Another Week in Paradise

 

First things first.  Right after my last blog post, we came back to the cottage and a gorgeous evening.  It felt like a reward for sitting through a number of cold and wet days.  The weather since has been a good mix of sunny days with overcast ones.  Sometimes, in the fog of reminiscence, you forget that not all the days of your holiday are sunny.  In short, the weather overall has been quite favourable.

The crafting has taken on a different focus.  I managed to finish the second sock of a pair destined to be a gift, but knitting has fallen to the wayside.  In its place is some Shake-n-Make work.  The photo above is of one element of our site-specific installation for the Hamilton Supercrawl in September.  We’re making reverse appliqué beaded “cozies” for three concrete planters along James Street North.  The holidays, for which most of my current knitting is destined, are at least four months away.  The Supercrawl is only five or six weeks away.  The great thing with priorities is that you can almost always shuffle them around (just ask my collection of short stories – sigh).

Note:  I only added this photo because the ladyfriend loves it so much.

We managed to exploit the strawberry season here but will miss the raspberries.  Spring was long and cold in Nova Scotia so things are a bit delayed.  Usually we get to go raspberry picking, which means I make raspberry jam.  This time, however, we’ve come up with four ways to enjoy strawberries:  on their own, in homemade ice cream, as strawberry jam, and as strawberry vinegar.  The recipes for the last two items came from the River Cottage Preserves Handbook, which Ian’s girlfriend gave to me last Christmas.  Excellent resource for anyone interested in canning and preserving.

I finished reading The Girl Who Played with Fire – holy cow!  I’m taking a bit of a breather, or perhaps delaying the gratification of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by reading The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.  The owners of our cottage, who are like family to us, were interested in my opinion of the book.  I have to say - so far I’m mesmerized although it is not a book I would’ve picked up on my own.

Our time in Nova Scotia is winding down, and already, I’m thinking (or more accurately, worrying) about things that I need to do once we get back to Hamilton.  It’s inevitable that the life you left behind wants to make its presence known to you once again, and in many ways, I’m ready to go back to it.