Don't Be Fooled

 

Good morning, my friends. It's that day when we must be wary. There's a prankster around every corner. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we're going grocery shopping today. You can bet we'll be on high alert.

There was a long list of to-do's yesterday. Everything got done, including walking on the treadmill. Yay me! And so it was late in the day by the time I made my way to the sewing room. No worries, though. I was able to finish the fourth row of the Stair Steps quilt. 

Already, the blue block was partly sewn together. I was able to finish that off pretty quickly.

I needed one more yellow block...

And then I could sew them into a row.

And then I could sew the fourth row to the rest of the quilt.

This is going to be a very large quilt. If I wasn't trying to use scraps, I might stop right here. There are two more rows, and I'll keep going until I've finished them all.

It was dinner time by then. I had a hunk of gruyere cheese I wanted to use. Also, somehow I'd ended up with multiple open bags of frozen corn in my freezer. It sometimes happens when we've been traveling. I leave a partial bag in the freezer at home, and then I buy more on the road. And having made two long trips last year, I believe I might have done this twice. In any case, I wanted to use some of that, and this recipe covered both nicely.

It was my third try making these Corn Souffles. These turned out perfectly.

On my first attempt, I baked them in a 4-cup souffle dish. It took positively forEVER to bake in that size dish, and even then, it still wasn't done enough. On my second try, I did them in these two-cup ramekins, but they still took a long time. They didn't rise enough, and they were still slightly soupy in the middle.

Having written myself some notes about this, I put my accumulated knowledge into this third try, and these turned out just right. They were done all the way through, and they'd risen nicely. The green cast comes from a portion of a poblano pepper that goes into the mix. The whole concoction is pureed in a blender, and then baked in these ramekins. (I used my toaster oven for this.) They were very tasty...a little rich, maybe, but still good. You can find the recipe right here.

Okay, so I'm ready to work on some other things today. Next up on my list of WIPs is to start another Gumballs quilt. I rarely make the same quilt twice, but I had fun with this one, and so I want to make it in another colorway. This time I'll use greens, blues, and aquas. Here's the red version quilt top, finished just recently.

Also, I'm nearly finished with my "Cozy Quilt" stitchery. I doubt I'll finish it today, but tomorrow isn't out of the question.

That means I'll need to ready my next piece. Next up will be 12 more tiny blocks for the Tiny Treasures project. Here are the tiny treasures I have so far.

Finally, I think I'm ready to start the quilting on the Amish Sampler. It's been hanging out on my machine relaxing its wrinkles away. This is my last sandwiched quilt. If I'm to do any more quilting on larger quilts, I'm going to have to make some quilt sandwiches. 

And this being the first day of April, it's time to choose a goal for April's

My goal for April is to quilt and bind the Amish Sampler. Probably I'll start on it today.

Okay, so that's all I have for you today. It's a dark and drizzly day out...pretty typical spring weather for us...sunny one day, raining the next. And it's time for me to get going. Those groceries aren't going to buy themselves. And, wouldn't you know it? They won't put themselves away either. It's just one thing right after another, isn't it?

Good-bye to March

Good morning, my friends. Beware. Pranksters will be out tomorrow. It's never to soon to make plans for defending yourself. We have a trip to the grocery store planned. Do you think we can April Fools Day our way into some free groceries? I'm thinking you do your debit card, then reverse the charges, and yell, "April Fools!" Yeah...probably not, but it has me thinking.

So yesterday I made good on my threat to get outside and clean up the culinary herb garden. There was an alarming amount of grass growing in some places. Grass can't simply be pulled up. It has to be dug out, and so it was more strenuous than I'd expected. Also, my getter-upper-and-downer isn't as efficient as it once was. When I was back inside, I iced my knees, and they're feeling fine this morning. Of course, weeding is an every day affair around here, but the biggest parts of the spring clean-up are finished for me. Mike still needs to put in some work, but he's waiting for some warmer and drier weather.

While I was out, I noticed some of the newer daffodils are blooming. This yellow one with an orange center is a classic.

This is the Riot daffodil. It was planted a few years ago.

I'm not sure about this one, but I think it's called "Banana Split."

This guy was keeping me company while I was wandering around.

Stay away from my daffodils, Buster.

Back inside, I sewed together the purple Stair Steps block.

The next one was pink, and I needed the scrappy squares to complete it. Smitty helped me cut the scrappy squares.

And then he guarded them, keeping them rounded up, while I sewed the rest of the block together.

And there's the pink one.

Now I've laid out and partially sewn together the next blue block.

There's one more yellow block, and then I can sew the five blocks into a row. If there's time, I can sew the row to the upper part of the quilt.

For dinner last night, I tried this recipe for stir-fried Chicken Lo Mein. (Mike loves these noodle dishes.)

 It was easy enough to do. It requires two pans...one for the stir fry and one for boiling the noodles. The recipe suggests using angel hair pasta, but I had some soba noodles on hand, and so I used those. Pretty darned tasty.

As we ate, I was admiring the star magnolia from my seat at the table. It motivated me to get outside for a picture. Wowzers.

Here's a close up of the flowers. They're so delicate and pretty.

So today I must make up a grocery shopping list for tomorrow. There's one housekeeping chore on the day's agenda, and I'm determined to get back to the treadmill. So far, I've had one treadmill day in a row...last week sometime. I've had the hardest time getting back to my workout routine since we've been home. I tell myself it's partly because I'm still catching up on things, and this week we'll be having the family over for dinner. By next week, I believe I will have run out of excuses.

Okay, then. It's time to get on with my day. I'm so glad to spend this time chatting with y'all. It's a good way to start the day.

Taking Cuts

Good morning, my friends. We're looking at a decent day of weather ahead. There's one more somewhat urgent clean-up job in the garden, and I'm thinking today is the day. I've pulled the worst of the weeds and  deadheaded the shrubs that needed it. The last task is to clean up the culinary herb garden. I cut a huge amount of sage from the herbs last year, and the ground is looking a little barren at the moment. I'm waiting to see now much of it will fill in with chives, and then I'll probably add some things that I'm missing. We're expecting rain the rest of the week, but a nice weekend. 

Yesterday's weather was good for sewing. It drizzled off and on all day, keeping everything wetted down. The kitties mostly spent their day inside. I spent some time on my slow-stitching in the morning. I've finished all the little quilt blocks now.

It's been fun so far. I've done some stitches unfamiliar to me, and I've looked up quite a few to figure out how they're done. Next, I'll need to stitch the line around the outer edge of the quilt, and then I'll be ready to stitch the flowers at the bottom. There are still a few more days of work on this.

When I made my way to the sewing room, I started at the top of my list of WIP's. Next up...the Stair Steps quilt. I'm making this one row at a time. There are six rows altogether, and I have three rows done.

It took me a while to figure out what I was doing. Happily, Sadie was there to help. She's very good at understanding patterns.

The first step was to cut the "stair steps." These are done in neutral colors. For some of them, I'm using the wrong sides of my fabrics. I'm making this quilt one row at a time. For a single row, I needed ten of each of these.

Smitty helped me with that.

If you look at the image of the quilt above, you can see there are diagonal lines of color running through the quilt. The first one has a yellow stripe. I needed eight yellow squares and 32 scrappy ones to finish it off.

When I had them all sewn together, they looked like this:

These are large blocks...about 16-1/2 inches square. Before stopping for the day, I laid out the pieces for the next block. This one will be purple.

And I'm continuing to work on my leaders and enders project of sewing together all my bonus triangles. I remember to do them a little more than half the time, and so my remembering has improved a little bit. I'm trimming and sorting them by size into sandwich bags. These are from yesterday's crop.

And that was a good day of sewing. When my gardening is finished today, I'll get back to making more blocks for the Stair Steps quilt. There are five blocks in each row, and I'm hoping to get two more done today. 

Aside from that, there isn't much going on. The latter part of the week is going to get a little busier. Matthew has a birthday this week, and so we'll celebrate with a family dinner on Friday. For that, Mike is going to roast a turkey. It's one I've had in the freezer for a while...one of those freebies they give out at Thanksgiving sometimes. We're not having a Thanksgiving-style dinner, but mashed potatoes are a must. Also, I've seen some fresh asparagus at the grocery store, and so I'll probably roast that as a side dish. For sure, I'm going to make some Thanksgiving Slaw. I made this for the first time when we had a "Friendsgiving" dinner with our friends in southern California. We liked it a lot. And just FYI, I'm using bagged coleslaw mix, rather than buying a head of cabbage. 

Also, Matthew requested creme brulee for dessert. It's one of the privileges of being the birthday person in our group. I've made creme brulee before, but just to bone up on my skills, I made a recipe for two a while ago, and it worked out great.

So, I've renewed my confidence about the creme brulee. And since Easter is on the horizon, I'll make some deviled Easter eggs as an appetizer. You can read how to do this right here.

Dinner is Friday. We'll do our grocery shopping on Wednesday. I can make the deviled eggs and the creme brulee on Thursday. And then Friday, Mike will do the turkey in our Traeger grill. It'll be an easy dinner, and it'll be good to get together to celebrate Matthew's 42nd birthday. Yikes. He's my youngest child. When did we all get so old?

Okay, so slow-stitching is next. Mike is walking on the treadmill right now, but when he's finished, I'm going to snag him to help me mop the floor. Sounds like fun, huh?

4th Finish in March

Good morning, my friends. Well...we roused the rabble yesterday. I'll tell you about that when I’m sure my balance is steady enough to climb up on my Soapbox. For now, let's talk about that fourth finish. Ta-Da! It ends up at 14-1/2 x 13 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

To finish it off, I decided on one fabric for the outer border. It was sewn on quilt-as-you-go style. Then, for a little added support, I stitched a single line around the embroidery.

From there, I just needed a binding. I bought that binding fabric while we were traveling in Virginia many years ago. It's supposed to look like frosty birch trees. I've only ever used it as a binding fabric.

I added a hot fix crystal to the larger star at the bottom...

And another smaller one to the smaller star. (Sorry these images aren't in sharper focus.)

While I was sewing, I baked another loaf of our newly-beloved Irish Brown Bread. We've enjoyed this so much toasted for breakfast, and I'm not yet ready to stop baking it. I suppose we'll get tired of it eventually.

While we were at the protest, I took a boat load of pictures with my phone. When I transferred the phone pictures to my computer, I found a few strays I'd forgotten to show you earlier. On the day I had my blood draw, we saw some pretty blooming things. This is red flowering currant, an Oregon native, that was growing near the clinic.

These daffodils and the blooming tree below them were growing at our local McDonald's.

You might remember we did our grocery shopping that day too. We were looking, looking, looking for a bottle of Marsala. We finally had to ask for help. But since we looked at pretty much every single bottle of wine on the shelves, I had to share this one:

Kinda makes you want to do epic sh*t, doesn't it? Seems like a good reason for a protest, doesn't it?

As for the protest, I have a few things I can probably show you without saying anything rude. Each Saturday in our little town of Newberg, there is a protest where the main highway forks, making the two one way roads that run through the business district. There, you can find this sign.

That's right...our town likes to think of itself as "The Camellia City." And, indeed, there were some pretty blooming camellias there yesterday.

I think this next one is blooming rosemary.

And more pretty daffodils.

Okay, time to get down to the nitty-gritty. Please don't feel compelled to read on. I'm getting out my bullhorn now, and it's probably going to get loud. It would not be considered rude if you want to plug your ears.

We were out for the No Kings protest, and what a great turnout! Keep in mind that our little town is only about 27,000 people, and yet, it is reported that 1,700 turned out. I'm estimating we had at least twice as many as for the previous protest back in October. 

After a couple of hours, I walked away from the larger group to try to get an idea how many were in attendance. It’s hard to tell because of the lay of the land, but you can get an idea of how it looks.

And look at these two ne'er do wells. They look like trouble to me. Don’t let those wrinkles and gray hair fool you.

I found this next picture on Facebook. 

If you look very closely to the left of middle of the image, in front of the brick wall, you’ll see too old codgers sitting in chairs. That’s us. I was prepared to stand for the whole time, but Mike brought some chairs. When we saw other chair-sitters, we decided it was legit to bring them out. We both stood up and wandered around several times, but the chairs were appreciated.

Here's some good advice provided on Facebook by the "Alt National Park Service."

I'll start with some of the photos that require a comment, and then I'll just show you all the pictures of signs. There are a lot of them. Please don't feel compelled to look at every one, but some of them are pretty darned clever. As I mentioned, there is a protest at this location every Saturday morning. This sign was permanently mounted.

There was a table set up with donuts, cookies, and coffee. The next signs were provided by the organizers.

This one made me sniff a little. As a military brat, I'm extremely concerned about the prospect of "boots on the ground" in Iran, and some have already died.

Here are a few more signs and banners provided by the organizers.

This guy was also driving around the circle at the protest back in October.

And, finally, for this grouping...

Okay, and there were a few signs that were made by folks after my own heart.

In my wanderings, I loved the costumes and the hats.

There were lots of frog hats. I love that Portland adopted the frog as the symbol of its resistance.

There's a free pattern online for knitters. I'm not a knitter, but hey...if you are, then have at it!

I saw a few of these online.

This frog was at our protest along with a froggy friend of his.

Also, Lady Liberty. (Just FYI, I've blurred or pixelated any recognizable faces. Sadly, I can no longer trust my government to respect and honor our Constitutional First Amendment right to peaceful protest.)

This is the second sign she was carrying.

I saw a woman wearing this hat. When I asked permission to take a picture, she informed me they were giving them away for free just about ten feet from where I was standing.

Well. Doncha know I needed me one of those. 

This spot is a great place to hold our protest because there are lots of cars driving by. Most everyone honks in support.

At the protest in October, I'd say about 2/3 of the cars driving by were honking in support. We also saw a few who were less supportive. Yesterday, we saw very few of these cretins.

And I think those are all the images I wanted to comment about. Here is a whole slew of some of my favorite signs. There are a lot of them. Bail out if you get overloaded, but I couldn't leave out any of them.

Okay, my friends. Let's get ready for the next one. And let's hope November brings us some good news.