Line By Line

Good morning, my friends. My morning started too early today. I don't know about you, but I have this notion of a "witching hour," and if I wake up during that hour...any time after about 3:30 a.m....I can't get back to sleep. My brain seems to think I've slept long enough, and it winds up into full-blown thinking mode, making it difficult to relax and return to peaceful slumber. Usually, I give myself about an hour, and if I'm still awake, I might as well get up. The warm weather is part of the problem, and this has happened with more frequency over the past couple of weeks. And so, all of that to say we're going grocery shopping this morning, but I expect to come home and take a long nap. You can join me, if you like. 

As for yesterday, it was time to bottle the cherry vinegar I had sitting on the countertop. This turned out to be not as flavorful as I was hoping. I found only one recipe when I looked online. Maybe there are others. Mine used apple cider vinegar. I added halved cherries, and then let it sit at room temperature overnight. When I bottled it, it looked like this:

It looks pretty. I'll give one of these to Erik and Mae. My only problem with it is that it doesn't really taste like cherries. All I can taste is the apple cider vinegar. The recipe gave the option of using white wine vinegar, and that might have tasted more like cherries. I'll try this again some other time.

When I make chive blossom vinegar, it's allowed to sit for two weeks before bottling. It makes me wonder if using the flowers from the chive plant vs. fresh fruit makes a difference in the time it's allowed to sit. I know the flowers will stay intact for the full two weeks. Would the cherries spoil in that length of time? I don't know. The acid in the vinegar would help prevent spoilage, but I'm not sure if they could go two weeks. Maybe one of you has some ideas about this. In any case, I'll still use the vinegar, but it probably won't add much cherry flavoring to anything.

When that was finished, I went outside with the kitties and took a little walk around. Most of the blooming things are finishing up their season. We still have the dahlias to look forward to, but they are still weeks from blooming. The daylilies are still going strong.

The purple hydrangea is looking magnificent right now. It doesn't like that bright morning sunshine, and the petals on the flowers curl up some. Still, it's very pretty right now.

The rest of the morning was spent slow-stitching, and I got in a Bowflex workout. It was mid-afternoon before I started on my quilting. I really had no idea how much I had left to do on this, and so I just started quilting lines this way and that way until I ran out of bobbin thread. After that, I had only about three more lines until it was finished. I had to take it off the machine to be sure. Here's how it looks.

Here's a closer shot of the top.

And here's how it looks from the back.

Here's a little closer shot of that.

When I folded it up to head downstairs, I found Miss Sadie waiting for me. She was thinking she could score some treats if she engaged in adorableness.

So I'm hoping I'll find the bleary-eyed energy to get the binding sewn onto my quilt this afternoon. I'll enjoy sitting and stitching it over the next couple of days.

The only other thing I did yesterday was to spend some more time with our Alaska trip. The route is pretty well laid out now. We're keeping things flexible by not making any reservations anywhere for the time being. I'll probably make some reservations when the time gets closer, but I'm wanting to keep our time flexible. We'll wait until we're a few days out from each stop to look ahead and find a place to stay. Also, we're told by many, many, many travelers that there are lots of places to pull off the road and camp for the night for free. 

So here's our route as it stands. I ended up adding one of Alaska's many state parks to what I already had.

We'll be backtracking in some areas, and that's okay. Unlike the network of roadways in the lower 48, roads in Alaska are more spread out and remote. Not all of the roads will be paved.

Mike is making good progress getting our Jeep Wrangler set up for towing. I only mention this because it means the garage will be freed up soon for sandwiching quilts. For now, I'll get busy sewing the blocks for A Joyful Journey into a finished quilt top. There's always plenty to keep me busy in the sewing room.