Busy Week Ahead

Good morning, my friends. My best laid plans for the week turned into better plans when Erik scored a campsite for our two camper rigs for later in the week. We already had a plan to visit the farmer's market yesterday morning, and so what started as a routine schedule for the week just got a whole lot busier. 

Before heading out for the farmer's market, I was able to stitch up the day's Tiny Treasure. This is Tiny Treasure #64. It has stem stitch, lazy daisy, running stitch, and French knot.

At the farmer's market, I was on the hunt for some of the carrots I know only by the name our CSA farmers called them: Nelson carrots. They’re the best carrots for my Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears...a family favorite. I like them for their uniform roundness from stem to root end. Here's a picture I found online.

They’re quartered the long way for canning, and so I end up with nice, straight spears. Also…they’re a short carrot, and so they fit pretty well into the 12 oz. jars I used in the canning process. 

Also, I was on the hunt for some beets to turn into Easy Spiced Pickled Beets. I was able to score both, and so that will keep me busy today and tomorrow. While I was with the kids, we talked about food for our short camping trip, and so I'll be making some things for that as well.

Back home, my first priority was to check on the green beans and continue my mission to train them to grow up their poles. They're doing a pretty good job so far. While I was out, I walked around to check on the flowers. The echinacea are reaching full maturity now with the petals that hang below the center. So pretty. They're one of my favorite flowers.

The buds on the suspected purple poppy get larger and larger, and it has about a half dozen flowers. Look carefully at the midde of the image below, and you’ll see two large buds side by side. I’m so excited for them to open.

Okay, and I thought this was going to be a yellow zinnia, but now I’m thinking it might be red. Maybe I’ll find out today.

Oooh! And lookie there! The first sunflower! The marker next to this one says “Infrared Mix.” According to Territorial Seed (where I get my seeds), its colors can range from the darkest to the softest reds, including many bicolors. You can see that this one has a red-tinged center.

Okay, and then I got back to my quilting. I ended up doing a sort of teardrop motif in the outer border. I wanted something easy that I could do fast. I’ve done this motif before, and so it was pretty easy.

Here’s a peek at the back.

And now that puppy is ready for binding. There were no binding strips cut yet, probably because I couldn’t decide on anything. For a while, I pawed through my stash, and came up empty. Finally, I decided to use the same fabric from the back. The books are a larger scale, and so they’ll be lost on a narrow binding, but the colors will be right for the quilt.

Before I can think about getting that binding sewn on, I need to finish these two blocks for the Northern Wilderness project. This is one of those projects where I end up with scraps and all sorts of crap strewn from “A to Izzard,” as we like to say in our family. (I married into that idiom.) Yesterday’s quest was to make the “Blueberry” block…this one:

First, I needed to make the background. The quilt block is a basket. I struggle with this configuration of triangles every time I encounter it. This one confused me less than previous ones, so I guess that’s progress. At my age, not many things get less confusing. No worries though. If I don’t understand it, I just assume magic made it happen.

I breathed a sigh of relief when that went together correctly. Then, I just needed to add the top, bottom, and sides, and the background was ready for applique.

Just the handle of the basket was fused down, and that pretty much took up the last of my sewing time for the day.

For dinner, I tried this recipe for Greek-Spiced Pork Chops with Warm Zucchini-Feta Salad. We found some nice pork chops at the bargain meat counter on a recent grocery-shopping excursion, and hey…anything to use zucchini at this time of year, amiright?

We actually liked this really well. The Zucchini-Feta Salad was especially nice. It’s served warm and flavored with shallots, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and some other seasonings. We liked that well enough, I’d prepare the zucchini that way even without the pork chops. It would be good as a side dish for anything. I’d link to the recipe, but this is an America’s Test Kitchens recipe, and so you’d need a subscription to their website to be able to open it. If you want the recipe, just email me, and I’ll be happy to send it to you. No sweat.

Okay, so it’s going to be a busy day today. I need to hoe the garden, and I’m going to can the carrots today. While I’m working on those, I can roast the beets. They need to be roasted and skinned before I can turn them into pickled beets. That will be for tomorrow. If there’s time left this afternoon, I’ll work on the applique for the Blueberries block, and then both blocks will need to be top-stitched before I can say they’re finished. The binding will need to wait until then.

I know some of you have been dealing with smoke and heat. I’m hopeful conditions are improving. Summer is great, but it has its moments…like everything else in existence, I suppose.