Welcome home to sweet September

So here we are again. The end of summer. 

And I feel it as I get ready for September. All the family dinners and lunches that I cooked this summer. All the visitors. The hours of chatting. Seeing family after years apart. Happy hours on the deck. Morning swims, walking by the lily pond, and barefoot on the beach. And it all happened so fast. It is a blur.

And I am full. And yes, slightly tired. My daughter said people would relate to a Sunday letter about the chaos of summer.  She also said, "Atlantic Canadians think they can only do things in the summer. They forget there is a whole year." And it's true.

Here where I live, we live extra in July and August because we feel like the rest of the year is winter. We have to pack in all the road trips before the snow. All the family visiting before the school year even though none of us have seen a classroom for years. We savour the summer and fill it up.

It is exciting. And let's be honest, exhausting.

Then you see September, and it looks like a couch on which you can lay down for a nap. All summer there was so much love pouring out of you, and so much love brought to your door, and you are grateful. Ever so grateful. And you cannot help but think what will next summer bring? Because this one is ending and there will never be another quite like it. 

The sweetness of summer past is already sinking in. And rather than be sad, we begin to awaken ourselves to September. To book club meetings, and pots of mums on the doorstep, and maybe an apple pie. (Home made. The crust too. Definitely make the crust.) And what was lost is now something new found. The sun rises later and the dark begins to fill the evening and there is even time to light a candle. The fall is coming. And there is so much to look forward to. 

We can settle down. There is less pressure. Less running around. There is time to think and write a few notes to yourself with a cup of tea in the middle of the day. You don't have to feed six people. A tuna melt will do for supper. And you have time to be with yourself again, hear your own thoughts. 

And of course all the above is really my story. And it might very well be your story. Perhaps like me, you are ready for the calm after the bluster of summer. I am ready to hook for two hours in the day without air conditioning. I am ready to wrap myself in a sweater and make a stew. I have a lot of work to do this September and I am thankful for it. In late September eight women are coming to the studio for a three day workshop. I am thinking of them and welcoming them and making being here wonderful for them. 

Somehow though, the pace of September is different than the pace of summer and I respect that. It suits me better. So this weekend as I say so long to summer I will be saying hello to a new season. A season of learning and adventure in the studio. We are going to be focusing on new products and new ideas. And I am ready to embrace it just like the girl in our poppies and seedpods pattern, with my arms wide open, and my heart tender.

It is a change of season in so many ways in the studio this fall. A new book. New courses. The Inspiration Sessions opening up. We are making room for new ways of being, new ways of doing things and thinking about all the rug hookers out there that matter so much to me, and to all of us here. 

And Angela and Patrick have worked all summer on something beautiful that we will share with you in the next few weeks. A gift from the studio and all the beautiful smart people who helped create it. Stay tuned, good things are coming.