It's a Start

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy morning here yesterday. After writing my blog post, I took the first stitches on the third embroidered section of the Girls' Getaway quilt. Mainly, I was just cleaning up the bits and bobs of floss left over from the last section.

When I get back to it today, my floss bobbins will be clean, and I can do some serious stitching. 

From there I started two loads of clothes (one load at a time, obviously), and I baked a Blueberry Zucchini Cake with Lemon Buttercream. I'm only making half the recipe and baking it in an 8 x 8-inch cake pan. This is how it looked straight from the oven.

When that was finished, I went for a walk on the treadmill. When I was finished with that, I added the lemon buttercream frosting. And let me just tell you, that frosting is to die for. We each had a piece for our dessert last night.

It was lunch time by then. I had some lunch and took a shower. It was about then we started asking ourselves where Sadie was. Neither of us had seen her for several hours. We both searched her usual hiding places, and didn't see her. Another hour passed, and then we were really starting to get worried. Mike saddled up the ATV and rode all around. Usually, the noise of the ATV will scare her back to the house. Nothing. 

Well, now we weren't just worried...we were bummed. This was unusual behavior. We thought about all the places we'd been that day, trying to think of something we might have opened where she could be trapped inside. (Remember the whole garage attic incident?) Neither of us could think of anything, but we checked the RV "basement" storage...one door that had been opened...and we checked Mike's shop. Nothing. 

By then, we were both super bummed. I decided to head downstairs and get started on my "Spices" quilt. Smitty was worried too. We were all hoping she'd come home, but it wasn't looking good. (Yes, I saw you trying to sneak a look at my picture by Smitty's tail.)

Usually, I put on some kind of sing-along, dance-along music when I'm sewing. Yesterday, I chose Christopher Parkening Plays Bach. I needed more of a dirge to match my mood. Also, I posted our worries to Facebook because misery loves company, doncha know. About 15 minutes later, her little face popped up at the glass door, and she was back. Just like that. Little sh*t. I never know whether to kiss her or kill her when she does stuff like that. Want to see what a bad cat looks like?

Well. I could put on some livelier music then, and I went to work on my quilt. Here's your peek at the first day's effort.

It's the only thing going on in my sewing room right now. When I make these quilts from photos, I end up with stuff strewn everywhere. It's too much to work on one for more than an hour or so, but the sewing room is kind of ruined for doing anything else. Happily, my mid-arm machine is in a different room, and so I'll get started quilting "New Mexico Kitchen" when I tire of working on the "Spices" quilt. 

Since sandwiching quilts last week (or whenever it was), it's been lounging on my chair. It has the advantage of not having been buried under a stack of other quilts for months on end, and so it probably doesn't have many wrinkles that needed to relax out.

So far, I've given almost no thought to how this should be quilted. I haven't even considered thread colors. This afternoon I'll have some time to think about it. Usually a first day on a new quilting project consists of choosing thread colors, and then getting the machine loaded and adjusted for quilting. We'll see how far I get with this today.

Okay, so for Saturday's comings and goings, I have one very small housekeeping chore to do. Probably the annuals need watering. No doubt, the bird feeders need filling. Aside from those things, it should be all sewing all the time. Mike is close to having the camper outfitted for our trip next month. The Jeep is all set up to be our "toad," and now he's working on getting the Starlink system set up to be used in the camper. Aside from that, we're just biding our time until after Labor Day.

Our hazy skies and air quality alerts continue. I hope y'all are breathing easy and staying safe out there. Summer will be winding down soon. Enjoy it while it lasts.