Slow Ahead

Good morning, my friends. The past several days have been luxuriously slow. Somehow I ended up without a single to-do on my calendar unless I put it there voluntarily. I've added a few things, but mainly, things I've wanted to do anyway. Today will be such a day. Tomorrow will be a little busier. Still, with several days of leisure, I feel ready to pick up the pace again.

We had another pretty sunrise this morning. 

It's been hot the past couple of days, and we've been running our A/C during the day. It's cooler today, and we're expecting rain by this evening. We should get a good amount of rain over the weekend. With wildfire season approaching, and a state of emergency already in place in Oregon, the rain is welcome.

My most important to-do yesterday was to water the annuals. While I was out, two of these Red Admiral butterflies joined me. 

That's three different butterflies in a span of two days. It's quite a treat to see them. While I was out, I noticed another flower on the Stargazer lily. This one seems to escaped its protective fencing. Also, a few of the buds have been nibbled by deer.

Back inside, I finished up November's block for "A Year in the Garden."

These are the 11 blocks I have for this quilt so far. Just one more to go.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I wanted to bake another Moravian Sugar Cake. My goal was to use the last of an old box of instant mashed potato buds. There was a little left over, but it went out with the trash. That extra inch of space on my shelf is going to come in handy.

You might recall I had some ideas about this bread from the first time I made it. For one thing, I wondered if I'd get better distribution of the cinnamon-sugar if I made the indentations in the top before adding the sugar, as suggested in the recipe. As it turns out...no. It works better to put the sugar on first, and then make the indentations. Also, there's no reason to remove it from the baking dish. For this go-round, I allowed it to cool for 20 minutes in the dish, and then cut myself a piece to enjoy with my afternoon cup of espresso. I'd still like to try making this again using a fresh potato, but I'll admit the potato buds make it very easy. 

We were almost completely out of sandwich bread, and we aren't going to the grocery store until tomorrow. Mike decided to run a few errands in town and pick up some bread while he was at it. When he came home, he surprised me with this nice bouquet of flowers.

Mike was a flower-delivery guy before we were married. Eventually, he learned to do floral arranging. We used to refer to him as a "petal pusher." He still enjoys making a nice arrangement now and then.

In the sewing room, I finished the top-stitching on The Yoder Sisters. I left the tiny bits at the neck unstitched. I can pick that up when I quilt it. With the top-stitching done, I cut a back from the same yellow I used in the pieced quilt blocks. Probably I'll give it a gray binding. For now, I'm setting it aside while I work on some other projects.

Next up, I wanted to square up the "Seasons" quilt and machine sew the binding. You might recall that Smitty claimed this quilt the day before.

Enter Miss Sadie, and she had her own ideas about this.

These colors look meowarvelous with my furs.

Yes, I think this is pawsitively purrfect for me.

Hm...let me see if it's comfy enough for catnapping.

(Five minutes later.)

Snzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Well, that made it hard to square it up, but we negotiated a memorandum of understanding. It has a black binding that I'll stitch in black thread. Sometimes it's hard to see when hand-stitching black on black, but it was the right choice for this quilt.

Now it's clipped and draped over the chair downstairs, awaiting the arrival of my hand-stitching needle.

And that brought me to the end of my sewing day.

This morning, I'll take the first stitches on the 8th block for Le Jardin...the Birdbath.

Of course, I'll get a start on hand-sewing the binding for the "Seasons" quilt. With just five days left in the month, I'm hoping to get well along in order to complete June's One Monthly Goal.

In the sewing room, I want to sandwich and quilt Hawksbill Honu. I'm pretty sure I know what to do with this one. It shouldn't take very long.

The day ahead seems relaxing, and I'm looking forward to it. The bird feeders need filling (as usual), and I need to make up a grocery shopping list. Aside from that, it'll be all sewing, and mostly slow-sewing. And with that, I'll just get to it.