Taking Stock

We're back home again. It took forever to get from Vancouver, Washington, and through downtown Portland. Try as we might, we did not get off from Lake Mayfield as soon as we'd hoped, and so we ended up in early Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic. Oh well. It reminded us how glad we were not to be contending with that on a Monday through Friday basis any more. On the way home, we saw a few more barns. It's pretty hard to get very good pictures of them as we speed by. Also, I've noticed that too many people plant trees and build houses, which obstruct my camera's view. The noyve.

There wasn't a lot of time for stitching while we were gone, but I made good progress on the 4th of the Summer Holiday quilt blocks. This morning, I finished up the remainder. I love that the bird is wearing swim trunks.

It still needs its little pieced border, but I'll probably wait to do that until I've finished the last block. Since I finished up the previous block with gold floss, I just continued on with the same gold floss on the 5th block.

You might recall that I was considering how to make the embroidered picnic basket cover the red-checkered tablecloth in this one. I'm doing a basket weave satin stitch, and I think that will get the job done nicely.

And I stopped when I finished with the length of my floss. I'll pick it up there again tomorrow morning.

As for today's activities...there isn't a bite of food left in the house, and so we're heading off to the grocery store first. There's also a ton of cardboard to take for recycling. Then, we'll need to unpack the camper. The camper doesn't take very long since we barely take anything along on these trips. Most of the food is eaten as well. After that, I can get back to my sewing.

First on the sewing agenda is to sew the binding on Mumm's the Word. Nothing will give me more pleasure than getting a start on hand-stitching the binding down and calling it finished. High on the must-do-it-now list is to sew hanging sleeves and labels on the two quilts I'm entering in the Oregon State Fair. Those are my highest priorities in the sewing room for now.

Also, I've been thinking about our big trip starting in September. I'm in the very enviable position (enviable to me, at least) of finishing up three of my four embroidery projects in the very near future. That means I get to start three new ones. With that in mind, I'm planning to cut all the backgrounds and backing pieces to size before we leave. It will mean carting along less fabric and reducing the size of the bins they'll be stored in. Tracing the designs can be done on the road. Also, Wine Country's blocks are all iron-on transfers. Of the bunch I've been working on, it's the only one that isn't going to be finished in the next couple of weeks. It makes sense to make up those blocks as well so that I can continue working on them while we're traveling. That should be enough embroidery to keep me busy for the entirety of our journey.

So that's today's agenda. I doubt it will all get finished today. Nevertheless, it makes for plenty of dull moments, which is the way I like it most of the time.