Another Tiny House and a Winner!

Good morning, my friends! There's no time to waste on pleasantries this morning. It's time to announce the winner of my giveaway. Thanks to all who left such nice comments. I enjoyed reading all of them. Mr. Random Number generator has spoken. The winner is:

#66--Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting!

Congratulations, Cheryl! I've sent you an email, so check your inbox.

Okay. Ahem. Now...where were we? Oh yes. When we left off, I was heading for the farmer's market with Erik and Mae. We'd hoped for sunshine, but it was clouded over and chilly. Nevertheless, it was a successful outcome. Erik and Mae always load up on food while we're there. I was on the hunt for some rhubarb...and success!!!

Also, I hoped to find a little cherry tomato start, and that was successful as well. This is a Sungold cherry tomato. They're sometimes hard to find, and so I was happy to see this little guy.

We're expecting more rain, rain, rain. For now, I've given it a seat of honor in my greenhouse window. When we can expect warmer weather, I'll plant it outside in one of the whiskey barrels.

No time was wasted baking up a Rhubarb Upside-down Cake. This was new to my kitchen last year, and it was so yummy, it's going to become one of our perennial favorites. It has a streusel topping, and it looks like this when it comes out of the oven. The recipe calls for sliced almonds, but I only had slivered. After eating it last night, I can say I preferred the sliced almonds. The slivered were a little too crunchy for this recipe.

Okay, but that streusel topping ends up on the bottom when you flip it over. Here's how it looked after taking that scary step.

A few little bits of rhubarb fell off in the process. I just plopped them back on top. Then, it's dabbed with some warmed-up red currant jelly. When it's ready for eating, it looks like this:

The jelly is first liquified in the microwave (about 20 seconds), and then dabbed on with a pastry brush. When it solidifies again, it helps hold everything together. It's a Cook's Illustrated recipe, and so you won't be able to open it without a subscription. If you really want the recipe, email me, and I'll be happy to send it to you. We had ours for dessert last night with a generous dollop of whipped cream.

Okay, so the day was half gone, and I was still hoping to finish up the Tiny House from the day before. 

Smitty was chagrined to find we were still doing papurr-piecing. 

Count meowt!

Okay, so, no kitty help for me yesterday. Still, I managed to finish Tiny House #13. I tried to keep this one a little straighter by not pressing it so hard with the iron. I don't know if it helped, but here it is:

When I went back upstairs, I found these two lazy cats. Admittedly, Sadie was busy making sure her toy mouse didn't escape.

Smitty was busy taking a nap. It's a cat's most impurrtant job.

Okay, so you might remember I needed a backing fabric for Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage.

I had some ideas about fabric acquisition, but then I received an email promotion from Fabric Shack. As it turns out, they had just what I needed, and it was on sale, plus I saved another 10% with the promotion. I was able to purchase 4-1/4 yards of this one for less than $30...not bad. It arrived in yesterday's mail.

The time pieces and the references to "Apothecaries" will go nicely with my quilt top. 

So next up, I'll for sure get to work on the next quilt block for "When Quilters Gather," this one:

but yesterday I realized I needed to start preparing for my next project. I'll be starting a new Shop Hop quilt, and I'll be using this pattern for the blocks:

At first, I wasn't sure this would work for my purposes since I wanted to put the name and place on the book's "spine." These are paper-pieced, and I wasn't sure how I could accomplish that and have everything positioned properly. Then, I realized the two halves of the book are pieced separately, and the spine is added to sew them together. So, I can still embroider the names ahead of time, and add them when I sew the two sides of the book together. And all of that to say that I decided to trace out the names for embroidery so it will be ready to go when I'm ready to start sewing.

I'll choose "spine" fabrics based on the colors in the regional fabric associated with each shop, and I'll continue to stitch them in black floss. They shouldn't take too long. I'll get started this morning.

Okay, so that's all I have for you right now. It's my day to work out, and I really must do a couple of easy housekeeping chores. Other than that, it'll be a mostly sewing day.