Sonora Sparkle

The window washer guy didn't show yesterday. The best laid plans sometimes don't make it onto the calendar. No worries. We were here the whole day anyway, and we'll just try it again in a week. It'll be another excuse to spend the whole day sewing. But I didn't spend the whole day sewing. I took a little walk out to the vegetable garden. Some of the sunflowers are having trouble standing on their own, and so we got some sturdier garden stakes while we were grocery shopping earlier in the week. I've been checking them each day to see who might have fallen over in the night. Sunflowers...hard partiers, no doubt.

While I was out, I took a few pictures of things that are growing there. I was sad to see two more of the green bean plants had been bitten off at the ground level. I'm left with just three bean vines now. We won't get many (if any) beans at this rate. We've come to the conclusion that a gopher is to blame, and now Mike has set a trap where we found some tunneling. 

We're having more success with the melons. I found three flowers on a single plant.

In my wanderings, I discovered some of the beets were ready for harvest.

Checking on the sunflowers, I found some new ones in bloom. This one is called "Joker."

This next one is called Sunrich Lemon. It's hard to see, but there's a big bumblebee in the center.

This next one is called Floristan.

I needed to get a big bucket to harvest the beets, but I first harvested some of the baby zucchinis. These are about the size of a human finger. They're the perfect size for the Canal House Marinated Zucchini. I'd like to find a couple more before I make that salad.

Then I went to work harvesting the beets. About half were ready.

I separated them from their greens and then bagged them up for the vegetable crisper. Not sure yet what I'm going to do with them, but they'll keep for a while. I still have 5 jars of pickled beets from last year, and so I don't suppose I'll do any more. I may just can them as plain old beets. Or maybe we'll just eat them. The sky's the limit.

I used some of the greens to make Beet Green Pesto. If you've never tried making pesto from anything other than basil, just know that the two are indistinguishable. Possibly if you tried them side by side, you might be able to tell the difference. I've made pesto from all sorts of things: kale, sorrel, and nasturtiums come to mind. We had some spread on crusty bread with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. It's so good, I could easily make a meal of it. 

I'm going to use some of it to make this Fettuccine with Asparagus, Beet Green Pesto, and Poached Egg.

When I was finished with my outdoor activity, I left Smitty nibbling the tall grass in one of the larger weed beds. This area was replanted recently after removing two enormous butterfly bushes. Despite Mike's best efforts, the grass has refused to grow, but the weeds have come along fabulously.

Back inside, it was time to get started on my sewing day. With great trepidation at using so many metallic threads of different brands and colors, I used a small strip of scrap fabric to create a little tension check point. The fabric isn't exactly the same as what is used in the quilt, but it was close enough.

My tricks for using metallic thread are these: (1) massage Sewer's Aid into the thread. It's a silicon thread lubricant, and it won't stain your thread or your fabric, but lubricates it for when it passes through the needle. It also lubricates the eye of the needle. (2) Use a thread stand set a distance from the machine to give the thread plenty of time to uncoil and relax before it passes through the needle. (3) Use a large-eyed needle. I was using a 90/14 metallic needle for yesterday's quilting. (4) Finally, check the spool for any burrs that might catch on the thread. You can use an emory board to sand them smooth.

Starting with a sky blue metallic thread, I stitched several curvy echoing lines across the blue portions of the sky.

Since I hadn't decided whether that was the plan for the whole quilt, I took it off the machine at this point and checked in with my quilting snoopervisor. She approved, and so I continued on my merry way.

I added a white metallic to the white portions of the sky, and then set my sites on the sun. I had several ideas about what design to use there, but then just let my hands decide on the final pattern. Here, I used a gold metallic.

And then, I just continued on from top to bottom, switching thread colors as I moved to a new color on the quilt.

It's a little hard to see the sparkle of the metallic in a photograph, and so I took a series of photos from different angles.

The metallic thread sewed perfectly yesterday. I had not a single episode of breaking or fraying.

I was using a reddish-brown cotton thread in the bobbin, and I switched to the same thread on top to quilt some saguaro cactus into the border.

When the quilting was finished, it looked like this:

I was just getting started hand-stitching rays from the sun using a gold metallic embroidery floss when I decided to quit for the day.

There should be plenty of time today to finish the hand-stitching, and then the quilt will be ready for binding. I've worried I wasn't going to like this quilt, but it's working out okay. I'll be glad to get it finished. It's been on my to-do list for many years.

So today will be another mostly sewing day. I'll need to get out and water the flower pots. It should have been done yesterday, but my sewing kept me occupied, and I didn't want to stop. Also today we need to give the kitties a second dose of worming medicine. It's hard to convince either of them that this is good medicine. Don't let Sadie's tiny stature fool you into thinking she doesn't pack a punch. She does. 

This could be my last blog post. If I'm not back again tomorrow, you can assume we were ripped to ribbons trying to administer medicine to Sadie. Yeah...just look at that sweet face. Evil lurks under those ears.