in love with pretty things

The blistering days of summer finally seem to be over. Last Friday we got rain - finally, rain! It had been nearly a month since we'd even had so much as a glancing thunderstorm, and far longer since a real rain had soaked the ground.

On Friday a light drizzle began in the late afternoon. Everyone was dancing and jumping around the office. Rain! Rain! By the time I got home, our rain barrel had filled and was just beginning to overflow. Now the rain had turned to a soaking, and I got drenched running around finding ways to conserve every drop before they overflowed and ran into the storm drains. I stuck a giant bucket under the overflow valve and used our garden hose to drain more overflow out to the sad trees in our backyard.


this bucket ususally means "kegger!", but today it means "rain!"

When we woke up Saturday morning, it was beautiful outside. Ever since then, we've had the windows open, worn sweaters in the evening, and finally started the fall vegetable garden. Goodbye and good riddance to the 100-degree heat that plagued us all through the late summer. The drought is not over, not hardly, but the weather at least feels more normal. We can breathe again!

And with the relief comes a new appreciation of the beauty all around. One of the coolest things I've seen in the yard since the rain is the amazing other-worldly egg case of the green lynx spider who lives on a basil plant. It looks like something from another planet. Here she is holding it:



Another promise of new life and good things to come, even in a crazy world out of balance.

This lovely crisp weather has my fingers itching to knit, of course. Though there are sweaters and gifts and mudpuppies on the agenda, lacy socks kept dancing through my mind. I have been dreaming of single-color sock yarn - maybe hand-dyed? - in a fall color to knit twisting vining lace socks. And then at the LYS I found this:


the picture doesn't do the color justice - it was a rainy day

Which quickly morphed into this:



I found the lace pattern in Barbara Walker's First Treasury, and it is completely addictive. It's not the easiest pattern, since it's twelve rows long and doesn't exactly repeat, so you have to sit there reading the chart while you knit it. But I find it immensely gratifying, and just can't seem to put it down, even though other things beckon. You may see this again in October when the next Free Pattern Friday rolls around.

Socks! Sweaters! Wool! Rain! I could faint from happiness.