Greenhouse Gardening

Our typical Oregon spring weather has returned.  That generally means about five days of rain and gray followed by a couple of days of sunshine, then five more days of rain and gray, and so on.  Both yesterday and today started out gray and chilly, but warmed up to be very nice, warm, and sunny.  I spent the gray part of the day doing hand stitching.

In general, I choose one floss color and then just work with that before putting it aside for the day.  Today, it was the lighter of the two golds.  That meant putting the hair on my Quilting Snow Lady.  I talked in a previous blog post about "fringe stitch" and my confusion about the proper way to do it.  As it turns out, I should have looked at that blog post again because I did today's hair wrong.

Yes, it looks okay, and it should be fine.  I did give it a tug after trimming the threads to be sure it won't come undone.  The challenge with this stitch is making sure the loops of floss are dense enough to give her enough hair.  She would be mortified if she had bald patches, as any woman would.  Then, she'd have to resort to getting some sort of body perm, and well, I just don't think it would be a good idea for her to sit under the hair dryer, do you?  Anyway, she has her doo now, and so she should be happy.  Also, I started hand sewing the binding on the Divine Promises quilt.  I have it nearly half way around now, so I should have that finished in no time.

By that time, the sun had come out, and so I decided to spend some time outside.  Actually, I spent most of the time in the greenhouse, but I had the door and window open, so it was a lot like being outside.  It certainly was warm in the greenhouse!  I guess that's kind of the point.  Anyway, I repotted the largest of the tomatoes and gave them tomato cages.

The smaller tomatoes are still not large enough to require repotting, but they will be in less than two weeks, I imagine.

Those black cords you see hanging down are for the drip irrigation system Mike rigged up last year.  He'll need to get it going before we take off for the weekend.  I feign ignorance on all things sprinkler.  Besides (and my feminist friends will hate me for this), I think men are biologically superior to women when it comes to sprinkling.  And if you don't believe me, just go on a hike with a man some time.  I guarantee you'll come back with "sprinkler envy".  And if you don't, I'm saying you just didn't drink enough water.

Let's see...what else did I do?  Oh yes, even the smaller tomatoes got nice new stakes.  Also, I repotted the dill and the basil.  I sort of propped up the dill with a bamboo skewer.  As much as I have exhorted it to stand up and fight, it still leans over as if its been beaten.  Sheesh.  I've never seen such wimpy dill.  I might have to give it a proper stake if it doesn't straighten up on its own.

Also, despite my neglect of the rosemary, it continues to thrive.  Today I rewarded its heroism with a brand new pot.  It was so terribly root bound in its old pot that I feared what might happen if I took it out.  And taking it out was quite a challenge too.  It clung on for dear life (perhaps literally for dear life).  For now, it's seated on the ground with the tomatoes, but I will move it outside the greenhouse for the summer eventually.  

Here's the thing:  I have tried and tried and tried to grow rosemary.  It always dies when I plant it in the herb garden.  I finally gave up and put a little plant in the greenhouse that I could use culinarily.  Over the winter, I almost completely abandoned it.  It got no water for months.  None.  Nevertheless, it bloomed away this spring and acted as if it had completely forgiven me for treating it so badly.  Then, I allowed it to get root bound way past the point of good taste.  Still, it continued to thrive.  I have half expected some sort of Rosemary Rescue Association (RRA to you) to come and remove it from our home for plant endangerment, but so far nothing.  I figure now that I've given it a little TLC, it will promptly die.  Anyone want to place a wager?

Here's my one lonely red leaf lettuce plant.  As I said in a previous post, I replanted some of the seeds a few days ago.  Perhaps now we can have some red leaf lettuce???  Third time's a charm, right?  Either that, or three strikes and you're out.

But look at my beautiful green leaf butter lettuce!  It's doing beautifully.  This week, it is on the menu.

Can you stand a few more pictures of iris?  Honestly, they are so beautiful right now that they practically take my breath away.

This yellow one is still tantalizingly close to opening.  I can't be sure it isn't the same as the apricot ones that are already open, but I don't recall those being this sunny yellow as buds.  I can't wait to see what I get when it opens.

Remember when I weeded and cleaned up the herb garden about a month ago?  Here's what it looked like then.

It's all growing and filling in now, and it's looking so pretty.  This image is taken standing at the other end, obviously, but I'm always surprised how pretty it looks once things get going for the season.  For just a little bit of effort, it's a great garden, and there are few things any more gratifying that having fresh herbs for cooking that I have grown myself.

But here is the most thrilling moment of the day.  I noticed that the plum tree is absolutely loaded with plums!

I talked last year in this blog post about our plum tree desires and my theories about fruit production.  I hoped that we would get enough for me to make plum chutney, but it wasn't meant to be.  By nature (I think), a fruit tree will shed a good portion of its fruit, and last year, I ended up buying plums at the Farmer's Market (because I was determined to make the plum chutney).  This year, seeing maybe four times as many plums as last year, I'm hopeful that this just might be the year I can make the chutney from my own plums.  Wouldn't that be thrilling?  Yeah, I am easily amused.  Besides, my life is boring, and so plums on the plum tree?  Whoa!  I need to sit down before I have a heart attack or something.

So with that, I took one more stroll around the yard before coming inside.  The rhododendrons have mostly done their thing, but these two are the last to bloom.  They are so pretty right now.

The one in the background to the left is the dark purple one, which is definitely my favorite rhodie in the garden.  The sun is a little bright, and so this image doesn't do its color justice.  It's dark purple like my darkest purple iris.  So pretty.

Also, this magnificent bright red azalea is in full flower right now.  Most everything in our garden is pink, lavender, and purple, and so this bright red azalea is always a show stopper when it blooms.

And now it's time for me to do some machine sewing.  I'm going to try to get the May block for the Hello Moon QAL done today.  I think I'll work on a few other blocks before starting my May NewFO.  Tomorrow, I'm going down to Salem with my quilting buddy Pat to pick up a few fabrics I need for that project.  

I'm having a lovely day here at the Three Cats Ranch.  I hope your day is lovely too.

Macro Monday

It's been a while since I posted anything to Macro Monday.  The weather hasn't exactly been conducive to getting out on my belly to shoot those tiny little things.  Today, however, the iris are particularly beautiful.  There are still more colors coming, but I really love this apricot colored one.

For more Macro Monday, visit Lisa's Chaos.

Serene Sunday

Mike and I haven't done anything more stressful than getting out of bed this morning.  It's been nice just to laze around doing what we want when we want to.  It's not as if we are such stress-ridden people on our best days, but the past week was stressful with all that needed to get done for our floor exercises.  

It's been quite a while since I've had a quiet enough morning to work on embroidery, and I have really missed it.  I never feel as if the day gets off to a very good start if I don't get to do some hand work first.  It occurs to me that it doesn't really have anything to do with the hand work; rather, a day too busy for hand work is a day too busy.  Period.  So to make up for lost time, I spent quite a bit of time with my little Quilting Snow Lady this morning.  Here's what I have so far:

The last time I wrote about her, I was considering giving her a little kitty like the other Quilting Snow Lady had.  The vote was unanimous, and so I added a kitty on the left side.  From now on, I'll make sure there's a kitty in every block.  And I'm going to link this post to Slow Sunday Stitching (emphasis on the slow).

After that, I suited up and went outside to take care of a few things.  I filled the bird feeders, and then went into the greenhouse to check things out in there.  Tomorrow I'm going to repot some more tomatoes.  The largest ones are ready to go into their largest pots of the season, while the one small one remaining in a tiny pot, needs to go into a medium-sized pot for now.  The remaining tomatoes already in medium-sized pots will be ready for larger pots in a week or two as well.  I'm so happy with how they have perked up.  Several are blooming now.

Also, I gave up and replanted the red leaf lettuce (for the second time, now).  Only one of the seeds germinated.  I'm suspicious that when I planted the other seeds, they may not have actually stayed in the soil. The seeds are so tiny that I use the moistened tip of a bamboo skewer to pick them up.  The very first seed planted was the only one that germinated, and it think it's possible that the others stuck to the skewer and that I just didn't realize it.  This time, I made sure they stayed in the dirt where they belonged.  This has been the most challenging year for the red leaf lettuce, which is our favorite, of course.  The butterhead is ready for  picking now, and so I'm going to make sure we have some nice green salads on next week's menu.

After that, I took some pictures of the iris that have opened.  There are still some colors that have yet to bloom, and a yellow one, in particular, that I've never seen before.  It must have been planted with the original group, but for some reason, has been hiding its light under the proverbial bushel.  Maybe tomorrow it will open completely and I can show it to you.  For now, here's a peek at a couple of them.

My favorite changes all the time, but if I were put under the lights, given sodium pentothal, and forced to choose, I think I would say this next one is my favorite.

However, I'm very partial to this one as well.

And this one.

And check out these chive blossoms!  They were next on my agenda.

I only picked about one quarter of them, and that was plenty to make a batch of chive blossom vinegar.

I like to cut off the green stems, although I don't think you really need to.  Then I wash them really well and put them in an air tight container.  Then I pour white vinegar over them, just enough so that they are all submerged in the vinegar.

Pretty huh?

Now they just need to sit for two weeks.  Then I'll strain the blossoms out of them, and I'll have the most wonderfully fragrant chive vinegar.  By then, it will have turned a lovely shade of pink.  (I looked in on it just before I sat down to write this post, and the vinegar was already turning pink.)  I love it in vinaigrettes, but it makes a nice gift too.  When two weeks are up, I'll show you how pretty it is.

After that, I finished quilting and binding the Divine Promises quilt.  

This is the largest quilt I've ever quilted on a domestic sewing machine.  It's about 45 x 47 inches.  (I know some of you have been brave enough to do much larger quilts, but this is the biggest one I've done to date.)  I'm thrilled with how well the new sewing machine is working for this application.  It does beautiful free motion quilting, and that was why I wanted it.

I stippled the embroidered blocks,

added a little flare in a few places,

and then did a meandering heart, flower, loop design over the borders and sashings.  

Here's how the back looks, pieced with the leftover fabric from the front.

All that's left now is to hand sew the binding, and it will be finished!

So that's about all I know for today.  Here's a gratuitous cat picture for you.  

Gracie...still camera shy after all these years.

Passing for Normal

The past couple of days have been fairly busy.  Thursday, the carpet was laid.  Smitty told you all about that.  I left Thursday afternoon while they carpet installers were here and met up with fellow blogger Judy R.  We had coffee at Starbucks and I gave her the bobbin clips that I had previously used as my bobbin storage system.  Since they won't work with the new, larger bobbins that my new machine takes, I passed the clips along to Judy.  It was great fun getting to meet in person.  Judy came bearing gifts, which surprised me completely.  As she put it, her gifts had a chocolate theme:

Yum.  And may I just say that the pincushion will last longer than the chocolate bar did.  (Thanks again, Judy!)

Friday morning I had breakfast with Erik, which is always a delight.  It's such fun to hear news from my kids about what they're doing.  Erik and Mae were heading off to Eugene for the weekend to see the Oregon State Beavers play three baseball games.  These are some important playoffs, and since their bitter rival, the University of Oregon Ducks, was also in the mix, it was going to be nothing less than a grudge match.  (Go Beavs!)  I had a few errands to run on Friday, but I was pretty tired from the week.  I suppose I did a fair amount of work both packing up and cleaning up, but I think the most tiresome aspect of any kind of domestic re-do is having strangers in the house.  Fortunately, I could hide in the sewing room most of the time, but it isn't the same as having the house to myself.

All of that to say that I took most of the day off on Friday.  I was suffering with a muscle spasm right between my shoulder blades.  It's sort of a chronic problem, generally made worse by stress, and I haven't had to deal with it for quite some time.  So I ended up taking some strong muscle relaxants and sleeping most of the afternoon on Friday.  Under the circumstances, it was probably the best thing I could have done.  It is still bothering me today (Saturday), but not as much as it was on Friday.

This morning we got up and had breakfast with Matthew, who came up to help move some of the heavier items back to where they belonged.  Matthew, being without a car for the time being, then drove my car back to his house.  With Mike at home, I won't need a car until Tuesday, and so Matthew might as well have some wheels.  With Matthew's help, we have things put pretty much back to normal.  I took a break for a while to give my shoulder a rest, and then I managed to get everything unpacked and put back in its place.  Despite my whining about the mess and the stress, I'm absolutely thrilled with how things are looking.  I wish we had done it a long time ago.  On the other hand, these sorts of things always involve a good period of time getting psyched up.  Do you agree?

So this afternoon, I managed to get some more quilting done on the Divine Promises quilt.  All the blocks are quilted now, and I'm doing a Loopy Daisy Heart meander around the sashings and the borders.  I'm following along with Melissa Corry's video called Loopy Daisy Heart Leaf.  This is how it's looking.  It's easier to see from the back.

I have the quilt more than three quarters done, and so I'm hoping to finish the quilting tomorrow and also to get the binding sewn on by machine.  I can do the hand sewing next week.

So that's about all that's going on for now.  Next Friday, Mike and I will celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary.  We decided it would be a good time to make our return trip to The Palouse.  You can read about the trip we took there last fall after the harvest by clicking right here.  We've been dying to go back in the spring to see it all dressed in greens.  Just the other day, I found this image that really whetted our appetites for a return trip.

(image credit:  Kevin McNeal)

So we'll be heading out on Friday morning, and returning Monday evening.  Looking forward to that.  

Tuesday I'm heading down to Salem with my quilting buddy Pat to pay a visit to one of my favorite quilt shops, Greenbaum's Quilted Forest.  I need a few fabrics for my May NewFO project, and I get a birthday discount all during the month of May.  It seems like a perfect time to make the trip down. 

What's on your agenda for the weekend? 

Carpet Camo

Good Morning!  Smitty here with some very impurrtant things to tail you.

Some Mans have been here this week, and they sure made a mess of things.  They refurrbished our floors, and they laid down this new stuff called carpet...which is a lot like fur, only for the floor.  Cool, huh?

It feels so soft and nice on my feets.  And I love this color...it looks just like my own furs!  

Gracie doesn't like it.  She says it smells of Evil Mans, and she's mad that it doesn't have more patches of orange in it.

Also, my mom cleared everything off of all the furrniture, so I can go on a walkabout without breaking anything.

Usually she squirts me with a squirt gun when I walk here, but today...no purroblemo!

These toy mousies think they blend in with the carpet too.  But I can see them with my supurr secret cat-ray vision.

Come to me, Mousie.  You cannot escape my lightning fast paws.

They don't have as much speed as the outside mousies.  They need a little kick start.

Oh, it's okay, Mousie.  It won't hurt a bit when I rip your stuffing out.  I'll be gentle.

Here.  Let me clean your furrs a little bit.  Then we'll play.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Plain and Simple Amish Sampler

Thank you for viewing my entry to the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  I'm so glad you stopped by!  For this entry, I want to show you my Amish sampler called Plain and Simple.  My ancestry is Amish, and this quilt pattern was one of the first I bought when I learned to quilt.  It was my desire to honor my Amish ancestry, and particularly my grandmother, who was a gifted quilter.  All of her quilts were pieced and quilted by hand.  If you are interested in reading more about my family history and about Amish quilts in general, you can read this earlier blog post.  For now, here is my quilt, finished just a few months ago:

When I chose the fabrics, I wanted to make this a traditional Amish quilt, and so I used Kona solids and a special Amish black fabric.  The black is a pure black and the fabric is densely woven so that it has a slight sheen to it.  

It was quilted by a very talented long arm quilter named Erin Davis of Wilsonville, Oregon.  Erin has quilted many quilts for me, and I knew she was especially good with traditional designs.  Erin's quilting did not disappoint.  It is all done free hand.  She used a grid in some areas.

Medallions in others.

And some lovely feathering with cross-hatching.

This next image shows the outer border, and this picture was taken before the quilt was bound.  Erin recommended a black batting so that there would be no problems with the batting showing through or bearding.

The pattern I used suggested a deep olive green for the back, but I really wanted to use this pretty royal blue.  Here is how the quilt looks from the back, where the quilting really shines.

And here is the complete back.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my quilt.  Thanks for stopping by!  To return to the Blogger's Quilt Festival, just click on the button at the top of this post.