Seize the C's

As suspected, it didn't take long to finish the hand-stitching on the Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs quilt block. This is where I left it yesterday. I was just getting started with the running stitch around the outside edge. 

This morning I expect to finish it off, and then I'll be on to my next hand-stitching project, I Believe in Snowmen. And so now, the race really is on to see if I'll be making more embroidery blocks, or finishing the quilting on Solstice. Which one will win the race to go camping? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this epic race.

Smitty is just bored with the whole thing. He kept joining me on my quilting adventure yesterday, and he thinks the bunched up folds of the quilt are an excellent napping place. It took some doing, but finally, he was enticed to lie on the chair beside the sewing machine.

I believe I need to wash the little quilt he's lying on. He kept sniffing it and finding it inadequate to his needs. Eventually, he left the room in a huff. It could be he was disgusted with my quilting prowess when I came across this left-behind pin within the quilt sandwich. Phew! Glad I didn't run over it!

Fortunately, I could reach under the quilt top to retrieve it. I don't believe I've ever done that before, but it did bring to mind a story from the Way Back Machine. My mother used to make all my dresses for school. There was one dress, and whenever I crossed my legs or brought my knees together, it poked me. It happened several times before my 3rd grade fingers decided to explore the source of this annoyance. I found a straight pin stitched into the hem. Possibly this was a way of working up to yesterday's pin performance because I was able then to work it up to the top of the hem where the hand-stitching was and pull it out.

I stitched for hours yesterday and eventually ran out of the prewound bobbins, as expected. So I went to my spooled thread and wound a couple more. Here's how it looks from the back...prewound on the right, spooled thread on the left. There's just a slight color difference, but I doubt anyone will ever notice. Except you. You know. You won't tell, will you?

The quilt is about 90% finished, but I was getting tired by the end of the day. Also, my C's had sort of squashed themselves into parentheses.

If you look at where I started this whole thing in the image below, you can see there's a lot more curve to my curves.

Oh well. It's not a big deal. My goal with every quilt I make is to learn something. As I look back over the quilts I've made, I can tell you the thing(s) I learned with each one. With this one, I've learned that a new day should bring a new round of practice to reinforce the muscle memory of the day before. Ordinarily, I'm quilting my quilts one block at a time because I usually do each block differently. It's unusual for me to quilt an overall design like this one, and so this is what I've learned...start each new day of quilting with at least a little practice so I can pick up where I left off.

For dinner last night, I used a great recipe that took care of three CSA veggies in one fell swoop.

And it's been a while since I asked of The Google, what the heck I was talking about when I said something like "one fell swoop." What does that mean anyway? And why do we say it? Here's what The Google tells me:

The swoop (or stoop as is sometimes now said) is the rapid descent made by the bird when capturing prey. Shakespeare used the imagery of a hunting bird's 'fell swoop' to indicate the ruthless and deadly attack by Macbeth's agents.

Feel free to repeat this bit of information to your friends and colleagues today. They'll be impressed with your knowledge of useless trivia, and no doubt their opinion of you will be changed in some way. The direction of change is unclear at this point.

As for the recipe, this used the newest bundle of kale, all of the potatoes, and all of the spring onions. This is Roasted Chicken Legs with Potatoes and Kale. I've linked to the recipe there, but just know that I used boneless, skinless chicken thighs in mine. Also, you'll only need half the amount of chicken. She said 8 whole chicken legs, which would include the thighs, and that is a whole heck of a lot of chicken. So I suggest half the amount of chicken, but use the same amount of veggies. Also, I increased the number of onions from one to three. The onions are delicious in this dish, and they help sweeten the kale. Even kale-hater Mike liked it prepared this way.

We enjoyed it very much. I love a dish with nothing much added so that the pure flavors of the food come through. It's all done in one roasting pan, and that makes it an easy dish to put together. Also, it made enough for another meal, and so I've packaged it up to take along next week. That means one meal is planned.

Speaking of meal planning, I'll need to get that done today. I'm getting my hair cut later this morning, and I'm going to stop off for a couple of things, but I'll save the bulk of my grocery shopping for tomorrow. There are a couple of other errands to run, but I should still have plenty of time to finish the quilting today.

Before I go, I want to tell you that we looked through the laundry room window yesterday evening to see Smitty lying on his cat walk. A few of you suggested putting an old quilt out there for him to lie on. I looked through my old quilts (which caused me to patch the Saltwater Taffy quilt a few days ago), but I couldn't find anything I really wanted to leave outside in the moisture and fading sunlight. Instead, I moved one of the towels from another shelf to the cat walk, and that seemed to appeal to his tender tummy.

Wait...did somebody say chicken?

So I'm heading into the living room now and I'm hoping I'll have time to finish the running stitch around the Dancing Chicken block before I need to get ready to go. And it's a hopeful day because I'm also hoping I'll finish off the quilting today. That will leave plenty of time for getting the binding sewn on tomorrow.