Time for a little instant gratification...

I ventured back to Michigan last week for another long weekend in the north woods. Which, of course, meant another trip to my favorite quit shop. I'd managed to miss their annual sidewalk sale by visiting the weekend before and the weekend after, and I was happy they still had some of these Moda jelly rolls left. I'd been thinking about this one since my last trip, and regretted not picking it up the first time around. I fell in love with the bright, saturated colors of the fabrics -- like the name implies, they really do feel fresh!

When I got home, I dove right into it. I know if I sit on something too long, I'll get paralyzed by indecision and it'll end up in a stash box.

Gotta swim with the momentum while it's flowing, the tide seems to ebb rather quickly around here.

So I made this:

I definitely needed to get something done. It always feels so good to actually complete a top, especially to one whose work usually ends up half-baked in a Ziploc bag! I'm still contemplating adding a border, which would seriously threaten its progress, and I'd really like to get it quilted this week to further add to my sense of accomplishment. Here's hoping!

And while I've been gone off and on for the past month, my little neighbor Ryan has been watering the flowers on my deck. He takes this responsibility very seriously, reminding his mother every morning that "Cake's flowers need water!" Over the years I've been "Aunt Take," "Auntie Tate," now "Cake." It could be worse.

Now, the weather took a surprisingly cool turn while I was gone last week, bringing a ton of rain (and a tornado, which I missed driving through by oh, six or seven minutes), and, I imagine, a bit of relief to my petunias, but that really doesn't explain how everything has virtually exploded.

I came home to a festival of purples and pinks and crazy verbena. My butterfly bush has dozens of cones, and my roses, which last year produced three flowers all summer, have twelve blooms on one bush this week alone!

Obviously Ryan has a greener thumb than I. Maybe I should leave a three-year old in charge for good?