Back again

If I hadn't learned my lesson about making resolutions (the lesson being that I rarely manage to keep the ones I make), I would resolve here to write more often. But I know how these things go, so I am not going to make any new-leaf declarations.
The college students have returned to our little-big town. I'm wearing a sweatshirt as I write this. The football season, new though it is, has already claimed a few victims. If anyone wants to make weekend plans with us, we are quoting them mid-October dates, as our September dance card is all full. Which is to say, summer is gone. I can't say we made the most of it, but neither would I say we squandered the season. Autumn, really, is my very favorite season. In February and March, spring edges it out for favorite status, but that is purely situational. Fall's got it all over the rest of the year--the sky is its bluest, the air is its most fragrant, sweaters are still new and welcome. I know we have a few more weeks of late-summer heat, a while before leaves really change colors and sweaters are necessary all day, but right now it feels like fall. And after a hiatus from sewing, I am back at it.
This stack...

has been on my mind for a couple months, haunting me from the sewing room, calling out "There aren't enough of us to make a quilt! There are too many of us for anything else! Enter at your own risk!"
They began as a quilt for a little girl, but if that little girl got a quilt, there are about a dozen other little girls who would be owed a quilt from me, and I am about as good at owning up to obligations like that as I am at sticking to resolutions. Until I am more comfortable with this quilting thing, smaller projects are more prudent.
So I am going to go think about what those smaller projects are going to be. I bought a bunch of white and off-white fabric this weekend, which I love to have because I am not stingy with it (solid white being less likely to evoke that "what-if-I-use-this-beautiful-pattern-and-tomorrow-realize-I-need-it-for-the-masterpiece-I-didn't-know-I-had-in-me?" anxiety)--I can play fast and loose today. Fast and loose means productive, if I can just publish this post instead of going on and on because I am still scared of that stack of squares...