Another Warm One

Good morning, my friends. We're expecting another hot day today, but then cooling fairly quickly overnight. I'll be happy to turn off the A/C, if we can. I was out early yesterday to water the flower pots and harvest vegetables. While I was out, I found Sadie sleeping in the house on her catio.

Back inside, I went to work on my slow stitching. I finished off the next "book spine" for the Shop Hop quilt

And then I took the first stitches on the Chat to Friends block for The Story of My Day. These are really fun to stitch.

By then, it was time to set free the cats for a bit. Sadie melted like tiger butter right away.

Smitty has had enough of the hot weather. He purrfurs the comfort of a cushy quilt inside the house.

I still had one hot job to do to make another batch of Tomato-Jalapeno Jam. That makes 9 half-pints for the season. 

There are still tomatoes in the greenhouse, although they're all green at this point. I'm hoping they'll ripen before we leave (in three weeks). If not, I might make up a batch of green tomato relish before we go. And I'm really hoping the farmers come through soon with some tomatoes for pasta sauce. That's a big job, and time is running out.

Okay, so the afternoon was spent in my freezer of a sewing room. I was bundled up in jeans and a sweatshirt to stay warm enough. I decided to make the mini quilt to finish off the "Fall Harvest" embroidery. It was five inches square when it was finished.

Then I sewed it to the embroidered block, and that was a finish.

Finishing this block was my goal for August's 

and so I'll link up there when the party starts at the end of the month.

And "Fall Harvest" was the last block I needed for this quilt. Here are all four blocks together.

I have just a bare bones idea about how I'm going to sew these together. I'll probably use the border design that came with each block pattern, using seasonally-appropriate fabric, and then I'll sash them together somehow. It won't be any time soon, but before I've passed on, hopefully.

It was time then to get back to the block I'm making for When Quilters Gather. Sadie consented to being my helper cat for this.

When she realized we were making this block in the style of Ruth McDowell, she was furious!

This is too much like papurr piecing!!! 

She stamped her fuzzy paws and left the room. Fortunately, I have more stitching cats to help out. Enter my heroic furry friend.

I'll help. Of course, it will cost you.

Okay, and so with his help, we were able to get this far.

Now I've finished the portion of the block inside the teal line. I'm hoping I'll have time to finish it off today.

As I'm making these blocks, I'm realizing I'll want to pay attention to how the ones in the book are quilted. If you look at that image above, you can see that fingers have been quilted into her hand, and the name of the block has been stitched into the upper left-hand corner. It seems a good place to start when I get that far...probably around five years from now.

I was getting tired of sewing by then. Mike and I had the same idea. We had dinner out last night. It's been a while, and we were bored with zucchini dishes. Think of it as R&R. We'll be back to battling the Z Force this evening. Don't you worry.

There was a pretty sunrise this morning, Our air quality was just terrible yesterday, but it's much better today.

We're heading out in a couple of hours. We have appointments to get RSV vaccines. I read this morning that the reformulated version of the Covid vaccine will be out next month. So far, we've stayed healthy through all of this, and so we'll just keep on keeping on getting whatever vaccine is recommended. We're hopeful the one today won't make us sick.

When we get home, I'm going to make up some component parts of a recipe I'm testing for America's Test Kitchens tomorrow. There are three parts to the recipe, and two can be made ahead. I can't share the recipe, but I'll tell you what it is: "Toad in the Hole." My mother used to make a version of "Toad in the Hole" that was completely different from ATK's version. She made a hole in a slice of bread, laid it in a frying pan, and then cracked an egg in the hole. It was a breakfast dish. The ATK version is a dinner dish. The recipe introduction says this:

Toad in the Hole is a British comfort food of seared sausages baked in Yorkshire pudding, akin to a giant popover, and served with onion gravy. The sausages should be well-browned and juicy. The Yorkshire Pudding should have a custardy, moist interior and a golden brown, puffy rim. For the gravy, the onions should be tender but not mushy and the sauce should be glossy, rich, and deeply savory.

Okay, well that's a new one on me. I'm curious if some of my friends in the UK have eaten this dish. It'll be on tomorrow's menu for us. I'm trying another zucchini recipe tonight, although this one includes chicken. The ones I've done up to now have mostly been vegetarian dishes, and we've lost a couple of pounds on our zucchini diet, despite the sweet breads, cakes, and bars.

All right. If we're going to get out of here for our vaccines this morning, I'd better get busy with breakfast. Have a good day, everybody. Stay cool out there.