Aqua Cat

Good morning, my friends, and Happy Fourth of July to my American friends! It was a busy morning yesterday. I had some things to do in the kitchen. Our friend is coming up tonight to celebrate his Fourth of July birthday. Before we left on our trip earlier this year, I promised him some cookies. My father always said that a promise made is a debt unpaid. Birthdays seem like a good day to settle those sorts of accounting problems.

Also for tonight's dinner, I made a Texas Potato Salad. It's one of my favorite potato salads. It has some jalapeno and cayenne. I remove the seeds and ribs from the jalapeno, and with the cayenne, it gives this salad just the slightest bit of heat. You can find the recipe right here.

When that was finished, I looked out the window to see one of the squirrels humbly requesting that I fill the bird feeders. The birds were looking hungry, and so I did that next.

By afternoon, I had some time to spend in the sewing room. First, I traced out "book spines" for the last two blocks I'll need for the Shop Hop quilt. There are still four blocks to make, but I've already embroidered the spines for the other two. I'll stitch these up when I reach the "short" section on my list of embroidery projects.

From there, I was ready to make July's aqua cat. You might think it's a swimming cat, but no. It's just a cat wearing aqua pajamas. Sadie was my helper cat yesterday.

She took one look at my project box and decided it needed some reorganizing.

Cats are very good at organizing things.

She really likes making these cats, and she was especially smitten with this white one. As soon as we had the head and brain created, she started teaching it the best way to get belly rubs.

She also gave it some important coaching on how to get the best back skritches.

See? Like this. You put your tail end up in the air like this so that the humans can reach the most impurrtant purrts.

Eventually she was worn out from so much helping and teaching, and so she took a nap break. Rest periods were among the concessions we made when we negotiated their last labor union contract.

It took the rest of the time I had available, but by day's end, aqua cat was finished.

Here are all the cats I have for this quilt so far. Smitty and Sadie are in the upper right corner.

Today will go a lot like yesterday. I'm baking a lemon meringue pie and I'm making some coleslaw. Mike is going to do the burnt ends we did last month. They were so tasty, I wanted to do them again right away. For that, I'll be making some bourbon barbecue sauce. There's just one housekeeping chore on my list, and I'll need to water the annuals. In all of that, I'm hoping there will be a little bit of time for sewing. If there is, I'll cut the pieces I need to make the half square triangles for the Lightframe quilt. There are six in each of  eight rows. If I make them two at a time, I'll need 24 squares in each of the two colors to get them all done.

I'll cut them ahead of time, but sew them together one row at a time. The other fabrics will be picked from my scrap bins. Have you noticed that no matter how many scraps you use, you'll still have as many filling your bins when you've finished as you did when you started? There seems to be some kind of perpetual energy thing going on with fabric scraps. If someone smarter than I could figure out the physics involved in this, we could make the entire world energy independent and free ourselves of reliance on greenhouse gas-producing forms of energy. I know...it's a lofty goal. But who would be better than we quilters to solve the problem of climate change?

Okay. Well now that I've inspired you, you know what you need to do. But first...don't blow off any of your fingers today. That could be a serious impediment to your sewing time. I'm just sayin'. Be safe out there today, my friends. And watch out for your furkids too.