Sunday Slow

It's a rain-drenched morning here at the Three Cats Ranch. I'm a little late with my blog post this morning...not that anyone is keeping track. I changed up my morning routine so that I could finish the hooping of the Kitty Cat Alphabet I'm working on. In the middle of all that, I made our Sunday morning blueberry oatmeal pancakes. So you can see...we're not exactly racing out of the starting gate this morning. 

As for the kitty cats, here's what I worked on this morning:

I'm going to guesstimate and say I have it about one-third finished now.

And this being Sunday, I'll be linking up to:

Backing up to yesterday's sewing, I needed to finish up the Chorus Line for the Ties & Tails quilt. The first step was to machine stitch the birds' legs.

Then, I gave each one of them a hot fix nailhead for an eye.

When that was done, it looked like this:

From there, I needed to add a black flange, and then add the scrappy red sashing pieces all around. Smitty was my helper cat yesterday.

He made sure his peets were nice and clean before standing on my fabric.

With his help, I got 'er done.

There are still three more cats to make for this quilt before I can start sewing it together. Here are all the blocks I have so far.

Dinner last night was somewhat time-consuming, although not difficult. I'm in chanterelle mushroom mode with those beauties available now for a limited time only. After making the Chanterelle Mushroom Risotto a few days ago, I sent Mike back to the store to pick up another pound of mushrooms. I wanted to make this Leek and Chanterelle Tart for last night's dinner. Here's how it looked when it came out of the oven.

It isn't difficult to make, but it takes time to make, then freeze, then bake the crust, then the filling, then bake the filling, then let it sit for ten minutes before cutting into it. All-in-all, it took about three hours before dinner was served. It's a nice combination of leeks, chanterelle mushrooms, and gruyere cheese. You can find the recipe for this right here, if you're feeling adventurous. You can also make it with white or cremini mushrooms if you can't find chanterelles in your area. 

There was a lot of waiting involved in the making of this tart. While I was waiting for different timers to count down, I went to work planning next summer's trip to Alaska. I took along some materials on our previous trip, but was quickly overwhelmed by what I had with me. I really needed some paper maps, and I needed my Alaska "bucket list" folder before I could continue. While we were traveling, I ordered some supplemental maps and campground books. Yesterday afternoon seemed as good a time as any to get started on it.

Of course, summer is Alaska's high season, and so people who've made this trek in an RV all warn that reservations and pre-planning is a must. Also, there's the issue of getting across the Canadian border, both going and coming what with mandatory COVID testing and all. I'm hoping things will get less complicated by next May/June (our planned departure date), but for now, I'm studying up. 

So far, I've routed us from Portland up through Washington, British Columbia, and Yukon Territory and then across the border into Alaska. From there, north to Fairbanks, then south to Denali, Anchorage, Seward, and Homer, and lots of places in between. I'm not nearly finished, and things are still in flux, but it feels good to be making progress. We first have to establish a route and dates of arrival in the various places before I can start making any reservations. We do have one reservation already that we're planning the rest of the trip around: We'll be near Denali for the longest day of the year. That was Mike's one request for our visit to the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Okay, but back home, I have my next project ready for sewing. I want to make this little mini. I picked it up when we visited The Quilted Skein quilt shop in LaGrange, Texas, back in 2018. You can read my blog post about this shop right here.

It's only partially pieced, and then there is a button packet that adds in the details. This quilt was designed by Mouse Blankets Pattern Company. As I noted in my quilt shop post, their patterns can only be purchased in retail stores. Their website provides a list of stores where they are available. I'll warn you that my Norton security software went a little crazy over this website. I got all kinds of warnings that the website wasn't safe, and that if I clicked on it, mayhem would ensue. In fact, I should prepare for the apocalypse just to be sure. After consulting with the resident engineer, we concluded that Norton was being a little overly anxious...maybe I need to up its meds or something...and I clicked on through with no ill effects. You'll have to decide whether you feel lucky.

Okay, so all of that aside, I'm realizing I also need to make up the next block for Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage. I'll be finishing up with Kitty Cat Alphabet soon enough, and the next block for Calendula Patterdrip needs to be pieced and traced before I can do anything with it. I'll be working on the "boot" block. This one:

Cropping in on it, you can see there is a little bit of piecing to do before I can trace it out.

Also today, I'm helping Mike empty all of our dishes, pots, pans, spices, etc., from the kitchen slide in our truck camper. We had some difficulties with the slide while we were traveling. Fortunately, it didn't delay our trip, but it did give us some anxious moments every time we opened and closed the slide (dozens of times while we were traveling). It's going to have to go in for repair on Wednesday, but it will need to be empty. It's going to be an ugly chore, but it has to be done. And, of course, it's raining in Oregon. Who woulda' thought?

Okay, so clearly, it's a busy day ahead. Time to get going. I've plum run out of slow time.