Hello friends,

How are you all? November is here with all her wonderfully diverse weather. A season of seasons. The shortening days have always been a favourite of mine. Suddenly, you no longer feel the urge to be outside past 5 pm except for a brisk cold walk. The task of heating a home is in a novel fun state and making and consuming delicious hardy warming meals. Teas and coffees. Wood smoke, books and of course the sound of leaves crunching under our muddy boots. What I love best about November and December is the dark. Mornings and evenings. Our windows are lined with artificial glow of warming “candlelight” and I feel just an impossible coziness and joy seeing fairy lights illuminating the darkest, quietest evenings.

This month, Jamie, Henry and I stayed in a handmade cabin in Cape Breton. I was here 4 years ago and have longed to go back ever since. You would love this property, situated in a hilly valley, lush moss and hand-built cabins that feel as if they grew organically from the surrounding forest. The quiet and stars are enough to make you fall in love. Our idea was to go and detach from the internet and our phones all while embracing what I think of as the real world, the trees and stars. The stars seem closer while you’re in the hills. Orion’s belt handing above a clearing of spruce.

Oh what did we do? Read books, made homemade meals in the small kitchen, played scrabble, found sea glass in Inverness, read more books, knit, hiked to Uisge Ban, taking a back road through the mountains. Dreaming of someday owning land to build our own handmade cabin. Jamie and I also took some photographs of the Pangur Ban sweater that I have yet to put up in the shop. He managed to capture the absolute dreaminess that I often go about in my mind (every knit below will be in the shop shortly – within the next 2-3 weeks).

Instead of heading back to our home afterwards, I decided to stay with my family in the Northern part of the province for a few days. I love this area dearly, it’s wild and often referred to as “the forgotten coast.” I moved to Nova Scotia as a 19 year old with my family. We bought an abandoned house, the foundations from the 18th century, the house itself rebuilt after a fire in the 1930s. Economically, this made sense for our family although I’m sure most people thought we were strange (kinda true anyway :P). For 14 years, I’ve come back over and over to this place of fields and forests watching it transform under the care of my parents. A forest that was once clear-cut is coming back. Birds have returned when the land was silent from their song when we first moved. The deer find a refuge on the 65 acres. Perhaps this is a post for another day – the story of what it was like as a 19 year old to move from Ottawa to a previously abandoned farmhouse in a remote coastal region. In short, looking back it was wonderful and I’d never change a thing.

Home again and it’s time to focus and work on the creating process. Soon, there will be new items, be it knits or art. My heart has been leaning more toward creating art. Continue to share on here and create. Always create.

Thanks for reading. Hope you are all doing well and finding simple pleasures in life if you are struggling. Blessed Be my friends ❤