Final Fourteen

This morning's post is later than my usual. I'd like to say I slept in all this time, but no. There we were, sitting reading our email, when the power went off, and we found ourselves sitting in the dark. It was 6:30 a.m., and still dark outside too. The only light in the room was from our glowing iPads. I went to the Portland General Electric website to get the low-down, and found that the matter was under "investigation" and that power would be restored at 9:30 a.m. Later that forecast was revised to 9:15 a.m., but the matter was still under investigation. So, I figure that's a big fat lie, designed to give false hope to the masses. Without knowing the cause, how could there be any prediction about when power would be restored? Huh? Answer me that, PGE! Yeah, busted. Only...sadly, we were still sitting in the dark despite my protest.

Fortunately, my embroidery head lamp is rechargeable, and it had a full charge. When I finished my email, I spent quite some time stitching on Tree #5 for 12 Trees for Christmas.

At 9:00 a.m., the power was still out, and I was reluctant to open the refrigerator door. Instead, I headed out to a local cafe for some oatmeal and more coffee. I'd only had one cup when the power went out, and I was sorely in need of more, more, more! Also, I'd signed up for an alert when the power was restored. As I sat scrolling mindlessly on my iPhone, PGE kindly called me to let me know it was safe to return home, and that coffee was available. (Actually, they didn't say anything about the coffee, but my caffeine-starved brain filled in the blank.) Now, here I am...only slightly more addle-brained than usual.

Backing up to yesterday, I finished the final 14 stars for the Semper Fi quilt. In celebration, I'm cueing up John Phillip Sousa:

Did you know Wednesday was his birthday?

Yeah...so there they are.

This was Sadie's contribution:

Wait...are they finished?

And this quilt is seriously huge now, so I laid it out on the nobody-ever-plays-pool table for a picture.

My last gasp for the day was to cut the strips for the final border.

And I might have this finished by now except, you know...that pesky problem of no electricity.

It was time to quit for the day then, and I had a new recipe to try last night. This is a Cozy Autumn Wild Rice Soup, and man, was it ever tasty. It laid waste to no less than five CSA veggies in the form of garlic, kale, celery, carrots, and sweet potato. There is both a stove-top and a slow cooker version of this. I made mine on the stove top, but I didn't bother browning the onions or garlic. I just dumped it all in the pot and turned it on. It took about an hour from start to finish, but most of that was just waiting and stirring. You can find the recipe right here.

Okay, so now that we're powered back up again, I'm going to go finish the Semper Fi quilt. I'll still need to piece together a back for it too, but I might wait until tomorrow for that. I've been working on it almost non-stop for over two weeks, and it'll be good to take a break from it. Nevertheless, I'm hoping to get it quilted and finished off before the end of December. We'll get a better picture of the finished top this afternoon, I hope.