Some Surprise Sewing

 Good morning, my friends. We're one day closer to D-Day. As I'm writing, the sky is clearing and we're expecting some nice weather ahead for our final packing effort. Today I want to get out and pick a bucket of weeds. We're having a pre-trip war with the weeds, beating them back so the place doesn't disappear in a big tangle while we're gone. Mike will be out doing some spraying of the little "weed lawns" where the little sprouts are too numerous to pull up. As for my bucket, I'll be pulling the taller ones. We've kept up with the weeding pretty well this year, and so I don't think I'll even fill my bucket today.

Backing up to yesterday, we needed to head into town to pick up my sewing machine, but we were in no hurry to leave. I spent some time taking the first stitches on the Raggedy & Friends piece. These are going to be fun to stitch. 

Smitty is having a Big Mad right now. Until we leave on Tuesday, the kitties are housebound. We don't want anybody going missing just before we take off on a long trip. Since we'll both be outside working today, we'll probably give them a little time outside this afternoon. Mainly, though, they're in for the duration.

So we headed out for lunch, and we picked up my machine. When we had it back home, and I had it in its place, plugged in and ready to go, I couldn't think of a reason why I shouldn't do some sewing. Besides, I needed to see if everything worked, right? So, I switched out the throat plate to my single stitch plate and changed the foot to the quarter-inch foot. And lemme just tell you, that baby is clean down inside. Also, I hadn't noticed it being noisy before I took it in, but man...she just purrs now. Whisper sewing.

So, what the heck. I sewed a couple of borders on the Spring Flowers piece...

And then, I picked out a back. I left the rotary cutter there for scale.

And then I found a piece of scrap batting in the right size and sandwiched it for quilting.

It's a small quilt...11-1/2 x 13 inches...and so I quilted it pretty simply. I used a fancy tulip stitch on my sewing machine, and I sewed a straight line in the outer border. And then I squared it up for binding.

Here's how it looks from the back.

And then I slapped a binding on it, and it's ready for hand-stitching. I expect I'll have plenty of time to finish it today.

Through all of this, Smitty continued glaring at me with his Big Mad.

Later in the afternoon, I check again on the peonies. I don't think they can hold out much longer, do you?

Here's another one that's going to have to show itself.

The plant to its left also has golf ball-sized buds. I don't expect I'll see these before we go.

Yesterday, I texted our neighbor and told her she should check next week and feel free to help herself to all the cut flowers she wants. (Also, I asked her to send me some pictures.) They can help themselves to the cherries in July too. I hope someone gets some enjoyment from this stuff.

And, as you know, we had our 50th wedding anniversary celebration dinner last night. Our anniversary is tomorrow, but we wanted to get ahead of the crowd. We went to the same restaurant (The Charthouse) we went to for my birthday. It has some of the best views of the city. Too bad it was such a gray day, but this was the view from our table.

The menu hadn't changed. We ordered the same foods from our last visit, starting with this delicious Lobster Bisque. This is so good, I was motivated to look up a copycat recipe online, and there is one! I'm going to try this when we get home later this summer.

I had this miso salmon dish. The salmon has a slice of prosciutto over the top. So tasty.

Mike considered having the salmon, but changed his mind and had the prime rib instead.

For dessert, we each had a mini hot lava cake...

and since we were celebrating, the restaurant served us this complimentary slice of mud pie. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

And there we are...two old people, ready to engage in an evening of gluttony. Look closely at this image, and you can see the scabs on my poor nose.

So today we're still doing some chores around the house, getting it ready for a long gap in yard maintenance. I'll be pulling weeds, and Mike will be spraying them. Mike is also setting up our automatic sprinkler system. We don't have anything fancy, but we have lots of hoses and sprinklers that are controlled by a blue tooth timing system. I can't explain it, but I'll just say it's good to live with an engineer who understands all this electronic gadgetry. Through experience we've learned that the sprinklers have to be elevated on poles. The grass will grow up tall and block the spray of water. By mounting them on poles, they'll continue to keep things wetted down during the warm summer months.

We're also going to make a last-minute trip into town to pick up a few things. I'm taking a big mason jar of coins into town. We've developed a habit of emptying our spare change into a mason jar. Before a trip when I know I'll be using laundromats, I pull out all the quarters and save them in an empty medicine bottle. (The right size medicine bottle is perfect for a $10 roll of quarters.) And, all of that to say, the mason jar is mostly pennies, nickels, and dimes now, which are of no use in a laundromat. We'll take those in and turn them into paper money, and we'll also get some traveling cash. 

Aside from that, it's just organizing and more packing. It's still a little too early to get carried away with the packing part, but there is plenty of other stuff I can be doing inside the camper. If I run out of stuff to do, I can always finish off the little Kitty Lover's Redwork piece.

This one actually works really well in the camper. We bought this large truck camper so that we, the people, would have a comfortable place to sit. See how well that's worked out for us?

Okay, so I need to get on with my day. We'll be heading out in about an hour to take care of things in town. Before I go, I can't resist showing you another part of our Canada Apology Tour (CAT...it works!). If this sort of thing offends you, please feel free to stop reading. No hard feelings. We can agree to disagree and we can still get along as friends.

So early on after the inauguration, when criticism of Canada was particularly embarrassing, we purchased these bumper stickers for our journey. We have one for our towed Jeep, and this one for the back of the camper. The back-end of the camper extends off the back-end of the truck, and so the truck bumper is covered. I think this location will get the point across.

And to my Canadian friends, I'm sorry. Truly, I'm very sorry our president is such a dick.

And with that...I'm off to see the wizard...the one who is clever with all things sprinkler-related.