From autumn, with love

If you were to say: "Hey! You haven't updated in a year!", then I would still be in a position to disagree... for two more days. Maybe autumn makes me chattier. (Maybe I'm trying to talk the leaves back up on the trees.) Last year, I found the first ripe chestnut well before the end of August - this year has been more traditional: The first ones appeared this weekend, but then, after a bright and summery Saturday and still-okay Sunday, autumn decided it was now time to step in. Temperatures have dropped, and so has foliage.
Howth still looked like that on Sunday. One of the best things about Dublin is that when it's sunny, you can take public transportation for 30 minutes and end up somewhere like that. (In fact, I read recently that some Thai beach resorts stole pictures of the Scottish and Irish coast and used it to advertise their own beaches.) (Obviously, public transportation also runs on rainy days. But the view just isn't quite the same.) (It should be sunny much more often.) And then yesterday, Ireland remembered its core strength and brought on the gloom and the rain.

So I guess there was only one reasonable thing to do: Take some Donegal tweed yarn, and work on a sweater. I still find it surprising that there are so few yarn shops in a country with such a high sheep to human ratio. Where does all this wool go? It can't all end up in touristy Aran sweater shops?