Early Start

Good morning, my friends. Mike and I are early risers, generally. After all, we have furry alarm clocks who want to make sure we’re awake to see the sun rise in the morning. Yesterday was no different, and I was ready to make our usual Sunday morning pancakes around 8:00 a.m. Knowing I was going to be making a breakfast item with those egg whites I’ve been hoarding, I asked Mike if he’d be up for a change. Indeed, he was. And so for breakfast I made these Freezer-friendly Egg White Muffins. Here’s how they looked when they came from the oven.

When I went looking for this recipe, I was looking for something specifically using egg whites. Honestly, you could do this with whole eggs too. I needed 2-1/2 cups of egg whites. (Yikes. That seemed like a lot.) As it turns out 20 egg whites equaled 2-1/2 cups. I was happy to be using so many of them in just this one dish. So, it was easy. I added chopped spinach, cherry tomatoes, grated cheddar, and green onion to the muffin cups, and then ladled the egg whites over. Then, it needed 25 minutes in the oven, and voila! Breakfast is served. We waited five minutes for them to cool, and then added a dollop of guacamole. I added some tomato jam to mine, pictured below. We each ate one, but two would make a more filling meal.

The rest were loaded into zip-lock bags, and frozen. This morning, we’ll give them 45 seconds in the microwave, and that will be our breakfast. Mike has already done his. He gave it 45 seconds, but then gave it an additional 15 seconds. He doesn’t recommend a full minute from the get-go.

As long as I had the oven warmed up, I mixed up and baked some more Irish Brown Bread. It’ll be a good accompaniment to the eggs. It allowed me to use some buttermilk I needed to finish off.

So, I still wanted to make some watermelon sorbet, but my baking goals were complete. Time for some slow stitching. I took the first stitches on the Love Sampler.

And then I ventured outside briefly to pick some more lettuce from the greenhouse. I noticed the Stargazer Lily has put out more flowers. We don’t always get to see this, and so it’s a treat when it flowers so prolifically.

While I was out, I heard a rustling in one of the cherry trees. I thought it might be Sadie, and so I stopped to watch. As I did, I saw a crow fly from the top of the tree with a cherry in its beak. (Shakes fist skyward.)

I had one housekeeping chore standing between me and my sewing. It seemed a good time to get the watermelon sorbet churning. When I was finished with my housekeeping, the sorbet was finished too.

Okay…sewing…finally. It’s time to continue on with my quilt-all-the-quilts-or-die-trying quest. Next under my quilting needle is “Ruth’s Legacy.” The original name of this quilt was “When Quilter’s Gather,” done in the style of Ruth McDowell. When Ruth passed away last year (or maybe the year before), I decided to name the quilt for her. As a reminder, this is what it looks like. The block designs are Ruth’s. The block setting is mine.

My goal for yesterday was simply to get the machine set up for quilting. I’ll start the quilting today. In the bobbin, I’ll use an off-white Bottomline thread. It’s a 60-weight thread, and I still have a little left on a bobbin from a previous project. For the quilt blocks, I’ll use another off-white YLI thread on top. It’s a 40-weight thread. Already I’ve adjusted my tension, and these two will play well together. By the way, don’t you love that backing fabric? One of you put me onto that fabric when I finished the quilt top. I’m afraid I can’t remember who it was, but if it was you, then thank you.

In the borders/sashings, I’ll use this pretty variegated King Tut thread. I wanted something colorful, but not too bright.

It’s a 40-weight thread like the YLI thread I’ll be using on top. I’m constantly checking my tension these days, but I shouldn’t notice much when I change out the threads.

Spreading that out on the fabric, it looks good to me. It has the same colors, but it isn’t too obvious. (Thank you, Ila.)

Okay, so there are nine blocks in this quilt. I’ll endeavor to quilt three per day before I move to the sashings/borders. I figure it should be ready for binding within a week or so. For now, I left it needle-down at the middle block, and I’ll start there today.

I have in mind to do one of the two designs you see below in the pieced blocks. It’ll be an all-over design. I’m leaning toward the top one of the two choices. It’ll be easiest for me.

I’ll admit I really like the one below too. Maybe…maybe…maybe I’ll be very brave and give it a go. I’ll practice first and see if I can pull it off.

Okay, so that’s where I’ll start my sewing day today.

Backing up to yesterday again, I was able to sew the borders on Block 8 for “Le Jardin.”

There’s just one block left before I can sew this into a finished quilt top. Here are the eight blocks I have so far.

And, finally, July’s aqua block for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Here are the seven “Inverted Star” blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Okay, so I’ll get started with my quilting, and then I’ll be ready to start with my list of WIP’s. I’m ready to make the final row of blocks for the Stair Steps project. I like this quilt, but all that cutting has been a pain. I’ll be glad to have all the blocks finished.

It usually takes me several days to finish a row of blocks for that quilt. When I’m finished, I’ll be ready to make another row of blocks for this quilt I’m calling “Jawbreakers.”

Today will look a little like yesterday. I have some more ingredients I want to use up, and so I’m going to bake some cookies for two. It’s been raining off and on for the past several days. I want to check the vegetable garden. It’s probably time to hoe again, but if the ground is too wet, I’ll give it another day or two to dry out some. We’re expecting drier weather as the week wears on.

All right, my friends. Enjoy your Monday. Off I go.

Big Finish, Little Finish

Good morning, my friends. It was an all slow-stitching day yesterday, and I was able to finish off two quilts. Yay me! Before any sewing could be done, though, I wanted to do some things outside. Thunder and lightning were in our forecast, and so there was no time to waste. The lightning never materialized, as far as I could tell. Later in the afternoon, we had one big thunder clap, and that was all. It rained off and on, but really, nothing to write home about weather-wise. (You'll note that I am writing about it, however.)

Outside, I filled the bird feeders and then took a walk around. It's been a couple of days since I checked on things. This Red Cardinal clematis seems puny this year when compared with years past. It’s still putting out flowers, but not as many as previous years.

Right beside it, the purple hydrangea is covered in flowers. 

It’s a large bush. In a few more days, it should be spectacular.

Around back, this poor little thing didn’t get watered enough when we were traveling in Alaska last year. It’s much smaller than it was before, but it is surviving and blooming.

It has both blue…

And pink flowers on the same plant.

To its right, the variegated hydrangea is doing just fine. 

It too is covered in flowers at the moment.

The vegetable garden is looking good. It can probably go a few days without hoeing again. Checking the bee garden, I noticed some St. John’s Wort has joined the party. We never know what we’ll get in the bee garden, and so I keep scanning it for more color whenever I’m out there.

The Checkers dahlia is in full form.

I expect we’ll begin to see more from the Fuzzy Wuzzy dahlia soon. So far, it has just this one flower, but more buds on the way.

In the greenhouse, there are several tennis-ball sized tomatoes and more that are smaller. I believe it’s going to be a good year for slicing tomatoes.

More flowers have appeared on the Stargazer Lily. You can also see the deer have been nibbling at it.

This is the calla lily I mentioned a few days ago. It is putting out another shoot where I’ve marked with a red arrow. If it blooms, it will have a pink flower. Maybe we’ll see something from it this year.

The cherries are deepening in color. These are probably still at least a week away.

The blueberries are driving me crazy, ripening one berry at a time, it seems.

Okay, so back inside, I went to work on the block for “Le Jardin.” It was close enough to being finished I spent a little extra time on it. It still needs borders. I’ll work on this today.

With that finished, a stitching emergency was imminent. My next stop was to head directly downstairs where I could trace the “Love Sampler” for this morning’s stitching pleasure. Phew! Close call on that stitching emergency.

Satisfied that my stitching self woud be safe with a new project, I was ready to spend some time finishing off the quilt binding. Sadie was my helper cat for this.

With her assistance, I turned the fourth and final corner, and then stitched it to the end.

There’s a wall downstairs where I hang some of the larger quilts for display, switching them out seasonally. I was ready for a change, and so we hung it there. It ends up at 55 x 78 inches.

And that was my goal for June’s

So I’ve finished with a day or two to spare.

After that, I had to decide whether to spend time in the sewing room or finish off the Hawksbill Honu. I decided I was still in a slow-stitching zone, and it seemed like a good way to spend the remainder of the day. It was a quick trip around for that binding, and I had myself a second finish. This ends up at 21 x 24 inches.

Okay, and that brought me to the end of my sewing day. 

For dinner last night, I tried a new recipe for Creamy Tuscan Lobster Pasta. This was very tasty. We liked it a lot.

Lobster tails have been on sale at our grocery store, and so it seemed like a good time to try this. I made just half the recipe. The lobster tails were small, and so I asked for three. Earlier in the day, I dropped those puppies in a pan of boiling water, cooked them, removed their shells, and then cut them up to use in the pasta. They were refrigerated until just at the end of finishing off the dish. 

I made it pretty much as written. The recipe would have you divide the tomatoes, cooking some at the beginning, and adding the rest toward the end. That didn’t work very well since most everything was already hot and plate-ready while the newest addition of tomatoes still needed to cook some. In the future, I’d just add them all at once. There didn’t seem to be any advantage to adding them later. It’s a keeper. I’ll make it again.

Okay, so today I’m going to be spending some time in the kitchen. Maybe as much as a year ago, I learned I could freeze egg yolks or egg whites that had been separated and not used. I’ve been freezing them in zip-lock bags, occasionally using one or two, here and there. Recently, though, with all the birthday creme brulees and Father’s Day Eggs Benedict, I’ve accumulated way too many frozen egg whites. 

It’s embarrassing to admit that I currently have 27 egg whites in my freezer. (By the way, egg yolks can also be frozen, and I’ve used frozen [thawed] egg yolks to make hollandaise sauce. You wouldn’t know the difference.) I’m going to try a couple of things today. In the process, I’m hoping to use all of the egg whites. I’ll say more about that in tomorrow’s post. Also, I’m going to make some more watermelon sorbet. There is still puree left from the last batch.

If there’s time for sewing, I’d like to get the borders sewn on the block for “Le Jardin.” Also, I’d like to make July’s aqua inverted star. That will probably take me to the end of the day. If there’s still time left, I can start working my way through my list of WIP’s. There’s always plenty to do to keep me busy.

All right, my friends. I hope y’all enjoy your Sunday. We’ve had some weird weather here, but it seems as if things will improve over the next week. I hope your summer weather is treating you well.

Slow Stitching Ahead

Good morning, my friends. It turned into a pretty good day yesterday. We were expecting quite a bit of rain. It was gray and cloudy when we left home, but dry. We had our breakfast, ran our errands, did our grocery shopping, and had it all put away before noon. And then, it turned into a pretty nice afternoon with sunshine for most of the day. Today we're expecting more rain. If the forecast is to be believed, we'll have thunder and lightning by this afternoon. We're keeping our fingers crossed we won't lose power. A word to the wise (that would be me): Get out and fill those bird feeders early. 

Before we left, I had some time to spend on the Birdbath block. This is stitching up pretty quickly. It's possible I could finish it this morning.

It'll need borders added to it, but that won't stop me from moving on to the "Short" project on my list. There are 21 projects on my short list. I asked Mr. Random which one I should do next.

Ahhhh...17. ♪♪It was a very good year.♫  And number 17 on my list happens to be this "Love Sampler" from Kathy Schmitz. 

I've done a couple of her samplers..."Liberty"

and "Bumble."

Her samplers are fun to stitch for the variety of embroidery stitches included. For this one, she would have me use a Valdani perle cotton floss. Since I still have plenty of DMC 321 (Christmas Red), I'll stick with that.

When we were finished with our morning's outing, I was able to spend some time on my quilt binding, turning the third corner. I should have no problem finishing this off today.

There was some decision-making to do in the sewing room. Happily, my cat was there to give his  purrfessional recommendations.

Having realized that "Tulip Time" was finished and ready for quilting, I cut a back and binding strips for that. Now it'll go on the list of small-quilts-to-be-quilted.

Mainly, I just wanted to get it out of the way so that I could sew the binding on "Hawksbill Honu." That'll be next after I finish the binding on "Seasons."

And then I turned my attention to finishing off this little "Bunny Bait" quilt. It started as a single quilt block 12-1/2 inches square. I wanted to give it a bright green border to start. It took me a long time to find fabrics I liked for this. For one thing, I was literally scraping the bottom of my green scrap bin to come up with a strip of this bright green long enough to make it around.

And then I searched and searched and searched for some scraps of the border fabric used in the quilt below.

I could not find a strip, a scrap, a thread, a morsel...nothing. I can only think I used every last square inch of it when I made this baby quilt for one of Matthew's friends. 

Okay...I give up. Moving on, I found this orange in my yardage. It has been in my stash positively forever. There was plenty for a border and for a back, and that's what I used.

And then I used the last little bit of that green stripe to cut binding strips. It ends up at 18-1/2 inches square. Now it too will head to the small-quilts-to-be-quilted pile.

Okay, so there are a lot of little finishes in my future. What's next? Well, when I finish the binding on "Seasons" and "Hawksbill Honu," it'll be time to start on the next quilt to be quilted. Next in line is "Ruth's Legacy." Already, I've spent some time smoothing and ironing the back, and it's draped over Eliza awaiting the arrival of my quilting needle. I'm thinking I'll use a colorful variegated thread for this, but I haven't made any decisions about it yet.

Also, reaching the last Saturday in June, I'm informed that July's color  for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge will be "aqua." I'll want to make July's block next. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

When that's finished, I'll be ready to return to my list of WIP's. First up will be to make five more blocks for the Stair Steps quilt, and that will give me a finished quilt top.

So there's plenty to keep me busy on the sewing front. I'm afraid my days of zero to-do's have come to an end. I need to do a little housework today, and I need to fill the bird feeders. Honestly, when it comes to granulated sugar, the hummingbirds are slurping us out of house and home. Lately, I'm buying a bag of sugar every time we go to the grocery store. Also, I haven't checked on things outside for a couple of days. The blueberries are getting very close to ripe, and we need to be paying attention to the cherries too. I'm hopeful we'll get to the cherries before the raccoons do.

Okay, so there's plenty to keep me busy. Slow-stitching on Le Jardin is next. Time to be on my way.