Summer Idyll

I don't know if it's the 4th of July, or summer in Maine, or a week off with family, but this time of year gets almost ridiculously idyllic this time of year.

I bought Mr. Cleaver a pair of chaise lounges for the backyard as a Father's Day gift, and I'm starting to think that this made have been my best gift given to date. My brother and his family visited for 4th of July week, and we spent a good portion of that time, parents and kids all cuddled up on those chaises. I'm generally not great at relaxing, but give me a chaise, a cool drink, and a good magazine and I'm content for hours. 

My brother had never been to Maine in the summer before, and my adopted home did a great job of showing why Maine is so wonderful. We had sunshine for days and strawberries warm off the vine; we had seafood feasts and fresh strawberry ice cream; we played candlepin and wiffle-ball in the golden hour. We celebrated Steinbeck's gotcha day and Mr. Cleaver's birthday and Independence Day.

It was a warm, wonderful week and it makes me glad to live in Maine.  

4th of July Weekend

We had a wonderful, summery long 4th of July weekend. There were strawberries, birthday cake (for Mr. Cleaver) and Inside Out at the Drive-In, which LMC stayed up for the entirety of, and fireworks watching on PBS.

What are your favorite summer things to do?

• Martha Stewart's Marvelous Black Forest Cake
• Maxwell's Strawberry Farm
• Pride's Corner Drive In

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String and Strawberries

String I:

I finished this dish towel at the beginning of the month, but for one reason or another it's sat in my photos for about three weeks. It's not as though I have a backlog of a bazillion projects to post, but as cute as this piece of embroidery is (it's an ironing scotty dog!), I didn't think it warranted a whole post to itself, so I'm lumping it together with a few other bits and pieces.

The Scotty Dog Pattern is from the Hoop Love Vintage Transfers Group on Flickr, which has a treasure trove of patterns you can print out an stitch. They have an especially large collection of mostly complete days of the week patterns like the Scotty above.  I'm alos planning on doing Wednesday (mending) and Friday (baking).

I worked on this mainly while my bum wrist kept me from knitting and in the after period  when I struggled to get my knitting mojo back (which happily it has, thanks to Kate Davie's Manu and some Malabrigo Silky Merino). I haven't yet done the pattern transfer for the second towel, but if our current levels of humidity hang around for much longer I will, since they're only so much wool I can handle in humidity :)

Strawberries:

On Saturday, Mr. Cleaver and I picked four pints of strawberries at Maxwell's, two of which went to his mother and the other two which ended up on my cereal and this strawberry shortcake I made last night.

The recipe is from Posie Gets Cozy and the only changed I made/would recommend is to make 6 or 8 dough "blobs" instead of the listed 4. mine were doughy in the middle until I cut them in half and baked them some more, and the smaller biscuits (it's a very biscuity shortbread) were about all I could handle to eat at once.

String II:

I have plans for a fantastic Fourth of July dress from Vogue 8184. It's a fairly simple dress (especially since I'm skipping the boning- since my version has straps), so I 'm taking the time to do my first go at tissue fitting, especially since I fell in between two of the multi-size envelopes.  I'm somewhat obsessed with fit these days - what with the pattern drafting I've been dabbling in and all (and I'm close with another sundress I drafted). Since the Fourth is only ten days away, we'll hopefully have results soon!