Heating Up

Good morning, my friends. It's looking like we're in for several days of hot weather. And if that wasn't bad enough, we're also under an air quality alert. Sounds like a good day to hide out in my refrigerated basement sewing room. We've been running the air conditioner, and that always sends the basement into freezer territory. When I'm in the basement, I'm wearing a hoodie, despite the hot temps outside.

The kitties were outside for a while. Smitty had to come inside to cool his tummy furs on the wood floor.

Sadie took the high road. She cooled her tummy furs on the top of the china cabinet.

She always looks suspicious when I point the camera in her direction. She worries she'll get loaded into the RV or something.

The morning started with me taking the first stitches on the next Raggedy blocks. I'm starting with this one. There's another one to stitch when this one is finished.

After that, I made the salads we'd have for last night's dinner. It was good planning to make a cold dinner, and there are leftovers. This first one is a family favorite. It appears on the menu at least once per year. This is Seafood Pasta with Lemon-Saffron Herb Dressing. The recipe originally appeared in the July, 2005, issue of Bon Appetit. 

Just FYI, my grocery store doesn't stock campanelle pasta. I'm using trottole here. I've also used cavatappi. You want a thick spiral pasta that will hold onto that dressing. Also, I happen to have a supply of saffron given to me by a friend who visited Morocco some years back. You can leave it out, and you won't miss it. Also, I'm using canned crab. The fresh stuff is almost prohibitively expensive. I refuse to buy it out of protest.

Okay, and I wanted something as a side dish, and so I made this cooling summer salad. This is Watermelon Salad with Rum and Mint. It's so tasty when you want to keep things cool.

The recipe originally appeared in Everyday Food magazine. (Pretty sure that was a Martha Stewart publication.) It's no longer available online, but you can find it here. Also, if you're avoiding alcohol, white grape juice or apple juice can be substituted for the rum.

Okay, so that took a lot longer than I thought it would. I didn't make it to my quilting until after lunch time. Three more blocks were finished off. This one:

And this one:

And finally, this one. Looking at the one below, I can see I forgot to bury my threads at the bottom. I'll fix that today.

I tried a different angle to show you the back. Here's how that looks. So far, so good. I was getting a hint of eyelashes on the top. I kept messing with the tension with no success. Finally, I gave the tension knob a good three-fourths turn, and that took care of it. Sometimes you just need to bring out the big guns.

Okay, and so I still had about an hour left in my sewing day. I laid out all the blocks and "spacers" for the Cats in Pajamas. This was my 2024 Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt.

And then I started sewing them together. The left two vertical rows of blocks are sewn into rows, but not sewn together yet. 

Today I'll aim to finish the right two rows and then sew the rows together. There's also a narrow border around the outside. I'm a little worried I'm going to run out of that background fabric, but I'm also pretty sure I checked the required yardage before I started. We'll see.

Also, I'll quilt another row on the Stitching Wisdom quilt. The corner blocks (where I'll be today) are pieced blocks, and so I'll do a little dot-to-dot quilting there. There's one housekeeping chore on today's agenda, and I'm going to mix up some meat marinade this morning. Aside from that, it'll be a mostly sewing day. We're looking at another warm day. That basement sewing room will keep things frosty.