Well, it's Saturday, Julie left on Thursday, Friday vanished like a dream into a slow starting morning, a few visits with people in the front yard, three hours of work in my classroom (at long last!), errands en route home, a great work-out session with Kiley, then quinoa salad (which I am rocking these days, I must say) with Andy and Nate while we watched the wonderful "Muppets Most Wanted." Yay!
While Julie was up, we packed a lot of action into the five days we had, as has become our habit. We. . . .
picked out materials for three pairs of contrasting jammie pants: Caroline gets green and bright green; I get yellow floral and an aqua small print; Julie gets crazy patchwork and small pink flowers. I hope to cut them all out (most space-intensive part of the project) and then sew on them as time allows. I'm hoping that my new study set up will make it possible to sew for 1/2 hour or 15 minutes as that time becomes free. . . We'll see. We got the flannel at Marden's, and enjoyed the wonderful fabric ladies there.
At the other end of the chic scale, we also spent a day in Belfast and visited the ineffable Fiddlehead Artisan Supply, where I got some fabric for Mom's runner, better fabric to try to make Lyle's dream shirt, and we basically dreamed great dreams. What a lovely store: Julie, veteran of many fabric stores, said it was the nicest one she's been in. I resisted the urge to buy this book so I could make a dress from it that was almost exactly the one in the G'hopper window that stopped me in my tracks last week. . . . It's on my Christmas list, though!
While in Belfast, we went to the nice shoe store and I got a Deerfield Leathers handbag for 20% off--it's heavy leather, smells great, was made in New Hampshire, and . . . well, I just succumbed to the whole event. Lovely. I want to leather treat it and then start the switching over process from my backpacky muppet-haired Bean's bag to this one!
We also went to Bar Harbor, saw Lori, climbed Beech Mountain, went to the Beech Hill Farmstand, and checked out Spruce and Gussy and Salt--I loved S&G, but Salt was pretty pricey, upscale, and minimalist, so didn't really work for me.
A few things on MY "I've always wanted to" list included visiting the Gee's Bend Quilters exhibit at the Penobscot Marine Museum, climbing Great Pond Mountain (Nate and Andy came with us, which was great) and swimming afterwards, finally setting foot in the Courthouse Gallery in our very own Ellsworth, and then of course the mixed experience of Bar Harbor in mid-season madness.
Her last full day, Wednesday, was a chilly, rainy one, and we had already decided to see "The Hundred Foot Journey," (here's a link to the trailer, if you haven't seen it yet; backed by Spielberg and Oprah, it's had a lot of press!) regardless of the weather, so that worked perfectly. It's a fun movie, but not as strong as "Chef"--still, go see it. Much to like!
We ate at the Thai Sana place in Ellsworth that night, and before we knew it, J was off in her car with Scooter the turtle. . . . and I was thinking of how much she needed to move to Portland at least.
What a lovely time. How spoiled we are to have had two kid free weeks! It was great to get out and see some cultural sites, do some hiking, and also do some small-business-boosting shopping. Yay, friend visits and vacationing!
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