Border Crossing

Good morning, my friends. So that's enough of that three-day weekend stuff. It's time to get back to work. My yesterday started with a trip to our plum tree to pick plenty of pretty purple plums. (Awesome alliteration.) Just look at these pretties...

After selecting a dozen of the most ripe ones, I baked them into this Original Plum Torte.

There's a story behind this recipe: The NYTimes published Marian Burros's recipe for Plum Torte every September from 1983 until 1989, when the editors determined that enough was enough. The recipe was to be printed for the last time that year. "To counter anticipated protests," Ms. Burros wrote a few years later, "the recipe was printed in larger type than usual with a broken-line border around it to encourage clipping." It didn't help. The paper was flooded with angry letters. "The appearance of the recipe, like the torte itself, is bittersweet," wrote a reader in Tarrytown, N.Y. "Summer is leaving, fall is coming. That's what your annual recipe is all about. Don't be grumpy about it." We are not! And we pledge that every year, as summer gives way to fall, we will make sure that the recipe is easily available to one and all. The original 1983 recipe called for 1 cup sugar; the 1989 version reduced that to 3/4 cup. 

It had to bake for an hour. While I waited, I made good on my threat to get back to working out. I walked on the treadmill for half an hour. I started up a new-to-me Ken Burns documentary about the Civil War. (Seems appropriate, no?) There's another one about the gilded age that tempted me, but I figured I'd take them in the order they occurred.

With that out of the way, I could get back to my quilting. I finished the diagonal grid on the patchwork part of the Sweet Dreams baby quilt.

Here's how that looks from the back.

After that, I went to work on the section above the sleeping bears. I used a heart-shaped cookie cutter as a template.

Then, I used a hera marker to draw a heart shape above one of the big bears' heads. 

But wait...there's more. Also, I had a smaller cookie cutter that I could use...

To make a second heart inside the first one.

I did one above each bear's head, centering it in the space available. Then, I used a looping line to connect all of them. Here's how it looked when it was finished.

Here's how that looks from the back.

Now, I've started my trip around the outer border. I'll do the upsy-downsy heart motif here. It's an easy one for me, and so I use it often.

It seems realistic to aim at getting the binding sewn on today, and then this one will be on the home stretch. No word on the arrival of the newest resident of Planet Earth yet. I expect we'll hear something within the next week or so.

It's senior discount day at our grocery store today...first Tuesday of every month. We could wait another couple of days to go, but that discount is enticing. We decided to do our grocery shopping today, and that will hold us until next week. Aside from that, there isn't much on today's agenda except for sewing. 

My treadmill walk from yesterday left me with an aching knee last night. I slowed my pace, but still walked for half an hour. It surprises me that my knee flared up so badly. I took some naproxen before bed, but it still kept me awake for a while last night. Lesson learned. It's probably best to give myself at least a day off before getting back to the Bowflex. (And it's also an excellent excuse.)

So that's my day. It's time for some breakfast and slow-stitching, and then we'll be on our way.