Containment Contentment

Good morning, my friends. How is everyone doing? I'll admit I'm worried about you folks up there in Northwestern Washington. We passed through some of the areas I'm reading about both going to and coming from Alaska, and so it feels just a little personal.  If you're among the folks evacuated, then I hope this ends well for you. Having faced an evacuation order a few years back, I'm sympathetic to how nerve wracking it is. Please stay safe. 

The rain has stopped in our area...temporarily, at least. We can see patches of blue. I'll grab the opportunity to get outside for a while today. The bird feeders are empty, and I can imagine there are birds out there tapping their little birdie feet and complaining about the service at this cheap motel. Probably I'll do a little packing while I'm at it, but it's a little early to get too carried away.

Since we chatted on Wednesday, I've had two days of stitching on the latest block for the Le Jardin project. These are fun to stitch.

Probably I'll finish this one today or tomorrow, and that means I'm needing to get ready with my next stitching project. By rights, I should be stitching a "short" project. I have one packed in my take-along kits, and so I'll hold off with that until we get on our way.

Instead, I want to trace the next grouping of 12 for the Tiny Treasures project. There are 16 days left until we leave. If I stitch one per day, I'll easily finish this before we go. Here are the tiny treasures I have for this project so far.

Sadie has been my faithful helper cat for the past couple of days. She was so helpful, I encouraged her to find a different job, napping in the little bed provided. 

I've spent the past two days cutting all the pieces I'll need to finish the last two rows of blocks for the Gumballs project. The pieces are all cut and labeled now.

I must be making some progress on my scraps because I had to break into my fat quarter bins for some of these. There are sections cut to 4-7/8 inches square, and some that are 4-1/2 x 6-1/2, and some more that are 3-1/2 x 5-1/2 inches. My scrappy scraps were lacking pieces large enough to cut to those dimensions. Breaking into my fat quarter box, I was able to get the job done.

Now each row of five blocks is contained in its own zip-lock bag.

And the whole shebang is contained in a larger bag along with the pattern and a spool of thread.

Now all the take-along projects are ready to be packed away. This has been a tedious process, and I'm glad to have it done. I'll be even more glad when I'm able to pick up a project and sew with ease while we're traveling. Here are all my different project packages.

It all fits in the two bins you see below. The top shoebox bin is to contain whatever embroidery project I happen to be working on. Probably, I'll end up starting something before we leave home, and it'll get packed into that box. I have a dedicated cabinet in the RV for my sewing projects. I can fit more than you see here, but I'll probably just stick with what I have. There's more than enough here to keep me busy.

And if all this cutting and kitting has made for some dull blog posts, imagine how it was doing all the cutting and packing. 

So once I get the next Tiny Treasures traced for stitching, I can get back to the Northern Wilderness project. I should have plenty of time to finish the next two blocks. Also today, I'm doing a little more Christmas baking. On today's list will be these Cranberry Ecstasy Bars. Here's an image from some I've made in the past.

It's a copycat recipe for the Cranberry Bliss Bars served at Starbucks. I rarely visit Starbucks any more, but when I was a regular in the past, this was always my choice at Christmas. Yummy. I'm happy to be able to make them at home. For the two of us, I'll make just half the recipe. 

Aside from what I've mentioned, there isn't much more on today's agenda. I'll be happy to get back to some real sewing. And with that...I'll leave you to your day. Make it a good one, okay?

No Kitting

Good morning, my friends. Since I'm sitting here writing, then you've probably figured out I made it home from my haircut appointment safely. It rained pretty much the whole time I was out, but only lightly. There were a few areas of flooding around some of the creeks in the area, but I'm not aware of any real problems in our area. The worst flooding is farther north in Western Washington. There wasn't a lot of information in this morning's news about it. If you live in that area, then I hope you're high and dry...or at least not submerged. "Dry" would be too much to ask for.

Back home, Mike was suited up in his storm gear getting ready to make another stab at clearing the downspout drainage pipes. He'd come across a "sewer jetter" in his quest to avoid calling a plumber, and that did the trick. After a couple of hours outside in the rain and cold, he announced the all clear status. Yay! No plumbers were called in the clearing of the pipes. The cost of the sewer jetter was negligible compared to what a plumber would have charged. We're just happy it worked out.

After all that, he and Sadie spent the afternoon snuggled up with their favorite quilt to watch one of the Mission Impossibles. Sadie really likes Tom Cruise.

As for me...I needed a nap after a harrowing trip out into the storm. Actually, I don't have anything to complain about, but I had to leave home. Isn't that bad enough? After my nap I dragged my feet getting into the sewing room so badly I feared I might trip and fall. Facing another day of cutting and kitting was too much to contemplate. Then, mercifully, I remembered I hadn't done any slow stitching yet, and so I spent most of my sewing time finishing off August's block for A Year in the Garden.

These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

And then I could use up some more time I might have used for cutting and kitting to trace the next block for Le Jardin. I realized too late that the beehive was supposed to be an applique piece. I'd already traced it. I might have covered it, but I decided to just leave it and stitch in the colors shown in the pattern picture. Besides, I don't like stitching through the thickness of applique.

These are the blocks I have for Le Jardin so far.

So, I'll start on that this morning. It was probably good to take a day off from cutting. My neck feels better for it, and I feel ready to get back to it today. It's the last take-along project on my list. When it's all kitted up, I can get back to the Northern Wilderness project. I'd really enjoy spending some more time with that before we leave.

As usual, I have plenty to keep me busy on today's list. I'm meeting up with my friend Sue for breakfast tomorrow morning, and then Mike and I are going to head to the grocery store. With all that going on, I'm going to take a day off from blogging tomorrow. You can look for me right back here on Friday morning. Until then, stay warm and dry, my friends. 

Just Kitting

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing fast this morning since I need to leave for a haircut this morning. I dread the thought of going out into the horrible weather we've been experiencing the past couple of days. Already, we've accumulated nearly 2 inches of rain, and we're not finished yet. Seeing the weather report last night, radar showed solid rain for as far as radar could reach. Satellite images showed the area beyond in solid cloud cover. Sheesh. Oregon at its worst. 

So I spent the whole of my sewing day making up a kit for the remaining four Raggedy & Friends blocks. Sadie was my helper cat. She's as bored with this process as I am.

The pieces for the remaining four blocks are shown below. The embroidery is only finished on Block 9, and so this is both a sewing and an embroidery kit. Blocks 10, 11, and 12 each have two embroidered sections.

Each block is packaged in it's own zip-lock bag.

And then all four bags were contained in this one large bag along with the items I'll need for the embroidery. I always include a pen with my embroidery projects, since I sometimes miss a line here or there. If I can't stitch it free-hand, then I can draw in the missing line with a pen.

I was doing laundry while I was working on this, and I was beyond ready to quit by the time I finished. With about 15 minutes left so spare in the day, I bagged up my bonus triangles and the cut-off bits and bobs. Usually, I take these with me when we travel south. We didn't go south last winter, and so I have two years' accumulation of this stuff. Bonus triangles on the right...cut-off bits on the left.

I'll just start sewing it all together and see what I can make of it. Sometimes the cut off bits can be pieced into a larger quilt. It can be a good way to practice free motion quilting. This is the quilt I made from pieces a few years ago. I called it Waste Not Whatnots.

Some of the blocks for this project were made from the bonus triangles I'd accumulated. Others were orphaned blocks and stuff I sewed together however I could make it work. It was kind of fun. It ended up going to this young man.

So, if I'm going to have time for breakfast and a little slow-stitching, then I must be on my way. I'm hopeful I'll have time to make a kit from the last of the Gumballs blocks today. Given how long it took to do the cutting for the Raggedy & Friends projects, I'm not sure I can finish it in one day. It's the last one I'm going to do, and so it'll feel like a victory when it's all finished, if not today, then tomorrow.

Cats and Kits

Good morning, my friends. It was another busy day yesterday. I got a late start after sleeping in later than usual, but I still managed to cross off the things on my list. I wanted to get busy with the Peppermint Bark before I did anything else. It's very easy to make. The hardest part of the whole thing is getting the dratted paper off the candy canes. Mike helped with that. When it was finished, it looked like this.

This stuff is addictive. Once you take a bite, it's hard to stop.

So, it was late in the day before I made my way to the sewing room. Sadie was my helper cat. She washed her paws first. You never want to leave paw prints on the fabric.

After that, she snoopervised everything I did, pointing out any errors in thinking...like, isn't it time for some treats?

When I quit yesterday, I was getting ready to do the cutting for the Tulip Time quilt. There was a surprising amount of cutting to do for such a small quilt. These are all the pieces I'll need. The tulips are all pinned together and labeled for size.

Now, it has it's own project bag.

So I committed to kitting up four projects when I set my goal for December's 

Here they are. I'll link up when the party starts at the end of the month.

Since making that commitment, I've added more to the list, starting with this Sashiko kit I purchased on a previous visit to southern California. This came from a quilt shop that specialized in Hawaiian prints.

It's all self-contained, which makes it a good take-along project. The fabric is pre-printed with the design.

I bought the fabric below to finish it off while visiting the same shop with my dear friend, Debi. I'm looking forward to seeing Debi next month.

Okay, and I decided to take along one project to work on block-by-block. When we're at home, I have a list of five embroidery projects I rotate through. For traveling, nothing says I can't work on the whole thing one block after another. Desperate times, you know. Last time, I took along all the Raggedy & Friends embroidery sections. This time, I'm going to take this Snowmen & Reindeer pattern from Bird Brain Designs. 

Looking at what I needed, it listed two balls of Perle cotton #311. So,  I checked my embroidery floss stash and, well, lookie there! It's almost as if it were meant to be. The one on the left is partially used, but in my experience, these balls last a long time. Probably I have enough. Certainly it will last for the whole trip.

I'll be taking my lightbox along and tracing these on the road. So, I cut background fabric squares for all 12 blocks, and I also cut iron-on stablizer for each one.

 I've added a pen for tracing the designs and four safety pins so that I can pin back the excess fabric outside the embroidery hoop. Also, I included some needles with larger eyes. In my experience, the Perle cotton is sometimes harder to thread the needle. This kit is ready to go now.

That was as far as I got yesterday. I still want to do the cutting to make the remaining blocks for the Raggedy & Friends project. (The embroidered sections are already traced.) Also, I want to cut fabrics to make the remaining 10 blocks for the Gumballs project...this one...

These last two will take longer than the others have, and so I'll probably do one today and one tomorrow. 

And that will free me up to work on two more blocks for the Northern Wilderness project.

If I can finish two more blocks before we go, I'll be back to the first section of my white board, which would mean I'll be ready to quilt the Painted Ladies.

No word yet on the return of my machine. I have a feeling this probably won't even get started until next spring. Oh well. No hurry. On the other hand, I'd really like to get my machine back before we go. 

So that's all I have for you today. We had dinner out last night. It was kind of fun to see all the Christmas lights. Some people have a lot of energy for that sort of thing. How are your Christmas preparations going? 

Cookies and Kits

Good morning, my friends. Oh my...it is so dark outside. We're expecting lots of rain over the next several days. There could be around 4 inches in our area with minor flooding concerns in some places. Here on our hill, we're not at all worried about flooding. Sadly, however, Mike discovered the drainage pipes leading away from our downspouts are clogged with pine needles that cannot be dislodged with any equipment we have. We're going to have to call a plumber to snake those out. That should be a nice tidy plumbing bill. When it comes to spending money, I rank plumbing and new tires at about the same level of too much money for the return on gratification.

It was a busy day yesterday. I finished most everything I wanted to. My first stop was to bake up a cookie recipe I was testing for America's Test Kitchens. I'm sorry I can't share the recipe, but it will appear in a new book tentatively titled "Cookie Swap." These are Espresso Iced Oatmeal Crunch Cookies. Here's how they look straight from the oven.

After they cooled completely, they were iced with a very thick icing made from confectioner's sugar, egg white, and some espresso powder. I'm kind of a cookie snob, baking just one particular cookie, exclusively. These are good enough, I might let them into my exclusive cookie club. They're both crunchy and chewy at the same time.

Okay, and with that done, I went to work on my traveling quilt kits project. This Nordic Star Table Runner is the largest of the projects I'll take with me, and so I started with that.

These are the fabrics I'll be using, and the pieces are cut. The green fabric will be for the back, and there's enough of the red for the binding. I'll leave those two at home, taking only the cut pieces for the top with me.

I've taken to saving those zippered bags that sheets are sold in to make these kits. They can hold a surprisingly large amount...maybe not so surprising, since they can hold a set of king-size sheets. Anyway...this one is bagged up and ready to go now.

Next, I started with this Vintage Valentine.

When it's finished, it will be a small quilt at just 13-1/2 x 16 inches. It'll be made using about ten different mini quilt blocks. Probably, I won't do the cutting for this, although I might change my mind. With all those little quilt blocks, it makes sense to do the cutting on the road. And since I'm working mostly with fat quarters, they won't take up a lot of space when I do the cutting. These are the fabrics I pulled for this project. I'll use that red and white at the bottom (second from the left) as the background, and the rest can be used in the mini quilt blocks.

For that one, I found a larger zip-lock style bag.

From there, I moved on to this Carrot Top mini quilt.

These are all the pieces I'll need for this quilt.

And now it's all bagged up in another zip-lock bag.

I was just getting started on this Tulip Time mini.

I selected the fabrics, but then decided to call it a day before cutting anything. I'll start here today. 

In my sewing room, I have some backless bar stools I sit on when I'm working. They're great in the sewing room, but sitting on those for several hours means I'm slouching. Eventually, it starts to make my neck hurt. I had a surgery over twenty years ago to fuse some of my cervical vertebrae, and I have a metal plate in my neck. My neck is fine, but it bothers me when I spend too much time slouching. It made sense to stop there, and I sat with some ice on my neck before making dinner. It's really nothing serious, but I have to be mindful and take care of it when it bothers me.

So, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I was riffing off a recipe for these Sausage-and-Apple Stuffing Bites. The original recipe uses toasted bread cubes, and some other veggies and sausage to make up a little bowl of "stuffing." (No bird required.) I wanted to see if I could make this using my leftover stuffing from Thanksgiving, and I'm happy to say that it worked! Here's how they looked coming straight from the oven.

They cooled in the pan for five minutes, and then I plated them up to have with our dinner.

For this, I used 2 cups of leftover stuffing, 2 oz. diced pancetta (fried crisp), 1/3 tsp of dried sage, 3 minced garlic cloves (added to the pancetta as it fried), 1/2 a peeled and diced Granny Smith apple, one beaten egg, and one tablespoon of wine. (You can substitute anything for the wine...water, chicken broth...anything.) Then, I mixed it all up and baked it in my toaster oven at 350°F for 20 minutes. They turned out great. I'm happy to find another way to use up leftover stuffing.

We had those with Cranberry Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. Here's the picture from the recipe. (I didn't take a picture of mine.)

The recipe description suggests adding Dijon mustard. I used some homemade cranberry and apple mustard and some mayonnaise to mine. That cranberry mustard has seeds, and so Mike's was made with regular Dijon. Also, mine was made with my homemade whole-berry cranberry sauce. Mike's was made with the jellied cranberries. If you have a toaster oven, you can simply assemble the sandwich and then toast it in your toaster oven. Otherwise, grill it in a skillet like any other grilled cheese sandwich. We really like these, and it's a great way to use up leftover cranberries. 

Okay, so today is going to look a lot like yesterday. Today I'm going to make some Peppermint Bark...so yummy. And, you know...we need something sweet to go with our cookies. It's super easy to make, and so that won't take a lot of time. I'll get back to my kits, but I probably won't get them finished today. See, pain-in-the-neck above. 

It's going to be a dark and stormy couple of days. Good sewing weather. Besides, it helps motivate us to get on our way to warmer climes and all the preparation that goes along with it. And with that...I'll leave you to your day. Make it a good one.