The most wonderful time of the year.

Today is September 1, which officially starts my favorite time of year. September, October, November, and December are my favorite months. I've always loved fall, but it seems that the older I get the more I like it. Late winter depresses me more and more each year, spring is less about flowers and greenery and more about unpredictable weather patterns and repairing the house after winter's beating, and summer is a countdown to the cool mornings and evenings of fall (the kind that you dream about during a five-day heat wave of temperatures above 90F both outside and in). September is all about apples and Brimfield and uncrowded beaches; October blesses us with a long weekend, falling leaves, pumpkins and candy corn; November brings thoughts of turkey and potatoes and winter sweaters; and December allows for thirty one glorious days of Christmas music, Christmas decorations, gift-giving, and good cheer. Welcome, September!

August finished with a bang, though, so I can't really complain. Doug got himself a new amp (from Canada - though this time we had to drive only to JP to get it) and I finished the top part of my quilt! I realized that last August I was sewing up a storm, too, getting all those bibs ready for the cutest little baby in Portland who had yet to be born. Those are all the bibs that I made, spinning around in the washing machine before I ironed them and added the snaps. Now that was a fun project. I need someone else to have their first baby so that I can shower them with bibs. I really like making bibs, and I'm getting a little rusty!

I got the hang of sewing the quilt towards the end of my epic sewing day this past Sunday, sewing the rest of the strips together. I was whipping one strip out every forty minutes. You might think that's a long time just to sew one strip to the others, but it's a more complicated process than you think. First I would lay the already-sewn-together strips on the floor, facing up, and fold over the strips that I didn't need. Then I would take the next strip that I needed to sew on and lay it on top of the last strip, facing down, and gather all the strips up accordion-style to sit at the sewing machine and sew the strips facing each other together. The action shot doesn't make it look all that interesting, but the finished product sure is nice to look at. Apparently it's even nicer to lay on, if you're a big-bellied cat with squinty eyes. Of course, that's just a simulation of what the final product will look like on the bed. I think it looks great, though, and am eager to get to work on the rest of it. Part of me wants to bring my sewing machine and material with me to New Hampshire and get some done there this weekend, but maybe I should just wait. Who wants to transport my sewing machine, scissors, supplies, and material there and back? Not me, really. There will be plenty of weekends in September to work on sewing the bottom piece together, picking out batting, figuring out how to sandwich it all together, and then binding it. Another reason to love September - it will be quilt month.

And another reason to be sorry to see August go - we finally got to the Fairbanks House, the oldest frame house in America. Now that's a place to go to get to see how colonial living really was. The house is dark and kind of dank. It's all left as it was when the last Fairbanks lived in it, Rebecca, in 1903. When I think of houses in 1903, the turn of the century, I think of the Newport mansions - rudimentary plumbing and electric systems. Why I think of those houses I don't really know, because certainly not everyone was a Vanderbilt. Looks like Rebecca was still sleeping in a rope bed in 1903. Amazing!

It's also amazing that I've given up on two books in a row now, too. First it was Captive Queen, which I tried to read to alleviate the heaviness of Breach of Faith, but I couldn't get into the lustful looks across the palace floor, the bodice-ripping, and the corrupt priests, and all of that within the first ten pages. I turned to Mudbound (highly recommended, and such a quick read), and then I thought I'd try some short stories, but I just did not care for any of the stories in Taking Pictures. I tried - I did. I read half of them!, but I couldn't take the lying, cheating, broken-home women in each and every one of her stories. I'm not a prude and I'm not looking for stories about saints, but I had no patience for the interpretation of normal that she presented. So, I'm now reading The Reader. A real pick-me-up story, indeed, but at least it's well written, and even though I'm only fifteen pages into it I can't wait to read more. And in fact, that's where I'll be if you need me - smack-dab in front of the air-conditioner with my uplifting book of the week.

Huzzah!

I just got home from work and don't really feel like blogging, but I'd better write about our family visit to Old Sturbridge Village before my sister and the kids come up this weekend to go to the American Girl store. There was tons of good content the last time we went there, so need to get this one out of the way.

Have you ever been to OSV? We used to go semi-regularly when I was a kid and I loved it. Still love it. Wanted to get married there, but it was too expensive, and plus, OSV was going through a bit of financial hardship and I think they had stopped offering weddings at that point. They are back now, though, as back as any kind of non-profit working museum can be, and I was so glad to get back there to enjoy all the things I loved about it as a kid.

The animals are some of the things that I enjoyed most about OSV, and they didn't disappoint this time. We had quite a few specimen to observe:
(Buttercup, the cow, was in quite a mood that day. What a hoot she was! But the oxen were also rather entertaining.) So the live animals were great, but so were the not so alive animals. We saw a butchering demo (this is mutton): and the kids had a great time letting loose some energy on the fiberglass animals: The kids learned about making shoes in the early nineteenth century and Doug enjoyed thinking about becoming a farmer, owning his own little red farmhouse and having a bunch of animals to tend.When you're at Sturbridge Village, it's easy to romanticize this kind of lifestyle and time period. What we don't witness is the stink of sweaty bodies in the dead heat of summer as the women cooked before the open fire in the kitchen, or the emptying of the chamber pots into the fly-ridden outhouse. Yuck.

One of the other romanticized moments at Sturbridge is the coach ride. Here my sister's family gets a ride on the Hartford-Worcester coach service which seems like a lot of fun when you're only riding around the village green, but spending 6 or more hours on that coach from Hartford to Worcester with potentially eight other bodies stuffed in there with you... not my idea of fun. But my idea of fun is spending as much time as possible learning about our national past, and hanging out with my sister, brother-in-law and their lovely family, and both goals were achieved that day. Do you think this should be their holiday card photo? I think it's perfect.