"The Time Is Out of Joint."

This has been the damnedest summer. Rain, rain every day, to the point where I just realized I am still waiting for it to be spring. I was sick for a whole month. The rain came down. It was still not spring. June came and went. I was sick. I stayed inside. It rained.

I started to think about that documentary I watched, twice, which talked about The Year Without A Summer, an ice-age year where summer simply didn't come. The snow came down. The animals starved. The wind howled.

I started to do winter things. I made lentil soup. I watched a lot of TV and re-read Agatha Christie. I knitted, for Pete's sake.

I'm forced to admit that I rather enjoyed the knitting. Which just goes to show you how NON-springish it's been around here. (Note to those who've been reading less than a year: I do not knit in spring and summer. It's not that I don't know about the existence of bamboo, and cotton, and linen, and hemp. It's just that I can't seem to give a good god damn about knitting when the weather is warm.)

But I just finished a scarf, which was started long ago, in early winter or fall. It's a cerulean blue hand-dyed wool that Shan sent me, and which really looks to me like the ocean, and I just love it. It got laid by the wayside whilst I knitted a bazillion gifts for people, and then while I knitted the cobweb scarf, and so on. And there it was sitting in my knitting basket calling to me one very rainy afternoon.

It's a short scarf, and a very useful item I think it will prove. Most of my scarves are long long long. Certainly too long to wear on a bike. I may try this one out as a cowl-alternative. I think I can tuck the ends into either side of a jacket and it will warm both neck and chest. And plus, it is blue, blues, bluesy, bluest. I held off posting this until I could get a daylit photo of it, just so you could see the true blues.

Also because lately every time I go to write something here, I end up feeling like I've either said too much or said nothing very interesting. It's been a weird summer so far, and I am not just talking about the weather - though it occurs to me to wonder about the degree to which people's behavior and moods (including mine) might be affected by such a long spell of the drearies.

As I look out my window now, there are again the gathering dark clouds, and the fan is pulling in air that feels oversaturated with moisture about to break into big drops. I still haven't unpacked my books. I think I am waiting for the skies to clear.