In a Bind

Good morning, my friends. It's a second Valentine's Day here. Mike and I have an evening out tonight to celebrate Friday's Valentine's Day. There's a special three-course meal at one of our favorite restaurants in downtown Portland. We wanted to avoid the Friday night holiday crowd, and so we waited until tonight for our celebratory dinner. I'm glad because I doubt we could have gotten out of our driveway on Friday. Tonight, it'll be smooth sailing...but no sailing...and no slipping, just because it's smooth. Sailing and slipping are to be avoided while one is riding in a car. Just sayin'.

It was a good Sewturday yesterday. I got quite a bit done. I took the first stitches on the last block for The Story of My Day. I was thinking there were 20 blocks in this quilt, but there are actually 25.

From there, I was ready to quilt the border for the Vintage Linen quilt. You might remember I'd left it needle down like this:

And if you read yesterday's post, you might remember that I said this: "So far, I've not run out of bobbin thread. I expect I'll get about three inches from finishing today before I run out. Isn't that the way of things?"

Well, it seems the bobbin had the last laugh because when I sat down to stitch, I was out of bobbin thread. I couldn't stitch a single stitch. What??? How is that possible? It's possible, my friends. The bobbin might have gotten the last laugh, but at least it was convenient for me.

So I wound some more thread onto that puppy, and then I could sew away to my heart's content, bobbin woes far from my mind. I did this little flower motif all the way around.

It took less than an hour, and the quilting was finished.

The picture below shows all three motifs I stitched for this quilt.

From there, I took a little break, and then headed into the sewing room to square it up for binding. Smitty helped with that.

Binding strips were already cut. When it was all squared up...

I could sew on the binding.

Okay, and so I put all that stuff away, and then sewed the borders onto the next-to-the-last block for The Story of My Day. This is block #24 for this quilt.

And that was enough sewing for a day. I packed everything up, and took the quilt upstairs for hand-stitching. I laid it on the dining room table. Sadie knew just what to do.

Kitties aren't generally allowed on the dining room table, but when there's a quilt, whaddaya gonna do?

In other news, I happened to notice this abandoned bird nest just off our deck. It's all filled with snow. It's probably not a good place for laying one's eggs just now. Those things are expensive. You don't want to waste them.

So today I really will get started on my "Circus" piece. As a reminder, I'm working from this picture. No peeking.

I'll work on that for an hour and then I'll probably spend most of the day slow-stitching...either with embroidery or stitching down that binding. It sounds like a good way to spend the day. 

It's a day to do a Bowflex workout, but I'm continuing to be plagued with elbow pain. I was complaining about this fully two months ago. Like so many things, it has good and bad days. Today happens to be a bad day. I've taken some naproxen, and I'm hopeful that will help. It usually does. Still...this elbow situation has me wondering if I need to see a doctor about it. And when it comes to stuff like this, I ask myself, if someone wanted to do some kind of surgery, would I want that? And, for now, the answer is no. So, I'm kind of in wait-and-see mode with my elbow. And all of that to say I'll also wait and see if a Bowflex workout is still on the day's to-do list. A walk on the treadmill might be a better plan.

Okay, so we've already had our breakfast this morning. Slow stitching is next. And if the day goes the way I want it to, there will be lots of slow stitching today.