On the River

Good morning, my friends. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we had a plan to spend the afternoon on the river. We were home until around 3:00 p.m., and so there was time to get some things done. I had one household chore to complete, and in a burst of energy (and being out of socks), I decided to do a couple of loads of laundry. Laundry fits well with slow-stitching, and between machine beeps, I stitched along turning the third corner on my quilt. 

Probably…maybe…I’ll finish this today, but it could be tomorrow. Matthew and I have a meet-up scheduled. I’ll say more about that in a minute. For now, I just wanted to mention that as I was stitching the binding, I noticed this weird rat nest on the back. You can see where I’ve indicated with a red arrow in the image below.  It’s a small area. I don’t know what happened there, and I don’t know why I didn’t notice it at the time. 

Probably it happened as I came to the end of a bobbin. It could also have been the end of my spool of top thread. My friend, Sharon, mentioned to me once that she thought the thread got weird as it approached the end of a spool. She saved those ends to be wound onto bobbins. I can’t say I always see that happening, but I have seen it before. Anyway…this is just a small area, and it will be a quick fix. I wanted to finish off the binding so I wouldn’t have to mess with all those binding clips while I was fixing it.

Okay, and that was just about time to go. There’s a boat launch just down the hill from where we live, which is very convenient. It’s a nice ramp. Not busy. There’s a $3 day-use fee that supports the local parks. Having access to this launch is just one of the reasons we love our home. You can see it in the image below.

This is one of those times where the sound you’d hear on the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland pops into my head as if I were right there, right now. Having lived in Southern California for a good part of my life, I went to Disneyland a lot. On the Peter Pan ride, you got into this flying pirate ship and sailed through some doors that swung open. Just as you entered the interior of the ride, Peter Pan would say “C’mon, Everybody! Here we gooooooooooooooooooo!” And this is one of those times. Everybody got a life thacket on? Say good-bye to civilization, my friends. C’mon, Everybody! Here we go!

Okay, and mostly we just sat in the river and bobbed. It was very peaceful. Almost no boats on the river yesterday. Mike wanted to run the boat. The gas in the fuel tank was old, and it needed to get used. So we bobbed, and we also just sped down the river. It was a nice day for it. Sunny, but not too hot. In the image below is some kind of pipeline for gas, or oil, or who knows what? There are several places along the river where there are warnings not to dredge or to anchor because of pipelines running under the water. I’m not sure why this one is elevated like that.

And then there’s this bridge that heads south toward Salem from our town of Newberg. We cross this bridge several times a week, I imagine.

And then we just bobbed for a while. 

We didn’t see as many birds as we usually do, if it were earlier in the year. I saw a Great Blue Heron, but we were going fast, and I didn’t try to get a pictures. While we were bobbing, I was able to capture this osprey flying overhead. We probably saw half a dozen or so.

Ah, but show me a body of water, and I’ll show you some Canada geese. There were several armadas of these guys. They never fail to show up when we’re around water. I wonder how they feel about this tariff situation.

Okay, then. As I mentioned, Matthew and I are meeting up to see the Portland Japanese Gardens today. It was Matthew’s suggestion. We’ve both been before, but not together. My only visit was some 20 years ago. I remember that it was beautiful, and there’s no reason I haven’t been back. I’m glad he suggested it. 

So, that will probably take up a good part of my day. Also, I’m stopping off at Erik and Mae’s. They’re passing along some apples from their trees. I’ll use them to make applesauce. She’s also passing along some Asian pears. I might decided to make some apple-pear chutney from those. It’s really good spread on  bruschetta with a sprinkle of blue cheese. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I’m passing along pickles to everyone, and I’ll hand-off the Kittens quilt to Mae. It’s going to be a good day.

All right then, I’ll leave you to it. I hope you have a good day too.

Another Slow Day

Good morning, my friends. There was plenty of activity yesterday, but it still ended up feeling like a slow day. Pickles were on the morning’s agenda, and so I made one more trek to the garden to find any cucumbers that could be included. Just that morning, I’d told Mike that none of the red sunflowers had bloomed. I planted all the sunflowers from the many seed packets I had from years gone by. I was pretty sure some red ones were in the mix, but I’d kind of given up on them. And then…there they were. The garden never fails to surprise me.

The zinnias continue to delight me.

And how could I not take a picture of these happy little flowers?

Mike was out with me. I needed someone with longer limbs than I to help me pick some plums. Our plum tree was adequately fruitful this year. I have plums for the two desserts I like to make, and a few more for eating. If I were hoping for BBQ sauce from them, however, I don’t think I’d have enough. This is what we picked yesterday. Twelve of them will go into an Original Plum Torte for our dessert on Friday. There will be a few leftover for eating as plain old plums.

And then…oh, the cucumbers. I had about 3-1//2 lbs after adding the three or four I’d just harvested. I had 7 jars prepared. I hoped it would be enough.

And, as it turns out, 7 jars was exactly what I needed. That makes 13 pints of pickles this year. That will probably hold us, and I’ll have a few jars to give away.

Since I’m not needing any more pickles, and the cucumbers are still producing, I inquire of The Google whether pickling cucumbers were good for eating as regular cucumbers. As it turns out…yes. Commenters talked about their bumpy and thicker skins. Usually I peel cucumbers when I’m eating them that way. Also, I have a recipe for a chilled pureed cucumber soup. And, I can make a mean gazpacho. As you can see, the menu items are already piling up as I consider what to do with my cucumber bounty. It’ll give me something else to think about as I attempt to withdraw from harvesting zucchini. By the way, with Mike by my side, I abandoned two zucchini in the garden yesterday morning. No tears.

So that took me to lunch time. After lunch and a nap, I spent some more time with my quilt binding, turning the second corner.

I’m mere inches away from the third corner, and so I expect to get around there today.

There might not be a lot of time for sewing today. We’re going to try again to take our boat out on the river. You might remember we planned to go a couple of weeks ago, and then changed our mind because of the wildfire smoke blanketing our area. Air quality is good now, and it won’t be too hot. We’ll head out later this afternoon. Usually, I try to make us some kind of a dinner to take along. Mike suggested sandwiches from Subway. That suits me just fine. 

Tomorrow, Matthew and I are meeting up again. We wanted to try to get in one more meet-up before Mike and I head out on our Washington trip. The weather will be more iffy when we return from our trip, and so we’re spending time outside while the sun shines. Also, I’ll foist off a jar of pickles on him. He’ll like that. I offered him more zucchini. He didn’t answer. I took that as a no. It was a worthy try.

All right then…off I go. If I’m going to get in any sewing before boating, the time is now. Have a good day, Everyone!

Home Stretch

Good morning, my friends. It was kind of a slow day yesterday. There were a few things on my to-do list, but not a lot of sewing. I'd been out to water the flowers and harvest more vegetables. When I came back inside the house, I looked out to see a covey of about 20 quail run across the field. They ran past the bird feeders and to the far side of the garden. I have an idea they're attracted to the seeds falling from the sunflowers. This isn't a very good picture, and I missed capturing the many that I saw. I caught this one straggler just at the last minute. I love their little top knots. I believe this is a Gambel's Quail.

When I moved into the sewing room, I found Sadie napping on the quilt I’d left lying on the table. Excellent napability, I’m told. Purrfection.

She didn’t much want to give up her napping spot, but I convinced her to allow me to sew on the binding.

Back upstairs, I sat and clipped it for stitching, and then stitched far enough to turn the first corner. Sometimes just sitting and stitching is so relaxing and soul-soothing. It was a good day for that.

When I’d stitched for as long as I wanted to, I folded it up and draped it over Smitty’s favorite chair. He’ll keep it safe for me. Instantly, he went into attack cat mode, as you can plainly see. Yes. He’s fierce. People come up to him…big strong men with tears in their eyes…and they say “sir, sir, how do you maintain your level of fierceness?” It’s a talent. He has it.

That’s all I can say about that. It was a slow day. 

Today will be a little busier. Enough cucumbers have accumulated, I need to make another batch of pickles. They don’t take too long, but it’s still a bit of a process. I’m trying another new recipe tonight for Cheesy Bacon Zucchini Boats. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow if it’s any good. As I wrote those words, I wondered why I continue to torture myself with this desire to use all the zucchini. I keep telling myself to stop harvesting it. But then, I go into the garden and it looks so green, and shiny, and sleek. To leave it behind feels like abandoning a child or something. So there’s that. But also, I think I enjoy the challenge. It makes cooking more interesting.

So, okay. With that, I’ll leave you to your day. Make it an interesting one, okay?

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.

Three Near Finishes

Good morning, my friends. It ended up being a very busy morning yesterday. My morning to-do's took me well past lunch time, and so it was late in the day before I could get to any sewing. No matter. The goals I'd set for the day were accomplished despite the lack of time.

Of course before I could do anything else, I did some slow-stitching, finishing the final embroidered block for Le Jardin.

When I was able to get into the sewing room, I added borders.

Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt. It’ll go on the Quilt Tops to Finish pile now. Mainly, I just need to sew the blocks together, and then give it a border.

When my stitching was finished, I checked the garden. There, I found about a dozen pickling cucumbers. It had been two days since I’d been in the garden, and I was surprised at how things had grown. I’ll make more pickles next week. For now, I decided to tackle the accumulation of zucchini. It was all shredded and frozen in nine 2-cup portions. That should keep us, our neighbors, our family, and our friends in zucchini bread for quite some time.

We had zucchini fritters and zucchini muffins on last night’s menu, and so it was a good time to do the shredding. My next task was to bake the muffins for last night. Originally, I found this recipe on the King Arthur website: The Shipyard Galley's Zucchini Muffins. It comes courtesy of the Shipyard Galley food shop in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. Here’s how they looked straight from the oven. We had a couple for dinner last night. The rest will be for breakfasts.

Okay, and finally, I was able to get to my quilting. I had just the narrow sashings between the embroidered blocks to finish. For that, I stuck with the “loop de loop” motif I’d used in the other sashings.

And then…the quilting was finished! I’ll endeavor to get the binding sewn on today.

In the sewing room, Smitty was urging me to finish off the Cozy Quilt mini.

It was pretty quick to sandwich and quilt. For traditional blocks, dot-to-dot quilting is easiest for me. Also, I quilted a red line around the embroidered center.

Here’s a look at the back. Try as I might, I couldn’t get those lines perfectly straight. Oh well. It’s the best I could do, which, by my definition, means it’s good enough.

This lower-angle shows off the quilting a little better.

Then, I sewed the binding on, and it’s ready for hand-stitching. It should be easy to finish this today.

Okay, so I didn’t cross off everything on my list yesterday, but I got most of it done. Today I need to hoe the garden. I’ve been avoiding anything physically strenuous after my Moh’s surgery (as instructed), but I think it’ll be okay at this point. 

Also today, I want to bake some cookies. I have a recipe to test for America’s Test Kitchens: Sweet Potato Snickerdoodles. Sounds interesting, no? The recipe calls for mashed sweet potato, but it says I can substitute canned pumpkin. Well, I don’t have either, but I did have some frozen mashed acorn squash. Technically, I’m not supposed to make changes to these test recipes, and I don’t think I ever have. Nevertheless, I’m going to make that one substitution this time around. My kitchen, my rules.

There are a few more things to do today, but mainly, I’ll be hand-stitching. I’ll take the first stitches on the new Quilter’s Retweet project, and I’ll sew the binding on the Cozy Quilt. The only machine sewing I’m really determined to finish is to get the binding sewn on the Girls’ Getaway. It’ll be nice to get that to hand-stitching stage.

That’s about it from me today. Pancakes are next, and then I’ll get a start on my new project.

Future Finishes

Good morning, my friends. Except for grocery shopping, yesterday might have been the most routine day of the week. It was nice to just settle in for a normal day. Included on the day's agenda was to bake a Magic Apple Plum Cobbler. The plums and apples came from our own trees. As I've mentioned many times, our poor little apple tree has never thrived. Nevertheless, it generally produces enough apples each year to make this one single dessert. Why is it magic? Because it is so magically simple to make. 

We had that with a scoop of vanilla ice cream last night. So yummy.

Backing up to the start of the day, I stitched some more on Le Jardin. This will be finished this morning. It’s the ninth of nine blocks for this project. When the embroidery is finished, I’ll add some borders to the block. That won’t take long. Then, I’ll move it to the list of quilt tops to be finished.

With that so close to being finished, I needed to get serious about tracing the first of five blocks for this Quilter’s Retweet project.

On the way to the grocery store, we stopped off at a quilt shop in town. They don’t have a lot of fabric on hand, but they do have a good supply of solids. I decided to pick up an off-white solid to use as the block backgrounds. I only needed a half yard for this, but there were three yards on the bolt, and so I bought all of it. I’ll use it for another embroidered quilt. Taking the last of the bolt meant I got a 25% discount on the whole amount. Nice.

Later in the afternoon, I traced the first block. Probably I’ll take the first stitches on this tomorrow.

In other near finishes, I finished all the pieced blocks/border for the Girls’ Getaway quilt. More dot-to-dot on this block.

For this one, I outlined the oval of the embroidery. The rest was dot-to-dot or else some backsy-forthsy things on the sides of the embroidery.

For this one, more dot-to-dot.

For this one, I outlined the heart both inside and outside the stitching, and then filled in the rest with dot-to-dot quilting.

And, finally, this one.

As a reminder, this is what the whole quilt looks like. I’ve quilted all but the narrow sashings between the embroidered center panels. 

I might have finished it yesterday, but I was running out of time by then, and so I stopped, leaving it needle down at the top sashing. This shouldn’t take too long to finish, and then it will be ready for binding.

Smitty wanted to work on the Sawtooth Cozy Quilt, but we ran out of time. Maybe today, Buddy.

Okay, so I haven’t been out in the garden for two days. I fear I’ll find man-eating zucchini there…possibly even some man-eating cucumbers. When I last checked the beans, they were about three inches long. They were too small for harvesting, but I expect they’ll grow fast, like other things tend to do. We should see some corn soon too. I need to water the flowers, and there are a couple of easy housekeeping chores to do. As for the rest of the day, I’m hoping to finish off these projects that are so close to their next steps. Also, there’s more zucchini on tonight’s menu in the form of zucchini fritters. They aren’t bad. I’ll make some zucchini muffins to go along with those.

So that’s a pretty long list, but there should still be plenty of time for sewing if I get an early start. And the time for getting an early start is slipping away from me just now, so I guess I’ll be on my way. 

What’s on your to-do list today?