So Much Sewing

Good morning, my friends. All of my to-do's were crossed off yesterday, including walking on the treadmill and the one housekeeping chore on my list. Yay me! 

Once the meat and potatoes part of my day was complete, I could move on to dessert. There was lots of time for sewing. Fortunately, my purrtector cat was on the job, keeping an eye out for any invading forces from the north.

It was unclear how much quilting there was left to do on the Fantastic Felines, and so I just sewed until I was tired of sewing, and then laid the quilt out on the floor to have a look-see. Smitty was Johnny-on- the-spot to give it his once over too. Also..."Fantastic Felines"? Pshaw! There's no more fantastic feline than Smitty, and this quilt did not convince him otherwise.

And I looked carefully at all the lines and discovered the quilting was FINISHED!!! Yahoo!!!!

Here's another peek at the back.

So I turned everything off, folded it up, and carried it downstairs. There, I went to work on the binding for the Painted Ladies, turning the fourth and final corner.

There's just this much left to do:

And so I should easily finish this today.

As I was preparing to go downstairs to my sewing room, I happened to look outside to see that our star magnolia is starting to bloom. I noticed it a few days ago, but this was one of the first flowers to open.

A bird was living in this tree last year (or maybe it was the year before). I looked down to see if the nest was still there. It is, which had me wondering if a bird will take up residence there. If so, it'll have to do some housekeeping since the nest has accumulated some leaves and twigs with the passage of time.

It was tempting to call it a day at that point, but there was still another hour left to kill. I headed down stairs and pretty quickly finished sewing the Gumballs quilt into a finished quilt top. Yay! It ends up at 60 x 72 inches.

This was so much fun to make that I'm planning to start another one soon. I'll do the next one in greens, blues, and aquas. 

Sewing the Gumballs quilt into a finished flimsy was my goal for March's

and so I'll link up there when the party starts at the end of the month. 

And that really was the end of my sewing day. Last night's dinner was a new recipe for this One-Pot Cheesy Orecchiette with Cabbage and Paprika. We liked this a lot. I liked it because it as so easy to make. The whole thing is cooked up in a single skillet, including boiling the pasta.

We had that with a side of Texas toast, and that was one tasty dinner with easy clean-up. I'll be marking this as suitable for RV cooking.

So there won't be as much time for sewing today. I'm going to do some cooking this morning. Erik, the Grill King, has invited us for dinner tomorrow. He has an enormous pastrami brisket to grill up, and he says they need "all hands on deck" to devour said brisket. They're going to be serving Reubens (practically my favorite sandwich) with homemade sauerkraut. My contribution will be a macaroni salad. Also, and just for fun on Friday, I'm going to make some more lemon pudding cakes. I made them while we were traveling, and Mike asked for another round. 

Also, we've really enjoyed the Irish Brown Bread I made for St. Patrick's Day. It was good with the Irish Beef Stew I made for dinner that night, but we've really enjoyed it toasted in the morning.

The first loaf is nearly gone, and so I'll bake another. It's mixed up in a single bowl, and so it's easy enough. As long as I'm going to be in the kitchen anyway, I might as well bake some more. Also in the I-might-as-well category, I'm going to hard boil some eggs. I like to have at least a few on hand at all times, and we're fresh out.

Okay, so it's a busy kitchen day ahead. Also, I'm going to try to continue my effort to get back into some movement by doing a Bow-Flex workout. And I really have no idea how well that will work. Certainly, I can't be doing any resistance work with my hurting left shoulder. I can still do leg work, but I'll have to try doing the arms without any resistance on the left side. Maybe it'll work out, and maybe it won't.  Finally, I'm committed to finishing up the Painted Ladies, and so that'll be at the top of my list.

We're still gray and gloomy here. I'm anxiously awaiting some warmer weather so that I can get out and do some yard work. Looks like it'll be Sunday at the earliest now, and the weather is looking dry, even if it is on the chilly side. Still...the hairy bittercress is calling in reinforcements every day. I really need to get out and start yanking it up.

What's on your agenda for the weekend? Something fun, I hope.

Out with the Old

Good morning, my friends. My yesterday started with a long list of to-do's. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get through all of it, but there was a good amount of progress. But first...out with the old, in with the new. St. Patrick's Day is history, and Easter is approaching. My first priority was to switch out my holiday decor. 

First, I hung the little Bunny Garden on the wall between the kitchen and dining room. If I'm remembering right, this was a free pattern from Lynette Anderson at one time. It's no longer free, but you can find the pattern right here.

This Bunny Go Round able topper is on our breakfast bar. This was a free pattern from Doghouse Designs.

On the dining room table, this Easter Egg table runner. This was a free pattern from We All Sew, but it seems no longer to be available.

Okay, and with St. Patrick's Day banished from the house, I could get on with my one housekeeping chore. With that done, I had to decide whether to walk on the treadmill or do more sewing. Which do you think I chose? If you picked sewing, then you'd be right. Ding, ding, ding! You win the prize! (Disclaimer: there is no prize.)

And with every day here at the Three Cats Ranch, no activity is complete until I've let the cats in and out half a dozen times. When I looked out yesterday, I saw Sadie with a bead on something.

To her left, Smitty was urging her on. These two have an arrangement. Sadie does the hunting, and she gives whatever she catches to Smitty for proper, um, "disposal."

And it's completely understandable because Smitty has grown to geriatric status. He'll celebrate his 14th birthday next month. (They grow up so fast.) A while back, we gave him a geriatric kitty pole. He can be on the top rung without having to jump so high. Also, he can use the window sill for a boost up.

So my next sewing task was to finish off September's block for A Year in the Garden.

Here are the nine blocks I have for this quilt so far.

That meant I needed to trace something new or suffer a stitching emergency. Happily, youthful, energetic Sadie was there to help.

Together, we traced out Block 6 for Le Jardin.

Setting that aside, I went back to my quilting. Probably I spent about 45 minutes on this before I decided to call it quits. With my shoulder still bothering me, it's a literal pain wrestling with this quilt as I make my way around it with a straight line grid. Here's how it looks so far. Probably, I'm a little more than halfway finished.

Here's a peek at the back.

Regarding my shoulder, I'm still waiting for a decision about whether an MRI will be authorized. Yesterday, tired of waiting, I called my insurance carrier. There's been no decision, and they told me it takes 14 business days. Counting out the days, that would mean I might need to wait as long as April 1st before anything more can happen. To say I'm irked by this would be an understatement, but it is what it is.

And from there, I settled into our recliner to make some more progress on the quilt binding. I've been stitching two lengths of thread at a time on this, and I've turned three corners.

It was getting close to the end of the day by then. While we watched the news, I took the first stitches on the newest block for Le Jardin. Mainly, I was just cleaning up the extra bits of floss from my floss bobbins.

This one has a new-to-me stitch called the Ribbed Spider Web stitch. Possibly, I've done this before, but I had to look it up anyway. I was using a lavender variegated floss for this.

You can watch Mary Corbet's tutorial on this stitch right here. And if you can't open the video, then click right here.

Okay, and that brought me to the end of my day.

Today will look much like yesterday except that I'm determined to get in a walk on the treadmill. No excuses. And if I'm going to fit everything in, I'd better get busy. We're approaching vernal equinox tomorrow. We can say good-bye to winter and Hellllllooooooo, Spring! I cannot wait!

A Kitchen Day

Good morning, my friends. As expected, I spent most of my day in the kitchen yesterday. It's kind of fun to create a meal to celebrate a holiday, and so I don't mind a kitchen day every now and then. 

My morning started with the baking of this Irish Brown Bread. It's made with whole-wheat flour, buttermilk, and two kinds of oatmeal. The only sweetener is 2 tablespoons of honey (or golden syrup), and so it's a good loaf for anyone watching their calories and fat. Straight from the oven, it looked like this:

Cutting into it, you can see the rolled oats and steel cut oats inside. We had some toasted this morning, and it's good that way too.

It was intended as a side for the Irish Beef Stew I made later in the day. By rights (and to make it Irish), this should have been made with a bottle of Guinness. I didn't have Guinness, and so I used one of our Oregon porter stouts in mine. So, it's really more of an Ore-Irish Beef Stew. Also, my picture didn't turn out, and so I swiped this one from the internet.

Then, for dessert we had these Bruleed Key Lime Tarts. The recipe makes four.

They have an Oreo cookie crust, and then there is a lime sauce to be ladled over the top before the whipped cream is added. I should have used my hand for scale in that image above. These tart pans are about four inches in diameter, so this is technically a mini tart. They were delicious. And there are two more for dessert tonight.

Okay, so with all that going on, there wasn't much time for sewing. While the stew simmered, I spent some time on the quilt binding. Smitty kept my lap warm.

With his help, I turned the second corner. I'm probably about 40% of the way around this now.

The bird feeders were empty, and so I took a break to get outside for a little while. More daffodils are blooming.

And I was happy to see shoots coming from the Bleeding Heart. We had to move this a few years ago when snow falling from the roof pretty well flattened the other one. This one is moved out of the way of the snow, and so I'm hoping it'll take off and grow larger this year.

There was also some progress on September's block for A Year in the Garden. I expect to finish it this morning.

And that means I'll need to trace out the next one or suffer the scourge of a stitching emergency. Next up will be the 6th block for Le Jardin. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far:

Also, I'm hoping to get back to my treadmill walking today. It's the one part of day-to-day life that I haven't resumed since we returned home. I want to get back to it, and today seems like a good day. There's one housekeeping chore on today's agenda. After that, I'll get back to my quilt binding and my quilting. I'll pick it up where I left off on Monday.

And I haven't forgotten about the Gumballs quilt top. I'm hoping to get that finished today too.

So it's a long list of to-do's for today. Time to get going on it. I hope y'all had a nice St. Patrick's Day yesterday. We certainly did. There was a lot of cooking, but also a lot of relaxing and good food. What could be better than that? Maybe if it was payday too, but we'll take what we can get, right? Okay...off I go. Have a good day, Everybody!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Good morning, my friends. Hopefully, you're wearing your green this morning. I haven't decided on today's wardrobe, but it will definitely include my Irish socks from actual Ireland.

It's going to be a kitchen day here. I like to get my Irish up for St. Patrick's Day, and so I'm making an Irish themed dinner tonight. We'll have some Irish Brown Bread...a new recipe to me, so I hope it's good. That'll go with our Irish Beef Stew. For dessert we'll have these Bruleed Key Lime Tarts. I made these once before, but it's been 12 years since then. At the time, I wrote a blog post about the process. They aren't hard to make, but they do take some time, and so I'll get started on those right away this morning.

Baking up to yesterday, I had a doctor's appointment. That all went fine. I was meeting a new primary care doctor, and I liked her a lot. I hope she stays around because she's the fourth PCP I've had in five years. She stared me on the generic form of Fosamax for my brittle bones. Does anyone have any experience with Fosamax? It has some possibly troubling side effects, and so I'm hoping I'll be able to tolerate it. Time will tell.

After that, I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things on a limited-time buy one, get one free sale. And with all that going on, it was later in the day when I got home than I expected. It didn't leave much time for sewing. The easiest thing to do was to clip the binding on the Painted Ladies and get busy stitching. When I'd given it all the time I wanted to, I'd turned the first corner.

The kitties were ready and willing to help, but it took me so long to get all the way around with my clips that this happened:

You can hardly blame them. It was time for my nap too.

So after taking a short nap, I went to work getting the machine set up for quilting the Fantastic Felines. In the bobbin, I'm using a black 60 weight Bottom Line thread. 

On top, I'll use this 50 weight black Essential thread. 

Everything looked good tension-wise, and so I went to work, using my Line Tamer ruler to quilt a diagonal grid. I started in a corner and stitched to the opposite corner. From there, I caromed off in different directions as I reached the opposite edge of the quilt.

It was already late in the day by then. My goal for this is to spend an hour per day on it. A good amount of my time yesterday was taken up selecting threads, winding bobbins, and getting ready to quilt. By the time my hour was up, I'd stitched about six lines.

Knowing I needed to pick up some medicine, I suggested we go out for dinner last night. It was nice to do something fun for the day since it started out with a doctor's appointment and a trip to the grocery store. The sun was shining and it was relatively warm. Coming over the top of one of the hills, we had a beautiful view of Mt. Hood.

In the restaurant parking lot, the flowering cherry trees were in bloom.

And that was a nice way to end the day.

Okay, so I have a busy day ahead, and I'm going to get going on it. I'd planned to get back to the treadmill today, but I'll probably put that off until tomorrow. I'll be on my feet for a good part of the day, and that should count for something, right? So I hope y'all have a good day planned for yourselves. Don't drink too much green beer...and definitely don't eat any green snow.

Baking, Cooking, and Canning

 Good morning, my friends. I didn't think I'd have time to write this morning. As it turns out, my doctor's appointment isn't until 11:00, and so I have plenty of time for writing and for slow-stitching.

Before I tell you about yesterday's comings and goings, I can scarcely believe that I forgot to tell you about the pie I baked for Pi Day on Saturday. This was a Sweet Cherry Crumb Pie for Two. 

The recipe I've linked to is for the full-up version of a Tart Cherry Crumb Pie. It's from America's Test Kitchens, and so you'll need a subscription to open it. If you can't open it and you want the recipe, just email me, and I'll be happy to send it to you. For this particular pie, as a pie for two, I made just half the recipe. Also, the only part of the recipe I actually used was the part for the topping. I used a Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust and some homemade sweet cherry pie filling I made a while back using cherries from our own trees. I have made this pie from scratch before, and it's a delicious pie. The topping is wonderful. In any case...belated Happy Pi Day, Everybody!

So in yesterday's kitchen wanderings, I whomped up three half-pints of Small Batch Tomato-Jalapeno Jam. 

I love this stuff. I've made plenty of condiments from tomatoes. Salsa, of course, and also tomato chutney, Amy's Tomato Jam, and Moroccan-Spiced Sweet and Hot Cherry Tomato Preserves. Of all of them, the Tomato-Jalapeno Jam is my favorite. For one thing, it's pretty easy to make. From start to finish, this took me about an hour and a half. Mainly, I was setting a five-minute timer, and stirring it when time was up. We had it for breakfast this morning on our fried egg sandwiches, and mmm, mmm, mmm. That is some tasty stuff. Don't let that jalapeno pepper scare you. I remove the seeds and the ribs, and so there's no heat imparted...just the nice tang from the pepper.

With that finished, I could get back to my sewing. Smitty helped me clear the decks and spread out the Fantastic Felines for sandwiching. The quilt is 60 x 60 inches. I've always said 60 inches is my limit for sandwiching quilts in my sewing room. Larger quilts are sandwiched on sawhorse and plywood tables set up in the garage.

And having done this once, I've reaffirmed my 60-inch limit. 

Now it's draped over Eliza, awaiting its turn under my quilting needle...hopefully, this afternoon.

When that one was finished, Sadie was subbed in as my kitty helper. The decks were cleared, and she was awaiting the arrival of the Painted Ladies to be squared up for binding.

An efficiency expert, she helped me hold it down while simultaneously giving it the snuggleability test.

Having done all that, it was ready for binding. I used the same gray from the main body of the quilt.

And now that one is downstairs awaiting its turned to be clipped and hand-sewn. Hopefully, I'll have this finished in a few days.

After wrestling with two big quilts, we both needed naps.

For dinner last night, I tried a new recipe for Baked Artichoke Pasta with Creamy Goat Cheese. It was tasty, and not too difficult. I did just half the recipe and baked it in an 8 x 8 inch baking dish. When it came from the toaster oven, it looked like this:

If you click on the link I've given you, you'll see this is intended to be baked in a skillet. Since I was only doing half, I poured all of it into a baking dish and did it that way. It makes a large amount, and so there are leftovers. If I were to make the whole recipe, I'd probably still do it in a 13 x 9 inch baking dish. I figure the baking dishes are better for refrigerating leftovers. 

So that was a full day. It's gloomy out this morning, and we're expecting more rain over the coming week. We're hopeful of some better weather around Thursday, and I'm really needing to get out and do some weeding. Fingers crossed for some warmer temperatures and sunshine. As for today, I'm hoping I'll have time to get back to my sewing. If there's time, I'll get a start quilting the Fantastic Felines. For those, I'll just do a diagonal grid to make it easy on myself. Besides, I like the look of a diagonal grid. Also, I'll get started hand-sewing the binding on the Painted Ladies quilt. If there's even more time, I'm hoping to get the Gumballs quilt sewn into a finished quilt top. 

There's plenty to keep me busy today. Right now, there's time for some slow-stitching, and that's where I'm headed next. Have a good day and a good week, Everybody. Tomorrow is St. Paddy's Day. If you remember to wear green pajamas tonight, you'll be safe from pinching tomorrow morning.