Hellooo!!

The humid days of late summer have set in and we’ve been sleeping with the windows open and the fans running every night and waking up shivering. Love it. After a pretty disappointing gardening season (looking at you, groundhogs), my deck tomatoes are going crazy and suddenly I’m looking for things to do with all of these tomatoes, besides throw them at the groundhogs.

We had a wonderful family road trip in Maine and New Brunswick, the kind of vacation that makes you wish you had a week at each spot instead of just two nights. I stopped by Fiddlehead Artisan Supply in Belfast to meet Abby (the owner - a longtime supporter of MBR) and picked up some Maine blueberry fabric at Clementine in Rockland (thanks to my friend Cal Patch for the rec!) so I even managed to get a little fabric shopping in. Everything went according to plan…I’m just feeling so grateful for that, after last summer’s debaucle. A few snapshots from our trip at the end of this post.

Clementine has been gone at camp for the past three weeks; first Blue Lake, which she LOVED last summer and was so excited to return to again this year, and then she had 24 hours at home before heading off to another choir camp this week. So the house still feels a bit empty. I’m looking forward to having everyone back under one roof and getting back into the school routine. Hugo doesn’t have camp this week, so we’ve been day-watching Bluey and belly laughing at Bandit together. And Elliot has his final driver’s test next week ACK ACK ACK.

A few other things to share as you head into the weekend…

sewing: Lots of sewing projects in various states of completion lately: a Trillium in a colorful plaid (hopefully I’ll have it finished for Squam in a few weeks!), a fun striped Emerald top (more pics in this Stripe-Matching-How-To post) and almost-finished Luna pants, also in the stripes.

listening: I know I’m late to the Brandi Carlile game, but I stumbled across her Grammy performances of The Joke and Right on Time on YouTube and it was like, WOW, where have I been? So yeah, lots of Brandi in the playlist rotation these days.

The Armchair Expert podcast is such a frequent listen for me I almost forget to mention it, but the Terry Crews and Minka Kelly interviews were both phenomenal. I don’t always stay for the Fact Check because it often runs long, but Monica and Dax are fun to listen to and their interviews are reliably entertaining and vulnerable (any Armcherries out there?).

knitting: Yay! I finished my Fizz Cowl! And then promptly mailed it off to Elli, whose birthday was yesterday. Happy Birthday, EllI! *does kermit arms*

reading: I posted that I had just finished my first Inspector Gamache novel (A World of Curiosities) on Insta the other day and the Louise Penny fans CAME FOR ME in my DMs. If you are a Louise Penny person, you know that by breaking canon and starting with the 18th book rather than the first, I have now irreparably disrupted the space-time continuum. At the very least should not have posted about it!! everyone knows it’s best to keep those time-wrinkles secret!! Also read A Gentleman in Moscow (touching!) by Amor Towles and Romantic Comedy (fluffy! fun!) by Curtis Sittenfeld and both were excellent.

watching: We’ve been quite the moviegoing family lately. Barbie, which of course was awesome, and Oppenheimer, which was meh (even for this ex-physics teacher), and then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I didn’t see but my boys (9, 16, and 45) all loved. If you’re anything like me you’ve probably already read a million Barbie think-pieces, but may I suggest this fun behind-the-scenes Tour of the Barbie Dreamhouse from AD?

xo,
Rae

PS. see all of my Friday Faves here.

OK! Now for some pics of our vacation. Highlights included Acadia, St Martin’s Sea Caves, Hopewell Rocks, and lobster.