Summer of 2021

 It's time to say goodbye to summer as the equinox nears on the 22nd! Always such a bittersweet time of year, especially this year, as I celebrated a BIG birthday!

I guess I would have liked to keep it a secret, but I am always so bad at keeping them myself. So here I am, a few lines in my face and a grey streak, but still alive and sewing! I tried to flip the birthday numbers around, but all I could get was 90-- so I'm sticking with what I have.

For my birthday, I asked for a tiara-- my sister got me one, and I was able to wear it for most of the party (also provided by my sister <3) until my head got squeezed too much. Mostly, I got many, many flowers-- that is one of the best reasons NOT to keep your birthday to yourself! These were from my neighbor-- who as she presented them to me said, "Yellow is for friendship!"

Then my good friends from my quilt guild brought me a rose bush-- also in yellow, and also said, "Yellow is for friendship!" There must be some significance to hearing this twice in two days, and I'm still not sure what it is, but when I think about it, I want to shed some happy tears for friendship.

After the birthday, I had company for a few days! Thank goodness for company, or nothing would ever get cleaned around here, so we went from this:

To this:

with heartfelt thanks to the artist-in-residence, who has a lot more stamina than me! And a bonus-- we were out and about so much with our guests, it has actually stayed that way!

That is one of the peculiarities of living in a touristy area-- when company arrives, you go to places that you would never think of going anytime else! Here is the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor...

The Cape Cod Canal...

And even the pond down the hill from my house-- I haven't been over there in months!

We even did some fun cooking-- here are the birthday cakes and a pie-- German Chocolate and Peach-- my favorites, of course!

The artist-in-residence decided she wanted to make pickles-- that is something I would never have thought of, but it's always such a joy to do any type of adventure with this kid, so I'm always all in. The cucumbers were from a farm stand, and we cobbled together some spices from blown out grocery shelves. Who knew, but I am going to have trouble settling for jarred pickles anymore-- they were amazing!

Not much sewing got done, but before company came, I only had the borders to put on my Coriander Christmas. I'm hoping to get that done this weekend-- a FINISH! Ta-da!

And I did have a few sweet moments each morning to work on this-- who knew, when I picked this up mid-June I would become absolutely obsessed with it?

I pretty much have the left side filled in now-- after that, there are four different things in each corner-- Harvest, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Back to School. I'm estimating each would take a solid month. I really want to get on with my Baltimore Album quilt borders-- I mean, now that it's Autumn, why would I want to work on this? I would much rather be starting a Spring project... or work on a Christmas one, at any time of year!

So I'm ready for fall-- fall is my personal New Year, when brand new #2 pencils are sharpened, sheets of loose leaf paper are fresh, and even at 60,  I'm ready to begin again.

xox

Carol