Cherry Acquisition Expedition

Good morning, my friends. I don't know about y'all, but I was lazy yesterday. After my slow stitching, I slid down on the couch for a morning nap, and then I took one after lunch too. The morning squirrel was appalled at the level of sloth.

He'd been up stealing peanuts and sunflower seeds for hours. When I was able to get myself up off the couch, I went outside to check on the status of the cherries. I found Mike out there too, and we had a discussion about the cherry situation. We've never done much pruning of our trees. We like them as flowering trees in spring, and we like them as shade trees in summer. And because we barely had a spring this year, the cherries we have are way at the top of these two tall trees.

Mike was, understandably, not excited about the prospect of being lifted high up in the tractor bucket to pick them. We decided together it was too dangerous, and so I made a trek to a fruit stand in town to buy cherries. We'll leave the ones on our trees for the birds, squirrels, and raccoons this year. And let me just tell you...they've been eating them already. I've found lots of cherry pits on the sidewalks and in the garden. It feels like cheating not to use the cherries from our tree, but better safe than sorry...or dead...or permanently maimed. Yeah. No maiming. And no dying.

Okay, so that will be on today's agenda. I didn't need a lot of sweet cherries, but I want to make some cherries in syrup. I use those to make our skillet cherry cobblers, possibly my favorite dessert in the whole wide world. Also, I want to make some sweet cherry jam. I'm hoping we'll get some cherries from our neighbors' tart cherry tree for some tart cherry jam as well. We checked their cherries yesterday, and they still need more time. Fortunately, theirs are all on the down low. No ladders are required.

So, with cherries acquired, I went back to my quilting. The goal for yesterday was to finish the bottom "table" section (actually, I think it's a shelf). Mission accomplished. 

Mainly, I'm outlining the embroidery for definition, and then quilting in a few lines for texture. Then the background is done with a meandering hooking swirling motif. 

For the "tablecloth," I quilted it a little less densely with a hooking meander.

Here's how it's looking from the back.

And that brought me to the end of my sewing/quilting day.

It was a nice evening, and we had leftovers for dinner, which gave us plenty of time to sit outside and enjoy the warm weather. While on a Sadie reconnaissance mission, I noticed one of the baby violet-green swallows poking its head out of the nest box. It sat there for the longest time, considering taking the plunge. I expect they'll fledge in the next day or two.

There was happy mail yesterday. My friend, Becky, was cleaning out her sewing room and came across a set of embroidery patterns that she'd never stitched. She sent me an email a few days ago and asked if I'd like them. Would I?!? What a silly question! Yes, of course! And they arrived in yesterday's mail. These are from Sandy Gervais at Pieces from My Heart.

There's a new cat for each month. Aren't these cute? 

I'm going to have fun stitching them, so thank you, Becky. I appreciate you thinking of me. 

So, as I said before, I'll be canning some cherries today. It's another cool and cloudy morning, which will be good for my canning activity. I doubt it will take me all day, and so there should be some time for more quilting. My goal for quilting today will be to quilt the top three plates. If there's still time, I'd like to quilt the blue sashing.

After that, it will just be the crazy quilt blocks on each side. I've figured out what to do there, and that's half the battle. I'll quilt a motif I've used before, and that should finish it off nicely. More on that later. I should have no problem getting this finished in time to hand stitch the binding while we're on our camping trip in a couple of weeks. 

Okay, so it's a busy day ahead. Time to get on with my slow-stitching. How's your summer going so far?