Tuesday and Wednesday

It's been a busy 24 hours or so.  Yesterday evening, we met up with Matthew to visit the Hillsboro Farmer's Market.  The market turned out to be a combination "everything" market with lots of food, music, crafts, baked goods, wine, berries, and vegetables.  It's not as large as the Portland Farmer's Market, but it was every bit as enjoyable.

When we leave our hill to go down into the valley, the temperature warms by about ten degrees.  It was quite warm for late in the day, and the kids from the neighborhood were having great fun playing in the fountain near city hall.

We were glad to duck down this side street shaded by buildings.

We were lucky enough to meet Matthew's new sweety, Laura.  And let me tell you, this girl's a keeper.  We liked her very much.  

They look good together, don't you think?

We had dinner of Thai food there on the street where the main part of the market was.  I bought some vegetables, Matthew bought some kale and berries, and then we headed for home.

This morning, I spent some time quilting before taking off for my monthly pedicure.  Gracie took some time for a little ole' roll in the catnip.

I've quilted the middle bird panels now and one row of the flying geese blocks.  I'm pretty happy with how this is turning out.

And I'm glad I was brave enough to go with that red thread.  Here's how it looks from the back...a little like blood vessels, I'm afraid, but I still like it.

Here's a more direct overhead shot.

Smitty gives his approval.

He and I went down to the sewing room this evening so that I could make up the stitcheries for the next section of the Gardner's Journal quilt.  It's been a while since I made any progress on this one.  The next two stitcheries are the vegetable garden (seems appropriate, no?),

and "pulling the weeds".  Cute.

I wanted to get these made up so that I'd have some hand work to take along on our weekend outing.  I'm back to tracing since I didn't want to switch methods of transferring these designs half way through the quilt. It probably won't make any difference how I do it, but I don't want to take a chance.

This afternoon, I made up some potato salad for our dinner Friday night.  Tomorrow, I'm starting some pulled chicken in the crockpot.  I'll prepare that tomorrow, and then just warm it up for dinner on Friday.  I was going to make a watermelon salad, but then decided just to cut the melon into wedges.  It's an outdoor dinner, and so I figure watermelon wedges are good enough.  I'm also making a 7-Layer dip that is always a crowd pleaser, and some chocolate chunk, cherry, and pecan cookies...the cookie to end all other cookies. Also on tomorrow's agenda is to make up a double batch of pasta sauce.  I have a pile of tomatoes that need processing.  I needed 8 pounds for a double batch (to yield 4 quarts of pasta sauce).  I had a little over 6 pounds, and so I'm supplementing with some tomatoes I got at the farmer's market last night.

Aside from that, I don't have a thing to do tomorrow!  Except drive into town to get my hair trimmed.  Bad scheduling on my part, but there you go.  I can relax this weekend.  How did your day go?