Good morning, my friends. It was a busy day yesterday, without a whole lot of time devoted to sewing. After preparing dinner for our neighbors, I gave myself almost a full week off from domestic sorts of things, and so I had some catching-up to do. There was one housekeeping chore, and I did five loads of laundry. Before all that, though, I took a walk around to see what's going on outside. This guy greeted me:
Smitty accompanied me as I walked around. Kitties have very itchy chins, in case you didn't know. There are lots of good chin-scratching places outside.
This azalea is going to burst into bloom any day now. It's a very bright red.
Same goes for this rhododendron. Every day I expect to see them covered in flowers, but they're taking their sweet time. Today will be among the warmest days so far this year. That might get them going.
And this peony is teasing me. It is covered in big buds like this one. They're big like those big marbles we played with as kids. In my cohort, we called them "boulders."
Also, the goldfinches have returned. They're the true harbingers of spring around here.
We're also seeing our friends, the violet-green swallows swooping around. Maybe today I'll get outside with my DSLR and telephoto lens to see if I can get some pictures of them as they go in and out of the houses. Here's a picture from last year. You can see they weren't happy with their front door situation, and so they did a little remodeling.
Just now I paused to hunt down the charger for the DSLR battery. It gets used so seldom, any use requires charging the battery. I hadn't seen the charger since we replaced the carpeting upstairs. Happily, it showed itself after just a short search.
Back inside, Sadie and I went to work in the sewing room. As usual, Sadie was soooooooo helpful.
Together, we made five more blocks for the Land & Sea quilt.
Yesterday's post included the wrong picture of this. I showed you just two rows, when I actually had three. Now there are four.
My plan for this quilt was to make the blocks 10-1/2 inches (unfinished), and then set them five across and six down. Probably, I'm going to end up making this larger by one row and one column. I'm afraid it's going to end up a very small quilt with my original plan, and I'd like it to be larger.
Dinner last night was a bit of a production, and so I ended my sewing day early. Today I'm getting my monthly pedicure, but there should be some time for sewing this afternoon. Today, I'll make the final row for the Lightframe quilt. Probably I'll end up adding a green border around this. It will help stabilize the edges while it awaits its turn under my quilting needle.
We've had our breakfast this morning, and so I'll have some time for some slow-stitching before I need to ready myself to drive into town. With such nice weather today, we're really hoping it'll be our first opportunity to have dinner outside. I have some steaks marinating in the refrigerator. Mike will barbecue those, and we'll have one of our favorite main dish salads in the form of this Ribeye Steak Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette. I use this Better Than A-1 marinade recipe whenever we have steak of any kind. It's never let me down.
So that's my story for the day. Time to get going.
4 comments:
Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings. ~ Victor Hugo
I always enjoy going walkabout with you in your garden. I wonder, when it comes to chin scratches, if Smitty is actually marking his territory? Could be a message to other cats to stay away.
I'm sure I'd fill up a card on my DLSR just wandering around your garden. You have so many pretty flowers to focus the lens on. Hope you got lots done in the sewing room.
My DSLR batt is needing a recharge, too. I hardly ever use it anymore. The finches are back here, along with several other birds. A pileated decided to take a chunk out of our deck rail last week! That's a first!
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