An Everything Day

 Good morning, my friends. I'm happy to inform you that the basement is finished!!! 

The guy was here yesterday and finished it off. I hope we've seen the last of him. He'll have to come back, however, since he left an unidentifiable tool behind. Mike is pretty tool savvy, but even he didn't know what it was for. I'll take you on a little video tour eventually. I considered it yesterday, but then realized that my unrevealed art quilt is hanging in plain sight. I'll hide it somehow, and then I'll take you on a little video tour.

When the guy showed up, I was busy taking the first stitches on Block 2 for The Story of My Day. 

(Just there I had to pause to get a cup of coffee. I can hardly chat with you while holding an empty coffee cup, now can I?) I'll probably finish this up this morning, although it is a grocery shopping day. It might have to wait until we get home.

It was a dry day with periods of sunshine. It seemed like a good day to get out for a walk. I walked at the top of our hill, since that seemed to be the sunniest location. Once again, I was enchanted by the raindrops glinting in the sunshine.

There's not much to see at this time of year. On my last walk I noticed these leaves. They appear to be birch or aspen. As they're drying, they're becoming translucent, and they shine in the sun like silver coins.

Of course, the alpacas always give me something to smile about. Yesterday, their woofie friend was there too. The woofie tries to act all tough, but his tail is wagging. He's not particularly scary.

You have to admire the haircut and leggings.

It looks like some orthodontia could help.

I was wishing this white-faced one would come out from behind the gate. 

Looking off in the other direction, I could see a hawk. It was some distance away, and so I had to zoom in quite a bit. It's not a great picture, but things like this must be documented.

Back home, I iced my knees and then worked on my quilt binding. I've turned three corners now. I'm hoping to finish this off today.

Now that the basement is finished, I was able to move the wine bottles from my sewing room closet back to the wine racks against the wall. That opened up a large area for storage in the closet. I'll show you when I make the video...probably for tomorrow's post. When I'd moved things around to my satisfaction, I started on a fun little project. I used some paper and these two tools to make a little corner bookmark. Here's the tutorial I was working from. It was published back in 2014 and the link to the pattern no longer works. That was okay, I made it work for myself.

I used the top of the cookie cutter to draw the top of the heart.

The tutorial stressed that the point of the heart must be a right angle for this to work. So I drew the heart, and then lined up a small ruler to make the point at a right angle.

And there it is...one pattern created. I probably could have done this directly onto the fabric, but I was following instructions.

This wasn't a project easily suited to process pictures, and so I didn't take any. Following the tutorial, you'll get how I did this. When it was finished, it looked like this. There's a little pocket on the back.

Then I pulled a "Crazy Quilting" book off my bookshelf to give it a try. It works!

Closing the book...

Okay, so that was kind of fun. I'll give it to a friend who still reads paper books and goes to the library and everything. I had a library card for a while, but we're in an unincorporated area of the city, meaning that our tax dollars do not support the library. For me to have a library card, I have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 per year. I can read a lot of kindle books before I'll cover that cost. So...anyway...my friend with paper books will be able to mark her place now.

And knowing I was going to be finishing my current stitching project, I went ahead and made up the sixth block for the Domestic Affairs quilt. 

I totally missed having Big Bertha with her knee lift for doing this applique. I was having to manually lift the presser foot whenever I wanted to make a turn. Also, I kept bumping my knee against my sewing table, and so serious injury was an ever-present possibility. And I had to almost teach myself to use Pfelicity Pfaff again. I had a hard time finding the right stitch, testing out about half a dozen before happening on Stitch #39, which identified itself as "pinstitch." Huh? I've never heard it called that before. Okay, so it's finished and ready for stitching now. 

With all that going on, you'd think I'd get some kitty helpers, but no. Sadie was upstairs watching the news with Mike. She likes to stay up on purrent events. She's highly critical of certain pawliticians. As you can see, she was already in a bad mood.

Okay, so grocery shopping. I might be able to put it off just a little longer. Hopefully I'll find eggs. This has been worrying me. Some of you have reported high cost, but no shortage, which makes me hopeful. Ours have been very expensive too, but until our last trip, they were always available. Now, I'm not so sure. Of course, I will report back after I've done my reconnoitering. Stay tuned.