First Finish of July

Good morning, my friends. It's good to be on this side of Saturday. For whatever reason, I wore myself to a minor frazzle getting ready for last night's dinner. It all went off without a hitch, and we enjoyed meeting our new neighbors. Maybe it was just having new people up that wore me out. Whatever the case, I'm happy to have that in the rear view mirror. It certainly kept me busy for a few days, and so there was no time for very much sewing. For many years, sewing has been my sanctuary. So, when there's no time for that, things always seem more hectic.

Despite all of that, I used the morning to finish off the quilt binding on the Scrap Happy Baby Ribbons. That makes the first finish of July on the first day of July.

Here's how it looks from the back.

It's been washed and dried now, and it's ready to assume its responsibilities as a quilt for the newest resident of Planet Earth, expected to arrive sometime in September.

The next thing on the list was to water the annuals. While I was out, I noticed the hydrangeas are getting ready to take over as stars of the garden. This first one is a variegated pink. Its flowers are not quite mature yet.

To its left is a pretty blue hydrangea...

with some pink flowers on the same plant. I love this about hydrangeas. Sometimes I find both pink and blue petals on the same flower.

The echinacea is close to blooming as well. These are some of my garden favorites, and the bees love them.

So, the cooking was mostly finished, but there was still much to do on the hostess front. There was coleslaw to make, and I needed to pick things up and fold things up. And I needed to set the table. And I needed to decide on serving dishes and choose appropriate serving spoons. None of it was difficult, but it still took time out of my day. Late in the afternoon, I decided I'd done as much as I could do, and so I spent time sewing together the little mini quilt for the Summer Sun stitchery. When I had it this far, I ran out of time.

I'll add a black border today, and then attach it to the stitchery. When I came upstairs, I found Smitty resting in the setting sun on his catio. He was looking disapproving at how little sewing we've done the past couple of days. How is a cat supposed to achieve his goals for the month when his human is so distracted with other things?

Well. That all ends today. There's nothing on the calendar. The gardening is caught up. The only thing I'm going to do today is laundry and sewing. The two go hand in hand. Laundry ensures I don't spend the day sitting. Sewing ensures I don't spend the day working. It's a win-win, and we have clean clothes in the end.

When I wrote yesterday's post, we had no plans for the 4th of July. Now we've invited a friend to join us for steak and baked potatoes. His birthday falls on the 4th, and he has no family locally. It'll be good to see him and make a fuss over him for his birthday. Everyone needs that. I don't think we've seen him since before the pandemic, and so it will be good to catch up. We're expecting very nice weather. From our house, we can see fireworks going off in the valley far away. It's an interesting way to see them, and we don't have to fight the traffic getting home.

As I'm writing, I can hear Mike making waffles downstairs. Just now he set a timer to give the batter a short rest before ladling it into the waffle iron. Sometimes he gets a yen for waffles. It's nice for me to get a little break from cooking breakfast. Guess I'll go join him. Enjoy your Sunday, my friends. If you're looking for me, I'll be in the sewing room.