Monday's Moves

Good morning, my friends. How's everyone doing? Things are pretty slow around here. We're doing our grocery shopping today, and I'm getting a pedicure tomorrow. The energy level is going to need to pick up some. I was all set to take a walk on the treadmill yesterday, but I was discouraged when the TV wouldn't play my latest Ken Burns documentary...The West. And, obviously, I can't walk on the treadmill if I can't watch television at the same time, so what's a person to do? Well, I vacuumed and dusted. I suppose that counts for something. Mike has been doing something to the TV...don't even ask...which involved getting some new cables. The cables arrived yesterday, and so the TV is working again. No more excuses about the treadmill. Bummer.

Before that, I took the first stitches on my newest embroidery piece, "S" is for Sew.

Probably, I'll finish it this morning, and then I'll get started on the second of three.

From there, I made a little more progress on my "Circus" piece. Here's your peek.

There was no kitty help in the sewing room yesterday. When I went back upstairs, I found Smitty lounging on his new kitty pole. It's hardly new any more, but it has taken him some time to decide it's worth his attention. Now, he's claimed it for his very own exclusive domain. When he looks out that window, he's the king of all he surveys. And when he turns around and looks inside the house, he's still the king of all he surveys.

And that works out great for Sadie because she's the queen of the top rung on the old kitty pole now. 

Except when there's work to be done. When she saw I was gearing up to do some slow-stitching on the quilt binding, she couldn't get on my lap fast enough.

With her assistance, I've turned the second corner now. Even though I've turned two corners, I'm only about one-third of the way around. 

Finishing this quilt is my goal for February's 

There's still plenty of time left in the month, and so I'm confident I'll have it finished in time.

Except for grocery shopping, today will look a lot like yesterday. My embroidery pieces won't take long, and so it probably makes sense to make up the next block for A Year in the Garden...this one:

Her designs are always so delicate and pretty. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Also, I'll continue on with the "Circus" piece. So far, I'm adhering to the one-hour rule, but it's getting more interesting now. An hour might not be enough. And, of course, I'll continue with my quilt binding. Sadie demands it.

Breakfast is next. Time to get on with my day. I hope y'all have a good day planned for yourselves.

Long List

Good morning, my friends, and Happy President's Day! We're celebrating the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln today. Here, in America, these used to be separate holidays. A while back, some genius got the idea to combine the two into a single national holiday, providing Americans with another three-day weekend. If that includes you, then enjoy your day off. 

There was more on yesterday's to-do list than I remembered when I wrote yesterday's post. For one thing, I'd forgotten I needed to bake another pre-breakfast snack. Mike was given an opportunity to choose my next baking project, and he requested another round of the Jumbo Breakfast Cookies. And sure! I'm game. I like them too. So that took about an hour of my time in the morning.

While those were baking, I finished off the final block for The Story of My Day. It still needed borders.

My elbow was bothering me quite a bit yesterday. I've come to the conclusion that quilting is the culprit. Reading back over some blog posts where I whined about it, quilting seems to be the common activity preceding the times when it bothers me most. It was tempting to blame the Bowflex, but I had no pain when I used the Bowflex last Thursday. It wasn't until I spent a couple of days quilting the Vintage Linen quilt that it flared up again. 

Okay...so I'm not going to stop quilting, but I will continue to limit my time on any given day, especially for larger quilts that need to be hauled around more as I'm sewing. And all of that to say that I skipped my workout yesterday...fine with me. Smitty was more interested in sewing anyway. Bowflex workouts are so boring for cats.

It's a bit of a puzzle sewing the borders onto the blocks for The Story of My Day. He read the instructions to me as I did the cutting.

He also helped me hold the ruler so I could get a good straight cut. This is one of his favorite ways of helping.

And with his assistance, I finished off the borders for the last block.

Here are all the blocks laid out together. They still need to be sewn together, and then a wider outer border added. The outer border has those little squares of color like the block borders. I'll probably need to enlist the kitties' help reading the instructions to me as I do the cutting, but that will be down the road a bit.

And with that block finished, I found myself without anything for this morning's stitching. My next project is this "S" is for Sew small quilt from Wooden Spool Designs. I believe I might have downloaded this as a free pattern at one point in time. Now, it's available for purchase right here.

The blocks are small, and so this won't take long. I'm going to do them three at a time, starting with "S" is for Sew,

Pins & Needles

and Sewing Bee. 

They're all traced and ready for stitching now. I'll start on them this morning. These are the floss colors I'll be using.

From there...finally, finally, finally...I got started on the "Circus" quilt. It's only just at the beginning stages, but here's your peek. This one shouldn't take very long, and so I'll only annoy you with these peeks for a little while.

And for the last gasp of my sewing day, I clipped the binding and started sewing. When I quit for the day, I'd turned the first corner.

And then it was time to get ready for our dinner date. The weather was absolutely awful driving into downtown Portland. Fortunately, the roads were clear, but the rain...oh my. It came down in buckets. Happily, it was clear when we came home...just plenty wet. 

Our evening started with cocktails. They make a good Cosmopolitan at the Portland City Grill. Mike had his usual scotch on the rocks. Our cocktails were late arriving at the table, and so these were on the house. Nice.

We'd stopped off at the grocery store on our way into town to purchase our own bottle of wine. The mark-up on wine in restaurants is atrocious. We've taken to bringing our own. We pay a "corkage" fee, but we still spend less than we would if we ordered wine off the restaurant menu. This was a nice pinot noir from a winery near our home.

We were ordering off a special Valentine's Day menu. We both ordered the lobster bisque to start. I'd nearly eaten mine when I thought to take a picture. It was delicious, with big hunks of lobster and crab.

We both ordered the filet and scampi. Also delicious. One wonders where asparagus comes from in February. It surely isn't local.

We only diverged on our choice of desserts. Mike had the creme brulee. He gave me his berries. Those were two little cookies at the bottom.

I had the hot lava cake. 

It took me a while to find the hot lava, but when it did, it came pouring out. Yum.

So that was a nice evening out. We had excellent service all around.

Okay, so on today's list, I'll get started on the first of the blocks for the "S" is for Sew project. I'm going to continue on with my "Circus" piece, and I'll continue making my way around the quilt binding. If there's still time left in the day, I might start sewing together the blocks for the "Kittens" quilt. I'm still mulling over how to do this, but I think I might have some final decisions made. Hard to tell until I look again at the fabrics I've pulled.

I'm kind of tempted to give them a narrow border in a color included in each block. Also, I've pulled a batik used in a different quilt that could suggest the pattern of kitty fur. That might be the sashing. I have some pawprint fabric I'm thinking of using for cornerstones, and then I have some yardage I'm considering for a wider out border. There's probably enough to use for the back too. So...we'll see. It helps me to lay things out the way they'll be sewn together to see how I like it. I have another idea about this that doesn't include sashings and cornerstones. More to follow.

Okay, so it's time to get going. Slow-stitching is next, as usual. My elbow is feeling quite a bit better today. Probably I'll take another day off from the Bowflex, but a walk on the treadmill won't hurt. After last night's dinner, it's probably a good idea. Have a good day, Everybody, and a good week too!

In a Bind

Good morning, my friends. It's a second Valentine's Day here. Mike and I have an evening out tonight to celebrate Friday's Valentine's Day. There's a special three-course meal at one of our favorite restaurants in downtown Portland. We wanted to avoid the Friday night holiday crowd, and so we waited until tonight for our celebratory dinner. I'm glad because I doubt we could have gotten out of our driveway on Friday. Tonight, it'll be smooth sailing...but no sailing...and no slipping, just because it's smooth. Sailing and slipping are to be avoided while one is riding in a car. Just sayin'.

It was a good Sewturday yesterday. I got quite a bit done. I took the first stitches on the last block for The Story of My Day. I was thinking there were 20 blocks in this quilt, but there are actually 25.

From there, I was ready to quilt the border for the Vintage Linen quilt. You might remember I'd left it needle down like this:

And if you read yesterday's post, you might remember that I said this: "So far, I've not run out of bobbin thread. I expect I'll get about three inches from finishing today before I run out. Isn't that the way of things?"

Well, it seems the bobbin had the last laugh because when I sat down to stitch, I was out of bobbin thread. I couldn't stitch a single stitch. What??? How is that possible? It's possible, my friends. The bobbin might have gotten the last laugh, but at least it was convenient for me.

So I wound some more thread onto that puppy, and then I could sew away to my heart's content, bobbin woes far from my mind. I did this little flower motif all the way around.

It took less than an hour, and the quilting was finished.

The picture below shows all three motifs I stitched for this quilt.

From there, I took a little break, and then headed into the sewing room to square it up for binding. Smitty helped with that.

Binding strips were already cut. When it was all squared up...

I could sew on the binding.

Okay, and so I put all that stuff away, and then sewed the borders onto the next-to-the-last block for The Story of My Day. This is block #24 for this quilt.

And that was enough sewing for a day. I packed everything up, and took the quilt upstairs for hand-stitching. I laid it on the dining room table. Sadie knew just what to do.

Kitties aren't generally allowed on the dining room table, but when there's a quilt, whaddaya gonna do?

In other news, I happened to notice this abandoned bird nest just off our deck. It's all filled with snow. It's probably not a good place for laying one's eggs just now. Those things are expensive. You don't want to waste them.

So today I really will get started on my "Circus" piece. As a reminder, I'm working from this picture. No peeking.

I'll work on that for an hour and then I'll probably spend most of the day slow-stitching...either with embroidery or stitching down that binding. It sounds like a good way to spend the day. 

It's a day to do a Bowflex workout, but I'm continuing to be plagued with elbow pain. I was complaining about this fully two months ago. Like so many things, it has good and bad days. Today happens to be a bad day. I've taken some naproxen, and I'm hopeful that will help. It usually does. Still...this elbow situation has me wondering if I need to see a doctor about it. And when it comes to stuff like this, I ask myself, if someone wanted to do some kind of surgery, would I want that? And, for now, the answer is no. So, I'm kind of in wait-and-see mode with my elbow. And all of that to say I'll also wait and see if a Bowflex workout is still on the day's to-do list. A walk on the treadmill might be a better plan.

Okay, so we've already had our breakfast this morning. Slow stitching is next. And if the day goes the way I want it to, there will be lots of slow stitching today.

Sewturday

Good morning, my friends. Our weather warmed up significantly overnight. We have a dense cloud cover keeping everything warm. This is good news for travelers. Matthew's flight is supposed to leave for Mexico during the 10:00 hour (that's all I know). Checking in with the airport this morning, I notice there's a flight for Cancun (near where he's going) that is listed as "on time." If he can get to the airport, I expect he'll take off on his badly-needed vacation from the cold. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for now. (It makes typing difficult. If you see any typos, my apologies. Desperate times, you know.)

This was the extent of kitty outdoor time yesterday. Smitty said "nothing doing" when we invited him to go outside for a while. Sadie was all about it for about ten steps. Then, she remembered something she was supposed to do inside. She couldn't remember what it was, but the fireplace was involved.

My day was kind of slow yesterday. It was one of those days when I had a hard time blasting myself off the couch. I spent a little extra time finishing up the second of three blocks for The Story of My Day quilt. It still needs borders.

I took a walk on the treadmill, and I had one small housekeeping chore to do. And then I went to work quilting the vertical sashings on the Vintage Linen quilt. 

Only the outer border is left now. (I'll leave the narrow purple border unquilted.) Looking at it from the back, it looks like this.

It's harder to see the quilting in this darker section of the quilt back.

When I had it that far, I spent some time perusing Pinterest. Checking my "borders" folder, I decided to do the motif below. It should be pretty easy.

It seems like a good choice for that lavender fabric. I'll stick with the yellow thread. I left it needle down right here.

Remember when I decided on a different Bottom Line bobbin thread? I had this much thread in the bobbin.

So far, I've not run out of bobbin thread. I expect I'll get about three inches from finishing today before I run out. Isn't that the way of things?

My next stop was to head into the downstairs sewing room to add borders to the embroidered quilt block. Smitty took a nap with Mike yesterday, but he kept on sleeping long after Mike got up. I wandered across the hall to the bedroom to see if he wanted to help me in the sewing room. "Nothing doing" was his answer to most everything yesterday. When there's snow on the ground, the cat sleeps.

That's okay. Sadie was willing to help.

But then, I noticed the clock. It was too late to start on that, and so I called it a day. I'll get those borders sewn on today. Also, I'm hoping to get the binding sewn onto the Vintage Linen quilt today. I've still made no progress on the "Circus" quilt. Maybe I'll start on that today. More than likely, it'll be tomorrow.

So, did you see what I did there with my title? "Sewturday." Well, a couple of weeks ago, I floated this idea of giving myself Saturday's off. No workouts, no housework, and leftovers for dinner. The day would be reserved for sewing. Well. About two weeks on, I'm thinking I'll go ahead with this, and so I am proclaiming Saturdays as NBS days (Nothing But Sewing). You can join me if you like. And as long as we're renaming things these days, I'm going to sign a Catxecutive Order purrclaiming "Saturday" will hereafter be known as "Sewturday." Please proceed with changing all of your calendars...especially you, Google.

And with that, I'm off to eat some breakfast and get started on the last block for The Story of My Day...this one:

I started embroidering the blocks for this quilt more than two years ago. It's good to be stitching the last one.