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,
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.
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!