Triangulating

Yesterday was kind of a bust for a lot of reasons. It started off with rescheduling breakfast with Matthew. We're getting together this morning, and so that was no big deal...but so much for fresh bread. Now it'll be day-old. Oh well. Then it was the grocery store. Then it was housework. Finally, toward the end of the day I managed to fit in a little bit of sewing.That actually ended the day on a positive note.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I'm able to use scraps, especially certain scraps like bonus triangles, I feel pretty darned smug. So when this quilt was posted on the Kathleen Tracy's Small Quilt Lovers Facebook group as the March challenge,

my mind immediately went to a sandwich bag full of bonus triangles that has been hanging out in the closet for eons.

The quilt pattern is included on page 17 of her book:

There are 35 pinwheels in the quilt, and for all those pinwheels, I needed 280 bonus triangles. That's a whole lot of triangles, but I started sorting them out and pairing them up. Fortunately, my little cat came along to, um, help.

Oh, are you trying to get organized? Here...let me help you with that. I'll just lie down right here in the middle of things. Let's do this thing.

So, I had no expectation that I would have enough, but when they were all counted out and paired up for sewing, there were just five left. Whoa. It's almost as if it were meant to be.

It was the end of the day, and I only had about 45 minutes, and so this was as far as I got. The red ones on the right were used in the Love Me, Love My Cat quilt. As for the other ones...I have no idea. Those fabrics don't even look familiar. I even went through my "Finished Quilts Gallery" and couldn't figure out where they came from. Probably they were cut wrong at some point and then tossed in the bag to hide the evidence.

Still to be sewn together are these. They came from the You Are My Sunshine quilt.

So there you go. It sure feels good to dispense with all those triangles in one fell swoop. You'd feel smug too, wouldn't you?

With it being kind of a bummer of a day (really, no particular reason...some days are just like that), I decided to drown my sorrows in future alcohol consumption. Please tell me I'm not the last person to hear of the Knock Out Martini. I learned about this from Tanya, the woman who does my pedicures, when I was last in to see her. She was packing up to go on some kind of girls' weekend, and she had the mixture in her refrigerator. She described it to me, and it sounded so good that I went home and immediately asked my friend Google how to do it. Tanya gave me a quick rundown on what was included, and I found lots of different recipes, but this was the one that sounded most like Tanya's combination. From the Bar None Drinks website, someone left this comment:

The recipe is Absolut "Mandarin" (orange flavored) Vodka and fresh peeled pineapple chunks. Store in a large jar for a minimum of 10 days, remove the pineapple and hand squeeze thru a strainer and store in a jar in the fridge. When ready to serve put in a shaker full of ice and shake well, pour into a martini glass with or without ice cubes and garnish with an orange slice. Great summertime drink! Got the recipe directly from the bartender at Sullivan's. 

This is a specialty drink from Sullivan's Steakhouse, a restaurant that (seemingly) the entire world, excluding me, knows about. So in my grocery store wanderings, I picked up a surprisingly ripe pineapple. I'd already stopped off at the liquor store to pick up some orange-flavored vodka. When I got home, I started the process.

Although the recipe says to use Absolut Mandarin, it always seems like a sacrilege to use the expensive stuff in this kind of concoction, and so I just picked what was cheapest.

Now, it's off and running. I'm supposed to let it sit in the refrigerator for a minimum of ten days. That means it'll be ready for drinking when I get home from the Ann Shaw class...and that alone might be reason enough to drink. We'll probably save it for our camping trip mid-month and try it then. I'll have to get back to you on whether it's worth the effort.

Okay, so a day of using a sackful of bonus triangles, finishing my housework, and alcohol. How bad can it be? And when I get home today, I can get on with my triangles and pinwheels with a clear conscience.