotton and a ball of hand dyed mohair

5:15 am. Almost every morning I feel a bit like a kid on Christmas morning, when I glance at the clock by my bed and realize that it's 4:47 and it's almost time to get up! I love beginning a new day! I lie there in the darkness with an assortment of animals, this morning it was Winnie Dixon & Oliver, and I listen & wait for the last sputters of my coffee machine, which is on a timer (what a fantastic invention that is). Then down to the kitchen, I feed Gussie who is parading around, rubbing my legs & purring madly as if he hadn't been fed in days, pour my coffee, come back upstairs and here I sit. The windows are open and I just listened to a fishing boat leaving the harbour.

I joined a knitting group at the library this week (and thank goodness that we have a library in this little village. I'm a library junkie, as bad as my addiction to CBC radio). This knitting group meets every second Wednesday and this week a local couple who raise an assortment of sheep, llamas, goats & alpacas spoke and showed their wares, they spin their own wool and the husband of the team does the hand-dying (the ball above is mohair from them). It was very interesting and the photos of their assorted flock, very sweet. I'm afraid I'm not much of a knitter and I don't foresee that changing drastically but I thought it would be nice to add some human interaction into my mostly canine/feline existence. Earlier in the year I tried a once a month book club, but that didn't turn out so well. It's painfully slow for me to actually finish a book at the best of times, as reading in my cozy nest each evening is like an instant sedative. Rare is the book that stimulates me enough that I can read more than a few pages before nodding off. There are so many books that I would love to read, I found it difficult to be asked to read something that didn't really interest me ... who has time for that? The final straw came when early on the monthly selection was The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks -ick! I know that I am being a terrible literary snob by saying "ick", and I did read it, it was early on in the club's existence and I was trying to be a good sport. I've just never been a fan of the happy, sappy escapist genre, in movies or in books. I much prefer a good ol' dark & depressing story, or at least something a little more realistic and I do read an awful lot of non-fiction. (My apologies to any Nicholas Sparks fans out there, he's just not my cup of tea). Soon after that I begged out of the club but I always did miss the social part - so now I've joined the knitting club. I likely will knit a scarf out of the beautiful yarn shown above, something simple and not particularly challenging, as I'd prefer this first project to be fairly mindless.

Hurricane/tropical storm Noel is barreling toward Nova Scotia. Bulletins on the radio are suggesting that we batten down the hatches, fill lots of water jugs (in case of power outages), have enough food for 72 hours and generally be prepared. After the devastation of Hurricane Juan and then another wild winter storm dubbed White Juan, we in Nova Scotia take these warnings much more to heart. We no longer say "we don't have hurricanes in Nova Scotia". Overnight tonight - heavy rain, possible thunderstorms, winds gusting to over 140kms (Wow!) and tidal surges Sunday morning - an expected 12 hour storm. I confess part of me is a little excited - I do love wild weather as long as we're safe.

Oh yeah and the time changes tonight ... what an exciting weekend!