Keeping it Short

There isn't much to tell you this morning. In case you missed it, our power was back on around 1:00 p.m. yesterday, and I wrote a long post about what was going on then. There were only a few hours left in the day by the time I finished, and so not much more happened. You'll be happy to know I fired up the vacuum first thing. I was itching to get after my housework. I'm guessing you'll agree it was a completely understandable reaction to having been 12 hours without vacuum capability. Phew! I felt better then. I felt good enough to head into the sewing room and fuse together the plate of fajitas I was working on. Sadie was my helper cat for that. Fajitas are her favorite Mexican food menu item.

Starting fresh from the previous day was a good idea. The plate of food went together fairly easily, although it doesn't really look like much to me. There are still some details to stitch in, and possibly that will help. What you see here is supposed to resemble avocado slices, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, tortillas, meat strips, and orange bell pepper strips. I'll be stitching in some lines to denote divisions and I'll also use a zigzag stitch to stitch in some grated cheese. Hopefully, it will all become clear when it's finished.

And then I just had a few items to add to the whole, and the fusing was finished.

Today I'll do all the top-stitching. It usually takes the better part of my sewing day. When that's finished, I'll need to add two borders to finish off the block.

If I can finish the New Mexico Kitchen block, I'll start making the last row of roses for the French Roses quilt. Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt so far:

That will open a slot on my WIPs list. I have in mind to make another flannel quilt now that I've committed to using my flannel scraps. When those are finished, there is just one more block to finish on the Ties & Tails quilt. Here's what I have so far:

And that will open up another slot on my WIPs list. Since I need always to have at least one cat quilt going, I'm going to start working on a long-ago-purchased pattern called Purrfectly Pieced. Each section can be a quilt unto itself, but I'm going to make the whole thing. When it's finished, it will look something like this:

It's partly pieced, and party fusible applique. I believe I have everything I need to make the quilt top already in my stash.

So there you go...the once and future quilts in progress. I made good progress on the next section of my slow-stitching since I had hours and hours and hours to stitch yesterday. I might finish off the current section with today's effort.

In closing I want to add that we got some more snow last night. Yesterday's deluge was mostly melted away, but it's still looking very wintery outside. Yesterday's snowfall was the most significant April snow event in our area in at least 82 years. (I'm always happy when I learn there are still at least a few things that haven't happened since before I was born.) We're expecting low temperatures below freezing all week. I'm sure the cherry blossoms are toast, and I'm a little worried about all the new plants that were already greening up in preparation for warmer weather. The blueberries, peonies, and clematis are of particular concern. I just hope they are okay, but it will be at least a week before I'll be able to check on them. Also, we lost a very large limb off one of our red leaf maple trees. It's very sad when that happens. Many folks in the area are still without power, and so despite my concern about the landscape, I'm feeling fortunate to have electricity. We can replace the landscaping if we need to. 

Okay, so time to get at my slow-stitching. There's just a little housework to do today, and then I'll get busy on the Fajitas block.