Good Day, Sunshine

Our weekend was kind of a mixed bag of weather. Yesterday was one of our famous everything-in-a-day weather days here in the Pacific Northwest. There was sunshine, rain, hail, then more sunshine. Mike spent the day pressure-washing our decks and sidewalks. They were covered with a thin growth of green moss, and they were treacherous for walking. Very slippery. Everything looks good now. As sunlight waned, everything looked so pretty. So I took a little walk around, backing up from my usual close-up shots.

These are a couple of the azaleas. I was standing at the corner of the house. The one in the foreground is just starting to open. It's a sunny day today, and so we might see it really open up and show off.

Walking around to the other side of the house, our Japanese maples are all leafed out. They are especially pretty during the "golden hour" of sunlight.

Toward the front of the house, the lilac is in bloom now. I think this is its best year ever.

The heather is still in bloom at its feet, and the lilac is covered in flowers. Getting in a little closer, there are still little flowers that haven't opened yet.

The dogwood "blossoms" get a little larger and more red each day. These aren't actually flowers, but more like what we call "guard petals." Inside there is a flower bud, so I hope they come through this year. I'm feeling more optimistic each day. We noticed the ones in the valley are in bloom, and we're usually a couple of weeks behind them at our elevation.

But here's the most exciting news. It appears we have violet-green swallows living in at least three of our bird houses.

We've seen them sitting on top of the houses, hanging from the sides, and also going in and out of the holes. Pretty exciting. And there's plenty of boffing too. Yes, that's what I said. Boffing.

Yesterday's bread turned out beautifully. It might be the prettiest loaf I've ever made. The dough was so nice to work with, and it meant I could do some pretty scoring. I'm trying to accomplish a wheat head, but I think I might be making the center slash too deep. It spreads out, and while I can see the little wheat seeds, the shape is kind of lost as it expands.

And this is so nice. Here's how it looks inside.

As I mentioned yesterday, I ran out of bread flour, and so this one was made mostly with all-purpose flour. Now I'm finding from various friends that nobody bothers with bread flour. Apparently, I'm the last to know. Bread flour hasn't been available in our grocery store lately, but I might not bother with it in the future. I think the loaf also benefited from an extra 24 hours in the refrigerator. The dough can be made two days ahead and refrigerated for 48 hours before baking it off. I had two loaves. The one I gave to Mae had just 24 hours in the refrigerator, while this one got the extra day to think about what it wanted to become.

Despite several stern talking-to's I've given myself over the past couple of weeks, I haven't been able to force myself back to the hand quilting on Mulligan Stew. I'll get to it eventually. I've actually spent some time thinking about how it is that I can love embroidery, but hate the big-stitch hand quilting. For one thing, the quilt is large and bulky, but it's more than that. I think it's just the tedium of taking one big stitch after another. Embroidery stitches are fine in comparison, and there is variety in stitches and color. Whatever the case, I decided to put Mulligan Stew in time out until its turn comes up again on the white board.

For now, I'm getting back to the blocks for "I Believe in Snowmen." I last worked on this quilt back in December, just before we left on our trip. There are 16 blocks altogether, and I've finished ten. Now I've traced out the next three. They are small, and so I've worked them three at a time when their turn comes up. Here are the next three I'll be stitching.

After that, I got back to work on the poppy mosaic. Smitty helped me with this. Notice how carefully he places his paws, making sure not to disturb my work in progress.

He would much purrfer if I came outside with him. He was closed off from his outside world during our conversation, and he was very much looking forward to his afternoon adventure.

Sadie was warm next to the fireplace. When we can't find Sadie anywhere, she usually turns up in this little hidey hole.

So I finished the 9th row of sections for the poppies...

And then I did two more for the final row before quitting for the day.

Earlier this morning, I took these pictures of the kitties getting their morning sunbaths. This is the best time of the year for kitties.

Smitty likes his kitty pole. Sadie found a nice warm spot on the stairs.

So it's a little late in the morning, but I haven't done any slow stitching for several days. I'm going to get a start on the snowmen before doing anything else. I'm really hoping to finish off the last of the poppies today. It'll still need a borders added, but those will go quickly in comparison to what I've done so far.