Stuff from Sunday and a Winner

Good Monday morning to you. I'm trusting you all had a good Easter weekend. We had a pretty relaxed one here. 

I'm hoping you all had a chance to leave a comment for the Canvaspop giveaway. Let's just choose a winner right now. But before I choose the winner, I'm estimating that at least 50% of you who left comments were no-reply. It's an old song, but I'll say it again: If you're settings are at no-reply, and you don't leave an email, you have no chance of winning. None at all. You might want to check that out if you're entering a lot of giveaways and never winning. Or if you leave a lot of comments and no one replies. That's your first clue. Puh-leeze check your settings. 

Okay, so here we go. Spinning Mr. Random number generator, and he says:

#26--Nita!

Congratulations, Nita! I've written you an email, so check your inbox.

Now, don't despair if you didn't win because you can still get 35% off  an entire order from Canvaspop through the end of April by using this code:

CATPATCHES35

Just head on over to their website and order up.

But, hey! Here's another reason to dry your eyes. Come on back here on Saturday, and we'll be having a giveaway to celebrate Mr. Smitty's third birthday on April 11th! Look how he's grown:

Smitty worked all weekend making this mug rug for some lucky random someone. He's calling it "Aged to Purrfection".

Here's how it looks from the back.

If you'd like your own kitty mug rug, just be sure to come to the party on Saturday. It's gonna be great fun.

Easter Sunday morning I got a yen for a Dutch Baby. I'm a great fan of this Mixed Berry Dutch Baby, but I haven't made it in a while because Mike has to avoid those little seeds in the berries. So Sunday morning, I went in search of a recipe for a Lemon Dutch Baby. I didn't find one that appealed to me in particular, but in the process, I found this recipe for an Apple-Cinnamon Dutch Baby. Well. Nobody has to tell me twice. I just happened to have a Gala apple and everything else I needed, so I went straight to work. And yum, yum, yum. It was an instant hit.

These are super easy to make, and it takes longer for the oven to heat up than it does to prepare the "pancake" for baking. I used two Gala apples in mine. It said "large", and I'm never sure what size my apples are. How large is large? I took no chances. I'm a firm believer in food safety. 

It has a sort of "sauce" that goes over the top as well, made from sour cream, apple cider (or orange juice) and brown sugar. It makes a whole lot, and with just two of us, I only made half of that. It was still too much. For two people, I'd make about a quarter of the amount of sauce next time. For four, I'd make half. And if I were betting, I'd bet that even six people could get by with half the amount of sauce. So there you go...my food enticement for the day. Make it. You won't be sorry.

The rest of my sewing for the weekend was pretty much comprised of stitching up this block for Lisa's retirement quilt. Here's the original block:

Here it is rendered in fabric. It took me longer to stitch it than I anticipated, but it's done now. That's Block #11 of 56.

This morning, I scanned in the next one to get it ready to go. This is Elizabeth's block. From the notations that accompanied it, I can tell you that Elizabeth was a 4th grade student.

I'm thinking this one might work well with the thread painting technique a tried a few weeks ago. We'll see. Sometimes I change my mind once I get going on them.

Today I have laundry and housework to do. Also, I'm taking Miss Gracie to the vet to have her drain removed. You're probably wondering, and so I'll say that Gracie is doing marvelously well. She's been downright kittenish. We took off her cone, and she's been a good girl about not pulling at her stitches. We just left it off and we were all a lot happier. She's been eating, and she's had a few supervised strolls outside, and she's been downright playful. That's all a good thing, but it makes us realize that the abscess has probably been festering for a while, poor baby. 

"Get rid of that ruffian cat, and we'll all be a lot better off. 

I knew that cat was trouble from the get-go!"

Just FYI, a cat's skin can heal from a wound very quickly, which makes them prone to these kinds of infections. You can find some information about this condition here and here. Gracie gets lots of lap time and TLC (she demands it, in fact), and yet, we were unaware she had this brewing until it became inflamed enough to start draining. Then, they are stinky and disgusting and pretty much demand instant treatment.

So I'm sorry Gracie has probably been suffering for a while with this, but she's all fixed up now. She just needs to live with her stitches for a little while longer, take her antibiotic, then grow her furs back, and she'll be good as new. Good as a 14-year-old cat can be.

I'm hoping I'll get in a little bit of sewing time today, but it's too soon to tell. I hope you have a good Monday planned for yourself.