Catching Up

Good morning, my friends. Day by day the place seems a little more back to normal. We've moved from the big jobs to the small jobs, including little bits of housework. 

Yesterday's small gardening job was to tie up the echinacea into a tidy bundle and let the light shine on the plants hidden underneath. If you look closely at this image, you'll see black spots on the flowers. Those a bumblebees. They aren't aggressive, but I put on long sleeves just in case. You can see the size difference between the pink echinacea and the other two colors on the left.

The dark pink is the Pow Wow Wild Berry.

As I suspected, the Cheyenne Spirit was hiding there too. Now that they can get some sunlight, I expect they'll bloom and grow larger. Also, it's almost impossible to take a picture of these without getting a bumblebee in the mix...not that I mind.

Back inside...it was a small job, but we were all tired nonetheless. We're old. Even the cats. Smitty took his morning nap on his kitty pole.

Sadie deigned to help me in the sewing room, but only if she was purrmitted to nap.

Realizing I needed the embroidered names and places for the next Shop Hop blocks, I traced those first.

But my goal for the day was to make the fifth block for the Raggedy & Friends quilt. I have to keep reminding myself this is a free pattern because, with one exception, I've found a mistake in every block I've made.

These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far. 

This was my take-along project for our trip to Alaska. There are still more embroidered blocks to stitch before I can finish the rest of it. I've put it in the regular rotation with my other embroidery projects.

It was too late to start on anything else, and so I spent the rest of the afternoon stitching the names and places for the next Shop Hop blocks.

Making these two blocks will be my sewing goal for today. Also on today's agenda, one housekeeping chore, and then I'm going to make a Skillet Cherry Cobbler. We were appreciative of our neighbors' efforts at keeping an eye on the house while we were gone. We picked up a little something for them at a gift shop in Alaska. We've been plotting how to get it to them with at least a little fanfare. I wasn't up for making a whole dinner, and so I offered to share dessert with them this evening. I hadn't counted on this, but they invited us to come down to their place for dinner, and I'll bring the dessert. Sounds good to me.

Okay, so it's time to get back to my stitching. I'm nearing a finish on the latest block for Grandpa's Bridges. Maybe today will be the day.