On Hiatus

Good morning, my friends. We're heading out on our camping trip today. It's a short trip. You can expect to hear from me again by Sunday, if not sooner. I won't be blogging while I'm away, but I should have plenty to tell you when I get back.

There was still a lot to do in preparation, but I took some time to stitch up Tiny Treasure #67. This one has stem stitch, running stitch, lazy daisies, and French knots.

It was a hot day yesterday. We had the A/C turned on by 10:00 a.m. In the kitchen, I made the filling for the Blueberry Hand Pies. It needed to cool completely before I could continue on, and so I did that first. There was a little filling left over. We spooned that over some vanilla ice cream for dessert last night, and that was mmm, mmm, mmm good. 

For the hand pies. I needed to roll out the dough, and cut it into sixteen 3-1/2-inch squares. For that, I used a pizza cutter and one of my quilting rulers. (I have one with a broken corner that I use for unconventional jobs like this). It was like cutting pieces for a quilt. When they were baked off, they looked like this.

It was a scary job because, with the heat, the dough got so soft it was hard to work with it. We got 'er done, though, and these will be nice for our camping trip.

Also, I was squeezing in baking these cookies during my wait times. These are Iced Espresso Oatmeal Crunch Cookies. I'd share the link for the recipe, but it was a test recipe for America's Test Kitchens. I've checked their website, and it doesn't appear there, which leads me to believe it hasn't been published yet. In any case, please feel free to email me if you want the recipe, and I'll be happy to share it. Keep it on the down-low, though, okay? I'm not supposed to share the test recipes. It's a good cookie, and Mike requested them for our camping trip.

Okay, and then I packed the rest of the food for our trip. There wasn't a lot to pack. Erik has some restaurants scoped out where we'll eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He's making breakfast one morning, and we're providing dinner one evening. The rest of the time, we'll be eating in restaurants. 

While I was in the camper, I could hear some nestlings cheeping from one of our bird houses. This is a western bluebird, and she's been skittish about allowing me to photograph her. Finally, I just sat quietly on the steps of the camper and waited for her to return. She watched me, and decided I was not a threat.

Eventually, she started feeding her hungry babies. This little family has been here for more than a week. I expect they'll fledge soon.

Back inside, I had some lunch, then a nap, and eventually made my way to the sewing room where I found Sadie had already claimed the Shop Hop 3.0 quilt. Kitties like quilts. Any questions? Also, she would like you to know that she's been to all of the towns featured in these quilt blocks.

Eventually, I coaxed her into her little bed, and then squared up the quilt.

From there I could sew on the binding.

And then I spent the rest of the afternoon on the hand stitching. The first corner is finished, and I'm approaching the second corner. Probably this won't get any more work done on it until this weekend when we're back home.

Okay, and here's our morning's sunrise. 

It's going to be another hot day today. Probably, it's a happy accident that we're heading for the Oregon coast, where it will be cooler. We'll be heading out around lunch time and spending a couple of days at Slow Boat Farm. Slow Boat Farm is on Puget Island in the Columbia River near where it dumps into the Pacific Ocean. Erik and Mae have camped there before, but this will be our first time. It's a relatively short drive. We have plans to do some sight-seeing at Cape Disappointment in Washington, and Astoria in Oregon, and whatever else we can make time for. It should be fun, and what could be better than camping with our kiddos?

So I'm signing off for a few days. Look for me to return no later than Sunday morning.

Some Firsts

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy day from start to finish yesterday. It got so late in the day, I barely did anything in the sewing room. Oh well. Plenty of other things were accomplished. There’s still a lot to do today, but it’ll be less hectic than yesterday. 

Before we needed to take off for the grocery store, I was able to stitch Tiny Treasure #66. This one has stem stitch, straight stitch, and satin stitch.

When that was finished, I checked in on the green beans. They’re doing a pretty good job of climbing their poles, but I have to redirect a few each time I check. And yay! The zinnia has opened. There should be a few more within a couple of days.

The first tassels are appearing on the corn.

Here’s the second Bumble Rumble dahlia. Remember how I mentioned the first one seemed a little beaten up? All of its petals fell off, and just the yellow center was left. I’ve never seen it do that before, and I don’t have a clue why it behaved so weirdly this year.

I noticed a fat slug on the Firefighter dahlia to its right. I’ve been treating it with insecticidal soap because it appeared bug chewed. Seeing the slug made me decide to change strategies. Now I’ve liberally peppered the area with slug bait. Maybe now that I’ve discovered the real culprit, we might see some flowers from it.

Checking the greenhouse, I decided to harvest the first tomato. There are several more that I’ll probably harvest before we leave tomorrow.

Back inside, I made some cookie dough. These have been resting in the refrigerator overnight. I’ll bake them this morning. When they’re cool, I’ll add some icing.

When I was finished with the cookie dough, I made some pie dough for the blueberry hand pies. This won’t be my first time making the hand pies. Last time I made them, I noted the dough was easy to work with. I don’t know about you, but pie dough and I often come to blows. I’m hoping this will cooperate today when I attempt to assemble and bake the hand pies.

It was mid-afternoon before I was able to get going on the pickled beets. Fortunately, the most time-consuming part of the job was done. It probably took longer to boil my kettle of water for processing than it did to pack the jars. When all was said and done, I had five pints.

Honestly, all I wanted to do after that was sit and put my feet up. I was a few days behind on my crossword puzzles, and so I did those. It was nearing 4:00 by the time I made it into the sewing room. My goal was to at least get a start on the binding. I’d forgotten this, but the book fabric is an extra-wide one…60 inches wide.

Even with that extra width, I needed five binding strips. So, I cut those, and then decided not to start sewing them together until today. And who knows if I’ll even feel like it today. Nothing can happen on the binding until I square up the quilt, and that sounds like a lot of effort at the moment. Maybe I’ll find more energy toward the end of the day.

In any case, I decided it wasn’t a good take-along project. We’ll be doing some sight-seeing on the Oregon coast the next couple of days, and I doubt I’ll have a lot of time for sewing. Still, I decided to trace the 11th block for the Snowmen & Reindeer project. It’ll be my only take-along project this trip. It’s a short trip, and this should keep me busy.

Here are the blocks I have for this project so far.

Okay, so there’s still a lot to do today. I’m baking cookies and hand pies, and I’m packing food. We’re responsible for dinner on Thursday evening. We’re going to grill some steaks, and I’ll want to make up the marinade we like ahead of time. That’ll be added to the day’s agenda. The green beans will get another check-in, and I’ll give the zucchini a once over to decide if I need to harvest anything there. For sure, I’ll be harvesting zucchini tomorrow morning before we leave. It’s a short trip, but you know how sneaky zucchini can be. You can’t leave it alone for a second or it’ll grow to the size of a baseball bat.

So, after yesterday’s effort, today’s sounds small in comparison. Probably I’ll get that quilt binding sewn on today. It’s still my top sewing priority. But nothing can get done until I get up out of this chair. And with that…off I go. Enjoy your day, Everyone! It’s supposed to be hot here today and tomorrow. If you’re in the heat too, we can sweat it out together.

You Say Tomato

Good morning, my friends. By the time you read this, it'll be way past morning. I wrote my post and then never published it. Sorry for the late posting. That's what happens when I get too busy. It's Day 2 of my busy week. Yesterday gave me a taste. Today will be even busier. We must do some grocery shopping, unfortunately. We'll get an early start and try to be home early because there's much to do at home as well.

Before I even did my slow-stitching yesterday, I hoed the garden. It was a happy thing seeing this first zinnia nearly open. First, I thought it was yellow. Then, I thought it was red. Now, I'm thinking it's both yellow and red. 

There’s less to hoe in the garden each time I’m out there. I use a hula hoe and chop the weeds off at ground level. There are some weeds that have roots seemingly to China. Those are harder to eradicate. As for the others…hoe them off enough times and deprive them of sunshine, and eventually, they don’t come back.  

Checking the greenhouse, I’m thrilled to see about half a dozen ripening tomatoes. 

Here are some more over here. (Sorry for the blur in the image below.) I’m thinking that red one is just about ready for harvesting. The yellow residue you see on some of them is sulfur dust. It keeps the spider mites away.

When I’d finished my outdoor chores, I went to work canning four 12-oz. Jars of Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears. My recipe is for four jars. I had more carrots than listed in the recipe, but my yield was still just four jars. It’s enough to get us through the season, and I still have two jars from last year.

All the while I was working on the carrots, I was roasting beets in the oven. Those were roasted and skinned, and I’ll be pickling them this afternoon. The most time-consuming part of that process is done, and so it shouldn’t take too much of my time this afternoon. 

When all of that was done I turned my attention to Tiny Treasure #65. This one has stem stitch, satin stitch, and lazy daisy.

And then Sadie joined me in the sewing room to work on the Blueberries block.

I could eyeball the applique for this upper section where the blueberries are in the basket.

For the lower portion, I decided to do it on my pressing sheet first. I was glad I did because the pieces for the bear were a little tricky, and I ended up repositioning one of them.

When I had it that far, I fused it to the background.

From there I just needed to add three clusters of blueberries in the lower portion where the greenery is, and the applique was finished.

It occurs to me that I can clean things up now and get my binding sewn on before I do the top-stitching, and so that’s what I’m hoping for today. There should be enough time later this afternoon for the binding. If there’s still time left over, I’ll start top-stitching the Glacier block and then the Blueberries block.

Also on today’s agenda…grocery shopping and pickling some beets, as I’ve mentioned. For our camping trip, I committed to baking some blueberry hand pies and some cookies. So I want to make the crust for the hand pies today. The cookie dough is rolled into logs and chilled. From that point, it can wait three days before it’s baked off. So I’ll make the pie dough and the cookie dough today with a plan to bake both tomorrow. 

Of course, the flowers need watering. I’m still doing daily check-ins with the green beans to make sure they’re climbing their poles. That about covers it. Just writing about it makes me tired. Today and tomorrow are going to be busy but then we’ll have three days of forced relaxation on our camping trip. All the stuff I’m doing now will be worth it when we get to the relaxation part.

Okay, so I must get on with things. I have miles to go before I sleep.

Busy Week Ahead

Good morning, my friends. My best laid plans for the week turned into better plans when Erik scored a campsite for our two camper rigs for later in the week. We already had a plan to visit the farmer's market yesterday morning, and so what started as a routine schedule for the week just got a whole lot busier. 

Before heading out for the farmer's market, I was able to stitch up the day's Tiny Treasure. This is Tiny Treasure #64. It has stem stitch, lazy daisy, running stitch, and French knot.

At the farmer's market, I was on the hunt for some of the carrots I know only by the name our CSA farmers called them: Nelson carrots. They’re the best carrots for my Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears...a family favorite. I like them for their uniform roundness from stem to root end. Here's a picture I found online.

They’re quartered the long way for canning, and so I end up with nice, straight spears. Also…they’re a short carrot, and so they fit pretty well into the 12 oz. jars I used in the canning process. 

Also, I was on the hunt for some beets to turn into Easy Spiced Pickled Beets. I was able to score both, and so that will keep me busy today and tomorrow. While I was with the kids, we talked about food for our short camping trip, and so I'll be making some things for that as well.

Back home, my first priority was to check on the green beans and continue my mission to train them to grow up their poles. They're doing a pretty good job so far. While I was out, I walked around to check on the flowers. The echinacea are reaching full maturity now with the petals that hang below the center. So pretty. They're one of my favorite flowers.

The buds on the suspected purple poppy get larger and larger, and it has about a half dozen flowers. Look carefully at the midde of the image below, and you’ll see two large buds side by side. I’m so excited for them to open.

Okay, and I thought this was going to be a yellow zinnia, but now I’m thinking it might be red. Maybe I’ll find out today.

Oooh! And lookie there! The first sunflower! The marker next to this one says “Infrared Mix.” According to Territorial Seed (where I get my seeds), its colors can range from the darkest to the softest reds, including many bicolors. You can see that this one has a red-tinged center.

Okay, and then I got back to my quilting. I ended up doing a sort of teardrop motif in the outer border. I wanted something easy that I could do fast. I’ve done this motif before, and so it was pretty easy.

Here’s a peek at the back.

And now that puppy is ready for binding. There were no binding strips cut yet, probably because I couldn’t decide on anything. For a while, I pawed through my stash, and came up empty. Finally, I decided to use the same fabric from the back. The books are a larger scale, and so they’ll be lost on a narrow binding, but the colors will be right for the quilt.

Before I can think about getting that binding sewn on, I need to finish these two blocks for the Northern Wilderness project. This is one of those projects where I end up with scraps and all sorts of crap strewn from “A to Izzard,” as we like to say in our family. (I married into that idiom.) Yesterday’s quest was to make the “Blueberry” block…this one:

First, I needed to make the background. The quilt block is a basket. I struggle with this configuration of triangles every time I encounter it. This one confused me less than previous ones, so I guess that’s progress. At my age, not many things get less confusing. No worries though. If I don’t understand it, I just assume magic made it happen.

I breathed a sigh of relief when that went together correctly. Then, I just needed to add the top, bottom, and sides, and the background was ready for applique.

Just the handle of the basket was fused down, and that pretty much took up the last of my sewing time for the day.

For dinner, I tried this recipe for Greek-Spiced Pork Chops with Warm Zucchini-Feta Salad. We found some nice pork chops at the bargain meat counter on a recent grocery-shopping excursion, and hey…anything to use zucchini at this time of year, amiright?

We actually liked this really well. The Zucchini-Feta Salad was especially nice. It’s served warm and flavored with shallots, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and some other seasonings. We liked that well enough, I’d prepare the zucchini that way even without the pork chops. It would be good as a side dish for anything. I’d link to the recipe, but this is an America’s Test Kitchens recipe, and so you’d need a subscription to their website to be able to open it. If you want the recipe, just email me, and I’ll be happy to send it to you. No sweat.

Okay, so it’s going to be a busy day today. I need to hoe the garden, and I’m going to can the carrots today. While I’m working on those, I can roast the beets. They need to be roasted and skinned before I can turn them into pickled beets. That will be for tomorrow. If there’s time left this afternoon, I’ll work on the applique for the Blueberries block, and then both blocks will need to be top-stitched before I can say they’re finished. The binding will need to wait until then.

I know some of you have been dealing with smoke and heat. I’m hopeful conditions are improving. Summer is great, but it has its moments…like everything else in existence, I suppose.

Day Interrupted

Good morning, my friends. If you read yesterday's post, then you know I had an early appointment with my PCP. Everything went fine there. It was an annual physical, and I had no concerns. We talked about my recent severe asthma attack, and she's recommended a different inhaler for me. Aside from that, everything was routine. Before I headed for home, I had to fill my gas tank, and I was home around 11:00 a.m. Any trip into town always wears me out for the rest of the day, and so I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped. Oh well. Today is a new day, right?

Before I left, I was able to stitch Tiny Treasure #63. Having time for slow-stitching improved my mood considerably. This one has stem stitch and lazy daisies.

When I got home, I had some lunch, and then I took a nap. When I woke up, I dragged myself into the quilting room to try to figure out what to do in the space between the rows of books. I fiddled and traced things with my fingers, and I couldn't figure out anything I liked. I ended up just doing a zigzagging line from one side to the other. This seemed to be the favorite design among the finished "Book Nerd" quilts I saw online. If you click on that link to the pattern, you'll see that even the designer did something similar.

Here's a peek at how that looks from the back.

All that remains on this is the outer border. I don't have any particular idea how I'm going to do that either, but I'll figure out something. There are lots of border motifs in my Pinterest library. I'll settle on one and then I should have this quilt ready for binding by day's end. Maybe.

In the sewing room, I found my sewing cat awaiting my arrival.

There were a few more pieces to make for the applique on the "Glacier" block. When I had them fused and cut out, I assembled all of the applique onto a teflon pressing sheet.

When I was satisfied everything was where it should be, I fused it to the background block.

All the time I've been working on this block, it has seemed familiar to me. When I was finished with my sewing for the day, I went in search of some of the photos I took of the Matanuska Glacier we saw near Glacier View, Alaska. Does this image look similar to you?

That link above will take you to my post about that section of our trip, and more photos of the Matanuska Glacier. It's the largest glacier in Alaska that can be seen from the road. Each of the blocks in this quilt is sparking some memory of our trip, which makes it fun to work on it.

So, I’m hoping for some sewing time today. We had dinner with the family Thursday night. While there, we made last-minute plans to go to the farmer’s market this morning. It’s been months since we’ve been to the farmer’s market. Everyone has been too busy. I’m on the hunt for some carrots and some beets for pickling. We’re also gearing up for a short camping trip next week. I’ll say more about that as it gets closer. But all of that to say that some other things are going to be vying for my attention over the next few days. I’d still like to get the Shop Hop quilt to binding stage. It would be a good take-along project for the camping trip.

Okay, so it’s another trip into town this morning, which means I need to be on my way. Several of you have told me about the heat where you are. Try to stay cool, okay? And be sure to drink plenty of water.