And I started bawling. Correction. I am still bawling. As I am typing this.

Where did this summer go? How is it possible that it's the end of August, and I've only taken my little boy swimming twice? I feel guilty and a little cheated. But I have only myself to blame. (Yep. Still bawling.)

It's not that we haven't had a lovely summer full of fun things. We have. It's just that swimming is my summertime thing. I look forward to it every year like a little kid. And then every year, as the summer is ending, I invariably feel that I haven't gotten to swim enough. This year, more than ever. We don't live near a pool, and for all of my love of swimming, I'm a little phobic about the beach. But if I made time to do it, we could easily drive to my mom's house about 45 minutes away and swim in her neighborhood pool. I just haven't made time.

Why?

I talk about my kind of crazy life on this blog, and I think I make it sound kind of romantic and glamorously over-scheduled. And that's not disingenuous. I think that my life is pretty darned cool. I have a fantastic husband and an amazing child, not to mention a loving and wonderful extended family. I get up in the morning and go to work as a lawyer, giving my voice to people who would otherwise have none. The work is hard—it's time consuming and emotionally draining. But I care about my clients, and I love (I mean love) my coworkers. After my son goes to bed I get to design fabric and draw and write stories and read books. And, starting this week, two nights a week, I get to go to my law school alma mater and teach a new group of students what I have learned; I have dreamed of this opportunity for years, and so far it's just as good as I'd hoped.

But at the end of a week full of all of these good things, here I am sitting at my computer at 6:30 in the morning boo-hooing about what I haven't done. Because as much as I try to trick myself into believing otherwise, it's simply not possible for a person of even moderate imagination and passion to do and experience and accomplish every notion worth pursuing. Eventually, trade-offs have to be made. This summer, I have traded sun-drenched afternoons of swimming and wrinkled fingers for a combination of other indulgences and more pressing responsibilities.

I use this blog to tell stories, to share my creative process and product, to say "look at me!" But I also use it as a touchstone. A place where I come to reacquaint myself with...myself. As E.M Forster said, "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?"

So what do I think? I think that I probably need to slow down. But I don't really know how. I don't know if I even want to. Right now I think I'm just treading water. I know that what I don't want is to look back five years from now and realize that I had my priorities all wrong. Maybe what I really need is a sunny afternoon floating on my back to figure it out.

See, I have been having this weird not-quite-dizzy-but-definitely-not-normal malaise for the past few weeks. A normal person would probably have done one of two things if confronted by this feeling: 1) beat feet to the doctor in order to rule out anything serious or 2) waived it off as just one of those things and gone about her business. I did neither. Work has been relentless for the last few weeks, so finding a way to accommodate the incomprehensible schedule my doctor keeps was out. And, because I am an inveterate hypochondriac, just waiving off this feeling—which is something akin to the feeling you get when you drop from a great height—was also decidedly out of the question. So, as is my habit, I chose the path of greatest resistance: persistent worry, with no hope for a logical, practical resolution. For two weeks, I called my situation "vertigo" and told everyone around me to chill out, while I silently contemplated my living will.

Finally, on Saturday, after no small amount of prodding, I dragged myself to the doctor (not my regular doctor, but a very nice urgent care place that takes my insurance). I hoped for something simple, like a clogged ear, but I feared something serious, like, say Ebola. Well, I didn't really fear Ebola, but the things I did fear all sound too embarrassing to admit now. Ebola is a lot less hysterical than what I had in mind.

If not Ebola, then what?

We bought Doodles at Lunch: 36 Tear-Off Placemats after flipping through it for about, oh, 10 seconds. Remember Ed Emberly books? You know, where you drew about 100 different animals all from your thumbprint? Those were the tops when I was growing up. But, well, Ed...move over because Deborah Zemke's 36 doodles knock the old Emberly way outta the park. What I love about these suggested doodles—aside from the fact that they achieve remarkable realism with a minimum of drawing, breaking each doodle into its fundamental shapes—is that each doodle is built from a letter of the alphabet (or a number, thus 36 doodles, rather than 26), AND the letter of the alphabet that is the basis for the drawing is also the first letter of the item being drawn. My favorites: The sideways E's that make the feet of the Elephant and the two lowercase N's that make the head and body of the Newt. My son and I spent well over an hour one afternoon drawing and re-drawing these doodles. He opted for markers, while I chose my favorite black Staedtler pen and watercolor pencils. Rather than drawing on the pages themselves, which are intended to be pulled out and used as placemats, we each worked on our own large sheet of paper so that we can practice these doodles over and over. We were both very happy with our work—for someone who designs constantly in spite of significant insecurity about drawing, I found this really satisfying. I plan to track down some of her other titles for even more fun. 

Home as canvas? This could get messy . . .? Read the full entry.]]>A Canning Party - Free Printables from Paper Cravehttp://www.cottage-industrialist.com/blog/2010/7/11/a-canning-party-free-printables-from-paper-crave.htmlCameron Blazer2010-07-11T10:56:39Zcanning food kristen magee papercrave printables printablesSummer is a busy time Chez Industrialist, and so I am so happy to have asked the lovely Kristen Magee of Paper Crave to do a guest post. Like me, she shares a love of cooking, design, and craft. I think her post is the perfect blend of all three. I hope you love it as much as I do. Take it away, Kristen!

© 2010 Kristen Magee // Paper Crave

I have many wonderful memories of the yearly canning parties that my family used to have during the height of the summer harvest. Though I wasn't old enough at the time to actually take part in the jam making and pickling fun, I do remember having a great time picking berries from bushes that grew in the woods behind my godparents' house, which was where the parties were held. I honestly don't know how many of those berries actually made it back to the house, instead of going straight to my tummy!

Join the party, and get the free printables!

Honey Bees © 2010 Cameron Blazer // Cottage Industrialist

Ginkgo Wave © 2010 Cameron Blazer // Cottage Industrialist

We were heading to Washington, D.C., because I was attending a conference, and it seemed silly to go and stay in a hotel all alone when I could do it with my boys. To sweeten the pot (for myself), my husband and I agreed that we should break the trip up into two parts, stopping somewhere along the way. The somewhere was IMMEDIATELY obvious to me. Mebane, NC.

© 2010 Cameron Blazer // Cottage Industrialist
Ok, so these carrots and asparagus are no longer in season (I took this pic of my farmer's market haul back in April), but OOH! PRETTY! Thackeray Farms Carrots, Kennerty Farms Asparagus, Wadmalaw Island eggs

Last week I brought you photos of my friend Alex's amazing back yard farm. And I mentioned that our visit had inspired me to dig in hard with my ongoing efforts to eat more locally, seasonally available food.

I have long eschewed planning as something that other people—you know, the kind who balance their checkbooks, plan responsibly for retirement, and wear shoes indoors—do, but not me. It's not that I will completely defend my disorganization—let's call it my "organic" approach to life—I am a lifelong scatterbrain, and it's one of the things I dislike most about myself. Important things get forgotten; deadlines get squeezed; projects get buried under other projects never to be finished, or only to be rediscovered hours before a deadline.

© 2010 David Mandel

A couple of months ago Alex posted a link to a YouTube video of what looked like the work of a slightly crazy vegetable genius. Buckets linked together with pipes in long rows, water trickling out of drip hoses, and a bumper crop of vegetables growing in white, rocky sand. No details about where he filmed it or who had built it. And then I realized...Alex had built it! And? And? He has chickens!

I promptly invited myself over to check it out (with husband and son in tow, because CHICKENS), and Alex graciously accepted my invitation. And what it may lack in traditional pastoral beauty, it more than makes up for in functional, rocket-science-y cool. 

See more of Alex's back yard farm, now featuring 100% MORE CHICKENS. . . ]]>Strawberries and Cream Crumble: Dessert Three Wayshttp://www.cottage-industrialist.com/blog/2010/5/24/strawberries-and-cream-crumble-dessert-three-ways.htmlCameron Blazer2010-05-24T10:17:12Zdessert food recipe seasonal strawberries  © 2010 Cameron Blazer // Cottage IndustrialistQuick recap: last Sunday was a casserole of fail* on the cooking and crafting front. You may remember that I burned dessert. When you see how easy this dessert is, you will know just how off my game I was.

It's strawberry season here in South Carolina, and this week my son got to go to one of my favorite local farms with his class to pick strawberries. He came home with two pints of lovely, freshly picked, and minimally-smushed-by-and-eager-four-year-old strawberries. And so I set about to redeem myself from last week.

Will our heroine stage a comeback? Will she share the recipe? You'll never know unless you keep reading . . .

© 2010 Cameron Blazer // Cottage Industrialist

So. I now own a pair of sneakers adorned with my own patterns. Now, back in middle school, I would've gotten whomped for drawing all over my Keds. But now that I'm all grown up, the look is totally en vogue. I uploaded my designs to Zazzle.com and had them made into some sweet lo-top Pro Keds—can you believe this is possible?! Anyone can upload a design for their own shoes, so long as the copyright isn't held by someone else, and you have total control over every element of the design. Beyond cool.

But wait! Want some nifty kicks but don't know a pixel from a pica? I went on a shoe-designing kick this weekend—my insomnia and carpal tunnel is your gain: I give you the Cottage Industrialist Zazzle shop. Clever name, no? Yeah, well. Anyhoo, go have a look-see, just for fun!

My nifty new shoes arrived last Friday evening, thanks to an incredibly dogged Fed Ex man who actually called me on my cell phone (!) to find out where he should leave my shoes since I wasn't home and he'd already attempted delivery earlier in the day. I should have come home, put on my new kicks, and quit while I was ahead for the weekend.

Wherein I ignore the gentle whisper of the universe . . .