Autumn Golds and a Green Heffalump

It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine. --Eeyore

It's Thanksgiving Day Weekend here in Canada. I'm a little thrown off by it all with all the travel we did. It just seems like - BAM - here we are in autumn, and I'm supposed to be cooking a turkey. Right, then. Turkey it is...

I had a decent week back at work this week, once I finally got over the jet lag. I had a few zombie-like days during which I managed to finish some work and train a new employee. Time will tell if any of that was actually done correctly, but you know, whatever.

Yesterday, we caught up on all the normal-life things: got the car serviced and did the first big grocery shopping trip (though trying to do that the day before Thanksgiving wasn't the smartest thing we've ever done). I have a turkey roll and a load of brussels sprouts to put in the often to show for it. With all of that out of the way, we were free to go out and enjoy the crisp sunshine. We went out to the little town of Chemainus and walked down to the water, where the wind nipped at our faces, but the water looked clear and blue:

We walked back along a different route than we normally take, and on the way we encountered a house with the most ambitious gardening I'd seen in a while. So charming:

This elephant (or, as I like to call it, heffelump) just made me grin:

But it's the golden autumn colours that feed my soul the most, like in this sunflower, which looked like it was planted by a passing bird:

And like this giant sycamore leaf I found in the parking lot. Leaves like this are the norm around here, but I always have to stop and pick them up whenever I see one, just to see if it's bigger than the last "biggest leaf ever" I've found in the past:

These golden colours are like the beautiful yellow-golden hues in the yarn I'm using right now for my current project. I will admit, though: as much as I adore this colour, I am getting pretty sick of working on this thing. I think I started it back in August, and I'm just over halfway through it. I had the bright idea of making it extra large, since I had two skeins of the same colourway in the stash, but I'm really starting to regret it, but I also admit that I still found it deliciously beautiful when I draped it along the stairs for this photo, like molten gold dripping down each step:

And yes, it will be lovely once it is all blocked out... whenever that will be:

I have the day off tomorrow, and I've decided to give myself the chance to really spend time thinking about what I am grateful for. So far, the list goes something like:

• my family
• good friends
• being lucky enough to have yarn
• being lucky enough to have time to do something with it

And... I'm also grateful to have people like you who come to read this blog. I don't know who you all are, but I'm grateful you've stuck around. I will toast a bit of turkey to you.

Gobble, gobble.