A Full Day

Good morning, my friends. I have to write fast this morning. I have an appointment for a haircut and color. Today I'm making the bold move of having some blonde streaks put into my newly-shortened doo. If it turns out, and I'm very brave, I might even post a picture tomorrow. Time will tell. The picture could show me with new blonde streaks, or it could be me with a sack over my head. 

Yesterday morning, I stitched the next inchy. This one was chain stitch, backstitch, and a French knot.

Since these aren't keeping my morning stitching fingers busy enough, I went to work tracing out the Winter Wonder stitchery from Kathy Schmitz.

As I mentioned yesterday, these are small wall-hangings, and there is one for each season. I'm stitching all four, and I'll sew them into a single quilt eventually. For now, I just need something more to stitch in the morning.

While I was doing that, there was a cherry pie for two baking in the toaster oven. It was National Cherry Pie Day yesterday, and so, obviously, it was urgent that I do this. The cherry pie filling is some I canned a couple of years ago, using cherries from our neighbor's tree. 

The cherries were picked with her permission and encouragement. Now there are new neighbors living there. I might have to cozy up to them so I don't lose my source of tart cherries. They can be hard to find, even locally, since their season is very short.

After that, I got busy with the leaf quilting. This next round was a little less exacting since the veins on the leaves were less prominent. I felt I could do a little more with them. Mainly, I did a lot of echoing lines going off in different directions.

Here's a kind of hooking feather.

Here, I stitched in the veins, and then filled in with a little flame thing.

Here, I did more of a traditional feather, but filled it in with a little spikey thing. (I hope you're writing down these technical quilting terms, because this will all be on the final exam.)

Next, I stitched in the veins, and then filled them with echoing lines.

Here, some crisscrossing echoing lines.

About then, Handsome showed up. He's always ready to help in whatever way he can. Mostly, he helps me to slow down.

Something caught his attention outside, and then, all bets were off. 

I stopped to do some housework there, and when I came back, I did some pebbling.

And then more echoing lines, and I was finished for the day.

There's still a long way to go, but here's how it's looking so far.

It's almost impossible to see the quilting on the back in pictures, but if I turn off the flash and get an angle on it, you can sort of see it.

It's going really well. My bobbin thread has only broken once, and the top thread also has only broken once. Otherwise, I've quilted with wild abandon...no stopping and no problems. I'm probably jinxing myself by saying that, but I'm going to say it anyway.

So you probably want to see what we did with that cherry pie, don't you? Well, I got the bright idea to add some hot fudge sauce to the vanilla ice cream, and we turned it into a Black Bottom Cherry Pie. 

It was dee-lish. Good thing it's only a dessert for two, huh? No repeats.

Okay, so I mentioned my haircut and color today. After that, I'm going to stop and pick up some fresh bean sprouts for something on next week's menu. It's getting harder and harder to find fresh bean sprouts. Some of our local grocery stores no longer carry them since they are often recalled for food-borne illnesses. I'm told the stores absorb those losses, and so it isn't surprising that some are deciding not to carry them any longer. 

When I get home, I'll probably take a break from quilting for a day and get to work on the next Tiny House. They take the whole of my sewing day, and I don't want to fall behind. Getting it finished early in the week gives me a nice long paper-piecing break until the next one comes out. 

If the forecast is to be believed, we're expecting a significant amount of snow overnight. We had a camping trip planned for next week, but decided to reschedule it to the following week. Even if the snow were to clear by the time we leave, it would make it difficult to pack the RV. Tomorrow, I may be writing to you from a winter wonderland. Or not. I guess we'll all just have to wait and see.