Plenty of Sewing

Good morning, my friends. Yesterday's outing took less time than expected. We finished with our vaccines a little too early for lunch, and so we ran a couple of errands and then headed for home. Also, we both feel fine after our vaccines. I don't even have a sore arm from it. 

Before we left, I had time to press and photograph the Santa Quartet. These guys will get a border eventually. 

It seems small for a table runner, even with a border added. When I left it, I asked the Santas to discuss among themselves what they would like to become. Perhaps a coffee table runner would be a nice addition to the Christmas decor.

And there was time to stitch the first Tiny Treasure in the next batch of twelve. This is Tiny Treasure #49. It includes stem stitch, straight stitch, lazy daisy, and French knots.

I'll just keep going with those, one per day, until they're finished. I'll reach Tiny Treasure #60 with this go-round. After that, I'll have just one more go-round to finish off all 72 of them. After that...I have a plan. I'm kind of excited to see how it will turn out. I'll say more about it eventually.

After lunch, I made some more progress on the Homestead quilt binding. Now I've turned three corners. I expect to turn the fourth corner today, but I probably won't finish it until tomorrow.

It's a good thing because The Story of My Day is getting antsy about going under my needle. Also, I'm ready to get started. Possibly, if there's time at the end of today, I might start on it before I finish the quilt binding.

Okay, and then I spent the rest of the afternoon in the sewing room with my very helpful sewing cat.

The pieces for the next five Jawbreakers blocks were already cut the day before.

First, I needed to make and trim 20 HST's.

And then I needed five 4-patches.

And then I could stack all the pieces to be sewn into quilt blocks.

When all five were finished, they looked like this.

Then, I could lay them out with the first five blocks, and the first two rows of this quilt were completed. There will be six rows in all.

We had a few sprinkles yesterday, and slightly warmer temperatures. It seemed like a good time to see if any more peonies had opened. They're not quite there, but I expect to see these two open completely by the end of today. The first one is the Fairy Princess peony.

This one is the Garden Treasures peony.

For dinner last night, I tried this recipe for Thai Peanut Chicken. It was simple and good. There's enough left over for another meal. This would also be easy enough to do in the RV.

I made the recipe as written. We thought the "sauce" was a little skimpy, although it covered everything. Still, I'd probably double the sauce ingredients next time around. We had it with some store-bought peanut sauce. That worked too. There are lots of these on the market. We used this one.

Okay, and so the sun has returned today. We're expecting some warm weather over the next week or so. My knees have recovered enough from planting the vegetables that I'm going to give them another beating by doing some weeding today. We've had rain over the past few days, and so it's a good time to pull weeds. There's one housekeeping chore after that, and then I can get back to my sewing. Have you noticed that life is just a series of obstacles getting between us and our sewing?

Also on today's agenda, I'll make some more progress on the quilt binding. I'm hoping I'll finish it no later than tomorrow. Next up on my list of WIP's is to make Block #2 for "Where the Cows Come Home." This is the block for which the quilt is named. Here's the picture from the book.

The quilt pictures in the book have been done with wool. I'm using fabrics from my stash...all cotton...but I try as much as possible to replicate the colors shown in the picture. If I can finish this, I might get a start on quilting The Story of My Day. Doubtful, but one can aim high, right?

Okay, so it's a busy day ahead. Time to get to work on the next Tiny Treasure. What's going on in your sewing room today?

How to Spend a Rainy Day

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing fast this morning. Mike and I have appointments for a COVID booster, so we'll be heading out early this morning. Let's just get right to it, shall we?

Knowing rain was coming, I went out early to check on the flowers. The Garden Treasures peony looked pretty much the same as when I looked at it the day before. The Fairy Princess peony was starting to show more of itself.

The Edda clematis continues to add more flowers.

And that was pretty much all that was going on in the garden. Back inside, I spent some time stitching. I might have finished this, but I had other things on my agenda, and I needed to move along.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was making dinner early in the day. When that was finished, I sat down to work on my quilt binding. My trusty stitching cat took up residence on my lap.

With her help, I turned the second corner. 

From there, I was ready to sew the fifth row of blocks to the Stair Steps quilt. The five blocks were laid out in order, and then sewn together.

And then I sewed them to the rest of the quilt. With one more row to go, this is going to be a very large quilt. The blocks are 16 inches square.

And it’s kind of a puzzle figuring out where to add rows. I turned this around and around and around trying to figure it out. Even then, I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to sew it together right, but I did. There’s just one more row. I pinned a note to the bottom of the quilt to save myself similar frustration with the final row.

For now, it’s put aside, and I’ll make the second row for the Jawbreakers project. I have one row of blocks so far.

The remainder of my sewing day was spent doing the cutting for the second row of blocks.

There was still just a little time left in the day, and so I headed back to the Santas and finished them off.

There hasn’t been time to iron and photograph the finished stitchery yet, but I’ll get to that today. We’re expecting a little more rain today, but then the rest of the week should be nice. It’ll probably be another mostly sewing day. We might treat ourselves to lunch after our vaccines. If I’m remembering right, our last booster didn’t make us sick, and so I’m hoping I won’t notice this one beyond the stick. 

And with that, I’ll be on my way. Have a good day, Everybody.

A Celebratory Day

Good morning, my friends. It was kind of a lazy day yesterday. For one thing, we were both awake very early...during the 4:00 a.m. hour. I don't know about you, but if I wake up any time after 4:00 a.m., my brain is off and running, and I can't get back to sleep. While I was doing my slow-stitching yesterday morning, I could swear I fell asleep mid-stitch, and just kept on stitching. So, when Mike went back to bed for a morning nap, I just slid down on the couch where I was sitting and went back to sleep too. And don't think for even two seconds that a morning nap negates the need for an afternoon nap too. That's right...it was a two-nap day. We're old.

When I woke up from my morning nap, I went straight to work on the Espresso Iced Oatmeal Crunch Cookies. They aren't hard to make...no mixers required...but they do take some time. The dough is rolled into logs, and then refrigerated for at least an hour before they're sliced into cookie rounds and baked. After that, they need to cool completely before the icing can be added. When I was finished, they looked like this. 

Oh yes, and I must point out that Mike stole one of the cookies before I took this picture. He thought he was being sneaky. So...here's the thing: This is a test recipe from America's Test Kitchens, and so I'm not supposed to share the recipe. But I can't prevent the person at this email from sharing it. From here, I disavow any knowledge of what happens if you send a message to that person.

While I waited for the cookies to do one thing or another, I filled the bird feeders and took a look at the flowers. The potted snap dragons are making a comeback. These were planted several years ago, but they come back year after year.

The Garden Treasures peony is nearly open. I expect it will open all the way today. We're expecting rain today and tomorrow, so I hope it doesn't ruin the flowers. The sun is shining right at the moment, but rain is supposed to start within the hour.

Also, the Fairy Princess peony at the other end of the flower bed is close to opening. This one is covered in buds, and they will all open together. It's gorgeous when it's in full bloom. And...again...I'm hoping the rain doesn't do it in.

Back inside and still waiting on the cookies, I spent some time stitching the quilt binding. I've turned the first corner, and I'm about halfway across one of the long sides. 

Also, I'm modifying my quilt-all-the-quilts-if-it-kills-me rule. Since I want to keep things moving along in the sewing room too, I'm going to work on just one quilt...quilting and binding...at a time. I was trying to sew the binding on the Merry, Merry Snowmen, and also make progress quilting the Homestead quilt. It left me no time to accomplish anything in the sewing room. Now, I'm going to work on one quilting project at a time...quilt it and bind it...before I start on the next quilt in line for quilting. And there's no reason you need to know any of that, but it's important to keep the rule book up-to-date. Wouldn't you agree?

So...no quilting was accomplished, but I did finish the fifth block for the fifth row of the Stair Steps quilt. This one has a blue diagonal.

Today, I'll sew all five blocks together and then add row five to the rest of the quilt.

It's one of those days when I'll make dinner early in the day today. It kind of turns things around when I'm making dinner in the morning, but it means a longer sewing day.

From here on, I'm going to tell you about our dinner last night. If you're not into those food photos, please feel free to jump off here. No hard feelings. We had our celebratory dinner at the Portland City Grill, which is on the 30th floor of the building you see in the image below. That's the US Bank Tower, affectionately known in these parts as "Big Pink."

We always like to sit by the window here, and so we were offered a table in the lounge, or we could wait for a table to open up in the dining room. We figure we make good lounge lizards, and so the lounge it was. This was the view from our table. Portland is a beautiful city. Do not believe what The Orange One says about our fair city. It is not a war zone. The storefronts are not boarded up.

Looking through the window a little to the east of us, we could see Mt. Hood.

And there we are...just a couple of old codgers who never gave up on one another. Not yet, anyway.

When we go to this restaurant, I always order a Cosmopolitan. It seems appropriate somehow. Mike always orders what we refer to as "brown liquid."

We also brought a bottle of wine from home. They charge us $20 to open the bottle. If we bought this bottle in the restaurant, we would probably pay north of $100 for it. I can assure you that we did not pay that much.

And we're very good at math, Mike being an engineer and all. We wanted the lobster bisque. We could each order a 6 oz. cup for $12 apiece, or we could share a 12 oz. bowl for $14. We went for the latter because, being old, we are also cheapskates.

For dinner, we each chose the "Seafood Trio." (Yes, we each had our own plate for this.) On the left is a Dungeness crab cake, in the middle some shrimp, and on the right, some salmon with a butter beurre blanc. It came with Yukon Gold mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

We each ordered dessert, but this slice of red velvet cake was served gratis. (I just love having a fuss made over me, don't you?)

Mike ordered the New York style cheesecake.

I had the butterscotch bread pudding. So perfectly icky and yummy.

So that's it. Another one bites the dust. All we can say is that we hope we can keep our health and celebrate again next year.

Okay. That's all I have for you today. Time to get back to my slow-stitching, and my morning efforts at dinner-making. I'll work at making some more progress around the quilt binding, and I'll get the fifth row sewn onto the Stair Steps quilt. 

Next up in the sewing room will be to make another row for the "Jawbreakers" quilt. You might recall that I finished the Gumballs quilt top a while back...

and then went straight to work making the same quilt in a different colorway. I'll get started on the second row of these green-blue-aqua blocks today.

Just now, Smitty walked across my keyboard to let me know he requests my presence at the closed door. He would like it opened now, please. I guess I'd better go. Mustn't disappoint the boss.

Sitting and Stitching

Good morning, my friends. It's probably our last day of good weather here. We're told it will rain tomorrow. I have plenty of slow-stitching to keep me busy for the next several days. Yesterday, I stitched far enough on the Santa Quartet to decide to move my hoop to encompass the last of it.

Probably I have a couple of days left on the Santas, but I decided to trace the next 12 Tiny Treasures. I'm drawing lines to designate 2-1/2 squares for this, and then I center the design within the square.

It's hard to see in that image, and so here's a picture from the book. These are the Tiny Treasures I'll be stitching this time around. When they're finished, I will have completed 60 of the 72 included in the book. 

After that, I was ready to sew the binding on the Homestead quilt. But, uh-oh. There seems to be an impawdiment to purrogress.

I was able to ply him with catnip, but when I tried to spread it out for squaring it up...oh no! The quilt inspector is here!

There was another delay while the quilt inspector did her work, but eventually, I was able to get the binding sewn on. 

Now it's clipped and draped over a chair downstairs, awaiting my needle and thread action.

Okay, and with that finished, I was able to complete another block for the Stair Steps project. There is one more block to make for this go-round, and then one more row when it comes around again. This has been a great scrap buster, but I'll be glad when the blocks are all finished.

My last gasp in the sewing room was to trim and sort the leaders and enders I made while I was sewing together the pieces for the quilt block. I took a break from these for a few days. The sewing I was doing wasn't particularly conducive to sewing leaders and enders.

Okay, and so I took a little walk around outside after that. I noticed the Garden Treasures peony is close to opening. I expect we'll see this one by this afternoon.

I was out collecting lavender springs for our first Bees Knees of the season. Can summer be far behind? These are a little darker in color than usual. They're mixed with a simple syrup made from lavender blossom tea and honey. I used 100% clover honey for these, and it's a little darker in color than the honey I get at the grocery store.

And, oh my goodness. These children are celebrating 51 years of marriage today. Good grief. Where did the time go? We'll celebrate with dinner out tonight.

Okay, so my knee is feeling good enough this morning that I think I can safely resume some sort of exercise. I'm thinking the Bow-flex will get my attention today. No excuses. There's nothing else on the calendar, but I have in mind to bake some cookies. Back in December, I tested a cookie recipe for America's Test Kitchens. Their Espresso Iced Oatmeal Crunch Cookies are destined to appear in a new book tentatively titled "Cookie Swap." Just now I checked to see if they'd published the book yet. It appears not, and so I still can't share the recipe. Bummer. In any case, the cookies were good enough that I've wanted to make them again. Today seems like a good day for that. Aside from that, I'm going to spend the day sewing...mostly slow-stitching, but I'm going to endeavor to get the last Stair Step block finished too.

Enjoy your long weekend, my friends. Time for me to get on with my day. There's lots of slow-stitching ahead.