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.

A Little More Sewing

Good morning, my friends. A little more was accomplished here at the Three Cats Ranch yesterday. Have you noticed how there haven't been any pictures of cats lately? I blame them for the lack of progress on things. They've been outside a lot with this nice weather. Clearly, they have not developed a reliable work ethic. Oh well. We soldier on, don't we?

My first stop was in the kitchen to bake some zucchini bread to take to our neighbors. There are almost as many zucchini bread recipes in my collection as I have zucchini. Think of them as armaments. In this case, I used this recipe that originally appeared in Cooking Light magazine in April of 1996. It pains me to be using a recipe I found 30 years ago, but there you go. I was so much younger then...like 30+ years. Yikes. It’s a miracle I’m still alive, isn’t it?

Alright, and with so many recipes, how does one decide? Well, I decided on this one because it uses *two* cups of shredded zucchini, instead of the one cup required by most other recipes. Also, it uses 3/4 of a cup of applesauce. Usually, I’m stocked with homemade applesauce, but recently, I had to buy some for a recipe. The only container I could find was HUGE. So, I’ve had this enormous jug of applesauce taking of space in my refrigerator for a while. Making the bread from this recipe was a no-brainer. Zucchini and applesauce. And if you missed it, I linked to the recipe in the paragraph above this one.

The bread took some time. It had a long baking time, and then I had to wait 10 minutes before I could remove it from the pan. Still, everyone has to do their part, and I figured gifting the neighbor with bread was better than foisting off a bag full of zuchini, right? But don’t give me ideas.

When the bread was safe to be left on its own, I headed out to the garden. There, I took the picture I mentioned yesterday. These are the giant sunflowers, shown in their full height. Impressive, no?

Also, I discovered this newbie to the bee garden. My phone tells me this is Baby Blue Eyes.

This next one is flax. It’s been hard to get a good picture of this since it’s so bright it blows out the saturation in the images I’ve taken in the past.

Okay, the hummingbird feeders were empty again. After I finished up in the garden and took care of the hummers, I was able to get back to quilting the Girls’ Getaway. All the large embroidered blocks in the center are finished now. I outlined much of the embroidery…enough to make the quilting functional, and then I quilted the same meandering feathers to fill in the background.

Today I’m ready to start on the pieced blocks. I’ll aim to quilt a side each day until it’s finished. I left it needle-down in the middle of the bottom border row.

The only other “sewing” I did was mainly dinking around on the computer. Considering what to do with the Cozy Quilt stitchery, I had an idea to make it the center of some other quilt block. 

My first thought was to make it like one of the inverted star blocks, but I needed a center that was at least 5-1/2 inches. The inverted star centers are just 4-1/2 inches. And, yes, I could have done the math, but when you're old enough to be making bread recipes that were published more than 30 years ago, you're obviously too old to do math. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

So...anyway...I went in search of something that would work, and I came upon this tutorial for a Sawtooth Star. I'll need to decide on what fabrics I want to use still, but having a plan is the first step.

The plan for today will look a lot like yesterday, sans hoeing the garden. Baking more bread is on the agenda. I’m going to bake the same bread from yesterday, but in three mini loaves, instead of one large loaf. Matthew and I are getting together for a walk tomorrow, and I want to give him something to take home with him. (I really love spoiling my little boy who was age 42 on his last birthday.) Since it’s just him eating it, three mini loaves will be better. He can freeze two and then eat them whenever he’s in the mood. Also, and like the neighbors, it’s better than handing him a bag full of zucchini. No one visits here without taking some zucchini with them when they go.

The flowers need watering, but mainly, I’ll focus on sewing. I’m hoping to finish off one side of the pieced blocks on the Girls’ Getaway quilt. And then I’ll get a start on the Cozy Quilt project. Also, as I mentioned, I’m baking bread. There’s one other housekeeping chore on the day’s calendar, but it should be a mostly sewing day.

How is your Sunday going? It’ll be pretty relaxed around here. I hope you have a relaxing day planned for yourself too.