D-Day

It's the day I've been dreading. Today is the Mohs procedure on my poor nose. It's the fourth one I've had on my nose. My doctor is skillful. He's done the other three as well, with no scarring, and so I'm going into this dreading it, but not fearful. It's good having a doctor I trust. The worst part is the numbing medication, and then the recovery when the numbing medication wears off. I'm confident I'll survive it, but I'm not happy about it. My appointment isn't until this afternoon. Mike and I have to drop his car off for some service this morning, and we'll have our beloved Egg McMuffin for breakfast. We have a couple of other errands to run too, and so that will keep my mind off of it until the time comes.

Hopefully, I'll have some time this morning to continue hand quilting Mulligan Stew. When I finished with it yesterday, I moved the hoop to this position:

The portion of the border inside the hoop and to the left is all I have left to stitch. There are a few little places inside the quilt blocks I'll want to finish, but it's moving along. I'm hoping to have the binding sewn on by this weekend.

As I mentioned yesterday, I had an appointment with a podiatrist yesterday morning. That all went well, and she made casts of my feet for new custom orthotics. They are expensive, but they've made a big difference for me. My first set is more than 10 years old, and so the initial expense is offset by their long life. I wouldn't be replacing them except that the new ones will have a 4mm lift in the right foot. 

When I got home, we had some lunch, and I put some chili in the slow cooker. After that I headed into the sewing room to make the last section for I Believe in Snowmen. Smitty read the instructions to me as I worked.

We first had to choose which red and white fabric to use for piecing the star. Smitty tested all of them, and felt this was the most comfortable. That worked for me.

It was pretty quick to piece together the star and then the embroidery background piece.

When I had the background piece stitched together, I traced out the fusible, and then pinned the background to the template.

It helped me to get the correct placement for the applique. I started with just the largest pieces.

When those were fused, I moved it to my lightbox and traced in the embroidery lines.

And then I was ready to add the windows and doors to the houses. The window panes will be stitched in by machine as I'm doing the top-stitching.

That took the entire afternoon. I was just getting started with the top-stitching when it was time to stop for the day.

As for the chili, I was trying a new recipe from the Cooking Light Diet. This turned out to be really good, as are most of the recipes on our diet. I liked this one enough that I'll probably stick with it as my go-to recipe for chili in the slow cooker. It's made with ground pork, chunks of pork shoulder, and a ham hock for flavor. I don't think I've ever used a ham hock before. Of course, I've used a ham "bone" for making split pea soup, but the ham hock is a different part of the animal. 

It was topped with cilantro, green onions, and feta cheese (a stand-in for queso fresco). It's a bit of a to-do putting it together since the ground pork, pork shoulder, onions, and chopped green pepper need to be browned first. Do it in the morning, and dinner will be served when you're ready for it. It's a little spicy, and so if you're sensitive to that, I'd recommend cutting the chili powder down significantly. We liked the level of spice, but I added some fat-free plain yogurt to mine to tone it down just a bit. If you want to try this, you can find the recipe for Smoky Slow-Cooked Chili right here.

Okay, so I'm hoping to finish off the top-stitching today and then get back to machine quilting Friendship's Garden. On the other hand, I doubt there will be much time for sewing today. I'm planning to take the day off from blogging tomorrow because I won't have anything to tell you beyond whining about my medical woes. Thanks to all who have sent their well-wishes. Misery loves company, you know. I'm sure it will all be fine, and it'll be good to get it behind me. Seems like I'm saying that a lot lately.