Another Year Older, Another Day Lazier

Thanks to all of you who left Happy Birthday wishes yesterday. It brightened an otherwise dark and rainy day. I spent the morning on my slow stitching...filling in the edges of the tablecloth.

When I moved my hoop, the design included this English Daisy motif. I might have done this one other time, but it's been quite some time. The design is stitched over the top of a tiny piece of felted wool...or fleece in my case, since I didn't have any felted wool. It's a series of closely-spaced and overlapping lazy daisy stitches with some French knots in the center. Mine isn't exactly symmetrical, but it's good enough.

I had a couple of errands to run when I drove to the quilt shop. I needed some large envelopes to mail off my donation quilt, and I needed to drop off a printer cartridge for recycling there at the Staples store. (I'm always so happy to have them take those big cartridges off my hands.) I was right across the street from the Jo-Ann store. I first asked myself if I was prepared to be in a bad mood that day because I can't ever get out of a Jo-Ann store without gaining a bad mood in the process. In this case, I thought a follow-up trip to the quilt shop would fix whatever I picked up at Jo-Ann.

I was on the hunt for an alternative to the transparencies I use in my art quilts. The transparencies only come in 8.5 x 11 inch sizes, and so I have to tape them together when I trace out a design. You can see how this one is taped together. It isn't a big issue, but it does make the design a little more difficult to see.

Recently I inquired of someone on Facebook what she used to trace her design, and she mentioned "plastic sheeting," available in different weights from Jo-Ann (and probably other places too). So I checked yesterday, after reassuring myself about the bad mood, and I found just what I was looking for. It was in the back of the store on large rolls. I was checking different weights when I found a good-sized roll just lying on the floor, as if it were the end of a larger roll...a "remnant," in other words. It was just what I was looking for, and so I took it to the cutting counter where she gave me the remnant price. 

I ended up with a nice large piece for $1.99. Such a deal! I can probably get at least three art quilts from this. We'll see how well it works.

I didn't take a lot of pictures at the quilt shop, although I should write about it next time I go. When I wrote about it on the blog, it was way back in 2011...when I could still pretend I was young. Since then they've made some changes, and so it would be worthwhile taking you on another tour. Yesterday, I noticed they had a whole rack of these little embroidery "kits." I'm glad to know these are more readily available in case I have a stitching emergency on the road. 

These are made by Cozyblue, and you can see their webpage right here. I especially like this one:

The only other picture I took in the quilt shop was this one. I had to text it to my drumming son, Matthew. He pronounced it "excellent."

I wandered all through the store...twice...and nothing really caught my eye. I was on the hunt for a backing for the Ties & Tails quilt:

I was looking for a cat fabric or else something that suggested neckties. The only cat fabrics I found were in the wrong colors, and I didn't see anything suggestive of neckties. However, I found this yellow piece in their basement sale section. It was 40% off, and I needed 6 yards. So that was a good price on a large length of yardage. In this photo, it looks as if it has dirt on it, but that is part of the design.

And I needed a yard and a half of background fabric for my next embroidery piece. I ended up with this one, and I got a 25% discount for my birthday. It only amounted to about $5, but I'd pick it up if I found it on the street. Wouldn't you?

Back home, I was surprisingly tired. I ate some lunch, and then took a very long nap. I was surprised how long and how deeply I slept. Clearly I needed the sleep. It was late in the day before I thought about doing any sewing, and so I traced out the next "name plate" for the Shop Hop quilt.

There were about 45 minutes left before I needed to get ready to leave for dinner. I had almost the whole of it stitched by then.

We had reservations at the Portland City Grill downtown. We'd requested a window seat because the Portland City Grill has the best views in downtown Portland.

Looking out, we could see the Willamette River stretching westward. I'm sorry for the reflection. If you look at the river to the right of center, you can see the Broadway Bridge. Beyond that, the Fremont Bridge, and then way beyond that on the very left of the image, you can see the historic St. John's Bridge. 

We brought wine from home. It's a significant savings for us, and we're probably drinking better wine. They charge us $25 to open the bottle, but this bottle was over $100 on their wine list.

We ordered a shrimp tempura appetizer, which we'd already started eating when I thought to take a picture. It came with a plum sauce, and a spicy mustard sauce.

Mike had an iceberg wedge salad. Looks good, doesn't it?

My salad was mixed greens, apples, gorgonzola, and candied hazelnuts.

I wish I'd thought to take a picture of the menu because I can't describe our main courses very well. Mine was a risotto in pureed asparagus with snow peas, maitake mushrooms, and shrimp. The red sauce probably has some tomato, but I can't remember. It was delicious.

Mike had a Seafood Alfredo. It had shrimp, crab, and bay scallops.

They brought us this little slice of a chocolate tart with some kind of raspberry sauce along with the dessert menu. We shared this one, and that was plenty. It was very dense and rich. A few bites were plenty.

We'd hoped for a prettier sunset, but this was the best it got. It was a nice way to end the day.

This morning, my friend Sue is taking me to breakfast. When I get home, I'll get going on some laundry, and I have a couple of other housekeeping chores to do. There should still be time for sewing. I'll be starting to run through my list of WIP's, and so I'll be making another block for the Vintage Linen quilt. Here's where I left it last time:

The kids are coming for dinner on Sunday, and so I'm going to be cooking some things ahead. We're celebrating our May birthdays (three of us), and Mother's Day to boot. (I'd forgotten it was Mother's Day when I scheduled it, and so I'm cooking. Oh well.) So it's another busy day ahead. Time to get going.