Dinner Cruise

Good morning, my friends. It was kind of a lazy day yesterday. I'd awakened too early in the morning, and my eyes felt bleary. Despite my effort to go back to bed when my morning tasks were finished, I'd had too much coffee and couldn't get back to sleep. Happily, I was able to get in a short nap after lunch, and I felt better. I think I was just keyed up thinking about our impending dinner cruise. I had some cooking to do in the morning.

As you know, nothing can happen until I've done my morning slow-stitching. I took the first stitches on Autumn's Harvest Pumpkin.

After that, I went to work making some food for our "dinner cruise" on the Willamette River. First up were these Feta, Basil, and Roasted Red Pepper Muffins.

There was an open tub of feta in our refrigerator. Also, I had an open jar of roasted red peppers. It was a good way to use up that stuff. After cooling in the pan for five minutes, I took them out. They went nicely with the rest of our dinner. But before I tell you about that, let's get going, shall we?

Although the boat hadn't been in the water since last summer, it was running good. Mike had it all cleaned up, and zoom! Off we go.

Being a Wednesday and late in the year, there were almost no other boats on the river. It was peaceful and calm.

We just bobbed around for a while, soaking in the serenity, and listening to music. When it was time, I served up the rest of our dinner, which was a Chilled Corn Bisque with Basil, Avocado, and Shrimp. This recipe originally appeared in Cooking Light some time ago. Now I'm finding versions of it posted in other places. The original recipe calls for crab in place of the shrimp. Crab is pretty expensive, and I had some cooked shrimp in my freezer. I used that instead, and I doubt anyone would know I'd made a substitution. It was good that way. Before we left home, I ladled the bisque into plastic containers, and I had the topping mixture of basil, avocado, and shrimp in a separate container. We just spooned it into the bisque, and dinner was served.

And that was a nice way to end the day. We didn't stay out much longer because the sun was setting, and we wanted to get the boat out of the water while we still had daylight.

So that was an easy day. There's not much going on today either. I have a couple of housekeeping chores on my calendar. Now, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I list the things that need to be done based on a rough "when-it-needs-it" schedule I have in my head. Among the first things I do in the morning is to look at my iPad calendar to see what I think needs doing on any given day. Here's why I like that system: If I don't feel like doing something I have listed, I can simply use my fingertip to slide it somewhere else. And using this method...presto-change-o...I can take a busy day and turn it into an easy day.

So when I tell you I have housekeeping chores on my calendar, that doesn't mean they actually get done on that day. Also, the ones I'm telling you about this morning, might be the same ones I told you about yesterday...or last week. Somehow we survive this schedule of procrastination. I'm not sure how. I figure if I procrastinate enough, I'll just get old and die and it'll become someone else's problem. Sounds like a good plan, no?

Okay, so I'm going to take a walk on the treadmill, maybe do the day's housekeeping chores, and then I'll make my way to the sewing room. There, I'll make two more blocks for the Shop Hop 4.0 project. These are the blocks I have for that quilt so far. 

There are 16 blocks in this quilt, so just four more to go. If I can finish those, I'll make two more blocks for the Northern Wilderness project. I'm just getting started on this. These are the two blocks I have for that quilt so far.

After making those two blocks, I've realized I need to use a stabilizer on the back before I do the top-stitching on the applique. The two pictured here wanted to pucker up a little bit from the top-stitching. I'll probably add stabilizer to the two here just to be sure they look like the others when they're sewn into the quilt eventually. 

Before I do any of that, though, I want to try to do a modification to the sixth block for the Raggedy & Friends Project. If you're remembering yesterday's post, then you'll remember that I was whining about some problems with the pattern. In particular, the embroidered designs are too large, and they come too close to the edge of the section when they're sewn into the quilt. Because of that, I lost portions of the upper right section in the block pictured below. The bird was cut off on the left, and a portion of the foot on the right.

My clever friend, Anonymous, suggested simply extending the embroidery into the block piecing. And I think that could work! In fact, I can probably even draw that free-hand and stitch it in a matter of minutes. So I'll do that first today, and I'll feel better about this whole project. Thank you, Anonymous, for that excellent suggestion.

Okay, so it's time to get to it. Breakfast, slow-stitching, treadmill. After that it's anyone's guess. Housekeeping...maybe.