Three Near Finishes

Good morning, my friends. It ended up being a very busy morning yesterday. My morning to-do's took me well past lunch time, and so it was late in the day before I could get to any sewing. No matter. The goals I'd set for the day were accomplished despite the lack of time.

Of course before I could do anything else, I did some slow-stitching, finishing the final embroidered block for Le Jardin.

When I was able to get into the sewing room, I added borders.

Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt. It’ll go on the Quilt Tops to Finish pile now. Mainly, I just need to sew the blocks together, and then give it a border.

When my stitching was finished, I checked the garden. There, I found about a dozen pickling cucumbers. It had been two days since I’d been in the garden, and I was surprised at how things had grown. I’ll make more pickles next week. For now, I decided to tackle the accumulation of zucchini. It was all shredded and frozen in nine 2-cup portions. That should keep us, our neighbors, our family, and our friends in zucchini bread for quite some time.

We had zucchini fritters and zucchini muffins on last night’s menu, and so it was a good time to do the shredding. My next task was to bake the muffins for last night. Originally, I found this recipe on the King Arthur website: The Shipyard Galley's Zucchini Muffins. It comes courtesy of the Shipyard Galley food shop in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. Here’s how they looked straight from the oven. We had a couple for dinner last night. The rest will be for breakfasts.

Okay, and finally, I was able to get to my quilting. I had just the narrow sashings between the embroidered blocks to finish. For that, I stuck with the “loop de loop” motif I’d used in the other sashings.

And then…the quilting was finished! I’ll endeavor to get the binding sewn on today.

In the sewing room, Smitty was urging me to finish off the Cozy Quilt mini.

It was pretty quick to sandwich and quilt. For traditional blocks, dot-to-dot quilting is easiest for me. Also, I quilted a red line around the embroidered center.

Here’s a look at the back. Try as I might, I couldn’t get those lines perfectly straight. Oh well. It’s the best I could do, which, by my definition, means it’s good enough.

This lower-angle shows off the quilting a little better.

Then, I sewed the binding on, and it’s ready for hand-stitching. It should be easy to finish this today.

Okay, so I didn’t cross off everything on my list yesterday, but I got most of it done. Today I need to hoe the garden. I’ve been avoiding anything physically strenuous after my Moh’s surgery (as instructed), but I think it’ll be okay at this point. 

Also today, I want to bake some cookies. I have a recipe to test for America’s Test Kitchens: Sweet Potato Snickerdoodles. Sounds interesting, no? The recipe calls for mashed sweet potato, but it says I can substitute canned pumpkin. Well, I don’t have either, but I did have some frozen mashed acorn squash. Technically, I’m not supposed to make changes to these test recipes, and I don’t think I ever have. Nevertheless, I’m going to make that one substitution this time around. My kitchen, my rules.

There are a few more things to do today, but mainly, I’ll be hand-stitching. I’ll take the first stitches on the new Quilter’s Retweet project, and I’ll sew the binding on the Cozy Quilt. The only machine sewing I’m really determined to finish is to get the binding sewn on the Girls’ Getaway. It’ll be nice to get that to hand-stitching stage.

That’s about it from me today. Pancakes are next, and then I’ll get a start on my new project.

Future Finishes

Good morning, my friends. Except for grocery shopping, yesterday might have been the most routine day of the week. It was nice to just settle in for a normal day. Included on the day's agenda was to bake a Magic Apple Plum Cobbler. The plums and apples came from our own trees. As I've mentioned many times, our poor little apple tree has never thrived. Nevertheless, it generally produces enough apples each year to make this one single dessert. Why is it magic? Because it is so magically simple to make. 

We had that with a scoop of vanilla ice cream last night. So yummy.

Backing up to the start of the day, I stitched some more on Le Jardin. This will be finished this morning. It’s the ninth of nine blocks for this project. When the embroidery is finished, I’ll add some borders to the block. That won’t take long. Then, I’ll move it to the list of quilt tops to be finished.

With that so close to being finished, I needed to get serious about tracing the first of five blocks for this Quilter’s Retweet project.

On the way to the grocery store, we stopped off at a quilt shop in town. They don’t have a lot of fabric on hand, but they do have a good supply of solids. I decided to pick up an off-white solid to use as the block backgrounds. I only needed a half yard for this, but there were three yards on the bolt, and so I bought all of it. I’ll use it for another embroidered quilt. Taking the last of the bolt meant I got a 25% discount on the whole amount. Nice.

Later in the afternoon, I traced the first block. Probably I’ll take the first stitches on this tomorrow.

In other near finishes, I finished all the pieced blocks/border for the Girls’ Getaway quilt. More dot-to-dot on this block.

For this one, I outlined the oval of the embroidery. The rest was dot-to-dot or else some backsy-forthsy things on the sides of the embroidery.

For this one, more dot-to-dot.

For this one, I outlined the heart both inside and outside the stitching, and then filled in the rest with dot-to-dot quilting.

And, finally, this one.

As a reminder, this is what the whole quilt looks like. I’ve quilted all but the narrow sashings between the embroidered center panels. 

I might have finished it yesterday, but I was running out of time by then, and so I stopped, leaving it needle down at the top sashing. This shouldn’t take too long to finish, and then it will be ready for binding.

Smitty wanted to work on the Sawtooth Cozy Quilt, but we ran out of time. Maybe today, Buddy.

Okay, so I haven’t been out in the garden for two days. I fear I’ll find man-eating zucchini there…possibly even some man-eating cucumbers. When I last checked the beans, they were about three inches long. They were too small for harvesting, but I expect they’ll grow fast, like other things tend to do. We should see some corn soon too. I need to water the flowers, and there are a couple of easy housekeeping chores to do. As for the rest of the day, I’m hoping to finish off these projects that are so close to their next steps. Also, there’s more zucchini on tonight’s menu in the form of zucchini fritters. They aren’t bad. I’ll make some zucchini muffins to go along with those.

So that’s a pretty long list, but there should still be plenty of time for sewing if I get an early start. And the time for getting an early start is slipping away from me just now, so I guess I’ll be on my way. 

What’s on your to-do list today?

Unplanned Excursion

Good morning, my friends. My day went off the rails yesterday. Things were going along as per the usual routine, and I was minding my own business when my doctor’s office called. And I’ll say right up front here that everything is fine with my nose. I’m about to lead you down a worrisome garden path, but I want you to know that everything is A-OK before I go any further.

They called the day before too (the day after my Moh’s). So, I was kind of surprised to hear from them on Day 2. The night before, though, I’d become a little concerned about how the wound was looking. It wasn’t bleeding, and it wasn’t hurting, but somehow it just didn’t look right. And so I told the office what I was thinking, and they asked me to send a photo, which I did. Ten minutes later, they were calling to ask me to come in. Oy.

And here I’d been talking myself off the ledge of this scenario. I’d already decided just to keep an eye on it and call if it looked any worse. But then…the best laid plans. Within a half hour, I was driving back down town. It’s an hour both directions, and I had to stop for gas. The appointment was quick, but it still took 2-1/2 hours out of my day. And my nose is just fine. He looked at it for about 30 seconds, and said there was nothing amiss. I’ll admit, it was reassuring. Mike wanted me to go in. I really didn’t want to, and so I was kind of on the fence about how concerned to be about the whole thing. Now it’s settled and I can stop thinking about it. That alone is probably worth the time it took.

Okay, and so I headed straight to my quilting when I got home. Since I hadn’t done much the previous two days, I was determined to get some sewing time. And I’m sticking with my dot-to-dot motifs. It’s so easy even I can do it. Also, I outlined the embroidery and the embroidered “Red Barn” banner in the sign.

There’s a lot to do in the “basket” blocks. I think there are four in the whole quilt. It seems like I’ve done more by now. Where the block has a large center, I’m doing little “S” curves in both directions, forward and backward. It ends up looking like a 4-petal flower.

With pinwheels, I always do the same rotating swirl. And these blocks are a pinwheel within a larger pinwheel. 

More dot to dot here, and I outlined the sign.

Here’s another “basket” block. I really hope that’s the last one.

Okay, and now I’ve rotated the quilt another 90 degrees, and I’ll finish the remaining blocks on the left side of the quilt. I’m hoping to get that finished today. There are still a couple of blue borders between the large embroidered panels. I haven’t decided about those yet.

There are still a few days of stitching left on the Le Jardin block I’m stitching, but I was kind of curious to see what project Mr. Random would choose to replace it. There are 23 projects on my list. So, I spun the wheel and came up with…

Okay, and that means…

Quilter’s Retweet…yes, I remember this one. I’ve had it for a long, long time. It’s five bird scenes. 

The designer, Erica Plank, used to have a presence on Facebook, but I haven’t seen anything from her in a long time. Maybe she retired…or something. It happens. The Unseen Hands website seems to be no longer available, but I found the pattern on Etsy right here. If you'd like to see close-ups of the stitcheries, you can see them there.

As long as I had the pattern out, I decided to see if I needed any supplies…Well. Doncha know Sadie never trusts me to make these kinds of decisions on my own. She’s given up even trying to teach me anything about sewing, choosing fabrics, choosing threads. It’s pawsitively purrthetic.

And, honestly, these “choosing” sessions are so tedious. What’s a girl to do but take a nap? Thank you. I knew you’d agree.

Okay, so the pattern wants me to use 1/2 yard of a cream color for the embroidery blackgrounds. I only have white. I might decide to pick up a half yard of off white. Or maybe more. It’s a good color to have on hand for embroidery projects. And I had about half the floss colors I needed. I could find the rest on Amazon. Yes, I know I should be mad at Amazon, but when you live as far from things as I do, having it come to me is a godsend. And all of that to say that it’ll probably be a day or two before I even trace this, but it’s good to know what’s ahead. Wouldn’t you agree? 

All right then. It’s a grocery shopping day, but fortunately, the list is *very* short. I’m hoping to make a plum dessert for tonight. I have two different desserts in mind, but it will depend on how many ripe plums I can find. So, we’ll all find out together, won’t we? And now…I must be off. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Have a good day, Everybody!

In A Pickle

Good morning, my friends. Since we last chatted, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Thankfully, Tuesday’s Moh’s procedure is in the rearview mirror. My doctor and his staff made the whole experience as pleasant as possible. Still, it took four swipes to get all of it, and my nose looks like it's been through a wringer...or something...maybe in a boxing ring or something. In any case, it's done, and I'm glad it's done. Yesterday had me feeling a little dragged out, mainly from the stress of the whole thing. And let me just tell you, having to drive to downtown Portland, and then home again was probably 50% of the stress right there.

Okay, so on to happier things. There was enough time to bake another loaf of zucchini bread before I needed to head out on Tuesday. This one is Whole Wheat Zucchini-nut Bread.

Some time ago, I posted a link to the recipe, but the link no longer works. The recipe seems to have disappeared from the internet. No worries. I have it right here:

Then yesterday morning, I made a batch of pickles. Before I started, I harvested about a dozen more cucumbers from the garden. Unfortunately, I had to toss quite a few of the earliest ones. They’d already started going to the dark side, and so I couldn’t use them. I ended up with less than the four pounds I’d been shooting for, but it still translated into six pints of dill pickles. A good yield.

\

There are lots more cukes coming. Next time, I won’t wait so long.

Okay, and there’s been plenty of slow-stitching. It’s the best way I know to calm frazzled nerves.

As for the quilting, it has taken me the past two days, but I’ve finished all the pieced/border blocks on the right side of the quilt now. I’m sticking with the dot-to-dot motifs.

For these traditional blocks, it works well, and I can cover a lot of ground without cutting thread.

Here, I added in a feather around the “churn dash” part of this block. The embroidery was outlined.

More dot-to-dot on this one.

Some terry twists here.

And that brought me to the end of the row. Now I’ve rotated the quilt another 90 degrees, and I’ll start quilting the top row of pieced blocks today.

As I was cleaning things up, Smitty decided to give the quilt a snuggleability test. I reminded him that I wasn’t finished with the quilting yet. No matter. He checked it for napability too.

So I’m feeling quite a bit better this morning. The whole Moh’s thing had me a little wound up, but I’m approaching normal again. There’s one housekeeping chore on the day’s agenda, but otherwise, the day is my own. It’ll probably end up being a mostly sewing day. It should be easy enough to quilt another row of blocks, and then I’d like to get back to the little Cozy Quilt sawtooth star I was working on before. 

Probably I’ll go ahead and quilt it on my domestic machine, It would be quick, and I can have another little finish.

Right now…slow-stitching. It’s a good way to settle myself down in preparation for a more normal kind of day.

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge

Good morning, my friends. It was a lovely day for a walk with Matthew yesterday. There was almost no time for sewing. But you know me...no day can start without a little slow-stitching and yesterday was no different. I took the first stitches on this final block for Le Jardin.

So Matthew texted early, and he was feeling up for a walk. When he arrived here, we drove over to the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge together. Tualatin...pronounced Too-WALL-uh-ton. When Mike and I first moved to Oregon, Tualatin was among the first words we learned to pronounce.

There are a couple of trails for walking. We chose the Wetlands Trail, which is the orange trail marked on the map below. We took the loop that turns south in the middle of the image.

These pictures aren’t great. Most were taken from very far away, zoomed in as close as I could get. At our first stop, I was so busy looking out at the Canada geese and ducks…

That I almost completely missed the great blue heron standing right in front of us. Matthew spotted him with his good eyes.

A little farther on, we could walk out to where the Tualatin River flowed. The river trail walks along the river, and it’s more in the shade. Looking to our left, it looked like this.

Looking right, it looked like this.

Walking on, this seemed to be a bridge to nowhere. Matthew and I both mused about what could cross a narrow bridge like this that would weight anywhere near 11 tons. We’re probably safe if we all walk out together. Oh, but never mind. Like I said…it’s a bridge to nowhere.

Walking on, there were plenty of these American white pelicans hanging out on the far side.

To their right, a grouping of Great Egrets. When I aimed for this shot, there were just two. Just before I snapped the shutter, another stepped into the frame.

Here’s another Great Blue Heron. We saw a lot of these. Some of them were in flight. They have a huge wingspan.

Here’s an abandoned nest on a snag. It was surrounded by water.

The wildflowers were mostly bloomed out, except for the Queen Anne’s Lace, which was ubiquitous. There were a lot of these little miniature morning glory appearing flowers. They’re about the size of a quarter. My phone tells me this is Field Bindweed. Most of it was white, but there were some of these tinged in pink.

And that was our walk. We got some lunch before heading for home. Matthew was kind enough to go to the garden with me and harvest four more zucchini. Phew! He also took home three mini loaves of zucchini bread. With his one visit, I managed to foist off six zucchini. Not a bad haul.

Today is going to be a bummer of a day. I’m scheduled for a Moh’s procedure on my nose. This will be the fifth procedure on my nose. Seems like I oughta get some kind of punch card, doean’t it? Anyway, my nose is surprisingly unscarred given all of that. The same doctor has done all of them, and so I’m trusting this procedure will be as successful as the previous ones. It’s still a bummer, and my nose is going to hurt for a while. I don’t expect to have any time for sewing today, and the afternoon is going to be miserable. With all of that going on, I’m going to take the day off from blogging tomorrow. 

As long as we’re talking about tomorrow, I’ll add that it’s the day I’ve chosen to make some pickles from the pickling cucumbers I’ve accumulated. We’ve been out of homemade pickles for a while, and so I’ll be glad to be putting some back on the shelf. And I only bring this up because it probably means not much sewing tomorrow either. Nevertheless, I’ll be back on Thursday. Probably, I won’t have much to show for my days beyond some jars of homemade pickles.

How are y’all going to keep busy over the next couple of days? Hopefully, your day today will be more pleasant than mine.