Smitty's Bad Day

Today was Smitty's turn to go to the vet. You would have thought someone was killing him. He has a distress meow that sounds something like a dog howling. A "mehowl", if you will. He mehowled in the car all the way to the vet. When I took him out of his kennel he continued mehowling and trembling like a leaf.

Then they gave him two shots, which made him mehowl even more. How rude! Fortunately, he was given a clean bill of health. He continued to mehowl all the way home until I let him out of the kennel. Then, he walked away, still mehowling, his feelings obviously terribly hurt by the whole experience.

I decided it was a good time to try out this new recipe for Blueberry Oat Scones. I was thinking a good scone would make him feel better; but then I remembered, cats don't like scones. Shoot! Oh well. Guess we'll have to eat them.

These were quick enough to mix up that you could easily put them together for breakfast if you were in a scone mood. They have just 1/3 cup of brown sugar to the whole mix, and so their sweetness comes from the fresh/frozen blueberries. They also have a full cup of oatmeal in them, and so they're relatively healthy...unless you're eating gluten free. Thankfully, I am not.

So then I farted around most of the afternoon. I think I was avoiding going into my sewing room to continue on with quilting the White Trees quilt. I've worked on it almost nonstop for the past two days, and I'm getting tired of it. Still, I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. The blocks are all quilted now. It'll be very hard to see what I've done, but I've messed with the contrast in these next images, hoping you'll be able to see the white thread against the white fabric.

I quilted snowflakes into all the open areas...

Birch tree bark onto the trees...

and collecting snow where the tree branches are. I simply outlined the birds.

I did my little bird feet in the red border. The gray border has given me more trouble. I tried doing a symmetrical design, and that didn't turn out at all. So then, I took a cue from Leah Day and tried her Tree Bark motif. I was starting with the lines I'd originally sewn, and so mine doesn't look exactly like hers. I was just trying to approximate it, figuring it works with the tree blocks. 

It isn't perfect, but I wasn't going to rip the whole thing out either. I might decide to add some pebbling between some of the lines, or maybe in the "eyes". It will just have to be good enough. I think when it's all finished and the quilt is seen as a whole, it will be fine. I still have three sides of the gray border to finish and then the outer white border. I'm going to quilt swirls in the outer white border.

So that's about it for my sewing day. I'm hoping to finish the gray border tomorrow, but I have to go to PT too, and that always takes a big bite out of my time. My knee is improving quite a bit, however, and so I feel more inclined to go. I still have no improvement in my range of motion, but I can at least walk without limping. I'm not sure what they're going to do about the range of motion problem. My fear is that the tear in my meniscus is what's causing it, and that may mean I can't avoid surgery. All I can do is keep going and wait and see.

Now I need to go tend to my dinner that I've been neglecting to write this post. I hope your Tuesday was fun and productive.