In A Bind

Happy Sunday morning to you, my friends! It's a pancake day here at the Three Cats Ranch. Given the egg shortage, I might have to go looking for an egg substitute one of these days. At our last shopping trip, I was able to get the last two cartons of eggs on the shelf. I haven't looked since, but I'm reading about the shortage. Geez. How can we live without eggs? It's eggciting to think about, isn't it? (Did you see what I did there?)

Yesterday morning I decided it was close enough to Valentine's Day that I could put out my Valentine's Day runner, table topper, and wall-hanging. We're almost never at home in February, and so I rarely get to see these. Of course, I started with the little Stitches from the Heart wall-hanging I finished just recently. You can find the free pattern for this one right here.

On the table, this one called "Heart of the Home." The free 9-patch heart block pattern is available right here.

Finally, this quilt-as-you-go runner. You can find the free pattern for this "Be Mine" quilt right here.

A couple of years ago, I turned this into a St. Patrick's Day runner. I can see all kinds of possibilities for turning this into a runner for any season or holiday.

Okay, but enough of this holiday stuff. It was time to finish off my quilting. I was just getting started quilting around the outer border. It took about an hour's time, and then it was ready for binding.

Smitty did his part by sleepily guarding the stairs leading to my quilting machine.

When it was finished, I took it downstairs for its picture. Again, it's hard to see the quilting, and so I've messed with the brightness and contrast to make it visible.

I used this "apothecary" fabric on the back. It was in my stash for a long time, and it had the right colors, so I used it. Do you ever buy a fabric you love, and then have a hard time using it? This was one of those. It falls under the heading of "Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time," which should not be confused with the heading of "What Was I Thinking?"

We were still expecting the guy to show up to finish off the basement baseboards. I had some lunch, took a nap, and then learned he wouldn't be back until Monday. So Mike helped me put the sewing room back and set up my travel machine. There's no way I'm going a whole weekend without sewing. So with that done, I could sew on the binding.

I was trying out a new recipe in my Dutch oven last night, and so I got that going, and then went to work on my binding. Before I quit for the day, I'd turned the first corner.

Smitty was my sad solo quilt inspector yesterday.

Regarding dinner, I tried a new recipe for Brown Stew Pork Shoulder. This turned out to be really tasty. It makes the most delicious broth. I was really glad to have some crusty bread for dunking.

The meat is first marinated/rubbed with a combination of worcestershire, brown sugar, allspice, salt and pepper. Then it is browned, vegetables and seasonings added, and then it simmers for two hours until the pork is fork tender. It was easy enough to put together that I'd be willing to make this in the RV. You can find the recipe right here, but if you're not able to open it, you can email me, and I'll be happy to send it to you. My version was changed just slightly. I couldn't find a pork shoulder that was smaller than 11 pounds. Since I only needed two pounds, I settled on a pork loin roast, which worked out just fine. It was probably a more tender cut as well, although I'm only guessing about that. Also, I used half the amount of dried thyme. There was no way I was going to walk out in the pouring rain to get some from the garden. Hmph. My tolerance for rain has its limits.

Okay, so I'll continue with my quilt binding today. If I get tired of that, I'll start sewing one of my quilt tops together. I'm still not sure I've forgiven the Pieces of the Past quilt for being such a bugger to finish, but it would be next on my list of about a half dozen. I might enlist Mr. Random Number Generator to help me decide.