Watching Grass Grow

Good morning, my friends. Ahhhhh…what a nice afternoon I had yesterday. In a minute, I’ll tell you what I did[n’t] do. First, let me tell you about the morning. The Plaid Cat got his first stitches. It’s hard to see what I’ve done here, but I stitched all around the edge of the cat, and some of the facial features. 

When I do my usual morning slow-stitching routine, I work with two lengths of floss (usually about 18 inches each). DMC floss comes in six strands, and those are separated into three sets of two strands. (Sometimes I stitch with two sets of three strands.) And when you add that all up…or divide…or whatever (math, who can understand it?)… it ends up being six lengths of floss. It usually takes me about 30-40 minutes. When you look at it in the image above, it doesn’t look like much.

Okay, and I wanted to do some more baking. Mike was given a choice of Zucchini Coffee Cake, Zucchini Coffee Cake Muffins, or Zucchini Bread. He wanted the same muffins I baked last time…The Shipyard Galley's Zucchini Muffins. They are good. They’re made with whole wheat flour, nuts, shredded zucchini and raisins. Mike says they have a good “mouth feel.” 

The last time I baked them, I thought they were a little dry. I’ve noticed that almost every zucchini recipe that starts with shredded zucchini wants you to squeeze the excess water out of them. This recipe didn’t say that, but I did it anyway. This time around, I left all the excess moisture. I’m hoping it will yield a more moist texture.

Okay, so I’ve started two new embroidery projects in quick succession. I’ve been picking through my floss stash, but I needed several different colors. There were four colors for the Plaid Cat alone. Thankfully, it arrived quickly. Combined with the floss from my stash, I needed to wind floss onto six floss bobbins. Ordinarily, I’d do this as I need it for stitching. With so many for the Plaid Cat, I’d be constantly interrupting myself to wind another floss bobbin. Instead, I decided to use a part of my chill afternoon to wind all those bobbins. Watching grass grow would have been more interesting, but it’s nice to have that all done. Now I can stitch, and stitch, and stitch. These are the colors I’m using for the Plaid Cat.

And, hey…after all that, I rewarded myself by spending the rest of the afternoon stitching, and stitching, and stitching. Now I have something to show you.

This is going to be fun. I love all that color.

Okay, so today will be more of a regular day. If I’m going to make apple-pear chutney, I need to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store. That shouldn’t take too long, but I loath anything that forces me to drive somewhere. There’s not much more on the day’s agenda, and so I should have some time for sewing this afternoon. I’d like to get going on the quilting for the Tulip Time table topper mentioned in yesterday’s post. 

This week feels a little like the calm before the storm. We’ll need to get serious about preparing for our trip next week. Part of that involves an appointment for a haircut and one for a pedicure. So the week can get quite hectic. No reason to be getting ahead of myself though. The rest of the coming week will be smooth sailing. Deep breath. Relax.