A Little Sewing

Good morning, my friends. Well...the rain continues. We get periods of sunshine and blue skies, but it doesn't last. And then, we can get a long deluge. It makes planning anything outside impossible. But you know how it is. When the going gets tough, the tough get sewing. That's exactly what I did yesterday. I'm still working out some sort of efficient work flow set up for myself, but here's what I have so far.

The sewing machine is set up at the table, obviously. It's a good spot because I have windows to my left, and a window behind me. There's also light above the table, and so it's a nice bright spot.

This small ironing board is set up across our cook top. No cooking, please. It's a good stable spot there. Also, I have a wool mat I can use as an ironing board. It works when I just lay it on the wooden cutting board. This set up was a little clumsy yesterday. I kept hitting the iron on the bottom of the microwave above it. I might switch to the wool mat today.

I didn't take a picture of it, but my cutting mat is just behind me on the kitchen island. When I kitted up the pieces for this project, I labeled them with their size and whatever letter was used to identify them in the pattern. That turned out to be a good idea, and so I gave myself two attagirls for that effort. And then I went to work making HST's. I needed 16 in each color for a total of 48.

They were trimmed to 3-1/4 inch, and that took positively forever.

When those were finished, I sewed together a strip set, and then cross-cut it into sections 1-3/4 inches wide.

Then I added those to a 2 x 3-1/4 inch rectangle. I made the first one just to check my measurement. The sewn-together piece was to measure 3-1/4 inches square, and it did. (Always a happy thing.)

I needed 16 of these. 

It might not look like much, but I practically wore out my patience trimming all those HST's. I'd been at it for about two hours by then. With the pieces I have, I can start sewing the quilt blocks together, but it seemed like more than I wanted to start by this point yesterday. I put everything away, and I'll get it all out and do some more sewing today.

We're expecting this rain to begin to taper off by tomorrow. By Wednesday, we should be looking at drier weather, and by Thursday, I think it will have moved along. And good riddance. I know California needs this water, but we could have stayed home if we just wanted to be cooped up inside. There's serious sight-seeing to be done, and we're itching to get out there.

So, I have a couple of updates. After chatting with my friend, Darlene, this morning, I was motivated to do a little more investigation about this closed farm stand issue. Here's the picture I took a few days ago.

Here's one I took in March of 2024. You can see the sign there, although it was outside the frame in the image above. When we stopped a few days ago, I didn't notice if the sign was still there. Using the image below, I could determine the name of the place, and so I inquired of The Google to see if they're still in business.

Hours are listed, and it looks as if it's still open. The last notation about it was made in December.

So, that was encouraging. Possibly, they just took some time off for the holidays. Or maybe they just don't have anything to sell just yet. I'm just relieved to know that something didn't happen to them since our last visit. I'll feel more reassured if we can find them open while we're here. We'll keep checking.

Also, we found some Mexican food last night. You'd think Mexican food would be easy to find in Southern California. We found a spot nearby that was very good. I expect we'll go back again before we leave the area at the end of the month.

Okay, so that's all I have for you today. As I've been writing, clouds are moving in, and I expect it will be raining again shortly. All I can say is it's good sewing weather.