A Very Good Day

The kids are coming over for dinner tonight, which makes it a good day right from the get-go. But my, oh, my. It's been a super day from the start.

Before I go on, however, I wanted to tell you that I pieced together the "G" block for the Gardener's Journal quilt yesterday.

And with that one finished, I could sew the "F" and "G" blocks to the rest of the quilt. This is what I have so far.

Just the "H" and "I" blocks to finish piecing, and then this one will be a full-fledged flimsy. I've been working on it for a long time, and I'm getting excited seeing it come together.

Speaking of excited, the Oregon State Fair opened yesterday. I've been compulsively checking the website for results of the competitions. They have a nice web page all set up and looking so promising. Yet, when I opened it to check again just now, it still looked like this:

Do you see any results? Neither do I. And wouldn't you expect to see some since the judging is all finished and the fair is open?!?

Well, no problem, because in my email yesterday was a blog post from one of my fellow guild members, AnnMarie. AnnMarie cleaned up at the fair, let me tell you, including winning this Judge's Choice award for her Mod Pops quilt. Yay, AnnMarie!

AnnMarie blogged about the fair at her blog, Runandsew Quilts, and I could see three of my quilts in her pictures. And I'm so excited to tell you that Love Me, Love My Cat took a red ribbon.

Shine On also took a red ribbon.

You have to be stealth to see Snowbirds on the right side of this image, and it took a blue ribbon. 

(By the way, that's another of AnnMarie's quilts in the upper left of that image above, sporting a red ribbon of its own.)

So I couldn't see the fourth quilt in any of AnnMarie's images, but this morning she sent me an email letting me know that Vintage Miniature Sewing Machines had won its division! Wahoo!

And that quilt to the right of mine is another of AnnMarie's with its own blue ribbon! 

So I'm thrilled to have done so well in this year's fair, and it was totally unexpected. I sort of thought the Vintage Miniature Sewing Machines quilt might win something because it has been so well received in blog land. The rest was just frosting on a really yummy cake. Thanks go to AnnMarie for spreading the word and for giving me permission to post the pictures from her blog. Finally thank you, thank you, thank you, AnnMarie for picking up my quilts when the fair ends. I'll be on the road, and AnnMarie has graciously agreed to do that favor for me. I'm meeting some very nice people in my guild, don't you think?

So that was a wonderful way to start off the day. Then, I went to the Beaverton Farmer's Market with Erik and Mae this morning. That's Erik and Mae in the foreground of the image below.

With that hat, I think Erik is all ready for their trip to Hawaii next month when they'll celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.

We usually go to the Portland Farmer's Market, but we decided to change things up this morning and take a look at this market in Beaverton. They didn't have our usual huevos rancheros, but Mae and I had these yummy strawberry waffles for dessert breakfast. Erik had a breakfast sandwich.

Speaking of sunflowers...

Erik enjoyed a tasty refreshing beverage.

I was on the hunt for 20 lbs. of tomatoes to supplement the ones coming out of the greenhouse. I just don't think mine are going to ripen fast enough for me to can them before we leave on our trip a week from tomorrow. The San Marzanos on the left of the image below were absolutely marvelous.

Wanna see what 20 lbs. of tomatoes looks like? Feast your eyes...

Fortunately, I have the next three days free at home to process these babies, and I'll have pasta sauce and salsa to feed the world!

So I just sat down here for a bit to tell you what's going on. I'm in the process of making dinner for tonight. I tried out a recipe for a smoked salmon cheese ball made with the smoked salmon Valerie has been supplying from her uncle in Alaska.

Also, I just took a beautiful peach pie out of the oven.

I made the pie dough yesterday, and it was uncharacteristically cooperative when I rolled it out this morning. (You know how I feel about pie dough.)

So there is still quite a bit to do to finish up for dinner tonight, and I'd better get going on it. I'm having a lovely day. I hope you are too.