OMG: A Finished Flimsy

There was a little time spent in the garden yesterday, but mainly just hoeing down weeds and checking for sprouts. None yet. The rest of the day was spent in the sewing room, sewing the nine hand-embroidered Friendship's Garden blocks into a finished flimsy. The blocks were already framed in green, and the next step was to add the sashings and cornerstones, and then start sewing them together. I usually do this block by block. The first row looked like this:

This project might have gone faster except that I got confused about which side of the block needed sashing, and which part would be joined to the rows already sewn. When I ran out of cornerstones before I ran out of blocks, I realized my error. Sheesh. Kind of a beginner's mistake. Anyway...with much consternation and a discussion with my seam ripper, I had the second row sewn together and added it to the first.

The third row went together much easier, and the interior of the quilt was finished.

From there, I added two borders, and I had myself a finished flimsy.

Probably, I'll use the yellow floral and the yellow from the sashings to piece together a back for it. I'm still mulling it over. It's a small quilt at 49 x 49 inches...small enough to quilt on my domestic machine. With Eliza gone to the shop, I'm casting my gaze toward the smaller quilts on the pile, and so some of them are getting quilted faster than expected. And this was my goal for this month's

so I'll be linking up to the finishing party at the end of the month.

Also yesterday, I finished slow-stitching the Mariner's Compass block on the Appalachian Memories quilt. There's still a lot to do on this one, but it always feels like a little win when the quilt block is finished.

This morning I noticed a hummingbird at one of our feeders. 

We have Anna's hummingbirds year-round here at the Three Cats Ranch. In winter, of course, there are fewer and so we leave one feeder out when we're not traveling. Sometimes we have to switch it out to give them one that isn't frozen over. In summer when there are more hummers, and they are more active, I put out a second feeder for them. It prevents "thug hummers" from dominating one feeder. One is out of sight of the other, and so they can't guard both at the same time. And all of that to say I've put out the second feeder. This one is located near our patio table so we can enjoy them when we're sitting outside.

Mike surprised me with dinner out last night. I was all set to cook, but he wanted to drive the car he'd been working on, and so he found an open restaurant with outdoor seating. It was very nice, and we found ourselves upwind of other diners again. All servers were wearing masks, and so we felt pretty safe. We observed the two hostesses using hand sanitizer each time they seated a group, and we observed the tables being sanitized when a group left and before another group was seated. Interestingly, the chairs (plastic lawn chairs) were sanitized only on the "seat" portion, and not on the arms, which seemed a silly way to do it. I'm not worried about catching the virus on my sit-down place, but I am worried about touching the unsanitized arms of the chair. We had our own little bottle of hand sanitizer for after we'd handled the menus, and we kept our hands off the chairs. Despite concerns, it was nice to get another evening out in a restaurant after such a long stretch of time.

Today we'll be doing some planting. I'm not sure how helpful I'll be with that since this is the deep-hole kind of planting. Mike is a better shovel-master than I. Also, I'm going to get the quilt back made and Friendship's Garden will go on the quilts-to-be-quilted pile. From there, I'm not sure what's next on my agenda. You'll know when I know.