Smitty's Bad Day

Good morning, my friends. I'll just start right out by saying there's nothing to worry about with Smitty. I'll say more about that in a minute. With a vet visit in our immediate future, it seemed appropriate that I took the first stitches on the Pieces of the Heart stitchery yesterday morning. I’m just getting started on the body of the cat.

When I’d used up all my stitching time, we crated up the cat and headed to the vet. He was not happy about that at all.

Our vet has expanded into the building adjacent to theirs. Now there is a special cat area, which Smitty thought was well deserved.

No woofies. Thank you. 

We're still awaiting the lab results of his stool sample to see if he has parasites, but his blood work was all normal. We're told he has a slight decrease in kidney function, but that it's common in a cat his age. Depending on the results of the remaining lab work, the worst that will happen is that we'll start him on a diet lower in protein so that his kidneys won't have to work as hard. Sadie is considered a geriatric cat as well, although she's a few years younger than Smitty. The change in diet will probably be good for her too.

Okay, so that eased our minds, and it looks like we'll have our Smitty for a while. Back home, I had some cooking to do. We’re celebrating Erik’s October 9th birthday tonight. When we’re celebrating somebody’s birthday, I let them choose the dessert. Erik chose creme brulee, and so I did those first. It’s a scary process, but we got ‘er done. I’m starting to think the opportunity to light a blow torch and brulee them is part of the draw when you have three adult men in the house.

We’re keeping it simple. Mike is grilling some steaks. I’ll make some cottage fried potatoes. Yesterday, I made a 7-Layer Salad. It’s one of Erik’s favorites.

Okay, and that was the end of the day’s to-do’s. It was nearly 2:00 by then. Since I haven’t worked on the  Northern Wilderness blocks for a few days, I decided to head to the downstairs sewing room. 

My iron gave up the ghost recently. It was a Black & Decker iron, made from white plastic. It was a wedding gift when we married 51+ years ago. It gave its all in the service of ironing over the years. I had Mike take a look at it, although I didn’t expect he could fix it. It wouldn’t stay on for more than a few seconds. Also, it was making a sort of buzzing sound. That was all Mike needed to hear: Trash.

All right then. I went online and looked for another Black & Decker iron. If the previous one lasted more than 51 years, I figure the next one will outlive me. The only full-sized irons I could find on Amazon were of the metal variety. It’s a little heavier than my old iron, but it works well, and it’ll be fine. Spiffy, huh? So shiny!

It was surprising how inexpensive a new iron was. That got me wondering…unless you use it for sewing, do people actually iron any more? Except for sewing, I probably haven’t ironed any of my clothing in decades. The last time I remember ironing an article of clothing was the shirt for the tuxedo Matthew wore to his senior prom in 2002. So…maybe the low demand for irons has kept the price down. Something to ponder…or not. Probably I already have enough pondering irons in the fire. (Ha! Did you see what I did there?)

Okay well Sadie was tired of all this iron nonsense.

Purrhaps we could get on with the sewing, if you don’t mind. Wait, what? Are you doing papurr-piecing today?

Well, she hates paper-piecing as much as I do, and so she suddenly remembered a photoshoot with Purrboy magazine that was scheduled in just a few minutes. She was shooting her centerfold shot. She asked for my opinion of her purrsitioning just before leaving. Not bad…a little more streeeeeetch, maybe.

So then I went along my not-so-merry way with the paper-piecing. This is for the Orca block on the Northern Wilderness project. The quilt block for this one is “Storm at Sea.” I’ve never actually made this block before. I made the center.

And then the sides.

And then I just needed to add the corners and sew it together. Ta-da!

It was a slow process and that took the whole of my sewing day. Probably today I’ll have time to sew the rest of the background pieces and add the applique. There are only about six applique pieces.

So this morning I’m making a marinade for our steaks. Later this afternoon I’ll chop up the potatoes. Aside from that there’s a little tidying up to be done. Hopefully, there will be some time for sewing this afternoon. I’ve yet to make October’s block for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. It makes sense to make a block for both October and November at the same time. (There won’t be a new color in November.) There’s been no more progress on the quilting for Cats in Pajamas. It’s such a large quilt, working on it tires me out. Next week should be less busy. I’m looking forward to having some good uninterrupted sewing time.

All right then. Dinner preparations await. It’s going to be a good weekend. I hope y’all have a good weekend ahead of you too.