I’m designing it, fabric.  A huge dream, taking the form of reality, and a long overdue update from the previous post. Five months late-ish, but on time with who I am.  Lots has happened, really lots.  Thanksgiving, snow, Holidays, lack of snow, Jack turned eight, Anna turned ten (not sure how that happened), Chris accepted a professor position at ODU, defended his dissertation, and is just weeks away from graduating, it’s a big deal.  Oh, and we’re moving, our house (which I love) is officially for sale.  I’m finishing up local design projects with clients here, transitioning the business from one state to another, and shifting the focus to surface, product, and pattern design.

And about the fabric.  I signed a licensing contract with Andover Fabrics in December.  I’m thrilled.  Deeply thrilled. My first line, Lucky Penny, is somewhere in the production process, and will be available for purchase in the next few months, maybe summer, maybe fall.  Unreal.  A second line is turned in, with more colorful designs in the works.

So fun.  More to come.

It’s been a busy and remarkable month.  Just over six weeks ago we were feeding saved up ends of bread loaves to semi-interested ducks on campus, where I concluded that the ducks are picky and really prefer fresh bread. They uninterestedly ate it.  The trees were in the middle of changing, the color progressions were amazing to notice.  The kids crawled all over the river bank and through the trees.  It made me wish our backyard was the woods.  The walk was meant to stop and enjoy the moment, as a break from the long list of things to do.  I was very much in the middle of preparing to talk with manufactures about the designs I had made for fabric.  The samples had arrived just a few days before and were becoming sewn items in various forms, very busy, very future oriented, to show publicly to art directors, artists, bloggers, whoever wanted to see.

Since then it’s snowed a little, most of the leaves have fallen, it’s feeling like winter, and I spent a week in Texas, first in Houston at Quilt Market, then a couple of days with family in Austin.  Quilt Market was, I’m not sure how to summarize it, amazing.  In many ways I feel like a different person, though mostly totally the same.  I’ve never been in a place before where not only is my work so out there to be seen, but also so well received.  It felt great, and a bit overwhelming.  People were so nice, which is so nice, and so civilized.  I don’t have a conclusion to the trip yet, but at some point I will and I’ll write about it.

Some bits of time are just different and stand out.  Many are not, maybe to appreciate more the ones that are.

Oh, and we made caramel apples.  It’s good to eat an apple covered in melted caramel, but so much more exciting to have Indiana climbing down an apple boulder, in a mini-figure kind of way.  He just looks cool almost anywhere, doesn’t he?

It’s a thing here, to go and pick apples each fall.  We always end up with more than we know what to do with, but it’s fun and very fall-ish.  Plus the fields of pumpkins, and the cider and doughnuts, and the general northern loveliness of it all.  This year it wasn’t too cold yet, just crisp, which makes it even better.

And as an added bonus, if you’re lucky and they haven’t run out the nice apple people give you a picker which conveniently doubles also as a sword/poking device, especially if you’re seven!  Good times!

I’m one of those people who really like to make lists.  Really.  The getting it all down, the crossing it off, the completion energy.  All very good.  To the point where I’ll go back and write something on the list that I’ve just done so that I can then immediately cross it off.  I know others do this too, right?  It’s pretty easy to get focused on the list of things I haven’t done.  The what’s still left and never ending part, and to forget about what I’ve actually finished in a week or month or year.  So, I’ve decided to start a new list – of things I do accomplish each week – a done list – to change the focus.  So far so good, nice to stop and see that the progress is a lot more than I think it is.  Plus, I get to write it in this super duper rainbow with birds and clouds journal, and who wouldn’t want to do that?

Now in the third week since school has started back for my kids I have reflected a bit on our summer.  The weeks can get long, but I was not itching for them to go back this time.  I think that’s a good sign.  It’s great that they are back in school.  We can all be a lot more productive with our time this way, but summer was so fun.  We went places, saw friends and new things, and genuinely enjoyed the time together.  Many fun experiences to remember and look back on.

Walking in Central Park, something I’ve always wanted to do.  Enjoying the shells and the beach between NY and Boston.

Looking up words at the Boston Public Library.

Continual rainbows at Niagra Falls on the Canadian side!

I often am stunned when I think of how quickly they are growing and how fast their childhood is passing.  I don’t want it to end, but it’s also so exciting to see them growing into the people they will be.  These two conflicting ideas constantly run around inside my head.  So, it’s good right now to see the two of them them appear from the bus each afternoon (happy, sad, mad, and in between) and back into our home to be together again.  Looking forward to what then next year brings.

Welcome back to school for those who start after Labor Day!  Over here we look forward to a great new year full of crayons and paint, plus reading, math and all of that.  I tend to focus on the crayons though!

Painting area from one of my kids preschool classrooms.  How I wished I could take it home and just hang it up in my studio in all of it’s painty, glob-ish glory!  Crayons arranged by Anna, my cool kid.

Finally, I am getting around to posting photos of the finished bathroom remodel I first wrote about in June that was completed in July.  What a fun project to work on!  The finished space has such a nice feel.  I honestly wish it was my bathroom.  The clients are so super to work with, and I know they will enjoy it for years to come !  Better in real life than in the photos, it was quite a transformation!

It’s a good thing there is summer, with sitting at the local pool while the kids play in the water, to have the time to sit and stitch and stitch.  I have to note here how much I love doing this.  Rarely do I make things for us, and this was so, so fun.  Now, if only someone would come and make my bed everyday so there would be a worthy place to keep them!

Zinnia seeds planted in May have finally turned into bushes of tall flowers across our front porch.  They even mostly cover up all of the weeds!  Plus, there is a fairy ring of mushrooms in the yard.

I would live under those mushrooms if I was tiny-tiny, like a fairy or a butterfly or something.  Happy summer!

I saw this and wanted one, which is unusual due to my general need to create from nothing, but come on, it’s beautiful and so very made by hand.  Plus, I needed an easy to bring along, get it together in a hurry project for the drive in a big circle trip we made this past July.  Michigan to New York City, NY to Boston, Boston to Niagra Falls + Toronto, then back home.  An international trip!

Once home I couldn’t decide which Loulouthi fabric I wanted to use for the welting.  Indecision in this case lead to choosing many from the line.  I like it.  It also lead to a bunch of little triangles.  Then the triangles were begging to be grouped and sewn together, now all is needed is the time to finish!