Winter Begins!

Good morning, my friends. We're counting down the days until D-Day, one week from today. This coming week is going to be very busy. Happily, we'll get a break when we join the rest of the family for Christmas Eve dinner at Erik and Mae's house. I offered to bring something, but I'm told they have it handled. There's still a little bit of Christmas baking on my list. Aside from that, my holiday cooking responsibilities are complete. 

My yesterday started with Tiny Treasure #32. This one has stem stitch and straight stitch.

Next on my sewing to-do list was to sew the binding on "S" is for Sew. Sadie helped with the machine sewing. She really likes this quilt.

With her help, that was a pretty quick job.

When I took it upstairs, I found Smitty guarding the territory, watching for any invading forces.

Eventually, he decided the coast was clear, and so he took a more paws-on approach to helping me with the quilt binding.

Of course, any job worth doing when you're on a purrtection detail is best done undercover.

With him ensuring my safe sewing experience, I was able to finish all four corners of that binding in record time.

Then I had myself a finished quilt. It finishes up at 27 inches square.

Here's how it looks from the back.

With one week left at home, I can probably finish one more little quilt. I took a look at My Embroidered Garden. It needs to be finished off, and then I can probably quilt and bind it before we leave. So I gazed around my sewing room and first laid eyes on this colorful piece cut from the edges of My Whimsical Quilt Garden. There is plenty of fabric for a border and a back for this piece. I could add a narrow stop border.

Also, I found a leftover end of a binding strip that might be long enough to finish this off.

I went pawing through my fat quarter bin to see if I had any more fabric in that same color, and I noticed this fabric. This is kind of fun. I could do a narrow border, then a solid in some coordinating color, and then finish it using this fabric as a binding. That could be kind of fun. 

I'm leaning toward the first choice, but I haven't made up my mind yet.

So, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I'm ticking off tasks I need to complete to be ready to go on D-Day. Yesterday I made up a bunch of lists: one for clothing, one for food, one for sewing stuff, and one for general stuff. I'll probably take my lists out to the RV this morning and figure out what's there and what still needs to be packed. Except for that, there are no trip preparation tasks on today's list, but I do have one housekeeping chore to do. At some point, I'm going to need to do laundry. I'm trying to put that off until the last minute, so I don't have to do it again before we go.

When I go downstairs, I expect to find this:

With the rainy weather, the kitties aren't getting a lot of outside time these days. They spend their time gazing out the window at the falling rain and puddles. And let me just ask you, is there anything worse than wet paws? If there is, I don't know what it is. Smitty complains loudly about the inconvenient environment in which he finds himself.

So I guess I'll go see if I can open any doors for anyone, and I'll get busy with the newest Tiny Treasure. There are just a few more to finish up this go-round for the Tiny Treasures. When they're finished, I'll start on one of the take-along projects I have packed up. There are several on my list. I might have to ask Mr. Random to help me decide.

Oh yes, and it's the Winter Solstice today! As I write this, the north pole has crossed then line over its maximum tilt away from the Sun. It's officially Winter, my friends. It's the shortest day of the year for us in the northern hemisphere. The days will get longer from here, and that's something worth celebrating.

"S" is for Sew Close to a Finish

Good morning, my friends. Mike announced this morning that we'd only received three hundredths of an inch of rain yesterday. Add that to the full three inches received in the 12 hours previous, and you can see that conditions are dire. At three hundredths of an inch, how can anyone argue that we're not in a drought? We're expecting a similar day of weather today. It'll make the birds happy because I only fill their bird feeders if I can venture out without donning my storm gear.

It was a productive day yesterday. If you've read yesterday's post, then you already know we were home and had the groceries put away before lunch time. I'm hopeful we won't need to go again before we leave, but it's probably unrealistic to think so. It seems there's always something missing. A lot of the food we'll eat on travel days will be made ahead. I'll say more about that as I go along with my travel preparations.

As for yesterday's sewing, my first stop when the groceries were taken care of was to stitch Tiny Treasure #31. This one contains satin stitch, stem stitch, and chain stitch.

From there, I was ready to do some quilting. I sandwiched "S" is for Sew, and went to work.

As usual, my quilting fairy godmother, Ila, provided me with the perfect thread color. (Thank you, Ila.) I had a spool and a partially wound bobbin of this brown.

It's a 40 weight King Tut thread.

Before I could start, Sadie posted for her picture on this quilt since it blends with her beautiful furs so purrfectly.

And then I went to work. I hadn't given this a lot of thought, and so I just put my needle down and started sewing, letting my hands decide what we'd do with it. In the sashings, I stitched some criss-cross applesauce straight lines. I did the same thing in the horizontal sashings, but I stitched-in-the ditch when I came to the space between blocks. It was easier than cutting threads there.

When that was finished it looked like this:

It's a little hard to see in the image above, but it makes a sort of star pattern at the intersections of the blocks. Here's how it looks from the back.

In the outer border, I first used my chalk pencil to outline a square. This was to help me keep the the same size from corner to corner. And then I fit a quilted spool of thread within the boundaries of the square.

From there, I quilted a looping meander to the opposite corner, ending with a threaded needle.

When all four corners were finished, it looked like this:

When I was squared up, I was happy to see I'd successfully positioned the sewing machines on the back so that they were left complete.

The binding strips are cut, but I stopped for the day there.

Today I'll sew the strips together and then sew them to the quilt. Probably I'll spend the rest of my day hand-sewing the binding. It'll be nice to get in one more finish before we leave. 

If I play my cards right, I might be able to finish one more tiny quilt. Next up on my list will be My Embroidered Garden stitched in November.

So today starts a list of tasks on my calendar's to-do list. And "Lists" seems like a good place to start on any list, right? Sometimes I just write "Make a list" at the top of the list so that when the list is complete, I can cross something off right away. Actually, I have lists created from many, many trips like this. I just need to update them each time. As it stands, I've tried to remember every single thing I need to do, and I've written it on the calendar so that it all gets done without overloading myself on any given today. Today...lists. Tomorrow...the world. And with that send off, I think I'll get on with it. Busy days are ahead. Rest up, my friends.

A Finished Quilt Top

Good morning, my friends! And Yay! We're home early enough that I can still say "good morning." We've done our grocery shopping already today. I'm hoping I won't need to go back before we reach our final destination in southern California, but that's probably not realistic. Still...I'm hopeful. Without checking today's to-do list, I think grocery shopping was the only thing on today's list. If that's the case, I can spend the rest of the day sewing. Probably, I'll take a nap too.

So my yesterday started with me stitching Tiny Treasure #30. This one has Basketweave stitch, fly stitch, stem stitch, stem fill, and satin stitch.

From there, I forced myself to do a Bowflex workout, and there was just one quick housekeeping chore to do. After that, I went to work finishing the quilt top for the Shop Hop quilt. It ends up at 58 x 58 inches.

I'll need to go shopping for a back for this, and that works out just fine for me. We'll be traveling by plenty of quilt shops during our upcoming trip. Probably I'll find a new-to-me shop some place in Nevada. I know of at least one good quilt shop in Henderson, and I've visited one in Las Vegas, but I know there are more. Eventually, I'll bump into one and I'll look for a back while I shop. I won't be making any more "Shop Hop" quilts, but Mike has encouraged me to keep shopping anyway. He likes taking a nap while I shop for fabrics. It's a bit symbiotic.

My last gasp for the day in the sewing room was to cut the binding strips. 

Now the whole project will go on the quilts-to-be-sandwiched pile. And you probably won't see it again for quite a while. My quilts-to-be-quilted pile is stacking up. And with Eliza still off on her vacation, the only quilting I can do will be on my domestic machine. 

That works out just fine. For today's sewing effort, I'll sandwich and quilt the "S" is for Sew project. It's only 27-1/2 inches square, and so it'll be no problem to quilt it on my domestic machine.

I haven't given a lot of thought to this. I have in mind to quilt a big spool of thread in each of the corners with a looping thread and needle meandering across the border. For the blocks, I'll do something dot-to-dot, but I haven't decided on anything yet. Probably I'll do this in a dark brown thread. Before I do anything, I'll spend some time perusing Pinterest and see if anything catches my eye.

There was no kitty help yesterday. I went in search of some kitties, and I found Smitty tucked into Sadie's studio apartment. I was kind of surprised to find him there since we thought he was too big to fit. There's a warming blanket in there, and so it's a comfortable place for kitties on a rainy day. Sorry about the flare in that image below. It was dark when I took this picture, and the flash reflected off the fencing.

Okay, so the rest of my day will be all sewing all the time...except for napping. First, I'll get to work on Tiny Treasure #31. And then I'll get busy with the quilting. As the days wind down toward our D-day (departure day), I've given myself some tasks to complete. If I'm remembering right, I still have about three days before I need to start getting ready in earnest. We were deluged with rain yesterday, but we're looking at blue skies and sunshine today. It's going to be a good day. I hope you're having a good day too.

Busy Days Ahead

Good morning, my friends. We're expecting a drenching downpour today. The forecast is for three inches of rain over the next 12 hours. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, a big wind blew through the night before. With so much rain ahead of a big wind, it meant a lot of downed trees in our area...none where we live, fortunately, but we've had our share in previous storms. I believe the wind has died down now. Our forecast shows rain every day for the next week. I'd say it's time to get outta Dodge, and we will...in just about ten days. Between now and then, there's a lot to do...planning, cooking, and packing. I'll admit it's weighing on me, but it's too soon to start any of that just yet.

So let's not jump out there ahead of ourselves, okay? For now, we'll just relax with our slow-stitching. Yesterday started with the stitching of Tiny Treasure #29.

That was easy enough. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday on this next project. It's one more I'm adding to my take-along bins. One of my Facebook friends has a small collection of nativity scenes. She'd posted some pictures online, and we chatted back and forth a bit about her love of nativity scenes. (I've always loved them too.) The next time a Pinterest email landed in my inbox, this scene was included. 

Now here's the thing: I simply must sew. And if I kept everything I made, I'd have to add another room to our house in which to store all of it. So, when I see something I consider a perfect project to make for someone else, the devious part of my brain pipes up: "Ooooh....you could make this for fill-in-the-blank!" And when I saw this, I thought of my friend and said, "Ah ha! I believe I've identified my next victim!"

So, I visited the site where it originated. It was designed for machine embroidery, but I wanted to do it by hand. Did they have a hand-embroidery option? No. Of course not. Silly me. So I went searching for other possibilities, but I didn't find anything I liked better than the original. Then, I had an idea: I purchased the machine embroidery design, but then enlarged the picture that came with it for hand embroidery. I printed it on a sheet of Sticky Fabri-Solvy, and voila! A good machine embroidery design goes to the dark hand-stitching side. 

And then I went searching through my stash for some fabrics I could use to make a little quilt from it. Also, I had some blue embroidery floss left over from another project. Probably there's not enough here, but I can get more if I need to. 

As for the fabrics on the left, I'll make a narrow inner border from the lower one. That will also make a good binding. Then I'll use the dark blue in the middle for an outer border, and I'll use the star fabric at the top on the back. Now I'm excited to get started on it. Probably I'll start on this when I finish the Tiny Treasures.

And, of course, it needed its own project bag. Digging through my bag of bags, I came out with this one that was a gift on the day I visited Rosie's Calico Cupboard in San Diego, California. That was a good day. I met up with my blogging friend, Darlene. I was freshly burdened with a broken shoulder and a broken thumb at the time. Darlene helped me haul my purchases around. (Thanks, Darlene.) Anyway...this bag sparked a good memory.

Sadie found all this prepping and bagging terribly boring. She was there to help, but she finally gave up and decided to take a nap.

She told me I'd procrastinated long enough. I needed to sew the Shop Hop 4.0 blocks together. Done.

And then I had to decide how to finish it off. I'd already pulled the fabric you see on the left below. It's the cut off ends from another finished quilt, and I have a good amount for the outer border. It sort of makes sense with the barns, silos, and quilt shops pictured, since those are also things I photograph in our travels. For the inner border, I was torn between the two fabrics you see there.

After mulling it over a bit, I decided on the red one. I thought it would zazz up the quilt a little, and it will also make a good binding. Before I finished for the day, I had the two side borders done.

The top and bottom borders are ready to be sewn on now, and that's where I'll start when I make my way to the sewing room tomorrow.

Okay, so I started this post whining about the things I need to do to get ready for our trip. And when I'm thinking about that kind of stuff, it makes me terribly lazy...or maybe I'm just pre-tired. Anyway, I didn't get in my Bowflex workout yesterday, but I will today. No excuses. Also, I need to make up a shopping list. We'll do our grocery shopping tomorrow. If I play my cards right (read that: make a good shopping list), we can avoid going again until we're down in Southern California. I'll have some cooking to do ahead of time, but our first week of travel will mostly consist of eating leftovers I'll bring from the freezer. 

And consider this my reminder to myself that I cannot cross the state line with citrus fruits. I hate to think how many times I've forgotten that until we're already packed and ready to go. Our neighbors have benefitted from my poor planning several times, as I've tried unloading bags of oranges, lemons, and limes just before taking off. And all of that to say that I'll be planning our menu and making a grocery list today. Grocery shopping will happen tomorrow. All you need to know is that tomorrow's post will probably appear later in the day.

With that, I'm off to enjoy our rain-drenched Thursday. When we chat tomorrow, I'm hoping I can show you a finished quilt top.

A Kitchen Day

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy day yesterday. I left early for my pedicure, and so I was home before noon. I had plenty of time to do the cooking/baking I wanted to do. It took me nearly to the end of the day. After spending most of the day on my feet, I was tired by the time I was finished. 

So let's take a look, shall we? When I arrived home from my outing, I went straight to work making some peanut brittle. I'm using Mike's Mom's recipe, although I decided to add some vanilla to it. So, here we go. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble:

It's cooked to a blistering 310°F before adding two teaspoons of baking soda. But, beware if you want to try this. When you add the baking soda, it expands and threatens to boil over the top of the pan. Mine had just barely topped the lip of the pan, and I had to carry this *very* hot bubbling brew about five feet to the prepared baking sheets. Quietly repeating, “sh*t, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t” to myself, I managed to get it to the pans without spilling any or burning myself. Pouring it into the prepared baking sheets, it looked like this:

It kinda looks like somebody already ate it, doesn't it? It's tempting to spread it out here, but the recipe says not to in bold letters, so I just left it. It spreads and flattens as it cools. Mike was already eating it before I had a chance to break it into pieces. When it was finished, it looked like this:

But I wasn't finished yet. I wanted to try this new recipe for Cranberry Orange Muffins. When I finished making our cranberries for Thanksgiving, I'd only used half the bag of fresh cranberries. So I packaged it up in a zip-lock bag and then took it to the freezer. When I opened the freezer, I discovered a half bag of frozen cranberries from the year before. Well. That required something, and so these muffins were just what I needed to use up the rest of the bag. 

They were easy to make. The ingredients are all whisked together in a single bowl. No mixer required. When they came from the oven, they looked like this. The recipe notes that if you're using frozen berries, you might need to bake it longer. Indeed, I left mine for an additional five minutes or so.

When they were cool, I added the glaze. And I'd say here that my glazing technique is no better than my drizzling technique.

But then I noticed the picture from the recipe in the NYTimes. Theirs don't really look any better than mine.

Okay, and I was ready to sit down then. I hadn't finished my slow-stitching from the morning, which was a perfect reason to put my feet up and relax. And this is the only sewing I did yesterday. This is Tiny Treasure #28. It has stem fill, basketweave stitch, French knots and stem stitch.

When I had that finished, I tipped back and took a nap. It was a good day, but also tiring. 

Today will go a little easier. I want to get in a Bowflex workout, and I have one quick housekeeping chore. Aside from that, I can spend the day sewing. For sure, I'm going to get busy sewing together the Shop Hop 4.0 blocks. Here they are all together.

There's no sashing between the blocks. The pattern shows it with just two borders. I'm not sure yet how I want to finish it off, but the fabrics will tell me what to do.

A big wind blew through here last night. We took a momentary power hit. I only know because I heard my printer cycle through, as it does, when the power returned. We've been lucky so far. We've taken a few power hits over the past several days, but none lasting for more than a few moments. Fingers crossed it stays that way. So with that, I'll leave you to your day.