Finished Mosaic

Yesterday's housekeeping chore was finished early and so it was mostly a day of sewing. Of course, I started by slow-stitching on the barn.

There were still bricks to stitch toward the bottom, but I was getting tired of doing those, and so I decided to move the hoop to the right and work on some of the background landscape. I'll pick it up there next time.

After that, I got to work on the cardinal. The center mosaic is complete now. Yahoo!

Now I need to make a pieced border for it, and then it has a narrow border around the outside. I have some things to say about the outermost border, but I'll wait until I get that far to talk about it. I might need to ask your opinions.

From there, I took a break. It occurred to me that I could trim down the kitty paintings so they would fit in 8 x 10 frames, and so I've been waiting for said frames to arrive. Now I can hang them side by side on our chosen wall. The paintings are behind glass. I tried to get a picture with no reflections, but no dice. I note I still picked up a reflection of the living room window on the right side of Smitty's painting. Whatever...you get the idea.

With that done, I spent some time outside feeding the birds, and whatnot. It was a nice day yesterday. Then I cut all the pieces for the cardinal's pieced borders. These will be used to make square-in-a-square blocks. When the whole thing is finished, the quilt will contained 1,626 pieces. Yikes.

Smitty helped me count. Also, he requested some window dressing for his purrivate parts. Thank you.

As I was finishing cutting the pieces, Mike called to say he was coming home early to finish the RV dishwasher. And...voila!

The downside of this is that we had to give up three drawers to accommodate the dishwasher. It's okay...everything fits fine, but those drawers were a sacrifice. I know I'll forget all about them when we can wash the dishes without getting dishpan hands. We are both tender flowers that way.

Inside, it looks like this. Diagrams that came along with it say it'll hold six place settings. Maybe...if it's only dishes and no pots or pans. Either way, it's fairly roomy inside for a compact unit.

Also, it will use less water than filling a sink to wash, and so we'll be able to use it as long as we have electricity. I thought we'd need sewer and water, but Mike says the water usage and water drainage will actually be less than before. Cool.

The controls are on the top of the door, and it has several cycles. We ran it through a "light wash" cycle, and it worked great. No leaks.

Mike is pretty proud of himself. He had to learn some new plumbing tricks with this, and so he was very glad there were no leaks. We have an RV trip planned soon. Since our last trip, he's installed the washing machine, satellite antenna, and the dishwasher, and so it'll be a sort of "appliance shake-down" cruise.

As for me, in the middle of the day there, I got a call from our pharmacy that they had the 2nd Shingrix vaccine dose. We've both been waiting for it for over a month. Fortunately, we're well within the time limit for getting it, and I was able to get mine yesterday. Mike is still waiting. Predictably, I guess, it's made me sick again. It's my fifth vaccine since June, and I'm all caught up now. The first round was the first Shingrix vaccine and the tetanus booster. I expected the tetanus to make me sick, as it always does. Now I'm wondering if the Shingrix vaccine got its licks in too. The second round last month was the pneumona vaccine and the flu shot. I was sick with those too, but not as bad as the first time. So, I'm a little surprised this one made me sick, but I'm obviously sensitive to them. I'll live, but it's going to mean picking up our CSA share tomorrow. For now, I'll just lie on the couch and moan.

I'm hoping to get some more sewing done today, but we'll see. I took some Tylenol a little while ago, and I'm hoping I'll feel better. Time will tell.