Hot Days, With Knitting and Napping

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

It is so stinking hot today that we holed ourselves up in the house for most of the day to hide from the heat. Geez, summer really is not my favourite season... I hate the feeling of an electric fan on my skin, but we needed it on to keep the air moving in the house, so I often find myself paradoxically putting a blanket on to keep the air off me. Meanwhile, Seymour demonstrated how to best conserve energy:

Outside in the garden, our messy and wild-looking strawberry patch has suddenly started producing a bunch of fruit. We usually get one or two berries a day out of this lot, but we've been picking cupfuls over the last day or so. It's so lovely to have a freshly-picked strawberry. There is truly nothing like it:

Our blueberry shrubs are positively drooping with fruit. I'm hoping everything will ripen before we have to move. I would be so sad to miss all these lovely berries this year. Luckily, I had the wit last year to buy a couple of new blueberry shrubs, which are currently sitting in pots to be transported to our new home. Perhaps we won't have to wait too long to have shrubs like these again:

We've also been busy digging out a few transplants to take along with us. I've got a few strawberries, some lemon balm, some mint, and a bit of sage and rosemary, not to mention my unbelievable poinsettia which has survived four years with me and continues to bloom heartily throughout the year. It's a hopeful site on the deck these days:

I'm making really good progress on my cotton lace top. I won't say that it's exactly flying off the needles, but I'm really glad I decided to convert the written instructions into a chart. It's been much easier to work more intuitively with the pattern. I'm hoping that I'll make it up to divide for the sleeves this week:

I've been finding it really difficult to really capture the colour of this yarn. It's sort of a deep raspberryish purple... a tad darker than what I have here. It really is quite mesmerizing:

I attended a creating lettering workshop on Friday evening. To be honest, the class itself wasn't great and I didn't feel like I learned a lot. I spent the greater part of the class daydreaming about the chocolate bar I was going to buy after class, but it was interesting meeting the people there. We started off going around the group to introduce ourselves and to share a bit about why we were there. I was struck by how many of the group shared that they had all gone through some type of burnout, mostly job-related, and that coming back to some kind of creativity was part of their healing process. About half of the group expressed this, and while I didn't talk about my own difficult work experiences, it was so sad for me. Why are there so many people that go through this? And why do we lose touch with our creative sides when we are in the midst of it?

I do feel like I've come a long way since this time last year. When I go back to read my posts from last year, I notice how resigned and tired I seem in all of them. I'm in a very different world now, away from the stress and emotion I was in before. Last week, I realized how long it had been since I'd said, "I'm so tired," because these days, I rarely am.

What a difference a year makes. I wonder what the rest of the year will bring?

Have a great week.