Hey friends,

It’s been a few days. I’ve received a few messages asking how we’re doing and I thought I’d share a little bit more on here. I told you all that I’d be updating the shop on the weekend and I apologize – the storm really took us all (well my family and I) by surprise. I wasn’t anticipating having no electricity / internet / hot water for 2 nights nor all the stress from not knowing what was happening to our loved ones we couldn’t reach.

We were very, very lucky in our region of the HRM. There was little structural damage that we could see and our power was back after 2 nights. Yes, our road was littered with branches and leaves but that seemed to be the extent of the local damage. Other regions were not so fortunate and my heart is heavy seeing and hearing about PEI and NFLD right now. Thankfully most people are doing well despite all of the challenges. Maritimers are a hardy bunch, that much is for sure.

So, on Friday night around midnight, the winds really began to pick up from the North West. I had been alone all week at our house with the animals while Jamie worked in a different city. I was kind of eyeing the storm but we are honestly use to being warned about storms and being completely fine. It wasn’t until Thursday that panic set in a little bit seeing news stating it would be a “historic” and don’t forget “generational” storm. I had a deck full of tomato and basil plants. Pointy hat garden gnomes (I literally have a scar on my leg from one of these somehow while gardening) guarding the plants. In the rain and socks and sandals, I began to pick every tomato, gather every item outside and batten down the hatches.

Personally, I love storms and power outages. But hurricanes are just a little bit different than a regular snow storm. They are terrifying. The unknowns are huge and we have many devastating hurricanes that battered the east coast to look back on. I bet not many of us slept on Friday night into Saturday morning. The wind gusts were so powerful, the trees bent. I lay awake listening to any deafening cracks or bangs. Towering trees surround us and our neighbours. With the power out, there wasn’t any white noise to drown out the wind in the trees. The only thing to do is wait…

By Saturday morning, the storm has calmed a lot. There were a few gusts but I wasn’t spooked enough to not take Henry out to pee. We made a big pot of tea using our pocket stove and debated what to do. The wind had died down significantly that I felt we would be fine to drive around the basin and (why.. I have no idea) go to Ikea. For some reason, I became obsessed sitting in our cold house without any electricity to go to Ikea. I felt.. if there is a place open right now, it’s Ikea, Lol. The drive was slow because every light was treated like a four way stop. Lo and behold it was open so we charged our phones and ate a hot meal of meat balls and coffee. During the night, we prepared our kerosene lanterns, ate canned chili outside and read for hours by kerosene light. These are the parts that I love.

Perhaps I’m writing too much so I’ll share a few pictures to illustrate the rest ❤ Thanks so much for your words and your continued support. It means the world to me ❤

Now that I know everyone is safe and sound, I can focus on getting your orders together and updating the shop so do check it out for the first sweater and other knit and artful items 🙂 E-mails may take to tomorrow to get to as preparing orders take priority right now and we have a lot of basic living to get caught up on. As crazy as it sounds, our fridge broke 3 weeks ago while we were away and we lost an entire fridge and freezer of food. The new fridge was delivered hours before Fiona hit so we are only now getting caught up with food prep and eating properly (thank you universe). Truly, it’s been a little intense lately 😛

Thank you! (the post delivery MAY be a bit slower because of the hurricane aftermath). Thank you for reading, being patient and your words and thoughts ❤ Thank you!

Julia, xo