On the Border

Good morning, my friends. It's a grocery shopping day today, and so I'm writing fast again. Also, we'll be dropping off our ballots at the nearest ballot box. Vote, my friends. It's important, but you probably already know that. Won't you be glad when this election is over?

Smitty's morning was rough yesterday. We needed to give him a second dose of worming medication. He got the first dose when he visited the vet two weeks earlier. We wrapped him up in a towel and force-fed him a small syringe of the stuff. It was rude and insulting. He gave us the cold shoulder for the rest of the day.

He wouldn't even help me when I went to quilt the last row of blocks. I started with this one, purchased when we visited the Oregon Coast to see the Neskowin Ghost Forest. It was a terrible day of weather for our visit. I'd like to go back sometime.

This was from one of our winter treks to southern California. This was a large shop that specialized in reproduction fabrics. I purchased a couple of patterns there, but the fabrics weren't really the kind I use in my quilts. This fabric was representative of what you might find there.

This one was purchased during our last camping trip to Lake Mayfield in Washington. We went camping there every summer with the kids. In earlier years, we were die-hard tent campers. When sleeping on the ground got too hard for our old bones, we purchased our first RV. After this "last" visit, the RV park where we stayed was sold to new owners who raised the price to the point of ridiculousness. We haven't been back.

This one should be fairly obvious. Aspen trees. Colorado.

This one was purchased at the very beginning of 2020. We were being warned about the coming pandemic, and no one was really sure what was going to happen. 

This was a very nice store, but I vividly remember talking with the owner about whether she was worried about the pandemic. Already, she was separating out clean from "dirty" pens for signing, say, a credit card receipt. She'd already canceled all classes, and there was a sense of foreboding in our conversation. We weren't wrong. That's another thing I'm glad to be seeing in the rearview mirror. I hope none of us ever experience anything like that again in our lifetimes.

My wrist is still bothering me. (It's bothering me as I type.) I kept it splinted for all the quilting I did yesterday. Also, I took a break between each block. During one of those breaks, I tackled this part of my pantry shelving. This is the "basket" that holds pasta, rice, noodles, beans, and other grains. Here's how it looked before.

As suspected, I found more than one open package of certain shapes of pasta. Also, amounts of things too small to make them worth saving. So I combined anything I could, and threw out anything not worth keeping. When it was all finished, I'd cleared quite a bit of space. I'll leave it open for now, but I suspect I'll find some things on other shelves that I can move to this area.

Sadie was mad at us for the way we'd treated her friend. And she didn't trust us either. One wrong move (read that "any" move) had her scurrying away to avoid becoming our second victim.

She did accept our gift of a warm gas fire, though.

As I mentioned, we have grocery shopping to do. I'll get back to my quilting this afternoon. All that's left is the black border around the outer edge. 

I already know what I'll quilt there, but I'll probably switch to a black thread. I don't think I want a contrasting thread there. As always, I'm still mulling it over. My hands will tell me what to do next. If I can get all the way around, it'll be ready for binding, and on the way to the finished pile.

Okay...groceries beckon. Breakfast is next.