Slip Sliding Away

Good morning, my friends. I'm happy to announce that our slide seems to be repaired. Mike spent a good part of the day on it yesterday. He ended up calling off the dogs insofar as the RV mobile repair guy was concerned. Instead he spoke to the all-things-RV folks at Lippert. Using the video on his phone, he was able to work with them to determine the problem and make adjustments. I won't go into the ins and outs of it (pun totally intended), but it's working now. It goes in and out like nobody's business with no loud clunking noises. Yay!

Of course that meant not much else happened yesterday. The problem slide is the one where our "dining room" table sits, and so I wasn't able to set up my sewing machine. Instead, I got Smitty out for a walk during one of Mike's trips to the hardware store. If there's a blade of grass available, Smitty will find it.

Sadie helps by pointing out blades of grass from her high perch. She also keeps a watchful eye out for any woofies or bad mans.

Back inside, I finished off the first of two embroidered sections for the tenth block of Raggedy & Friends.

Now I've taken the first stitches on the second embroidered section.

And can we all pause here and hope that Sadie can find a way to get over her travel angst. Look at this poor little thing...so tense...so wound-up...so impossibly anxious that she can't get a moment's rest or relaxat...snzzzzzzzzzz. Shhhhh. I think it's working.

Okay, so I thought I might do some sewing today, but now we're looking at the weather outside and thinking it's time to get outside and enjoy the sunshine. We've been mostly cooped up inside because of the rain. Now, we're hopeful the rainy weather has moved along, and we'd like to get outside and do some other things. 

Right now, I'm going to get back to my slow-stitching. With the slide fixed and the weather improved, we can hang our bird feeders outside. (There seemed little point with the rain and the work on the RV.) Most likely, we'll just get out and go for a walk around the RV park. Naps are probably in order. I see a restful day in our future. We'll let Sadie tell us how to do it.

Dinner with Friends

Good morning, my friends. It was another day of not-much-accomplished, but we had a really nice evening with our friends. They'd invited us for a "Friendsgiving" turkey on Thursday (tomorrow). But then my friend, Deb, was using a dry brine on the turkey, and it looked as if it needed to be eaten sooner. And, no problem. We don't have much of anything going on, so we're flexible. And dinner was wonderful. We haven't seen our friends since March of 2024, and so it was good to catch up. My contribution was this Thanksgiving Slaw. (I swiped this photo from the website since I neglected to take a photo of my own.)

It's an easy salad to make. I use bagged coleslaw mix, and then add dried cranberries, sliced almonds, and a dressing. Very easy and tasty.

We had to make a trip to the grocery store for some of the salad ingredients. We got all the other stuff on the list while we were at it. When we got back, Mike got Smitty out for his first walk of the trip. He was busy sniffing the ground here, but on the far side of the RV, he found some delicious Califurrnia grass. Nom, nom, nom.

He did pretty well in this strange place. It's rather open for his taste. He prefers to be able to take cover under some bushes. Fortunately, there aren't many people around us, and so he was able to be brave. 

Of course, the real value of any walk is the dispensing of treats of valor afterward. Sadie gets treats of appeasement.

I was able to wash the Sticky-Fabri-Solvy out of my Christmas Miracle piece and give it a good press. It doesn't show too much in the image below, but it's still kind of wrinkly. My Oliso travel iron doesn't get hot enough to give it a good press.

I want to add a couple of borders to it and do some light quilting. I'm also thinking of adding a hot fix crystal to the lower star, and maybe the upper one as well.

With that finished, I took the first stitches on the next block for Raggedy & Friends.

That was pretty much all we had time for yesterday. As we drove to our friends' house, I spied another rainbow out my window. The weather is supposed to improve from here with no rain in the forecast.

Today we'll be heading to some other friends' house for another dinner. This will be a larger crowd with eight of us there. We're looking forward to seeing these friends of many years. My friend, Debi, has a Mexican-themed dinner planned. My contribution will be this Spicy Mexican Street Corn Salad. Don't worry...it's actually not that spicy. I remove the seeds and ribs from the jalapeno, rendering it mostly harmless. The picture below is one I took the last time I made this salad.

So, I'll spend some time on my slow-stitching next. I might take tomorrow off from blogging if I don't have anything to tell you. Except for dinner with our friends, it's going to be a lazy day. 

I'm hoping to get back to my sewing soon, but a guy is coming to have a look at our slide tomorrow. (It's the slide where I set up my sewing machine.) Mike thinks he knows what's wrong with the slide, but he's invited this guy to come and be a "second set of eyes" and to help him get it properly adjusted. I'm hoping they can get it working right, but we'll be fine regardless. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time not worrying over things when they're not working properly. And, like the slide issue, I worry more when it's completely out of my control, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. For my own peace of mind, I hope they can get it working right again.

Okay, so off I go to do some slow-stitching. I hope you have a slow and peaceful day ahead too.

Itching to Stitch

Good morning, my friends. We getting into the relaxation groove here at the Traveling Three Cats Ranch. Sadie spent her yesterday morning snoozing on her window hammock.

Later she decided to chase the sunshine across the back of the couch.

Having missed a couple of days of slow-stitching when we were driving south, I as in the mood for some slow-stitching. I spent some extra time on it and filled what remained in my hoop.

Smitty kept watch over my shoulder, making certain my needle didn't stray outside the lines.

When I moved my hoop to encompass the last of it, I could see that I had an impending stitching emergency. I had more to stitch than I had floss to stitch with.

Happily, we found an oasis in the desert...

And I was able to refill my stitching coffers. I really only needed one skein, but one can never be too careful when it comes to matters of stitching. Wouldn't you agree?

Our drive pretty well demonstrated the state of the weather since we arrived in Escondido. Periods of blue sky and puffy white clouds, overshadowed by dark gray and threatening ones.

As we drove back to the RV, we decided to drive a little farther north and check on the status of our favorite farm stand. HALLELUJAH! THEY'RE OPEN!!!

We spent some time chatting with them about our concerns. They weren't worried about ICE for themselves, but they said it had hurt their business some. They explained that many people here are afraid to leave their homes. It's very sad. They didn't have any of the Hass avocados, and that was the reason for the closure. As you might have noticed in a picture I posted a few days ago about the avocado groves, many of them are grown on the hillsides. With the recent rains, it's been too slippery to pick.

That was okay. We had the beautiful Fuertes at the RV, and we were motivated to make lunch of one of them. This is our easiest way to consume avocados. Remove the pit, add some Catalina (or Russian, or French) dressing, scoop it out with a spoon. Dee-lish.

Freshly flush with embroidery floss, I sat and stitched, and stitched, and stitched, until I'd finished it.

As I'm writing, I'm rinsing the Sticky-Fabri-Solvy out of it, and I should have a pressed and finished piece to show you in tomorrow's post. Here's the wrinkly version.

We had leftovers for dinner last night, but we also imbibed in our favorite way to eat avocados. Hear me out, now. This is canned grapefruit, chunked up avocado, and Catalina dressing. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

I learned this from Mike's mom. When Mike's dad was still alive, he used to send us avocados from his own trees. I'd make my workday brown bag lunch from a can of grapefruit, an avocado, and some dressing. The grapefruit kept the avocado from turning brown before I could have it for my lunch. Canned grapefruit is best. I once tried to make this with fresh grapefruit when we couldn't find canned in the grocery store. It wasn't the same. And, for this trip, I bought three cans of grapefruit before we left home. We won't be denied this time.

Okay, so next up on the embroidery front will be the two designs for Block 10 of Raggedy & Friends.

It's kind of hard to see in that picture. You can see it better in this image from the pattern.

And I've nearly forgotten, but it's time to link up for January's

My goal will be to finish these two embroidery designs before month's end.

On today's agenda, we need to make a quick trip to the grocery store. Friends invited us for dinner on Thursday, but then texted to ask if we could do it tonight instead. Fine and dandy, and the sooner we see them the better. But that means an emergency run to the grocery store because I want to bring a salad to share. I need me some ingredients if I'm going to do that.

So, off I go...not a second to waste. And if you've enjoyed this post, you can thank Sadie for her careful editing and input.

 

Have a good day, Everybody!

A Little Sewing

Good morning, my friends. Well...the rain continues. We get periods of sunshine and blue skies, but it doesn't last. And then, we can get a long deluge. It makes planning anything outside impossible. But you know how it is. When the going gets tough, the tough get sewing. That's exactly what I did yesterday. I'm still working out some sort of efficient work flow set up for myself, but here's what I have so far.

The sewing machine is set up at the table, obviously. It's a good spot because I have windows to my left, and a window behind me. There's also light above the table, and so it's a nice bright spot.

This small ironing board is set up across our cook top. No cooking, please. It's a good stable spot there. Also, I have a wool mat I can use as an ironing board. It works when I just lay it on the wooden cutting board. This set up was a little clumsy yesterday. I kept hitting the iron on the bottom of the microwave above it. I might switch to the wool mat today.

I didn't take a picture of it, but my cutting mat is just behind me on the kitchen island. When I kitted up the pieces for this project, I labeled them with their size and whatever letter was used to identify them in the pattern. That turned out to be a good idea, and so I gave myself two attagirls for that effort. And then I went to work making HST's. I needed 16 in each color for a total of 48.

They were trimmed to 3-1/4 inch, and that took positively forever.

When those were finished, I sewed together a strip set, and then cross-cut it into sections 1-3/4 inches wide.

Then I added those to a 2 x 3-1/4 inch rectangle. I made the first one just to check my measurement. The sewn-together piece was to measure 3-1/4 inches square, and it did. (Always a happy thing.)

I needed 16 of these. 

It might not look like much, but I practically wore out my patience trimming all those HST's. I'd been at it for about two hours by then. With the pieces I have, I can start sewing the quilt blocks together, but it seemed like more than I wanted to start by this point yesterday. I put everything away, and I'll get it all out and do some more sewing today.

We're expecting this rain to begin to taper off by tomorrow. By Wednesday, we should be looking at drier weather, and by Thursday, I think it will have moved along. And good riddance. I know California needs this water, but we could have stayed home if we just wanted to be cooped up inside. There's serious sight-seeing to be done, and we're itching to get out there.

So, I have a couple of updates. After chatting with my friend, Darlene, this morning, I was motivated to do a little more investigation about this closed farm stand issue. Here's the picture I took a few days ago.

Here's one I took in March of 2024. You can see the sign there, although it was outside the frame in the image above. When we stopped a few days ago, I didn't notice if the sign was still there. Using the image below, I could determine the name of the place, and so I inquired of The Google to see if they're still in business.

Hours are listed, and it looks as if it's still open. The last notation about it was made in December.

So, that was encouraging. Possibly, they just took some time off for the holidays. Or maybe they just don't have anything to sell just yet. I'm just relieved to know that something didn't happen to them since our last visit. I'll feel more reassured if we can find them open while we're here. We'll keep checking.

Also, we found some Mexican food last night. You'd think Mexican food would be easy to find in Southern California. We found a spot nearby that was very good. I expect we'll go back again before we leave the area at the end of the month.

Okay, so that's all I have for you today. As I've been writing, clouds are moving in, and I expect it will be raining again shortly. All I can say is it's good sewing weather. 

A Chill Day

Good morning, my friends. It seems we learn something new with each trip. Sometimes we have to re-learn things we've already known. In this case, it was driving more than three days in a row. We shortened our daily distance this trip, but driving for five days in a row was too much. We were both exhausted yesterday. We decided to take some chill lessons from our kitties. Sadie was taking on a zen position on her window hammock.

Only, here's something you need to know about traveling with cats: If you disturb the cat as it prepares to sleep, then you must be prepared to administer snuggles.

Smitty was relaxing on the reclining chairs.

He pawsed his resting to help me with my slow-stitching. 

I made a little more progress on it. It was good to get back to it, and it was hard to stop.

But we needed some groceries, and we wanted to get some of those delicious California avocados. Only...when we arrived at the farm stand we've visited for many years, we found it shuttered, locked, and appearing to be permanently closed. (Insert wailing and moaning here.) What happened? We wondered if this was an ICE-related thing. There's no way to know. I surely hope not.

From there, we made our way to the grocery store. I was feeling sickened at the idea of those nice folks being rounded up and deported. Honestly, there's no way we can know for sure the reason for their absence. I really hope it's something else. And nothing says this closure is permanent. Maybe they just took the holidays off. We're keeping our fingers crossed they'll be back.

Arriving at the grocery store, we found the parking lot planter areas filled with blooming Bird of Paradise, I felt a little bit better after seeing that.

We got our groceries and then headed back the way we came. We'd seen this farm stand on our way to the grocery store, but we couldn't really tell what they were selling because of a barrier in the roadway. We had to come back the other way, and then we could see. Yahoo!!! Avocados for $5 per bag. 

They're the smooth-skinned Fuertes variety. We prefer bumpier-skinned Hass, but they're not in season just yet.

We asked the guy there about those other folks, but he couldn't give us any information. I'm still hoping they'll return while we're here in Escondido.

Heading back to the RV, we found Sadie still showing us the ropes about relaxation. Kitties are very good at this.

It's too bad she's so tense. 

So we listened to what she told us to do, and then we studied hard on our relaxation technique for the rest of the day. We're both feeling much more rested this morning.

We'll spend the day relaxing again...nothing on our Sunday agenda. I'm probably going to get my sewing machine out and do some sewing. My first project will be this requested table runner. All the pieces are cut and kitted up. It should be a pretty quick effort to sew it into a finished top.

It's looking like it might be a nice day of weather. We'd like to get out and walk around this RV park a little bit. It's nothing fancy. Many of the RVs here appear to be permanent residences. The name of the place is the Champagne Lakes RV Resort. As so often happens, the use of the word "resort" amounts to wishful thinking. Also, "Champagne" Lakes because we're very close to where Lawrence Welk used to live. (Young people...ask your parents.) So, we probably won't return here next year, preferring the place we stayed last time we were in Escondido. Still, after saying all that, this place is very quiet. I'll give it that.

Okay, so it's Sunday morning, and that means we'll have our Sunday morning pancakes. The Sunday morning pancake tradition that follows us wherever we roam. Hopefully, I'll have a little bit of sewing to show you in tomorrow's post.