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.

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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.

Picking Up Steam

Good morning, my friends. A lot was accomplished sewing wise yesterday. Possibly the Lemurs used up my supply of sewing mojo, and I needed a break from sewing for a day or two. Yesterday saw me picking up the pace again. First, I finished January's block for Pieces of the Heart.

Actually, I’m not certain what the name of this project should be. It occurs to me that “Pieces of the Heart” is the business name of the woman who designed it. Her name is Sandy Gervais. I’ve searched high and low for this pattern online, but I can’t find it. It has a copyright of 1998, so it’s been around a while. Whatever the case, I’ll stick with the name I’ve given it unless I decide on something else down the road.

Since I wasn’t expecting to finish it yesterday, that put me in something of a stitching emergency, doncha know. So I hurried and traced the ninth (and final) block for Le Jardin. I’ll start on that this morning.

While I was doing that I had three mini loaves of zucchini bread baking. They came out of the oven about the time I finished my tracing. These will be for Matthew to take home with him after our scheduled meet-up today.

That might not happen. He called yesterday to give me a heads-up that he wasn’t feeling well. If we don’t go, I’ll freeze these and give them to him when we’re able to reschedule.

Last time I checked in on the garden, there were several pickling cucumbers that were so, so close to being ready for harvest. So, I checked in with them around lunch time and found about half a dozen to add to the pile in the fridge. And HOORAY! I need four pounds for a batch of pickles, and so I have all I need now.

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Okay, so it was time to get after my quilting. I was quilting the bottom row/border of pieced blocks. Pretty much I stuck with the terry twist and looping themes. Starting with this yellow block in the middle of the row…

I kept moving to the left…

Until I reached the corner.

Then I returned to the middle and stitched the blocks to the right…

Until I reached the end there.

And then I did a line of loops in the adjacent blue border. 

Now, I’ve turned the corner, and I’ll work my way across the pieced blocks/border on the right side of the quilt.

From there, I headed into the sewing room. Finally, I got some help from Sadie. 

She helped me decide on some fabrics to finish off the Cozy Quilt stitchery. When I was ready to trim the block to size, she held the ruler for me. (It’s a good way to lose your whiskers.)

And forget that link I posted yesterday. I found exactly what I needed at Quilter's Cache. Despite looking in Quilter's Cache earlier, I somehow missed their block instructions. I looked at the block designated “Sawtooth Star,” but it looked different from this one. This one was labeled simply, “Sawtooth.” Pawing through my stash, I wanted something in the pink or red range to bring out the colors in the embroidery. I was looking for something floral, but most of the floral fabrics were of too large a scale. Then, I happened on this one with the circles. It’s been in my stash a long, long time. Finding a coordinating red, I sewed the flying geese.

And then I sewed the whole thing together.

I decided on the fabric below for a back. I’m realizing I should have put something there for scale. Just know that those solid black squares are about the size of a quarter. It’s a good scale for my little quilt, which will finish at 12 inches square.

There wasn’t enough red for the binding, and so I went in search of an aqua that matched the print. You can see it there on the left side of the image below. 

That brought me to the end of my sewing day. I’ll aim to finish this off today. Probably there won’t be a lot of time for sewing today. Either I’m going to walk with Matthew, or if he’s not feeling up to it, I’m going to make some pickles. Neither thing should take all day, but it will cut into my sewing time.

We had some excitement here Saturday evening. In the image below, you can see the gable of our pump house. We’re on a well where we live. With all the watering we do in summer, sometimes our accumulator tank runs dry, and we have no water pressure in the house. When it happened Saturday, Mike walked down to the pump house to be sure everything was working as it should be. (It was.) When he closed the door, it didn’t shut tight, and so he slammed it, sending an angry mob of hornets after him, chasing him back to the house. No stings, fortunately. Certainly, it could have ended in an ER visit. He didn’t see the nest until they came after him. It’s about the size of a volleyball.

He’ll take care of that one of these nights coming up. He’s had to dispose of big hornets’ nests before. He’ll go out after dark after the hornets have all returned to the nest. They’ll be sleeping. Then, he’ll spray some insecticide into the hole. He’ll wear protective clothing, of course. He was going to do it last night, but then realized he didn’t have enough insecticide. He’ll have to get some more. There’s no real hurry. We probably visit the pump house less than once per year. So there’s that. There’s always something, isn’t there? 

It makes me think of a time decades ago when I was taking a college level chemistry class and associated lab. There was a guy in my class…not too bright, but very funny. One day in lab, we all heard the umistakable sound of someone’s crucible breaking, and all the results of their experiment being lost in the process. From the back of the room, this guy I’m talking about said, “Better you than me, Man.” It struck me so funny at the time, and I’ve never forgotten it. So, all of that to say that when it comes to the hornets…better him than me.

Okay, my friends. On that happy note, I’m going to get on with my day and let you get on with yours. It’s Moanday. If you’re a working person, you have my sympathy…and better you than me.