Spring, Sprang, Sprung

Good morning, my friends, and happy Hump Day. It's an unexpectedly pretty day here. The sun is shining, but I expect it will stay cool for much of the day. Mike is heading out this afternoon for an outdoor activity, and I know he'll enjoy a sunny and dry day.

It was kind of a busy day yesterday. I hadn't finished girding up my loins for a trip to the grocery store, but there were too many things we needed. After writing yesterday's post, I went straight to work creating a list, and then we headed for the store to bag it all up. (I'll just add here that I'm glad "bagging" something doesn't include killing it first.) Before we left, however, let me just add that there was insult and injury added to our morning when we spied this squirrel gobbling up all the seed at the bird feeder.

You can see there's a baffle on the pole to keep the squirrels from climbing to the feeder. This squirrel happens to be sitting on the arm that holds my bird cam. I haven't used the bird cam in several years. It was fun at first. After a while, you end up with thousands of pictures of the same bird, and then it loses its appeal. In any case, we brought in the camera, but left the arm since it was properly adjusted. It has taken a long time, but this squirrel finally figured out he can jump to the arm and get access to the sunflower seeds.

Crafty little bastard. Okay, so it was at the top of my list to remove the arm when we got home from the grocery store. Only then did I refill the feeders. 

Before we left home I had everything stitched on the "Spring has Sprung" piece with the exception of the bunny on the left. After dealing with the birdfeeder, I finished it off.

It still needed its mini quilt. Here's the picture from the pattern cover.

The mini quilts finish up at 4-3/4 inches, and they are paper-pieced. When the sections were all complete, I had these pieces. I love Kathy Schmitz patterns, but this one is annoying since there are no instructions included about how to sew these together.

I finally puzzled it out by looking at the picture and rearranging them several times. Finally, I had the pieces properly placed on a small ruler so I could carry them to the sewing machine. Only then...what order do I sew them together??? I thought they might be in alphabetical order, but no. Eventually, I figured it out, but this is really unnecessarily difficult. Just a little hint about the order they go together could have saved quite a bit of time.

It was supposed to have a border sewn around the outer edge, but I had it all sewn together and sewn to the quilt before I realized that. And I wasn't going to take it all apart, so it is what it is. I'll do the next one the same way.

Here are the two sections I have for this quilt so far. There are two more seasons to make.

With that one finished, it was imperative that I make up my next stitching project to start this morning. Next up is "The Story of My Day." Smitty helped by holding the book open for me.

The blocks for this quilt are small, and there are 20 of them altogether. I'm making them two at a time. This one is "Time for Another Fabulous Day."

And this one is "Wake Up Call." 

They're fun to stitch, but even more fun to finish off with their colorful scrappy sashings. These are the ones I've done so far.

It was getting late in the day by then. Sadie avoided all the hard work, entering the sewing room as I was just about to turn out the light. She just rolled around on the pile of quilts to be sandwiched, trying to look as adorable as possible.

There are a few things on my to-do list today. We picked up a couple of herbs and some marigolds at the grocery store yesterday. The squirrels (or the deer...not sure who) ate all the African daisies I planted in one of the annual pots, and so I'll go back to my old stand-by of marigolds. They don't like the marigolds so much. Also, I'm adding oregano and Italian parsley to the herb garden. I've had them in the past, but I usually need to replace something every spring. I'm on the hunt for tarragon, as I have been in years gone by. Doesn't anyone use tarragon in their cooking? It's surprisingly difficult to find. I'll want to plant all of that, and then I'll broadcast the wildflower seed into the bee garden. I think the proper time has come. We're expecting more rain tomorrow, but then more sunshine by Saturday. I might thread the needle just right with the wildflower seed.

There should be some time for sewing. I want to make the next block for the Homestead quilt. This time around will be the Churn Dash block done in May's color of the month: orange. After that, I'll get to work on the next Tiny House, this one:

This one has sections lettered "C" through "K," and so it probably isn't as complicated as some of the others. 

So that's a pretty full day. I picked up some asparagus at the farmer's market on Saturday, and I'll be making an Asparagus Bacon Quiche for our dinner. To go along with that, I want to bake some Jammers this morning. They're like a thumbprint cookie. Just remove the cookie and slide a biscuit under that thumbprint of jam, and you've got yourself a jammer. I'll tell you more in tomorrow's post.