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?

Unplanned Excursion

Good morning, my friends. My day went off the rails yesterday. Things were going along as per the usual routine, and I was minding my own business when my doctor’s office called. And I’ll say right up front here that everything is fine with my nose. I’m about to lead you down a worrisome garden path, but I want you to know that everything is A-OK before I go any further.

They called the day before too (the day after my Moh’s). So, I was kind of surprised to hear from them on Day 2. The night before, though, I’d become a little concerned about how the wound was looking. It wasn’t bleeding, and it wasn’t hurting, but somehow it just didn’t look right. And so I told the office what I was thinking, and they asked me to send a photo, which I did. Ten minutes later, they were calling to ask me to come in. Oy.

And here I’d been talking myself off the ledge of this scenario. I’d already decided just to keep an eye on it and call if it looked any worse. But then…the best laid plans. Within a half hour, I was driving back down town. It’s an hour both directions, and I had to stop for gas. The appointment was quick, but it still took 2-1/2 hours out of my day. And my nose is just fine. He looked at it for about 30 seconds, and said there was nothing amiss. I’ll admit, it was reassuring. Mike wanted me to go in. I really didn’t want to, and so I was kind of on the fence about how concerned to be about the whole thing. Now it’s settled and I can stop thinking about it. That alone is probably worth the time it took.

Okay, and so I headed straight to my quilting when I got home. Since I hadn’t done much the previous two days, I was determined to get some sewing time. And I’m sticking with my dot-to-dot motifs. It’s so easy even I can do it. Also, I outlined the embroidery and the embroidered “Red Barn” banner in the sign.

There’s a lot to do in the “basket” blocks. I think there are four in the whole quilt. It seems like I’ve done more by now. Where the block has a large center, I’m doing little “S” curves in both directions, forward and backward. It ends up looking like a 4-petal flower.

With pinwheels, I always do the same rotating swirl. And these blocks are a pinwheel within a larger pinwheel. 

More dot to dot here, and I outlined the sign.

Here’s another “basket” block. I really hope that’s the last one.

Okay, and now I’ve rotated the quilt another 90 degrees, and I’ll finish the remaining blocks on the left side of the quilt. I’m hoping to get that finished today. There are still a couple of blue borders between the large embroidered panels. I haven’t decided about those yet.

There are still a few days of stitching left on the Le Jardin block I’m stitching, but I was kind of curious to see what project Mr. Random would choose to replace it. There are 23 projects on my list. So, I spun the wheel and came up with…

Okay, and that means…

Quilter’s Retweet…yes, I remember this one. I’ve had it for a long, long time. It’s five bird scenes. 

The designer, Erica Plank, used to have a presence on Facebook, but I haven’t seen anything from her in a long time. Maybe she retired…or something. It happens. The Unseen Hands website seems to be no longer available, but I found the pattern on Etsy right here. If you'd like to see close-ups of the stitcheries, you can see them there.

As long as I had the pattern out, I decided to see if I needed any supplies…Well. Doncha know Sadie never trusts me to make these kinds of decisions on my own. She’s given up even trying to teach me anything about sewing, choosing fabrics, choosing threads. It’s pawsitively purrthetic.

And, honestly, these “choosing” sessions are so tedious. What’s a girl to do but take a nap? Thank you. I knew you’d agree.

Okay, so the pattern wants me to use 1/2 yard of a cream color for the embroidery blackgrounds. I only have white. I might decide to pick up a half yard of off white. Or maybe more. It’s a good color to have on hand for embroidery projects. And I had about half the floss colors I needed. I could find the rest on Amazon. Yes, I know I should be mad at Amazon, but when you live as far from things as I do, having it come to me is a godsend. And all of that to say that it’ll probably be a day or two before I even trace this, but it’s good to know what’s ahead. Wouldn’t you agree? 

All right then. It’s a grocery shopping day, but fortunately, the list is *very* short. I’m hoping to make a plum dessert for tonight. I have two different desserts in mind, but it will depend on how many ripe plums I can find. So, we’ll all find out together, won’t we? And now…I must be off. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Have a good day, Everybody!