Time for Tuesday

Good morning, my friends. It's been 12 days since our last grocery shopping trip. I'm afraid we can't avoid it any longer. Happily, it's senior discount day at our grocery store. It never works out to much, but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. If nothing else, it's an incentive not to put it off until tomorrow.

Yesterday had me finishing off the third block for Home is Where My Flock Is. This one stitched up pretty quickly.

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

With that finished, I was tidying things up some. I happened to walk into the laundry room where I could see Sadie perched on the top shelf of the catio. She's a tiny cat. This might be one of the few places she can sit where she looks down on everyone else.

Time passed from there. I spent some time calling RV parks and making reservations. After giving it some thought, I decided to let the first week of our trip be reservation-free. We've too often made a lot of plans for the first several days of a trip south, and then had to abandon them because of bad weather. Sometimes that means forfeiting a deposit too. For now, we have reservations in Escondido, California (one month), Boulder City, Nevada (two weeks), and then Pahrump, Nevada (two weeks). We're hoping the kids might join us for a few days at one of the Nevada locations, but there are no firm plans so far. After that we'll head over to Death Valley and stay about five days. We love Death Valley. It's kind of a retreat for us, and we haven't visited in a couple of years. From there we'll head for home. 

This won't be much of a sight-seeing trip. We're really just wanting to get out of the rain and cold for a while. Some people will rent an Airbnb situation for that purpose. We take our Airbnb with us. If you think about it, an RV is really just an enormous suitcase. It's so big it can even accommodate two cats. That trip is still a few weeks off, but it's time to start taking care of the details.

When I was able to get some sewing done, I starting cutting the pieces I'd need for another row of Gumball quilt blocks. Sadie was my excellent helper cat for this.

These start with twenty 4-7/8 inch pieces.

Those were sewn and trimmed into twenty half square triangles.

And then I cut the remaining pieces. The smaller 2-1/2 inch patches in the upper right will be sewn into two patches, and then I can start piecing the blocks together.

It was late in the day by that time. We had another dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers, and then relaxed for the rest of the evening.

The secret project I was making a few weeks ago has been received, and so I can reveal it to you. I was looking for something else in my notebook of embroidery patterns when I came across this little mug mat saved many years ago. The original pattern is from Jenny of Elefantz. It was too cute not to make it. I spent some time searching for the original online. It's not on her website, and it's not in her Etsy shop. In any case, this is my version. It doesn't show up well in this image, but the tree is decorated with hot fix crystals. In the pocket is a packet of peppermint tea. 

In my wanderings, I ran across the whole poem. Until just now, I didn't know there was more to it.

On Christmas Day 

at half past three, 

Brew yourself a cup of tea. 

I'll think of you, 

You think of me 

While sitting 'round 

the Christmas Tree. 

~ Author Unknown

Here's how it looks from the back.

Okay, so that's pretty much all the news I have for today. With the "flock" piece finished, I'm moving on to the 9th block for the Raggedy & Friends project. I was working on these blocks while we were traveling in Alaska this past summer. This will be the 14th of 21 embroidered blocks. It will be pieced into the 9th of 12 pieced blocks.

When I've finished with the Gumballs blocks, I'll piece together the eighth block for this project. This is what I have so far.

All right. Slow-stitching, then grocery shopping. After that, I'll get back to the Gumballs. We had a couple of nice days of weather over the weekend, and yesterday was nice too. It looks like the clouds have moved in again. We're expecting more rain in the next couple of days. Is it any wonder we're heading south?