7.31: Peak summer

If this doesn’t say summer, I don’t know what does:

Those are not the first zucchini that we harvested! A couple of them ended up in a lovely quiche — so good. I think I spotted our first pepper from the bedroom window this morning. The flowers are at/from Ali’s! We’re constantly amazed — she has the most interesting collection of plants over there.

The kids have been busy:

The boys both had haircuts last week, and the girls are up next. Malina discovered my buttons — though not all of them yet! She was looking for pairs of buttons that she liked so we can make some earrings. I watched a couple of videos & bought materials for that endeavor last week… and we’ll get to it as soon as we can!

I’ve been working on my Alabama Chanin project — not every day, but most days.

I’ve been mostly concentrating on the bottom third of that piece. Progress is more discernible on the wrong side — the middle pic is from Tuesday, the one on the right was taken on the 21st. (Color, contrast, temperature, exposure, brightness are all over the place!)

I finally uncovered my copy of Elegant Stitches in a stack of books, so am reacquainting myself with the Decorative Cretan Stitch that is used on some of the “leaf” motifs. I’ll be dipping my toe into “armor beading” again soon, too.

I’ve also been working on blanket borders — crocheting the edge for Addie’s blanket, and knitting the edge for the Family Temperature Project blanket.

Rusty’s been teaching this week at The Clearing Folk School in Ellison Bay, nearly at the top of the Door County peninsula, which he’s done for quite a few years now. He’s able to bring a guest, and it’s never quite worked out for me, so this year Ali went along. She wasn’t going to stay all week, so Kate, Maddy & I drove up yesterday to pick her up. (I also put my Florence Nightingale hat on & removed some stitches from Rusty’s arm where he’d had another excision to remove basal cell carcinoma.)

But guess what, Ali changed her mind and decided to stay for the rest of the week! So we went out for lunch & did a little shopping, then returned her to campus. She regrets that she didn’t sign up for a class, but she’s been drawing, reading… enjoying the quiet… “clearing.”

Oh, and we had ice cream — so many yummy flavors! This place has other food, too, but I think 90% of the customers are there for the ice cream.

On Saturday, Maddy & I are heading out for a little swing through the Northwoods for a couple of days. We’ll be stopping at Fred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park, visiting a cousin or two, taking possession of my grandma’s old photos, meeting up with a high school classmate that I haven’t seen in 45 years +/- (and returning a book that I borrowed in 1976), stopping in to see my uncle, and possibly climbing inside a giant musky… and whatever else we find along the way.