A Feel Good Day

Good morning, my friends. It was another no-sewing day, but it was a good day just the same. Matthew and I met up to walk the Eastbank Esplanade in downtown Portland. The weather was perfect. It was also a day for testing out the capabilities of my new camera, starting with the morning's sunrise.

Matthew and I walked this same route back in April. It’s a distance of just under four miles. Back then, I took a lot more pictures of the landscape, the bridges, and some of the buildings. The pictures from yesterday's walk were mostly of the blooming things kind. If you want to see more pictures of the Portland waterfront, you can find my April post right here. If you look at those photos, the first thing you'll notice is that the graffiti was cleaned off the sign below.

Somehow my camera got into a weird setting. Without realizing it, it was taking a burst of three photos at a time when I had it set to "P" (program mode). Looking at the screen, it looked as if the photo was fine, and the burst of three shutter clicks was simply an annoying sound. I'd spent some time in the morning trying to figure it out, but to no avail. As it turns out, it actually was taking three photos in rapid succession. It’s just slightly visible in the photo below. I'll say more about it toward the end of this post.

Some more blooming things. I think these are a kind of gaillardia.

Below, you can see the problem with the three photos in a single frame a little bit too. But I love the gaillardia, and so I included this photo, even if it doesn’t appear in sharp focus.

Eventually, I set the camera in "iA" mode (intelligent auto). It got rid of the three shutter burst, and in fact, was taking just one photo. I'm glad I made the switch because all of my photos might have been ruined otherwise. These are sweet peas.

What are these? Bluebells?

This looks like a poppy. It was large…about the size of my palm.

This is a hydrangea.

Here, we crossed over the Steel Bridge. This is the Willamette River looking south. The next bridge you see is the Burnside Bridge. We’ll walk under it in a few minutes.

Oh…and here we are already. The Portland Saturday Market has been a thing for as long as we’ve lived in Oregon. I’ve actually only attended once when a friend visited some years ago. It’s essentially a craft fair.

It’s set up here under the Burnside Bridge every Saturday, March through December. It looks a little spooky when it’s all empty like this.

We’d walked about 2/3 our distance when we reached this row of shops and restaurants next to the harbor. We decided to get a bagel and something to drink. It was warm, and we needed some hydration.

There were lots of different flavors of bagels and schmeres to choose from. We each chose a plain bagle, toasted. Matt had plain cream cheese on his. Mine was a pesto cream cheese. If we’d been thinking, we might have chosen one of those giant cookies on the left.

We each had a watermelon lemonade and then sat outside to eat and chat. It was a nice interlude in a shady spot. We had a view of the harbor from there.

Walking on, we met a contingent of Canada geese. When Trump claims Portland is a war zone, this is what he’s talking about. Canada is attacking…with geese. Sorry, Canada. We shall overcome. Have you heard about our army of crows?

Okay, and after our bagels and lemonade, we had about another mile to walk to get back to where I’d parked. Matthew rode his electric skateboard to our meet-up, but I gave him a ride home. After I dropped him off, I made my way to one of Portland’s two Ronald McDonald houses. 

My goodness, how this hospital has grown. More than 30 years ago, I did an internship at Legacy Emanual Hospital for my social work studies. It’s been a long time since I’ve returned to the area, but it is unrecognizable. The Ronald McDonald house in the image above is a new structure. When I approached the door, I had to push a button on an intercom to speak to the front desk. Without speaking, the doors opened, and I dropped off the quilts. They were gratefully received, and I was grateful to find a place for donating them. For me, the giving away of quilts is the best part of making them.

Okay, so let’s talk about this camera issue. When I took it out of the box the day before, I turned the dial to the “iA” (intelligent auto) setting. At some point, I put it in “P” (program) mode so that I could change one of the settings. It was still working fine. Then, that night, while I sat in bed, I perused the owner’s manual and made some changes to some of the settings. Then, when I woke up yesterday morning and took the sunrise photo, I noticed it was doing this three-click burst. The pictures looked fine, and so I tried to figure out how to turn it off. I couldn’t. And so it was disappointing when I took the pictures off the camera after our walk and found several of them that looked like the images below.

Oy. And I couldn’t figure it out. In frustration, I restored the camera to its factory default settings. (Despite resetting it, the time and date were left intact.) Now it’s working fine. As an experiment, Mike typed a question into his new AI chat window…part of the Edge browser…explaining the problem and including the pictures above. Within seconds, AI came up with a few solutions. I believe the first solution it offered was probably correct, but I’d already fixed the problem myself. In any case, if I have more problems with the camera, I know how to get some input about fixing it.

Okay, and so two no-sewing days in a row has Smitty completely demoralized. He flopped on my desk, bored out of his kitty mind.

We’ll take care of that today. First, though, it’s a grocery shopping day. It’s senior discount day, which usually saves us a few bucks. Our list is relatively short, and so I expect we’ll be home before noon. If I’m remembering right, there is one easy housekeeping chore on the calendar. Otherwise, I can get back to my sewing. I want to get the binding sewn on Ruth’s Legacy, and then I want to figure out if I have enough fabric to make the Butterfly Garden project as I’ve envisioned it. Probably I have plenty, but I’ll sleep better if I do the math and make certain of it.

There are leftovers for dinner tonight, and so I think I can safely say that nothing will get between me and my sewing this afternoon. It’s going to be warm, and my basement sewing room will be cool. It sounds pretty good right now. Have a good day, Everybody. Try to stay cool.

Picture Perfect

Good morning, my friends. It was kind of a mish-mash of a day. Things seemed out of order, and not everything was accomplished. It hardly matters. My calendar is flexible. 

The only sewing I did yesterday was slow sewing. I finished the upper right corner section, and now I’ve moved my hoop down to capture the “LOVE” section.

The bird feeders were empty, and I wanted to check on the vegetable garden. My sun-dappled cat was already lounging outside when I made my way to the garden.

Since I wasn’t going to get another chance to hoe the garden until Wednesday, I decided it needed to be done. That meant delaying the rest of the cherries until after lunch, but they’re done now. That’s all I’ll do with them this year. Below are 7 pints of cherries in simple syrup. There was another pint, but I can only fit 7 in my canner. I decided to just refrigerate the one remaining. It’s just a good excuse to eat that one right away.

Okay, and when the canning was finished, a delivery arrived. I’ve been in the market for a new camera. My old Panasonic got messed up on one of our trips when it got some fine grain sand into the telescoping lens mechanism. I had it repaired, but it hasn’t worked right since. For the past several months I’ve been using an old Nikon Coolpix, but I’ve never been happy with it. It takes terrible close-up shots. And all of that to say I’ve been looking for a good point and shoot camera. They seem terribly expensive right now…tariffs, you know. In any case, I finally settled on this Panasonic LUMIX FZ80D. It’s a larger camera than I wanted, but it still falls into the point and shoot category. It’s a fixed lens camera, and it works very much like my previous Panasonic camera

Taking it out of the box, I turned it on. It barely had any battery power, but enough for a short time. It prompted me to set the date, time, and location. It went through a few more prompts, but I simply turned to my right from where I was sitting and took this shot. Sadie was napping there on the geriatric kitty pole.

So I plugged it in and charged the battery for a bit. Then, I took it outside and took some random shots. It has a nice grip that felt good in my hand. I was standing a distance back for this shot of the purple hydrangea…maybe 15 feet away. I wanted to see how well the zoom function worked.

From the same spot, I zoomed in on this one flower. Pretty sharp.

Walking around to the front of the house, I was about 30 yards from the bird feeder. The feeder happened to be in shadow at the time. Still, it was able to get a pretty sharp image of the goldfinch.

As I stood there, this robin landed on the vegetable garden fence. Here, I was standing about 50 yards away. I’m pretty happy with the detail in the bird’s feathers and feet.

Then I zoomed in closer, which puts me into the digital zoom mode. It’s not as sharp, but not too bad either.

And then…what the heck, here’s a shot of the corn.

Turning a little to my left, these are the beans. The sprinkler was running, making things kind of bright.

So I turned down the exposure compensation. It’s not so different at this setting…maybe a little less glare. Mainly, I was just testing the different functions to see if they worked as expected.

Walking back toward the house, I stopped to get this Shasta daisy. It was breezy and it was blowing back and forth. Still, it did a pretty good job with this close-up. My Nikon camera would have produced a white blur.

Here’s our friend the Edda clematis, still blooming away. The next three shots were taken zooming in closer and closer to check its close-up capability.

Closer.

Even closer. I’m pretty happy with how these shots turned out.

Walking across to the dahlias, I took a close-up of the Fuzzy Wuzzy dahlia.

This one was for show and tell. It’s our crazy calla lily. It has put up another new leaf, and to the left, another shoot. Maybe we’ll see a flower eventually. It’s pretty when it blooms.

Finally…these petunias. They were along the way as I walked back to the house, and so I took their picture. No other reason.

Okay, so everything seems to be working properly, and I’m happy with the close-up capability. I spent some time reading through the manual last night. It has some “scene” settings I’d like to experiment with, but that will have to wait a day or two. Today Matthew and I are meeting up for our walk postponed from last week. I’m also dropping some donation quilts off, and I expect all of that will take up most of my day. When I can get back to my sewing, I want to sew the binding on Ruth’s Legacy, and then spend some time looking at the new project I have in the wings…the Butterfly Garden.

Speaking of the Butterfly Garden project, my friend, “Crew at Cabin Central,” made a comment yesterday that motivated me to do a reverse image search for this quilt pictured in yesterday’s post. I can’t remember where or when I saw this picture, but this is the quilt I’m going to make.

With a reverse image search, I was able to find the original pattern. The pattern is called “Arcade,” and it can be purchased here. The original pattern is for a lap-sized quilt. I’ll be making mine larger than that.

Okay, so if I’m going to have time for slow-stitching before I leave, then I must get going on it. I’m looking forward to seeing Matthew, and it’ll be a good opportunity to give my new camera a workout. I’m hoping to have some good pictures to show tomorrow.

Pitty Party

Good morning, my friends. Hopefully, nobody lost any fingers in yesterday's Fourth of July festivities. True story:  My brother once tried to put out a Roman candle by sticking it into the sand. Just one problem: He had the burning end in his hand and stuck the unlit end in the sand. Meanwhile, the thing shot a fireball right into the palm of his hand. It was a serious injury that had his hand out of commission for quite some time. So...hopefully, none of you did anything like that yesterday. 

We had a quiet day. No plans, and leftovers for dinner. I started the day weighing out the cherries we'd picked the day before. As it turned out, I needed four cups more for the cherry crisp I wanted to bake, and so we spent a short time collecting more cherries. And then...pitting. This is the most time-consuming part of working with cherries.

So, I started out by baking the Cast Iron Skillet Cherry Crisp. We had that with a scoop of vanilla ice cream last night. Tasty.

While that was baking, I pitted 8 lbs. of cherries and turned them into Sweet Cherry Pie Filling. My yield was 9 pints. Sadly a tenth jar broke in the canner…one assumes from thermal shock. The jars were warm when I put them into the boiling water bath, but apparently not warm enough. It didn’t make too much of a mess, and so it was more a disappointment than anything else. 

It was after lunch time by then. I had some lunch and a short nap, and then I went to work quilting the border for Ruth’s Legacy.

And now, the quilting is finished. It’s ready for binding.

Here’s a peek at the back.

And then there was plenty of time left to sew together the final block for the Stair Steps quilt. Hallelujah!

Then I sewed all five blocks into a row.

Smitty helped me lay the rest of the quilt out flat…

And I could sew the final row to the bottom of the quilt. Yay! It’s a huge quilt at 81 x 97 inches. Now that it’s all sewn together, it’s easier to see the diagonal strips of color.

It still needs a back. I haven’t looked through my stash, but I’m reasonably certain I’ll need to go shopping for this. Probably, I’ll wait until the last Saturday of the month. There’s a quilt shop about an hour south of me that will give 25% off backing fabric if you bring in a finished quilt top. It’s been a while since I’ve visited a quilt shop. Looking for a backing fabric seems like a good reason to go.

Having the Stair Steps quilt top finished means a slot has opened up on my WIPs dance card. The quilt pictured below will be added to the list. I mentioned this in an earlier post. Somewhere I saw this image. I don’t know where or when. I don’t even know the name of the pattern.

It inspired me to dig out the two fabrics on either side of the image below. These are such pretty fabrics, but I’ve struggled to find a way to use them. They are large scale fabrics, and so they need a pattern that will show off the design. The green was purchased a month or two ago with this quilt in mind. All I have is a picture…no pattern…and I’ve come up with my own measurements for sewing the blocks together. 

Next, I’ll need to look at how much fabric I have to be certain I have enough. I have in mind to use the butterfly fabric (on the left) where the large square is framed in light blue and black. I’ll use the green where the light blue appears. In the blocks with four squares and the black +, I’ll use the leaf fabric where the mottled blue appears. Possibly I’ll have to make some adjustments if my fabrics won’t stretch far enough, but I’m still working that part out. This project will be called “Butterfly Garden.” I’m still deciding whether to make the blocks one or two rows at a time. It’ll depend on how long it takes.

So, I haven’t decided whether to start on the new project now, or whether to wait until my list of WIPs comes around again. By rights, I should be making another row of blocks for the Jawbreakers quilt below. Possibly I’ll let the new project take cuts ahead of it. High drama…I know.

Okay so yesterday’s comings and goings took care of the hardest parts of things. Finishing off the final block for Stair Steps was the hardest part of that project. When I could sew the blocks into a row and finish the quilt top, it felt like I was getting a new lease on life. Also, I’ve pitted most of the cherries. Yesterday’s batch probably worked out to about ten pounds. Today I’ll make some Cherries in Simple Syrup. It’s the main ingredient in my favorite cherry cobbler. There are only six pounds to pit today, and the recipe is an easy one. Probably I’ll hoe the garden, and that should still leave plenty of time for sewing.

So that’s it from this end. Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend, Everybody.