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And just like that, it was the end of August.
And wonderful though it was, I sense that it is time for us all to get back to life on the hamster wheel. Though I can't say any of us has missed it one bit. Next week is going to be a rude shock to the system. Better check the alarm clock is still working.
Monica posted the other day and asked us to share our first quilts. Hers was typically accomplished, showcasing loads of different techniques and her characteristic ability to combine colours in a way that makes the whole so much more than the sum of the parts.
When I read the post, we were away from home, so I was thinking about what I thought was my first quilt - a red white and blue star pattern, but when I went to the cupboard to take it out and photograph it, I found another quilt entirely that I had forgotten about, that definitely pre dates the one I thought was my first.
This must be from around 1995, made as a way to practice using a sewing machine. It's a simple 9 patch and I think I made it because I wanted to incorporate the little whimsical farm print that now makes me cringe slightly.
It got heavily used once Mark came along as he was the pukiest baby ever and I moved about, draping any non-machine washable surface in his vicinity with some sort of quilt or mat. So there have been countless cycles through the washing machine and tumble drier, which have left some of the machine piecing stitches looking a little worse for wear.
Usually so much washing and drying would have given it that heirloom feel, but the wadding I used is nasty polyester, so that was never going to happen. Forgive me, it was before nice cotton batting was freely availible and I didn't know any better.
The forgotten quilt. Reminding me that even when you really have no clue what you are doing, you can accomplish things with a little focus and detemination.
Hubs and I bought our first house in 1995, the deposit saved from an entire year of my hard earned salary. I'm sure I've told you that story before - four hours a day, commuting through the Tokyo rush hour and the thing that kept me going on days when the white gloved platform pushers were shoving us into the carriages like cattle was the mantra of 'one more brick, one more brick'.
It took six months from returning to the UK to find the house we wanted to buy - a Victorian semi in a good part of town, with a long thin garden and most important to me, stairs I could climb to bed. As we house hunted, I read interiors magazines and dreamed of what our home would be like. One thing was for sure, we didn't want it to resemble the homes of our parents - it was going to be fresh, timeless, classic.
Of course now, as I look back on those notebooks now, I smile at how dated some of our ideas of 'fresh and classic' look now. And the super irony? I realise that my parents now live in the epitome of a mid century modern, hipster's dream pad.
My mother's kitchen accessories are the exact orange my design savvy friend just picked out for her kitchen. Bar cart? Tick. Ercol furniture? Oh yes. Parquet floor in pristine condition - they have it. Even those West German lava pottery floor lamps - though my mother swears now that she probably bought them from Argos. Every once in a while, I will spot an element of their home in some emporium and rush to phone them and let them know what their tea, coffee and sugar canisters are worth on the vintage market!
Who knows, if we had waited twenty years to get on the property ladder, I might have been gagging to re-create their look. Because I'm not averse to a spot of vintage chic. It is useful, living in a fairly new build house, as we now do, to inject a bit of patina of the past. Stops everything looking as if you just swooped along the high street acquiring all your household necessities in one go, thereby sentencing you to a definite design graveyard at some point in the future. Though thinking about it, if you did that and just hung tight, you'd probably turn vintage chic again at some point in the future.
The colours of that era are easy to pinpoint in my mind - orange and brown, harvest gold, avocado. Poof - imagine that lot and you're straight back to the 70's, your feet snuggled in a shag pile rug and a spider plant in a macrame hanger. When we bought our first home? It was beige all the way - the magnolia years. With curtain poles, not tracks - very important.
And what about now - when our current interior choices are examined in the cold light of hindsight. Will the cliche of white with 'pops' of colour scream vintage 2010s? Or perhaps it will be the Cath Kidston bright pastel palette. I strongly suspect the oh so personal statement feature wall will be a marker, as will my beloved antlers. And let's not forget bunting.
Because vintage, where colour is concerned, speaks to me in the same way as the dictionary still defines it in the context of wine - from a certain year.
Put your time travelling specs on - what are your interior palette future clichés of the moment?
The divide between a groove and a rut is a fine one, don't you think? Summer has been good. Great even. We've throttled back, enjoyed each other's company. Shifted the pace to slow and abandoned many notions of obligation and responsibility. But what was our groove, six weeks on, begins to look suspiciously like a rut.
Sitting outside the other evening, with a hint of chill in the air and a lengthening of the shadows foretelling the approach of Autumn, I felt a secret thrill. Time for a new season, for putting aside indolence and planning a few projects.
And what better way to kick start some creativity than a visit with Monica to the Festival of Quilts. She took lots of photos. I mainly soaked it in and brought away with me a sense of wonder in what we can achieve when we have a plan and work towards it, however insignificant the individual steps might seem.
And as a reminder to myself, I stitched up a little brooch from one of Janet Clare's line drawings with thread. I like to think of him as my bird of good intentions.
See him striding forward purposefully? It's good to have a reminder of that feeling.
Yes, I realize it is August already. I missed the last day of July - it snuck up unexpectedly, in my current free-from-the-fetters-of-the-calendar state.
But it was a month I was pleased not to have misplaced. A gentle month. One of soaking up the sun and recharging. And watching those funny boys. Johnny's expression is courtesy of attempting to master bubble gum. We still have a month of summer to crack that one!
