August Holiday Weekend

 The first Monday of August is a holiday "at local option" in much of Canada. It is called various things depending on where you live. In Ontario, each municipality gives it a name, so in Ottawa it is "Col. By Day" . Col. By was the engineer responsible for the building of the Rideau Canal. Without the Rideau Canal, Ottawa would never have been chosen as the Capital of Canada. The other sites recommended for the capital were considered to be too close to the US border. 

The summer has been cruising along. I have done a lot of knitting but not much else creative (unless you count making salads that use up the contents of our basket of CSA vegetables, every week). Last night we were watching fireflies in the backyard with our favourite small person.

I had two finishes in the past week.

This is the Get Set and Go shawl. Under the Olive Tree Knits is having a summer knit along, and I joined in again this summer. The pattern is on Ravelry and on her web site, free until the end of August.

Here is a closer view of the yarn colour. I have yarn leftover. Maybe some gloves to match.

I also needed some knitting for video chatting, so I made another pair of baby socks.

The yarn is leftovers from my April socks and is TurtlePurl in Joy. They are actually identical!

Solar activity this past week lead to some spectacular Aurora sightings. I live in the big city where the sky is too bright, but my son lives in Northern Alberta, far from the big city lights.

These pictures were taken early Tuesday morning and are used with his permission. I have seen the Aurora Borealis myself. When we first lived here our neighbourhood was at the edge of the city, but it has grown up around us. The pictures don't actually do them justice. They move and change constantly. My son said that these were like an umbrella over them so you saw them everywhere you looked.