The wanderer returns

Friends!  Have you missed me?  I have surely missed all of you!  Settle in for a long post - since it's been so long, I feel super garrulous!  First of all, let me sing the praises of Felicity, who sent me this amazing mini quilt as part of the Modified Tradition swap.

Is it not just the bees knees?  She calls it Starry Snowballs - how appropriate!  Can you see the meticulous quilting in the yellow snowballs (click through to Flickr to see it closer).  And the back is just as stunning as the front!

But yes, I have been away from my blog for awhile.  My absence has been due to a trip across the border.  With my lab manager and soon-to-be-doctoral student, Lindsay, I went to a workshop at Harvard last week.  We drove down to Boston after spending the night chez my mother in law in Montreal.  We were able to take a little stroll downtown before dinner and picked up some delicious macarons for dessert.  Wow - move over, cupcakes, this is one food trend I can sign up for in a hurry!

On the way to Boston, we stopped in Burlington, VT.  There may have been a quilt store there.  And a shoe store.  Money may have exchanged hands.  Ahem.  Moving on....  Driving in Boston is not for the faint of heart.  We got lost many times.  But at last we arrived at our destination.  You can imagine I felt smarter just being on the Harvard campus!  After a couple of days of hobnobbing with my fellow wizards, Lindsay and I took my colleague, the lately-married Clare, and her doctoral student, Luisa, to spend a couple of days at the beach in Ogunquit, Maine, before heading home again.

The weather wasn't so great at first.  The fog was so thick you could barely see the breakers.

The season had barely begun, so there were no crowds.  We did have some glorious weather just as we were leaving, with a spectacular sunset.

We walked to Perkins Cove and along the Marginal Way.


What a beautiful part of the world!

It was hard to return to work, but wonderful to come home to family.  I managed to catch up on some outstanding bee sewing, making a lovely tulip block for Norma and four scrappy Arkansas Crossroads blocks for Greta.

Today being Father's Day, we went to Prince Edward County for a bit of lunch and a drive around.  Eve drove, since we opted not to take the 401.  She was excited to get a good chunk of driving practice, since it's about 65km along Hwy 33.

We went with a young couple who met in my lab as students, but have since moved to Toronto together.  They were visiting Kingston for the weekend, and it's always so nice to see them.

I don't normally like pictures of myself, but I like this one well enough to share.

We walked around Picton for a bit and ate some gelato.  My little girl is getting big, but she still loves her Daddy.

We finished up the day by driving across the County to Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Factory, the smallest, tiniest shop off a gravel road in the middle of miles of farmland.  And who should we run into but my friend Mary, to whom I gave the Sunny Side of the Street quilt.  Small world.