Can-Do

Good morning, my friends, although I'm almost too late to say "good morning." We were up and out early to do some running around. Mike and I left in separate cars, but met up at the McDonald's in town for our beloved Egg McMuffins. Then, he had a doctor's appointment (nothing serious), and I did a short grocery shopping trip to pick up the items I'd need for pasta sauce. After that, I headed to the farmers' to pick up 40 lbs. of beautiful Roma tomatoes. You're going to make a lovely pasta sauce, my darlings.

So, I have everything I need, but I won't start on that until Monday. Erik and Mae are coming for dinner on Sunday, and I really don't want to get started on this until there's nothing else on the horizon. It's a big job over several days. The weekend will give me some time to steel myself for all the slicing, roasting, peeling, chopping, mixing, simmering, ladling, canning, and boiling. (Repeat as necessary.)

There was some canning activity yesterday. Finally, I accumulated enough cucumbers to make a half batch of dill pickles. 

It was mostly a matter of washing and trimming, and then filling the jars with brine. Then into the boiling water bath for 15 minutes. My yield was 6 pints.

Frankly, a half batch is enough for us, and so I've permanently halved the recipe I'm working from. I've adapted the recipe by adding one arbol chile pod to my jars. It's mainly for color and appearance, but I like a spicy pickle too.

When that was done, I had a couple of household chores to do, but then went to work in the sewing room. I needed to make two blue flowers like the one below. The one shown had to be constructed on a teflon pressing sheet.

When it was finished, I peeled it off the teflon sheet...

And then fused it to the larger block. After taking that picture, I realized I needed to peel it back from the edge a little to make way for a seam allowance when all the blocks are sewn together.

And then that block was ready for top-stitching.

Before I quit for the day yesterday, I'd done all the green stems and leaves.

I left one of the blocks needle down in preparation for all the red stitching.

Also, in yesterday's wanderings I decided on my "Quilter's Choice" project. I'm going to sew this panel into a quilt. This is called "Almost Amish," from RJR Fabrics. I purchased it on a wonderful day of quilt shop touring with my friend Robin in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

After giving it some thought, I'm thinking I'm going to cut the blocks apart and, using all solids, sash them and create mini quilt blocks for cornerstones. I haven't really checked into the desirability/advisability of that, but I'll get it figured out today. Also, looking at this picture, I've realized some of the blocks are duplicates. Hm. Maybe instead of mini quilt blocks, I'll make some traditional blocks to intersperse among the printed fabric blocks. Obviously, my ideas for this aren't fully baked yet.

Okay, so I'm getting a later start with the morning's running around, but it had to be done. Just before sitting down here, I let Smitty in the back door. Looks like he's been digging for gophers. I'd love it if he'd catch the one that did so much damage in my vegetable garden.

Go get 'em, Smitty. 

My slow-stitching has been on the back burner this morning. I believe I'll head there next. We're heating up here for the weekend, and we had some lightning and thunder last night. There's supposed to be more headed our way, and so we're keeping our fingers crossed for no wildfires. 

All righty, then. Off I go. Enjoy your afternoons. Get lots of sewing done.