Stitching, Cats, and Gardening

It's an all-around kind of day. We've been spending the bulk of the morning giving medicine and TLC to the resident invalid cat. She's actually feeling much better this morning. Mike sat with her quite a while this morning, and we took off the cone of shame.

She has a drain in her wound, and the cone is to protect the drain more than anything. She's been a good girl napping and occasionally licking at her wound, but she hasn't tried to pull at anything. We're leaving it off for now just to encourage her to eat and drink, and because she's more comfortable. It's quite an indignity to be such a beautiful girl and to be caught wearing something so repugnant to her fashion sense.

When all the nursing care was complete, I finished the machine stitching on the next block for Lisa's retirement quilt. That was a royal pain. I've been stitching back and forth on these little lines in order to lock down the stitching, and I was having to cut thread at each one, which meant cutting thread every three or four stitches. Finally, I just started leaving the ends uncut and pulling at the thread to give myself a little slack before moving on to the next one. That went much faster, and I could clip all the threads at the end.

I used one of the fancy stitches on my sewing machine for the line of grass, but I was moving the fabric and adjusting the length and width to try to stay as close to the drawn line as possible.

With all of that done, I was ready to start on the hand-stitching. When I stopped for the day I had all the stitching done on the left flower and butterfly, and I'd started on the words. I'm still hoping to have it finished by tomorrow.

On today's agenda is to clean out the greenhouse, and today is probably going to be our best bet for the weather. It's been kind of foggy and drizzly this morning, but the sky is getting brighter as I write this. We're hoping we can get a few dry hours this afternoon to get that accomplished, and that will probably take most of the rest of the day. 

And since you're probably all wondering about the verdict on the pies (or maybe you're not, but I'm going to tell you anyway), I can say with delight that they were deliciously fantastically awesome...a word I don't use often, but in this case it is appropriate.

I'll admit to having my doubts about this whole thing, cute as they were. It was their cuteness that convinced me it was worth a try. They were super easy to make. Even the pie-crust-phobes among you will appreciate that you only need a teensy weensy crust to make them, so even if it doesn't work out, you haven't lost much. Still, I'm betting even the least confident pie crust person can make these.

Then, my next area of doubtfulness was how easily they would pop out of their mason jar lids. As advertised, I just ran a knife around the edge of the pie and they popped right out of the lid ring. Oh, but wait, there's still the metal lid on the bottom, and how well did it come off of that? Perfectly. I just ran the knife under the crust, and before I'd even gotten a quarter of the way across, it popped loose from the lid easy as pie. (Sorry.) And just look at this little cutie. It looks just like a little miniature pie!

But then, I was doubtful about how it would taste, and what its texture would be like. There was only just a little fruit. Would it be mostly crust? Soggy crust? Crunchy crust? Was there really enough fruit to make you believe you were having a nice big slice of blueberry pie? Well...I can't really say, but for my money, it was SO GOOD!!! It had a perfect amount of fruit, and the crust was deliciously moist and flaky without being soggy. We had ours with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. All in all, it was the perfect little bite or two or three of pie for those of you watching your waistlines. And you've got to admit there's something to be said for eating an entire pie all by yourself.

So I'm definitely going to make these again, and I'd like to try them with some different fruits. Peaches, apples, pretty much anything would work. But there are so many great desserts in Christina Lane's book that I'm going to have to try something with each of my new baking utensils...and soon.

That's about it from me for the day. I'm not sure I'll have time for any more sewing today, but I'm focusing on blocks for the week. There are lots of blocks for me to make, and I want to do some of that before starting on the quilting for my friends' baby quilt.

What's on your agenda for Saturday?