Moving Slow

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, my broken shoulder was bothering me...probably from too much quilting. I took some Tylenol in the morning, and then decided to see how it would be to do just one star. My goal was to finish four, and I had the whole day to do it.

Taking a break, I had to decide whether to trace the next block for Heartland Barns, or whether to start sewing together the quilt top for Blackwork Baskets. I wanted to do the tracing the least, and so I did that first. 

In an earlier post, I said the center panel wasn't really much larger than the other four I'd already stitched. Well...I was lying. It's actually about twice as big. I had to start at the left side and move it across my lightbox to do the whole thing.

When it was all finished, it looked like this:

I still needed to add some iron-on stabilizer to the back, and now it's hooped up for quilting. I'm starting on the left side, and I'll work my way across from left to right.

Tracing embroidery designs isn't my favorite thing to do, and so it's good to have it finished and ready for when I finish Calendula Patterdrip. Throughout the day, I quilted and then took a long break, and by day's end, I had all four stars quilted on the Charm Stars quilt. There are just four left to do now.

As for Calendula Patterdrip, I'm moving right along with that one. While we watched the news, I stitched up the current hoop, and then moved my hoop to the left.

I'll probably move the hoop about three more times to finish the whole thing. 

For last night's dinner, I tried a new recipe in this Thai-Inspired Chicken Meatball Soup. The meatballs are made with a healthy amount of grated garlic, ginger, and jalapeno pepper. I used only the outer green part of the jalapeno, discarding the ribs and seeds. It wasn't a spicy dish. They also contain a whole bunch of chopped cilantro. Mike and I agreed the cilantro flavor was not strong. I know some people cannot abide cilantro. I'm not a huge fan, but I can tolerate it if its well disguised, as it was in this dish. (And if you really don't like it, you could substitute some other fresh herb, such as parsley.) Also, I used ground turkey in mine. It's quite a bit cheaper than ground chicken. The broth is made with chicken stock and coconut milk. Fresh spinach and lime juice is added at the end. It was served over rice, and we thought it was very good. There's enough left over for another meal.

While I was trying to get that picture, I learned something new about my camera...re-learned it is probably more accurate. So, here's a screenshot of my camera. See where the flash is located, under the word "Lumix" and just above where the hand grip is? The shutter is just above the word "Lumix" on the top of the camera, and so it's difficult not to cover the flash with your finger when pressing the shutter.

When you cover the flash with your finger, you get an image that looks like this:

Okay, and when I said it was difficult not to cover the flash, what I really meant is that it's difficult to *remember* not to cover the flash. I'm going to have to retrain my hand to hold the camera a little lower down. I'll get it right eventually. At least I know when I look at the screen and see something that looks as if it were shot in a brothel, I'll know what I did wrong.

Meanwhile, Smitty was letting us know he's much too smart to fall for this cat trap business. He's fallen for this gag before. And here it is, not even April Fool's Day yet. Well...we all know who the *real* fool is.

On the other hand, Sadie found the afternoon sunbeam and was warming her furs and her bones. It was a nice end to the day for her.

Today, I'm hoping to finish up with the final stars. There are four left. I'll do them one at a time, as I did yesterday. The quilting won't be finished though. I still need to quilt in the areas between the stars. I'd hoped to avoid that, but those areas are too large to leave unquilted. I know what to do. I just need to do it without flaring up my shoulder pain any more. During my breaks in quilting time, I can get started on the Blackwork Baskets.

Tomorrow's post will probably be later in the day. Mike and I wasted no time getting our second booster shots scheduled, and we'll do that Friday morning. Our appointments aren't until 10:00 a.m. at a grocery store pharmacy. We'll have breakfast first, and then make it a short grocery shopping trip too...enough to get us through the weekend. I'll check into the blog when we get home in the afternoon. The last booster made me kind of sick. I'm hoping this one won't be the same, but not really counting on it. Fortunately, the weekend is clear, and I can sleep if I want to.