Liberation!

Your feedback has helped me reinforce my decision to stop at Step 5 of my Mystery Quilt-Along and I'm probably going to take a few days off before starting a new project.

I can now say that I am truly a "liberated" woman...not as in "woman's lib"...but free from all UFO's, WIP's and PhD's.  I am totally caught up and let me say that it's a glorious feeling.  In the past, I've found myself lying awake at night when I have more than one project on the go which causes me to be stressed out and I really don't like that feeling.

Honestly, I'm not here to preach about finishing up projects before starting on a new one.  It doesn't work for me but we're all different and all I can say is if it works for you then that's all that matters.  Different strokes, huh?  *wink*

For those of you that mentioned that they would like to make their quilt a little larger and before I made the decision to end mine at the fifth step, I was considering a final border of either log cabin blocks to tie in with the "house" theme or another border of piano keys to echo the other row.  I'll leave it in your hands or if you have an idea of your own, go with it!  I'm sure it'll be lovely too!

You can certainly tell that Fall is just around the corner with the warm days, cool nights and the noticeably shortened amount of daylight hours.

I've replaced the now spindly wave petunias that graced our wheelbarrow for most of the summer with a Fall mum and some pumpkins. 

The flower gardens are definitely past their prime and it won't be long before we start to put them to bed for the winter.  

In the spring, we planted six tomato plants in the kitchen garden plot just outside our back door and at the rate at which they're ripening, I think we'll have enough tomatoes to open up a roadside stand!

Few things can compare to the taste of a freshly picked tomato.

We can't keep up with them!  The 'beefsteak' variety were bred to be eaten fresh from the vine are not the kind for canning/preserving or I'd certainly be busy doing that.

Some of them are the size of grapefruits!  

That's a quarter, just to give you some perspective as to their size.

So now I think I'll spend the afternoon going through some of my hundreds of patterns, books and magazines to see if I can find a new project that tickles my fancy.  

Failing that, maybe I'll design one of my own!

Happy stitching!