Sitting and Stitching

Good morning, my friends. It's probably our last day of good weather here. We're told it will rain tomorrow. I have plenty of slow-stitching to keep me busy for the next several days. Yesterday, I stitched far enough on the Santa Quartet to decide to move my hoop to encompass the last of it.

Probably I have a couple of days left on the Santas, but I decided to trace the next 12 Tiny Treasures. I'm drawing lines to designate 2-1/2 squares for this, and then I center the design within the square.

It's hard to see in that image, and so here's a picture from the book. These are the Tiny Treasures I'll be stitching this time around. When they're finished, I will have completed 60 of the 72 included in the book. 

After that, I was ready to sew the binding on the Homestead quilt. But, uh-oh. There seems to be an impawdiment to purrogress.

I was able to ply him with catnip, but when I tried to spread it out for squaring it up...oh no! The quilt inspector is here!

There was another delay while the quilt inspector did her work, but eventually, I was able to get the binding sewn on. 

Now it's clipped and draped over a chair downstairs, awaiting my needle and thread action.

Okay, and with that finished, I was able to complete another block for the Stair Steps project. There is one more block to make for this go-round, and then one more row when it comes around again. This has been a great scrap buster, but I'll be glad when the blocks are all finished.

My last gasp in the sewing room was to trim and sort the leaders and enders I made while I was sewing together the pieces for the quilt block. I took a break from these for a few days. The sewing I was doing wasn't particularly conducive to sewing leaders and enders.

Okay, and so I took a little walk around outside after that. I noticed the Garden Treasures peony is close to opening. I expect we'll see this one by this afternoon.

I was out collecting lavender springs for our first Bees Knees of the season. Can summer be far behind? These are a little darker in color than usual. They're mixed with a simple syrup made from lavender blossom tea and honey. I used 100% clover honey for these, and it's a little darker in color than the honey I get at the grocery store.

And, oh my goodness. These children are celebrating 51 years of marriage today. Good grief. Where did the time go? We'll celebrate with dinner out tonight.

Okay, so my knee is feeling good enough this morning that I think I can safely resume some sort of exercise. I'm thinking the Bow-flex will get my attention today. No excuses. There's nothing else on the calendar, but I have in mind to bake some cookies. Back in December, I tested a cookie recipe for America's Test Kitchens. Their Espresso Iced Oatmeal Crunch Cookies are destined to appear in a new book tentatively titled "Cookie Swap." Just now I checked to see if they'd published the book yet. It appears not, and so I still can't share the recipe. Bummer. In any case, the cookies were good enough that I've wanted to make them again. Today seems like a good day for that. Aside from that, I'm going to spend the day sewing...mostly slow-stitching, but I'm going to endeavor to get the last Stair Step block finished too.

Enjoy your long weekend, my friends. Time for me to get on with my day. There's lots of slow-stitching ahead.