Food, Fathers, Family, and Fun

We had such a nice day yesterday. We headed down to Erik and Mae's house for a Fathers Day Eggs Benedict brunch. Here's a shot of the cooks in action:

Erik toasted the English muffins and warmed up the Canadian bacon. Mae poached the eggs, and I made the Hollandaise. We had it all done surprisingly quickly. After breakfast, we took a little walk around Erik and Mae's garden. Their vegetables and herbs are looking really good.

On the opposite side of the yard they've planted this flower garden and seating area. Doesn't this look like a nice place to spend a summer day?

Here's a close-up of that red blooming thing on the left side of the image above. So pretty, and Mae says it's easy to grow.

Here are The Stanbro Men.

I've been on a quest to get good pictures of their kittens, Cricket and Clementine. I got some good ones with my phone, but I'm not sure there's enough resolution to make them good for pawtraits. We'll see. This is Cricket.

Clementine was outside and a little harder to capture, in more ways than one.

After that, we stopped off at the grocery store to pick up more eggs, and then we went for a walk in Barrows Park, where I "sowed" my first heart into the wild. Now I'll have to watch the blog to see if anyone reports it found.

This morning we're heading out for a walk on the Fanno Creek Trail with Matthew. I have another heart to sow there. We saw a few blooming things in the park. This was a blooming tree...I think this is a dogwood.

And this one...I need to remember to use my Like That Garden app so I know what these are.

On the way home, we stopped off at the Hoffman Farms Store. We were hoping they would have some cherries. I want to make another batch of barbecue sauce. They had none, but they do have a quilt block on the side of their store.

Hoffman Farm is a Century Farm. This is their "trademark" image. I wonder what this structure was used for. I would think it was an old-fashioned grain elevator, but the windows would seem to rule that out.

We tried again for the cherries at the Smith Berry Barn farm and garden store. None there either. We'll try again at the Newberg Farmers Market on Wednesday.

We did pick up some hanging baskets there. Ordinarily, I would plant these myself, but I've planted no annuals this year. Being late getting home from our trip and then planning another trip in just a couple of months, summer at home feels a little temporary this year, and I'm having a hard time investing much energy in the outdoors.

They'll brighten Sadie's view from the catio. She was enjoying a nap in the warm sunshine.

Mike spent the rest of his day getting the catio mounted on the side of the camper. This involved installing some stainless steel hooks.

Here's how it looks from the inside. I like that there's a shelf there for them to sit on while inside.

If you were a kitty contemplating a move to the catio, this is what you would see.

I spent the rest of my afternoon getting ready to work on the scrub jay quilt. I first color-coded the regular size image. It looks a little funny because I decided to color in the background pieces adjacent to the bird. Some parts of the bird were colored gray or even white, and so I wanted to make it obvious where the bird ends and the background begins.

Then I taped the blown up image to the window with the freezer paper and drew in the seam lines.

Then I flipped the whole thing over and labeled it for piecing order.

That's where it stands. Next, I'll highlight the outer edges, larger sections, and then smaller sections with different colors of highlighter. After that, I'll be ready to cut the larger sections apart and get on with fabric selection. I know now why I've been dragging my feet about this. The process I just described is pain-staking and tedious. It's my least favorite part when it comes to making these quilts. Now that I've reached the fun part, it'll go a lot faster.

This morning I moved my embroidery hoop for the last time on the Hocuspocusville block.

I've already stitched some of what remains in the hoop. This one should be finished by tomorrow.

The weather has suddenly turned much warmer. Possibly summer has arrived. Probably I just needed to finish up the last Solstice block to bring it on. Now that it's here, there's no keeping Smitty inside. He was out for a little while this morning, but he got too warm and had to cool himself off on the tummy air-conditioning of the wood floor.

After we walk with Matthew this morning, I need to take Sadie to the vet. Hopefully, I'll have some time for sewing this afternoon, but possibly not. The third of the Monday Mini blocks has been released, and I'd like to catch up on those next.