Some Firsts

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy day from start to finish yesterday. It got so late in the day, I barely did anything in the sewing room. Oh well. Plenty of other things were accomplished. There’s still a lot to do today, but it’ll be less hectic than yesterday. 

Before we needed to take off for the grocery store, I was able to stitch Tiny Treasure #66. This one has stem stitch, straight stitch, and satin stitch.

When that was finished, I checked in on the green beans. They’re doing a pretty good job of climbing their poles, but I have to redirect a few each time I check. And yay! The zinnia has opened. There should be a few more within a couple of days.

The first tassels are appearing on the corn.

Here’s the second Bumble Rumble dahlia. Remember how I mentioned the first one seemed a little beaten up? All of its petals fell off, and just the yellow center was left. I’ve never seen it do that before, and I don’t have a clue why it behaved so weirdly this year.

I noticed a fat slug on the Firefighter dahlia to its right. I’ve been treating it with insecticidal soap because it appeared bug chewed. Seeing the slug made me decide to change strategies. Now I’ve liberally peppered the area with slug bait. Maybe now that I’ve discovered the real culprit, we might see some flowers from it.

Checking the greenhouse, I decided to harvest the first tomato. There are several more that I’ll probably harvest before we leave tomorrow.

Back inside, I made some cookie dough. These have been resting in the refrigerator overnight. I’ll bake them this morning. When they’re cool, I’ll add some icing.

When I was finished with the cookie dough, I made some pie dough for the blueberry hand pies. This won’t be my first time making the hand pies. Last time I made them, I noted the dough was easy to work with. I don’t know about you, but pie dough and I often come to blows. I’m hoping this will cooperate today when I attempt to assemble and bake the hand pies.

It was mid-afternoon before I was able to get going on the pickled beets. Fortunately, the most time-consuming part of the job was done. It probably took longer to boil my kettle of water for processing than it did to pack the jars. When all was said and done, I had five pints.

Honestly, all I wanted to do after that was sit and put my feet up. I was a few days behind on my crossword puzzles, and so I did those. It was nearing 4:00 by the time I made it into the sewing room. My goal was to at least get a start on the binding. I’d forgotten this, but the book fabric is an extra-wide one…60 inches wide.

Even with that extra width, I needed five binding strips. So, I cut those, and then decided not to start sewing them together until today. And who knows if I’ll even feel like it today. Nothing can happen on the binding until I square up the quilt, and that sounds like a lot of effort at the moment. Maybe I’ll find more energy toward the end of the day.

In any case, I decided it wasn’t a good take-along project. We’ll be doing some sight-seeing on the Oregon coast the next couple of days, and I doubt I’ll have a lot of time for sewing. Still, I decided to trace the 11th block for the Snowmen & Reindeer project. It’ll be my only take-along project this trip. It’s a short trip, and this should keep me busy.

Here are the blocks I have for this project so far.

Okay, so there’s still a lot to do today. I’m baking cookies and hand pies, and I’m packing food. We’re responsible for dinner on Thursday evening. We’re going to grill some steaks, and I’ll want to make up the marinade we like ahead of time. That’ll be added to the day’s agenda. The green beans will get another check-in, and I’ll give the zucchini a once over to decide if I need to harvest anything there. For sure, I’ll be harvesting zucchini tomorrow morning before we leave. It’s a short trip, but you know how sneaky zucchini can be. You can’t leave it alone for a second or it’ll grow to the size of a baseball bat.

So, after yesterday’s effort, today’s sounds small in comparison. Probably I’ll get that quilt binding sewn on today. It’s still my top sewing priority. But nothing can get done until I get up out of this chair. And with that…off I go. Enjoy your day, Everyone! It’s supposed to be hot here today and tomorrow. If you’re in the heat too, we can sweat it out together.