Rainy Day Woman

It has been raining since before I woke up.  The kind of rain that can last for hours.  (The Snufflepuffs do not like this kind of rain, however.  It means that eventually I will have to put on wellies and take them for a walk.  Given their druthers, they would sit under the covered area of the deck and watch the rain.  Or not even go out in it at all, like Frosty.  Despite Frosty's love of walks, he has been known to turn right around once he feels a raindrop.  Bit of a prima donna, that one.)

Spring rain is one of the things I really like about North Carolina.  Spring rain often lasts all day, unlike the summer rain.  The summer rain comes in hard, lasts an hour, and makes the already humid air even more heavy and close.  We haven't hid humid weather yet, so this rain isn't going choke me.

Rain is one of the things I really missed when I lived out in San Diego.  The weather in San Diego is very much the same most days.  San Diego is almost the absence of weather.  The joke is that it is 75 and sunny, every day.  And it pretty much is.  I once asked a co-worker about his vacation to the midwest, and the first thing he mentioned was that he heard a thunderstorm for the first time in years.  I don't think it thunderstormed the entire time I lived out there.

So when we get days rainy days like this here, I celebrate it.  I make up for all the rain I missed.  I light candles in the day time, listen to mellow music, and drink buckets of hot tea while knitting and reading.  (Unfortunately not at the same time.  I wish I could be one of those people who can knit and read, but I can't.  Not yet anyway.)

Two new yarns, wound into cakes for two new projects.  The pink (MadelineTosh Tosh Sock in Pop Rocks) is for a pair of Hedgerow Mitts (Rav link).  The brown is Dream in Color Smooshy for a Little Oak (Rav link).  Behind the yarn is a pile of new library books.

I'm currently mining the Young Adult section of the base library for books.  Gregor the Overlander is the first book in a series by Suzanne Collins.  She wrote this series before she wrote the Hunger Games trilogy.  Stoneheart begins a trilogy about statues in London that come to life.  Really, how could I leave that on the shelf?  The Iron Throne is about magic and witchcraft set in a Victorian-ish America.  (I didn't know that the steampunk movement influenced YA fiction, but I guess I'm not surprised.)  I thought it was a stand-alone novel, but when I linked up to Amazon it seems that it is a trilogy.  Another thing I'm not really surprised by, as many YA novels are series novels.  I didn't quite mean to start three different series simultaneously, though.  Whoops.

I'm off to load up the CD player with some Bob Dylan, Mumford & Sons, and Nick Drake and start knitting.