Rounding the Final Corner

Good morning, my friends. My night of sleep was short last night. It took me absolutely forever to fall asleep, but I was up at my usual time after just about 3 hours of shuteye. My mind was busy with everything I need to do, and there's no more procrastinating. Today, I really must start doing some packing. For the past couple of days, I've been doing some cooking and baking ahead. On yesterday's to-do list was to bake up these Chocolate-chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Dried Cherries. Several years back, I scaled this favorite cookie recipe down to make it cookies for two. 

In this case they're cookies for two times two. (We like to enjoy these with our afternoon cup of espresso.) For now, they're bagged up individually, and they'll go into the freezer until we get underway.

With the trip so close, the kitties are confined to the indoors now. We don't want anyone to go missing right before a trip. This made Smitty very unhappy. You would not believe the amount of whining that came from this cat. Here, he was trying the old Mervyn's sale "open, open, open" chant. It didn't work.

When he couldn't talk me into opening the door, he consented to serving as my emotional support cat while I stitched the binding on my quilt.

Sadie was close by serving as the emergency back-up cat.

While I hadn't intended to spend this much time at it, my emotional support cats made it possible for me to sit and stitch around three corners before I decided I'd had enough.

My hand didn't bother me after so much stitching, but I noticed my previously-broken thumb was a little sore last night. It feels fine this morning, and so I'm confident I can finish up the last of this binding today. I should have a finished quilt by day's end.

The stabilizer I've been waiting for finally arrived yesterday. I was glad to see that since I didn't want it being held at the post office with the rest of our mail. I've not seen this product before, nor even heard of it until I read about it in a Facebook post recently. The original poster said she liked it for thread painting. I'm going to be doing some of that on the "Spices" quilt, and so I'm going to give it a try. It looks like this in the package.

It's fairly thick...I'm estimating about 1/16 of an inch. It's flexible, but also rigid, if that makes sense. 

There is apparently an iron-on version, but mine is the sew-in version. I'll use some Sulky KK 2000 to baste it to the quilt top before I start on the thread painting. I like 505 as a spray baste, but this Sulky product is preferred for smaller projects. It's non-flammable and non-toxic, and so it's a better choice for indoor use. I'd hoped to finish the "Spices" quilt before we left, but it will have to wait until we return now.

The only other baking I did yesterday was to make these Chocolate Chip Bread Puddings for Two. 

I like to buy loaves of brioche for French toast. Those loaves are kind of expensive, and so I save the heels for these. The original recipe used milk, but I had a little leftover cream I wanted to use up. It made for a very decadent little dessert. We enjoyed it with some whipped cream at the end of our day.

So for today, I have frozen breakfast burritos on my food to-do list, but then I'm going to need to get going with my packing. I'm happy to say that Erik and Mae have invited us to dinner on Monday (our last day at home). Having dinner with them will take some of the pressure off since I won't have to cook at the end of the day. Between now and then, there's plenty to do. It's always a little tricky timing the packing of food. We have limited space in our refrigerator and freezer, and so I have to strategically plan what's refrigerated and what's frozen to make sure I have room for everything.

I doubt there will be any time for sewing today. If there is, I might get busy making September's cat for the Cats in Pajamas quilt. September's color hasn't been announced yet, and so I might have to go it alone. Here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

I'm thinking the next cat will be Siamese...maybe some multi-colored jammies for him.

Okay. I think my first stop this morning will be to finish off my quilt binding, and then I'll get busy with the rest. It's a three-day weekend! What are you guys up to for the holiday?