Slowly Staying the Course

Good morning, my friends. Certainly things could be a lot worse. For one thing, we might have had no problems on our beachy trip. We could be on the other side of the coast mountain range tomorrow, trying to drive home in this:

Yes, that's right. More snow. It's not terribly unusual to get snow in April, but it isn't frequent either. When we watched the weather last night, we were told this wouldn't arrive until tomorrow morning. So, it could get worse, and that would have been a problem for us towing our fifth wheel. We might have ended up having to stay at the beach, and the kitties would have been home alone. 

Oh well...none of that happened because we're having a Staycation. We decided yesterday morning to do all the things we might have done if we'd been RVing, and none of the things we wouldn't have done. So there was no housework, no time on The Rack, and no machine sewing. My day was pretty much just relaxing and hand-stitching, and that's what I would have done at the beach too. First, though, I made our dessert of Skillet Cherry Cobbler for Two times two. (It's actually four servings.)

The cherries are from our trees, canned the summer before last. This cobbler was a recipe from my mother. I told Mike yesterday that of all the things my mom left to me, I believe this recipe might be the thing I'm most happy to have.

The rest of the day was spent on slow-stitching. I'm getting close to a finish on my embroidery project.

And I finished hand-stitching the binding for the Best Friends quilt. We had some nice afternoon sunshine, and so the Best Friends got their glamour shot on one of our patio chairs. It ends up at 21 x 26 inches.

My trick of covering their hair with fabric worked just fine. There's not a hair out of place.

Here's how it looks from the back.

And this guy got plenty of loves, extra treats, and attention for his birthday.

A cat of his vintage can't spend too many hours as a party animal, though. He was 'zhausted by the end of the day.

A nice afternoon sunbath was just what he needed to finish off the first day of the rest of his life.

Now, I'm ready to start hand-stitching the binding on the "Maps" quilt. It's clipped and waiting for me downstairs. Sorry. I had to blur a bit of the quilting there since I thought it gave too much away. The reveal is coming, though. Just a few more weeks. I do love that backing fabric. It was a lucky find from our last road trip.

So, I expect that will take most of the day. I'll do a little more work on my embroidery first, and then I'll focus the day's attention on the "Maps" quilt. There is still the Dream Big Leaf quilt to hand-stitch too. Since we're still on our staycation, that will probably comprise most of the day's activities.

Right now, I'm headed down to eat my breakfast burrito. Just one more thing I'm not doing on my staycation: cooking breakfast. It was all done ahead. After that, I'll just settle myself with a needle and thread and enjoy another day of relaxation.