Sew Long

We had a wine shipment to pick up yesterday. It was a hot and smoky day. There are many fires burning in Oregon right now. This morning I saw some pictures of a major highway junction on the way to Bend that was all in flames. It was rather alarming, although it is far away from us. Nevertheless, I also read about 140 hikers trapped between two fires in the beautiful Columbia Gorge. We will be driving through there in about a week, so go firefighters! And by all means, be safe.

It's close to harvest season at the vineyards and it showed in the vines. It wasn't the best light for taking pictures, but I did take a couple.

It's a little late in the season for blooming things, but there were a few of those too.

We arrived home after lunch, and I had some cooking to do. Then, I headed into the sewing room to work on my last project before we go. At the bottom of the stairs, I found this little waif. She keeps thinking the door will open and she'll be able to go outside. Nothing doing, Little Missy.

So then I got to work on the March block for Tuxedo Tales. First, I fused down the applique.

When I turned to the sewing machine to do the top-stitching and machine embroidery, a shadowy figure flew by.

We call her the Cat of Darkness.

From there, I did all the machine stitching.

And then took it upstairs to do the hand-stitching. I only got as far as the little clover blossom on the left when I had to stop for the day, but I was able to finish it up this morning.

And then, the only thing left to do was to sew on the button eyes and trim it to size.

Cute, huh? These are the three I have finished so far.

When we get home next spring, it'll be time to work on April's block, which seems completely appropriate.

And when you think about it, coming home in April to work on April's block, coupled with making progress on every one of my WIP's this past month, it seems as if the universe is all set to right...completely balanced...simpatico...stable.

So with that I cleaned up the sewing room and said, Sew Long, Sewing Room.

Bye-bye, Books and Sewing Machine.

Happy Trails, Thread.

See you next spring...actually, tomorrow when I start packing up my sewing stuff for the trip.

This morning the sun rose as a red orb in our smoky skies.

The kids are coming for dinner. It's half made already, but today I'll be making a Cool Tomato-Corn Soup from our CSA tomatoes and corn. It's a chilled soup, so nice on a hot summer day. Also, the plums are not ripe, and so it's a lemon meringue pie for dessert. Definitely not on our diet, but we'll have the kids here to help us eat it all in one sitting.