As Luck Would Have It

This morning I decided to finish quilting the Irish chain blocks for the Doors of Ireland. There were only two left, and so I told myself it would be quick. As luck would have it, the Universe took this on as a personal challenge, and I ended up taking out as much as I left in. Nevertheless, the chain blocks are finished now, and I can get on with quilting the details into the door blocks.

Smitty thinks quilting is boring, and so it seemed like a good time to kill this felted cat. When it fell behind the table, he started knocking other things to the floor as well. Just helping me stay organized, you know.

Since I was sewing next to this door, I added some thatch to the roof. I included some when I made the block originally, but I'd always intended to add more with the quilting.

When I'd finished all the chain blocks, I took it downstairs to the living room where the light from the windows usually gives me the best contrast for hard-to-see quilting.

Mind the sentry there...no one gets past these doors!

So, the light doesn't help much for pictures, but you can sort of see it.

My lines are far from perfectly straight, but when one looks at the quilt as a whole, it isn't noticeable. That has been my experience with free motion quilting. As the quilter, it's easy to feel as if you're ruining the quilt because you see every little bobble and wiggle as it happens. When you look at the quilt as a whole, all of that disappears. A perfectionist could find those errors, for sure, but I try to avoid allowing perfectionists near my quilts. A perfectionist is someone who is always looking for the flaw, you know.

Then I flipped it over to look at the back. It's still hard to see the quilting. Especially when there are

so many obstacles.

It's easier to see a little closer up.

We're back to rain today, but we had a nice little respite yesterday. I took advantage of the sunshine to dump our compost pail, fill the bird feeders, and take a little walk around. Look out there in the distance, and you can see that we were above the clouds here on our hill.

I discovered the cover on our hot tub had blown open sometime during the storm...not securely latched, I assume. No harm done except to the balance on our electric bill.

Pause here for a moment to admire this healthy patch of weeds we've grown this season. Impressive, no?

Can you tell the winds have been ferocious the past few days. Sadly, three people lost their lives in Washington when trees fell onto their cars in separate incidents. Indeed, when I went to pick up our final CSA share, there was a large branch down across the road. A crew was there cleaning it up. They're pretty quick on the scene when something like that happens.

The last week of our CSA share was two weeks combined. Man, oh, man. What a lot of vegetables. Fortunately, most are root vegetables and squash, and so they will keep for quite a while. I had accumulated such an abundance of carrots that I spent some time making more of the spicy dilled carrot spears. (The recipe is right here.) The carrots in our share are short fat ones, and they are a perfect size for the 12 oz. jars I've been using.

Can you tell these are dug fresh from the Hillsboro soil? One pound will yield two jars of carrots. I was hoping to get six more jars, and there were plenty for that with enough left over for the recipes on this week's menu.

And there they are. I'll give a jar to each of the kids and keep the rest for snacking on. They are so flavorful and satisfying that I'm hopelessly addicted to them. Fortunately, carrots are available year-round.

Part of the reason for finishing my quilting this morning is that I have a huge grocery trip in store for myself today...more than 60 items on my list. If we even remotely needed anything, I added it to the list. If I spend enough money, I get my turkey for free and free is a very good price. And all of that to say that this marks the day when going out into public leaves me a little frazzled. It seems everyone is frazzled at this time of the year, and it easily rubs off on me. I know I'll want a nap when I get home.

So...wish my luck. A holiday storm is brewing, and it won't be over for another six weeks or so.