Four Corners

Good morning, my friends. It was a productive day yesterday. I'm closing in on a finish for the Cats in Pajamas. It should be an easy task to finish it today. Under Smitty's watchful eye, I turned the fourth corner on the binding.

And, duh. A quilt with cats on both sides obviously needs two quilt inspectors. Sadie was happy to help out.

It was a day-long effort, but all the while I was sewing, I was working on this Leek and Chanterelle Tart. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I used half chanterelle mushrooms and half cremini mushrooms. 

It isn't hard to make...even the crust was easy. But it requires a lot of waiting time. After making the crust, it has to be frozen for 30 minutes. Then, it's baked, but it has to cool before it can be filled. Then, the filling goes together easily, but it too needs to cool to room temperature before it can be added to the crust. When all is said and done, it must be baked another 25 minutes. It's worth the effort because it's delicious, but if you want to make it, my advice is to start early in the day.

Okay, and while I was in waiting mode, I had time to sew together the third block for the second row of the Zebra. Then, I sewed all three blocks together.

From there, I sewed together the fourth block.

I was getting kind of tired of sewing by then, and so I laid out the top row and what I had of the second row.

When I stopped for the day, I had the final block for the second row laid out. I'll endeavor to sew this together today, and sew the top two rows together.

It's a floor mopping day, and then I'll mop myself downstairs for a Bowflex workout. I'm confident I can finish the Cats in Pajamas today, and I should be able to get the top two rows for the Zebra sewn together. Probably I can get a start on the third row before the day is over too.

Mike has requested a pot roast for dinner tonight, and so I'll get that going by early afternoon. It's good pot roast weather. It started raining yesterday afternoon, although our weather has been downright decent this past week. We keep waiting for the Big Dark to begin. It's not here quite yet.

Okay, so there's  plenty to keep me busy today. How are you keeping busy on this Saturday?

Sewing: Day Three

Good morning, my friends. It was kind of a busy day yesterday. I had to drive into town for my haircut. Then, I stopped off at Wholly Too Expensive Foods to score some chanterelle mushrooms. The mushrooms were available, but packaged in 16 oz. packages. I really only wanted 8 oz., and so I quickly checked my Paprika app to see what I could do with the other 8 oz. No worries. I can make a Leek and Chanterelle Tart with those.  

Chanterelles in hand, I headed to our regular grocery store to return those dill pickle pistachios (perish the thought), and got the plain unsalted variety. Also, I picked up a few things I'd need for the Leek and Chanterelle Tart. I was home around 1:00 p.m. And after all that, I needed lunch and a nap.

There was still time in the afternoon for sewing. For the past three days, I’ve worked on the same projects. My first priority was the quilt binding, and I was able to make my way around the third corner.

There was still a little time left in the day, and so Sadie offered to help me sew together the second block for the second row of the Zebra quilt. She thought it was for her. She always fancied herself a calico cat, and she likes how those white patches complete the look of her lovely tortie fur coat.

She didn’t give it up easily. At the top of the image below, you can see she still has her foot on it. It’s like when you play checkers, and you can still change your mind as long as you don’t take your fingers off the checker.

Eventually, she agreed I could have it, and I was able to sew it to the first block. Here’s what I have for the second row so far:

After that, Sadie helped me lay out the squares for the third block. She watches me like a hawk to make sure I don’t put anything in the wrong place.

And there we go. A lot of black in this one. Fortunately, I’d cut lots of black squares the day before.

There wasn’t time to sew that together yesterday. I needed to get going on my risotto. It isn’t hard to make, but it takes some time. I’d already roasted the mushrooms earlier, but the rice takes some time to cook down and absorb the added liquid. This is Chanterelle Mushroom Risotto. Way back in 2011 (sheesh), I wrote a blog post about this. A link to the recipe is included in that post. When it was served up, it looked like this.

It’s a bit of a production to make it, and it dirties a lot of pans. Still, it’s so good, I have to make it every year when chanterelles are available.

As for the rest of those chanterelles, I’m going to make the tart I mentioned above. I needed a full pound of mushrooms, and now I only have 8 oz. The recipe tells me I can substitute creminis, and so I’ll use both. That’ll be on today’s agenda. On Fridays, I like for dinner to be something I can make ahead or or else reheat. This tart can be served at room temperature, and so I’ll make it earlier this afternoon. And since I haven’t tried it with the creminis before, I’m not linking to the recipe until I can say more about it…tomorrow. Patience, Grasshopper.

All right then. There are a couple of easy to-do’s on my list, and I want to go for a walk on the treadmill today. I like to watch documentaries while I’m walking, and today I’ll be starting an old PBS documentary about The Pilgrims. I’ve wanted to watch it for quite some time, and so it gives me something to look forward to. It’s my way of tricking myself into actually doing it.

There was no time for slow-stitching yesterday, and so I’m heading there next. Have a slow Friday, everybody.  

Another Sewing Day

Good morning, my friends. Yesterday looked a lot like the day before. It was kind of a busy morning, but as always, my day started with embroidery.

Having stitched that far, I decided to move my hoop up to be ready for today’s stitching. That takes me all the way to the top, but there’s still more on the left side.

There were a few things on my to-do list. I had one housekeeping chore, and…miracle of miracles…I’ve returned to my treadmill and Bowflex workouts. I’ve done one on each apparatus this week, so that’s two days in a row. Whoa. I’ll miss today with my haircut, but I’ll do my very, very, very, very best to get back to it tomorrow. With summer gardening done, and most any other outdoor activities on hold for a while, there needs to be more in-the-house movement. Use it or lose it, as they say.

So, when I was ready to commence with my sewing, I turned the second corner on the Cats in Pajamas.

And then I went to work on the Zebra. The first of six rows is finished now. The fifth block for this row was laid out. I sewed it together, and then I could sew all five blocks together.

After that, I had time to first block for the second row.

The second block for that row is laid out. More than likely, I’ll have time to sew this together today. No telling if there will be time for anything else today, but I’m also hoping to get around the third corner of my quilt binding.

Okay, so I’m writing fast this morning. I need to head out a little bit earlier than I like, but that’s life. On my way home, I’m going to stop at Whole Foods and try to score some chanterelle mushrooms. They usually have them this time of year. It’s time to make my annual Chanterelle Mushroom Risotto. Mike and I are Jonesing for it. That’ll be for tonight’s dinner, if I can find the mushrooms.

Also, I’m going to try to return a bag of pistachios we purchased on our grocery shopping trip. Usually, I have pistachios on hand because I use them in different recipes. Since I was running low, I grabbed a bag on Tuesday. When I got home with them, I realized they were dill flavored. What??? Does that even make sense? Who wants dill flavor with your pistachios? Well. That won’t work in my recipes, and so I’m going to try to exchange them for the plain old pistachio pistachios. Sheesh. Some people’s kids. (I used to work with a furniture salesman who said that all time time. It stuck with me.)

So that’s it from this end. It’ll be good to get my hair cut. It’s about two weeks overdue, and so it’s at the knife’s edge of driving me crazy. Sanity to be restored shortly. (Unapologetic pun, in case you missed it.) 

Marathon Sewing

Good morning, my friends. We had an epic grocery list yesterday because we hadn't been to the grocery store in nearly two weeks. On our way home, we passed by this pretty tree decked out in its fall colors. I've seen a few of these around with three colors of leaves on a single three.

Thankfully, the shopping was all done and the groceries put away before noon, which left me lots of time in the day for sewing. My first stop was to clip the Cats in Pajamas and get started hand-sewing the binding. Before I stopped for the day, I'd turned the first corner.

From there, I spent the rest of the afternoon on the Zebra quilt. The first four blocks are finished. I've sewn together the three blocks on the left. I'll sew the fourth and fifth blocks together before I sew them to the rest. When I had it this far, I needed to cut more squares in every color. That took up the rest of my sewing time for the day.

Before I turned out the lights, I laid out the squares for the fifth block. I should have plenty of time to sew this together and complete the first of six rows.

The only other thing I have to tell you about is making these biscuits for last night's dinner. We'll finish them off tonight. We had some leftover chili, but we'd eaten all the cornbread I made last week. These Cheddar Bay Biscuits...a copycat recipe from Red Lobster…seemed like a good accompaniment for our leftover chili.

So there's not a lot going on today. I have a couple of things on my to-do list, but it's going to look a lot like yesterday. Hand-sewing will continue on the Cats in Pajamas, and I'll keep making blocks for the Zebra until I run out of time. Since I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow, I'm hoping to get in a good day of sewing today.

When you looked outside this morning, did the sky look a little bluer than it has been in a while? The future is looking just a little brighter this morning. Have a celebratory day, Everybody!

Bind On

Good morning, my friends. There wasn't as much time for sewing yesterday as I'd hoped, but the binding is sewn on the Cats in Pajamas, and that project is on the home stretch. We had almost not a single bite of food in the house for lunch, and so we ended up driving into town for a second McRib. Usually, we limit ourselves to one per seasonal offering, but what the heck, right? 

Before we left, I took some time for slow-stitching.

There's enough done on the left side that I decided to move my hoop to the right to encompass that side. There's still plenty to be done at the top, but it's moving along.

Okay, now this next bit requires some explanation. In yesterday's post, I had the first block for the Zebra project laid out. Looking at the image below, I was still uneasy about the contrast between the two lightest tan colors. In the picture, you almost can’t tell the difference. (I’m looking at the left column, 3rd and 4th from the bottom.) Since I wanted to get started on it, I was willing to live with that, but it was on my mind whenever I thought about sewing this together. My fear was that it would bother me even after it was finished.

Then, as we were driving into town for lunch, I remembered there are two shops in town that have small inventories of fabric for sale. I figured I might be able to pick up a color I liked better. Sure enough. When we got home, I laid the first color on top of the just-purchased color, and I liked that a lot better.

And that looks so much better now that I have the squares sewn into a block. This took a lot longer than expected. Somehow I got things out of order, and so I had to unsew and resew several of them. When it was finished, it looked like this. This is Block 1 of 30 blocks. 

Okay, and I was determined to get the binding sewn onto the Cats in Pajamas. That took the remainder of my sewing day, but it's ready for hand-sewing now. I'll get started on that today.

So when I said there wasn't a bite of food in the house, did you wonder if we were going grocery shopping at some point? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. We were putting it off until today because the first Tuesday is senior discount day. It doesn't save us a lot of money, but it's still worth the wait if we can make it work.

That's going to cut into my sewing day some, but I'm hoping to get well along with the Zebra today. If I can get the top row of blocks finished, I'll consider that a good day of sewing. 

What's going on in your sewing room today?

An Everything Day

Good morning, my friends. Well, my extra hour in the day stretched to accommodate all my favorite activities: Cats, Gardening, Quilting, Cooking, and Photography. So let's just see where it all began.

In the cooking category, I baked a batch of Chocolate and Pistachio Biscotti. I've made these before, and they're supposed to be dipped in more chocolate. We liked them as is, and so I bagged the whole chocolate dip at the end. These will be nice with our morning coffee.

Biscotti isn't hard to make, but it is a time-consuming process. 

In the gardening category, it was nearing lunch time before I was able to get out and cut back the dahlias. They're safely stowed in the garage for the winter now. While I was doing that, Mike very cleverly gave the poppy a new barrel. You can see one of the older, falling-apart barrels in the background of the image below. We'll switch that one out next spring when we plant next year's cherry tomato.

As for the poppy, Mike gave this quite a bit of thought. He first removed the wood and rings from the old whiskey barrel, which left him with a sort of "poppy cake." It was too heavy to lift into the new barrel, and so he took a machete and cut it into fourths, like a pie. Then, he could safely lift it into its new barrel while barely disturbing the plant. Yay! I've been worrying about accomplishing this without destroying the plant. Now, it's done and ready for blooms in the new year.

In the photography category, I noticed this perfect spider web on one of our red-leaf maple trees. I'm assuming the spider was inspired by Halloween. So, of course, I needed a picture of that. We often get these big garden spider webs this time of year, but it’s rare to find one that goes the full 360 degrees.

In the quilting category, I was ready to quilt the border on the Cats in Pajamas. I scrolled through heart motifs on Pinterest, eventually settling on this one. It's really just a heart-shaped feather.

That was pretty easy to do on the quilt. It took about an hour, and the quilting was finished. It's a little hard to see, but you can get a look at it along the left side and the top of the image below. From there, I took it downstairs to square it up. 

In the cat category, or cat-egory, Sadie took one look at that and claimed it.

This looks like a delicious spot for a nap.

Why yes, I think this will do purrfectly.

It took some convincing, but eventually she decided to nap in the bed provided for her in the sewing room. That gave me an opportunity to square it up. I might have sewn the binding on, but I was kind of tired of wrestling with it by then.

Besides...the fabric had been delivered for Matthew's Zebra quilt. I'd hoped for a little more contrast between the two in the upper left, but this will do. 

So, I started by cutting one 4-inch strip from each color. (I already had the white in my stash.) Those were cross-cut into 4-inch squares. I can get 10 or 11 from each strip.

The original grid is 25 columns by 30 rows. (I've added two rows to each side to make it queen sized.) So, I drew a 5 x 5 grid on the pattern, and I'll make it one grid-block at a time. There will be 30 blocks in all...six rows of five blocks.

Now I've done the cutting and laid out the first block. I was getting kind of tired of sewing by then, and so I covered it with rulers and left it there.

Today I'll start sewing it together. Before I do that, however, I'll get the binding sewn on the Cats in Pajamas by machine. Hand-stitching will probably commence tomorrow. If I’m feeling really energetic, I’ll sart on it this afternoon.

So that was a busy day. While I was waiting for various baking times on the biscotti, I was able to get my to-do's for both yesterday and today finished. Today is going to be all sewing, all the time. Probably I’ll do the laundry, but laundry and sewing are a good partnership. I'm hoping to have a lot accomplished by day's end. Happy Moanday, Everybody!

Spooky Sewing

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to November! Sheesh. Can you believe we're into the "holiday season" already? And it’s my favorite time change of the year. For the past week, I’ve been making a list of all the things I’m going to do with my extra hour of time. 

Truthfully, time seems to fly by any more. I feel as if we just got home from last winter’s trip south. It makes me think of a conversation I had with one of my graduate school professors. Her name was Maria, and her social work career was spent working with the “frail elderly.” I recall her saying once that she asked her clients, does time just seem to go faster and faster as you grow older and older? Yes, was the answer. I believe it. 

We won't be heading south this year, and so we'll get to experience the crappy winter weather here in the Pacific Northwest first hand this year. It's okay by me. I'm just as happy to stay home, but I will miss seeing our SoCal friends. Today is going to be relatively nice. We’re going to get outside and do a little yard work. Gazing out the window at the moment, it’s still foggy, but we’re confident it will burn off.

But let's just back up for a minute and talk about yesterday's sewing, shall we? The first stitches were taken on the Snow Day project.

And this being the first of the month, it's time to set a goal for November's

My goal for November will be to complete the embroidery for the Snow Day piece.

As I was packing things up to move on with the rest of my day, I glanced out the window to notice the color on one of our showier trees. No color editing on this...it really is that red.

Okay, and I had a couple of easy housekeeping chores to do, but then I went to work finishing up November's gold star. I needed to make and trim 24 HST's.

And then, I could sew it all together.

And, yes. I'm feeling pret-ty smug about having November's star done already. Here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Since there won't be a new color in December, I'm already thinking December's star will be pulled from my "multi-colored" bin with a focus on fabrics with a black background. 

From there, I was ready to get busy quilting the Cats in Pajamas. My goal was to quilt the eight "spacers." Each was done with this same upsy-downsy heart motif.

When they were all finished, I laid it out for a picture. In this image you can see all the different motifs I've used on this quilt so far.

Here's a peek at the back.

Just the border remains for quilting, and I'll make that my first priority for today's sewing. Probably I'll do the same "half-hearted" motif I used in the vertical sashings, but I want to spend some time on Pinterest looking at other heart-related motifs I might use in the border. With any luck, this will be ready for binding by day's end. 

If I can get the border finished, I'll move directly to squaring it up and machine sewing the binding. The binding is from that same background fabric pictured above. 

My next project is on hold just now. I'm awaiting the fabric I ordered before I can get started on Matthew's zebra quilt. My tracking number promises it will arrive today. I'm hopeful. 

Also, I'm hopeful y'all survived this year's Halloween visitors. Sadie went dressed as a black cat.

Every year...same costume. You'd think she'd outgrow it, but she is a small kitty.

Today will probably be our best day of weather for the week, and so I'm going to cut back the still-blooming dahlias. It's time to be moving them into the garage for the winter. Mike will load them into the tractor bucket for that since the individual pots are pretty heavy. 

Also, we’re going to try to transplant the poppy into a new planter. We started with five whiskey barrels shortly after we moved into our home in 2002. Over time, they’ve rotted and fallen apart. So far, we’ve replaced two of them. The poppy needs to be done now so that it can grow again in the spring. (I might end up having to reseed it.) That will probably wrap up my year of gardening until next spring. 

Next spring, we’ll endeavor to replace the other two whiskey barrels. One has our cherry tomato growing in it, so that will be easy enough. The other has mint growing in it. We could probably just fill the new barrel with soil, and then set it beside the current rotting mint barrel. It would probably start growing there all on its own. If you’ve ever grown mint, then you know I’m not kidding.

So for today I'll focus on getting the Cats in Pajamas to binding stage. Also, I have a couple of easy housekeeping chores. Mike has requested biscotti, and so I’ll probably do that too.

Happy November, Everybody. And if you haven't voted already, please do. Our democracy is counting on you.