Early Start

Good morning, my friends. We were up and out of the house early to drop off Mike's truck for some service. (It meant picking it up in the afternoon again too.) While we were out we got our beloved Egg McMuffins, and then picked up a few things from the grocery store. When we arrived back at home, I checked on the status of the bird feeders. I found this little hummer relaxing at one of the feeders.

Checking in on the dahlias...ooooh! They're just days away! 

Maybe this morning, although I haven't looked yet. We're just two weeks away from leaving on our trip, so they need to get with it. I'll be standing over them today chanting open, open, open!

Since I hadn't yet done my morning stitching, I spent some time on that. Later in the day I worked on it a little more while we watched portions of the Democratic National Convention. I filled in what was in my hoop.

Now I've moved it north, and I'll start working on this portion this morning. 

It's very close to being finished, and so it seemed like a good time to pick my next project. I'm on the "Short" part of my embroidery dance card. The "short" projects are ones that can be stitched from start to finish in one fell swoop. Here's my list of short embroidery projects.

And I can never decide, so I let the random number generator choose my next project. Spinning the wheel, I came up with number 12.

So...hmm...let's just see what number 12 is.

Okay, Phenology. I know that project. I remembered getting it ready as a take-along project on one of our trips...only, I never even started it. And, if you're like me, you don't know that word, "phenology." So let's just check in with our friend, Merriam. She knows all the words.

Okay, well, that makes sense. You'll see in a minute. Only, when I created a little project box for this earlier, I wrote the wrong word..."Phenomenology"...which means something totally different. Oh well. I can probably keep this straight without needing a new label for the box.

I first got wind of these patterns (one for the Northern Hemisphere and one for the Southern Hemisphere) on Instagram. The patterns are available in this Etsy shop. Cost is shown in Swedish currency, and so you'll have to convert that to your own currency to figure out what you'd pay if you wanted to purchase them. Here in the United States, that works out to about $10 and some change.

Okay, so what does it look like? Already, I had the northern hemisphere stitchery printed onto Sticky Fabri-Solvy.

There was an off-white fat quarter included in the box as well, and so I cut that to size, added some iron-on stablizer, and then stuck down the Sticky Fabri-Solvy sheet. (Do not iron the Sticky Fabri-Solvy.)

Next, I selected lots of colors of floss bobbins from my stash. I'm thinking this combination covers all the colors I might want to use.

When I came back upstairs, I found Smitty practicing his Burt Reynolds pose. He has a cover shoot coming up, and it's important to show your best moves if you want a callback.

Sadie was doing her own version of the open, open, open chant.

So I'm still not doing much sewing. This morning has been set aside for pulling weeds. No excuses about hurting wrists. I'll be using the other hand for that. I'll pick a bucket and then call it quits. As for sewing, I'm going to try quilting just one block on the New Mexico Kitchen quilt. I'll keep the splint on my wrist, and I'm hoping that won't cause it to flare up again. 

After that, I want to start sewing together the Tiny House quilt blocks. I've been calling this project, "It Takes a Village." 

I've been sewing unfinished sets of quilt blocks together according to which projects are the oldest. By rights, I should be sewing together the Homestead quilt blocks first. Perusing my stash yesterday, I didn't have a fabric I liked for that quilt, and so the Tiny Houses will take cuts in front of it. I do have some good fabrics for this one. I think it's going to be cute. 

Thursday, I have a return visit to my dematologist. I'm planning to do some fabric shopping that same day. I'll choose something for the Homestead quilt, but I'm also looking for some fabrics to finish off the "Spices" quilt. You remember this one...

Yeah...I have some fabrics in my stash that I could use, but I'm hoping to find something I like better. I'm stuck on this one until I decide how to finish the quilt top.

Okay, it's going to be a busy day, as usual. Time to get to it. With two weeks left before our trip, you might want to start thinking about what you're going to bring along. We'll be riding Jeep trails while we're in Moab. Snacks are recommended. Those will be long and dusty days. It'll be a short trip this time around, so please be a light packer. We're limited by space in the truck camper. I'll be preparing food for the trip next week, so get your orders in now.