So Much Sunday

Good morning, my friends. It was another busy day yesterday. It seems I'm still catching up from a couple of doctors' appointments over the past couple of weeks. Possibly things will settle down for a short time. We're gearing up for a trip next month, though. That always means there's lots to do. I'll say more about the trip as it draws closer. Just know we'll be making a loop around Washington State. 

Mike and I have lived in Oregon since 1978. Washington is just about an hour north of us, but we've never really done much sight-seeing there. Usually when we're in Washington, we're on our way to somewhere else. With the price of fuel so high, a shorter trip seemed like a good idea, and with possible fuel shortages, it'll be good to stay closer to home this time around. So...more about that later.

There were plenty of to-do's on my list for Sunday. As you might guess, I started with slow-stitching. These are the first stitches for my new project. Quilter's Retweet. I don’t yet have all my floss colors. The color for the tree branches is still coming. The green for the leaves was another I ordered. For whatever reason it showed up two days ago. I wasn’t expecting it before Wednesday. 

When that was finished, I hoed the garden. Things are growing fast. I harvested another half dozen cucumbers. I plan to make more pickles tomorrow. Also, a couple of zucchini and more green beans. There are enough green beans now for a side dish. If they’re going to grow in great numbers, I’m hoping they’ll get with it. My time for canning them is growing short.

As I was walking back and forth, I noticed this purple flower on the catnip.

Looking more closely, I realized I have two different kitty herbs growing here. The darker, larger leaves on the left side of the photo below are traditional catnip. The lighter green, smaller, fuzzier leaves on the right side of the image below are actually cat mint. Inquiring of The Google, I learned that, indeed, cat mint has a purple flower. I’m almost positive I planted one catnip plant here in the spring. I believe the cat mint was a volunteer from a previous year. Both are perennials. I can just never seem to get it to come back in the spring.

Okay, well…another surprise from the garden. Our little rose was able to produce another flower…one that the deer forgot to eat.

And the Red Cardinal clematis is still blooming, although the vine is looking a little sad these days. I love it when things start blooming in spring. It’s sad as fall approaches and everything wilts and dies off. Things almost always come back in the spring, but we’ve had winters severe enough that sometimes they don’t, and that always seems tragic to me.

Okay, well enough of this garden talk. Lets bake some cookies, shall we? These are some “Sweet Potato Snickerdoodles.” It’s a test recipe for America’s Test Kitchens, and so I’m sorry I can’t share it.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I could use either mashed sweet potato or canned pumpkin in these. But since I had some mashed acorn squash in my freezer, I decided to color outside the lines by substituting that. Mike said he could taste it…honestly, I wouldn’t have known the difference. They just tasted good to me. They didn’t taste like sweet potato, nor pumpkin, nor acorn squash. Oftentimes, I end up with a half can of pumpkin during the holidays. (I forget why…one of my recipes must use half a can.) This would be a good way to use it up.

Okay, and it was getting late in the afternoon by then. I really wanted to sew the binding on the Girls’ Getaway, but since I already had a binding for sewing on the Cozy Quilt project, it seemed silly to spend the time on something else. So, I stitched that first. It didn’t take long. This is a mini quilt at 12-1/2 inches square.

Here’s how it looks from the back. I was trying to get those lines straight…they’re better than I thought they might be.

By then, I didn’t feel like sewing the binding on the Girls’ Getaway. It was getting late, and I was tired. Nevertheless, I took the time to square it up. That step sometimes has me dragging my feet, and so I wanted to get it done.

The binding strips are cut, but not sewn together. I used the same blue that I used in the quilt sashings.

And that was the end of my day. I had about an hour before I needed to start dinner, and I just sat with my feet up and doom scrolled. Doing that for a while made me want to make dinner.

There’s nothing particularly pressing on my list of to-do’s today. I feel confident I’ll get the binding sewn on the Girls’ Getaway, and I expect I’ll spend some time hand-stitching it too. Right now I’m kind of on the fence about whether to start quilting another project. My rule is that I get to finish the binding on Girls’ Getaway before I start quilting something else, and I’ll stick to that. Still, if we’re going to travel next month, it seems late in the game to start on something else. I’d rather not get it half finished and then have to leave it wadded up on the machine. (I suppose I could fold it up too, but that would make too much sense.) 

So, you can see, I have the weight of the world on my shoulders with this. To quilt, or not to quilt. That is the question. There’s one more thing I know about myself: I really hate leaving things unfinished. If I start on something so close to a trip, I’ll feel internal pressure to finish it before we leave. That’s a good argument for not starting something new.

All right then. This has me in a thoughtful mood. Excuse me while I retire to my study (Ha! As if!), to cogitate on this weighty matter. Pawssibly my cats have some sage advice for me. Purrhaps, we could have a consultation session.