Cats and Stars

My kitty consultants were hard at work yesterday. It seems kitties have very strong opinions about color value. I was working on the next two blocks for the Charm Stars quilt. The stars are made from a combination of light and dark color values as well as neutrals. Sadie was not happy with my choices at all.

You've chosen a lavender, where you really should have chosen a light purrple.

She read over the instructions and looked at the diagram several times. We couldn't agree on the color choices or placement.

Pawsibly you need new glasses, because I read it a diffurrent way.

In disgust, she gave up.

Sometimes no amount of purrsuasion makes any difference.

She decided to bed down on the already-made blocks for a nap.

It's depurressing when my human will not listen to my expurrt advice.

So, despite her disappointment, I laid out the HST's my way.

They're a little tricky getting the right configuration of darks and lights.

Of course, Smitty had to put in his two cents too.

Don't listen to Sadie. Any cat with a short tail like that is not to be trusted.

By day's end, I had them sewn together.

I still need two more blocks for this quilt. I'll do the last two in browns.

It was time to think about dinner by then. As I mentioned, Matthew won a sort of all-in-one cooker just before Christmas, and this is the first time I've felt courageous enough to give it a try. Mike thinks it looks like R2D2. When it makes its little button beeps, it sounds like R2D2 too. So it's a rather large appliance, but it steams, roasts, air fries, pressure cooks, broils, steams, slow cooks, dehydrates...let's see...I'm sure I've left something out.

I was planning to air fry two pork tenderloins. But first, I needed to read the instructions, and this was rather intimidating. There were two pages of ways I could die using this.

They contained many scary words like "DO NOT" and "NEVER" and "ALWAYS," and I don't know about you, but my memory isn't good enough to be trusted with "nevers" and "alwayses." In all, there were 61 ways to die.

Also...that many cooking functions translates into lots of pieces. It took me at least 20 minutes to figure out what went where, and which parts I would need for last night's dinner.

In the end though...it turned out good. I used this recipe to marinate and then air fry the pork tenderloins. (By the way, you can use the marinade and cook the pork tenderloins however you like. No air frying is required.) They took about 30 minutes, rather than the 20 listed in the recipe. Mine might have been a little larger than specified. Either way, they were quite tasty. Mike and Matthew had the pieces at either end. They thought theirs were a tad dry. My slices from the middle were just right.

So that was something new and exciting. I'll try one of the other functions next, but I'm not sure which or when.

Speaking of new and exciting, I'm starting a new project today. I know I said "no new projects," but here's the deal: My plan for the year is to finish quilting one quilt and to finishing sewing together one quilt top per month. When those two things are accomplished, I can work on my WIPs. And after years of experimentation, I believe a list of five WIPs is a reasonable number to have going. You may disagree...and I can hear you laughing, so be quiet! So with that excuse explanation out of the way, I'll just say that recently, three positions have opened up on my dance card. The first one will be filled with this pattern I purchased nearly 10 years ago.

When we were traveling through Las Cruces, New Mexico, I had a day of visiting three different quilt shops. This one came from a shop called "Sew What's New." You can read my blog post about it right here. My visit was in 2011, and so I wondered if they were still in business. It seems they are. You can find them on the web right here.

So, as is my usual practice, I'll be doing this one block at a time. The first will be this "Guacamole" block.

When I purchased this pattern, I was fairly new to quilting. There are some tricky bits to this pattern, including curved piecing of the block backgrounds, and homemade fringe on some of the background "tablecloths." I'm kind of glad I didn't try this way back then because it would have been rather confusing. And I'm not sure it won't be confusing still, but I'm hoping I'll be able to get 'er done. That's on today's agenda. It looks like all those striped fabrics I've been collecting are going to come in handy for this project.

Also yesterday, I started stitching the next Appalachian Memories block. I like to start with the quilt block on these. When I stopped for the morning, I had it this far. 

I'll be heading there as soon as I publish this post.

Also yesterday, I took another picture of the star magnolia. The flowers still have not opened, and we're expecting rain all week. I'm afraid the flowers will be fairly battered by raindrops by the time they are in full bloom.

I had good intentions of getting out and picking another bucket of weeds yesterday. By the time I was dressed and heading outside, the rain had started up. I'm easily discouraged from weeding, and so that was the end of my weedy day. Darn. It's looking pretty dark and cold right now, and so I doubt I'll get any more done today either. It's my expectation the weeds will wait for me. They're very dependable that way.