Creaky

Do you ever wake up feeling achy and creaky? That's how I feel today. Often I feel better after taking a warm shower, and I'm hoping that will be the case today. Enough tomatoes have come from the greenhouse and from the CSA shares to put together a batch of salsa. We used the last little bit of the last jar over the weekend, and so it isn't a minute too soon. As we poured the last from the jar, our fingers started trembling and our pupils started dilating. Life without salsa just isn't worth living. So there's that.

My creakiness could be chalked up to getting up and down while planting the echinacea yesterday.

These six plants were started from seeds earlier in the spring, and they've been living in pots while I waited for Mike to obtain a load of dirt and fill in a hole. Now they have a home. I imagine getting out of those pots feels to them like it feels when I take off my shoes after being on my feet all day. It's gotta feel good to spread your toes, wouldn't you think? On the other hand, maybe they feel nothing at all. 

While writing yesterday's blog post, I looked to my right and saw this.

We've been letting him out in the morning when Mike leaves for work. We figure Mike driving off in the car scares away the monsters and Smitty can safely roam for a little while. He likes to climb one of the trees and then jump to the roof. Then, he stands at the window and whines for me to let him in. Only...I happen to know he can get down by himself. I proved this to myself (and to him) once again yesterday by simply moving around the yard. Eventually, he was standing beside me. 

We were looking at the plums, and they are close to ripening. We might actually get some plums this year. They have a habit of waiting until the day we leave on a trip to become edible. Then, our neighbors come (at our invitation) and pick them while we're gone and we miss out on the harvest. This year, I think their timing might be off. 

From there, the Smittenator and I went inside and sandwiched some quilts. First, the Baby Birds baby quilt for my cousin. I have not the slightest idea how I'm going to quilt this, but I'll figure out something. It'll probably be something in the form of straight lines and circles.

There was just one other quilt awaiting sandwiching, and so I did this one too. This one won't get quilted until next month probably.

When I came upstairs again, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The baby is sleeping.

The last thing I did yesterday was to finish quilting the free motion quilting sampler. It ends up about 36 inches square, and it still needs binding. This was a very fun project, and I learned a lot from it.

Now I'm kind of excited to start another sampler. There's another free motion sampler quilt-along going on right now at Adventurous Applique and Quilting. It started about a month ago, and so I'm already behind. I'll need to make a quilt top for that, which shouldn't take long, but time...time is always the problem. Have you noticed that too?

Today I'm going to head down to the local farm stand to pick up the remainder of what I need to make some salsa, and then I'll tackle the tomatoes. I'm hoping to get a start on the Baby Birds quilt too, but that might mean simply staring at it and waiting for inspiration to strike. I've noticed that just staring at them sometimes scares them into submission.

How do you find inspiration for quilting?