Lots of Slow Stitching

It was very windy here yesterday. As I'm writing this, I can't remember if I mentioned it in yesterday's post. The wind blew hard all night long, and then around lunch time, I'm sure we scored a direct hit from one of those "dirt devils" you often see in the desert. It was a little frightening to be hit by such a hard gust. It was a good day to stay inside and hunker down. I'm just glad I had plenty of slow-stitching to do. 

Of course, I went straight to work on the latest inchy from Crabapple Hill's stitch-along.

That one was pretty easy. All of mine are bordered with a blanket stitch this year since I'll be trimming them close to that edge. Aside from the edge, the rest of was all backstitch with just one French knot for the bird's eye. Here are the 15 I have for this project so far:

From there, I went to work hand-stitching the binding for the "Never Too Many Cats" quilt. And that makes the third finish in two days.

I wanted you to be sure to notice the top middle cat is gray with a pink nose, like Smitty. The bottom middle cat is a tortie with a black nose, like Sadie. Here's how it looks from the back:

Yesterday afternoon, I was doing something on the computer when all sorts of bells, whistles, and sirens went off...well probably no sirens, but it might as well have been. They were all announcing a severe weather alert:

Good grief. Mike was out flying his drone, and so I went out to tell him. We thought it prudent to batten down the hatches by putting away lawn chairs, folding tables, and the like. Fortunately, the dust storm never materialized, but a dark black cloud did hover over Pahrump for several hours. For the appearance of such threatening weather, nothing happened, and we're back to sunshine and calm weather again today. With so many freakish weather events occurring nowadays, it has occurred to me that almost anything can happen at any time. I just keep hoping we won't be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Okay, so it seemed like the best way to calm my nerves was to get into some more slow-stitching. I did some work on the 7th blackwork basket, filling my hoop. It's been several days since I worked on this.

And now I've moved my hoop to the final position. I should be able to finish this off today.

My sewing projects have dwindled to just the final two "bonus" scrap projects I brought along. Today I'll do the cutting for the free Apple Mini Quilt from Sassafras Lane. If I'm feeling particularly energetic, I'll start sewing it together.

After writing my post yesterday, I realized the original photo (shown above) has just straight line quilting on it. It's hard doing free motion quilting on the smaller Pfaff Ambition machine I'm working with, and so I wasn't excited about switching back to the free motion foot and giving it another go. Now that I've considered just doing straight line quilting, I might decide to take this from start to finish after all. If not, I still have one more mini quilt along with me. 

The second is a Mini Single Snowflake Quilt from Lake Girl Quilts. It's another free pattern I found...probably on Pinterest.

So you can see I still have plenty to keep me busy as we make our way home. With all my WIP's projects finished for the trip, I'm kind of excited to start something new just for fun.

Okay, and I don't expect I'll sew all day long again, so I'll probably get out for another walk. I'm glad the wind has died down. It's looking like a good day is coming up. But first...I must check to see if the inchy is posted. It's such a fun way to get started on the day's sewing activities.