All Ahead Slow

Saturday mornings are lazy mornings here at the Three Cats Ranch. We've been busy with appointments over the past week, and so it was nice to just laze around. It took me until around noon to get myself up and around. After lunch, I resumed quilting a feather motif around the outer border of I Believe in Snowmen. By around 2:30, I had it finished.

The quilting went faster than I thought it would, although it seemed as if the feather took forever. I took a break there and girded my loins for sewing on the binding. I'm used to have a large table to work on when my sewing room is available. Working on the dining room table seemed a daunting task. I'm not sure why because it really was no different from working in my sewing room. I just had to be careful not to run my rotary cutter off the cutting mat and onto my teak dining room table. (Yikes!) And all of that to say it took about an hour, but I managed to get the binding sewn on as well. Now it is ready for hand-stitching.

It has been inconvenient to have everything on the dining room table, although the table isn't the problem. The problem is that I can't get access to all my good sewing stuff. Nevertheless, Smitty has appurreciated being able to snoopervise from his kitty pole in the living room.

Sadie finds the disorder much more offensive. She's moved into a studio apartment located on their catio for the time being.

It was a cold and wet day yesterday. It seemed like a good day for soup. I tried out a new recipe for Hearty Minestrone. It's a recipe from America's Test Kitchens, and so you won't be able to open that link without a subscription. If you really want the recipe, just email me and I'll send it to you. I neglected to take a picture of mine, and so this image is the one from the website. It looked good in the picture, and so I decided to give it a try.

It's chock full of vegetables in the form of carrots, celery, onion, zucchini, and cabbage. The recipe called for dried cannellini beans. I wasn't able to find those, and so I substituted great northern beans. I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference. It took some time, but I started early, and that was a tasty dinner for a cold day. We had it with some crusty French bread for dunking.

So, this morning I found myself with nothing to stitch other than the quilt binding. That's the sort of thing I like to stitch sitting next to the window in our reclining rocking chair. I decided I really needed a smaller embroidery project. Since I can't get at anything else, I decided I'd go ahead with March's block for the Joyful Journey quilt. Before sitting down to write this post, I took time to trace it out.

Now it's in my hoop and awaiting my return. 

Also, it's Sunday morning, and that means Sunday morning blueberry oatmeal pancakes. It's sounding very good right now.

So I'll probably spend most of the day doing hand-stitching of one kind or another. We're expecting carpet to be laid in the basement tomorrow. I'm very hopeful to be back in my sewing room by the end of next week. With the way things have dragged on in this project, I've learned not to set my expectations too high. Still...I'm feeling more optimistic than ever, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.