Making Progress

Good morning, my friends. The promised rain has finally arrived. With a few breaks, it's been raining fairly steadily for hours. It started while we were asleep, and now it's beginning to look like a typical Oregon winter. Of course, winter is not even close, but we're getting a glimpse into the future today. 

Thankfully, I was able to get out and do some weeding yesterday. I pulled up or "mussed up" some of the smaller weeds, and then whacked back my enormous sage plant to about one-third its size. I love the fresh sage, but the plant grows to enormous proportions. It's been known to inundate the chives. It was kind of a big job, but I kept looking at it and thinking, it isn't going to get any smaller. So, loppers in hand, I laid waste to it. 

While I was out, I checked on the dahlias and deadheaded the spent flowers. The Checkers dahlia is covered in flowers right now. This was the prettiest among them.

And lookie here! The Firefighter dahlia finally has a flower. It's the first bud this season. I gave it some fertilizer recently, and it seems to have helped.

Here's how it will look when it blooms. This picture was taken in October of last year, so maybe it's right on schedule.

Back inside, I went to work on my slow stitching, taking the first stitches on the third block for Le Jardin. Mainly, I was just cleaning up the little bits of floss left on my floss bobbins from the last round of this project.

It was after lunch by the time I was able to get into the sewing room. There I found Miss Sadie, ready to help.

Purrhaps I may be of service today?

While I was getting ready to sew, she struck her adorable pose.

And then she continued practicing her adorable when I gave her the job of holding my blocks down on the table. So helpful. Honestly, I don't know how people without any cats are able to accomplish anything at all.

It was time for a change of shift. Smitty was right on time to take over.

Enough of this adorable girly nonsense. Let a mancat take over.

With so much help, how could I not complete the final row in a single day?

Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt. It'll end up around 50 x 60 inches. I may decide to add a border when I sew it all together. (It would be a good way to use a few more greens and blues, wouldn't it?)

So I'll move this project to the "Quilt Tops to Finish" section of my white board. That leaves me with an opening on my WIPs dance card. 

Next on the list is the Gumballs project. I only just started on this, and so I have just one row of blocks.

That's what I'll be working on today. I'll make another row of five blocks. I'm using my red, pink, and purple scraps for this project. There's a lot of cutting involved, and so I probably won't finish it before tomorrow.

But I need to choose another project to fill in that opening. From this book...

I'll make this quilt called "Stair Steps." 

It'll be a good way to use many colors of scraps, and I'll also put my off-whites to work. My scrap bins are overflowing, and so the new projects I've started are selected for the amount of scraps they can tame.

Okay, so I have a housekeeping chore put off from yesterday on today's to-dos. Also, I'd like to fit in a Bowflex workout. There should be time for both. Right now, it's time for our Sunday morning blueberry oatmeal pancakes. After that, I'll get back to my slow-stitching and move on with the rest of my day.