Busy Kitchen Day

Good morning, my friends. There was a lot to do in the kitchen yesterday, and so I went straight to work on that before I did anything else. First, I wanted to try another method with the Granola Cups. We really like these a lot for breakfast, and I think I've finally hit on the magic formula. This was my fourth attempt.

The first time I made them, I baked them in a 12-cup muffin tin. The recipe would have you take them directly from a 350-degree oven and put them into the refrigerator. And, I’m sorry, but that just sounds crazy. I didn’t refrigerate them. But when I tried to get them out of the muffin cups, they fell apart. I ended up spooning them into custard cups, and we enjoyed them that way.

Mike thought they needed a bigger container, and so I tried them again. This time, I used a 9-cup muffin tin, and I let them cool before putting them in the fridge for 20 minutes. They held together a little better, but I still spooned them into 1-cup ramekins. That worked okay.

But they use three egg whites, and I was accumulating frozen egg yolks at an alarming rate. So, on the third try, I used the egg whites that come in a carton from the grocery store. That didn’t work as well as a binder. The egg whites seemed watery, rather than gelatinous as they are fresh from the shell. They fell apart again. No worries, I just spooned them into ramekins.

This time, I figure, if they’re going to end up in ramekins anyway, why not just bake them that way? Thus…granola cup perfection. At least, I hope so. Fourth time’s a charm, right? We’ll have them for breakfast this morning, and I’ll tell you what I think.

As long as the oven was already hot, I baked a Dutch Apple Pie for Two for last night's dessert. We had it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream last night, and that was downright tasty. Mike says Dutch apple is his favorite pie. 

From there, I took some time to do some slow-stitching. This one is going fast. I spent some time on it in the morning, and then again while we watched the news last night. Probably I should start tracing the next one since there is probably only a day or two of work left on this one.

There was still one more thing to do in the kitchen. Next, I wanted to make some Tomato-Jalapeno Jam...my favorite condiment. My yield was four half-pints. The jar on the left went straight into the refrigerator. The other three were processed to make them shelf stable. I'm the only one who eats this, and so these should last me about a year. It's so good on eggs, but I especially love it on a fried egg sandwich.

When that was finished, I happened to look out the window to see Sadie lounging in the shade of the cherry tomato. When you're a black cat, it can be too hot in the bright sunshine. Besides, it’s important to purrtect your furs from skin cancer, and kitties do not like sunscreen.

It was time for lunch by then. After lunch, I quilted the final three embroidered Kittens blocks.

One more.

The back fabric is a busy design, and so it’s almost impossible to see the quilting there. Here’s a peek anyway.

Before stopping for the day, I threaded the machine with the variegated thread I chose earlier... 

And then spent a little time adjusting my tension. Also, I wanted to practice the meandering kitten paw motif planned for this. I’ve done this motif before. I’ll make the paws larger than what you see here. Mainly, I was adjusting the tension.

The blocks are offset from one another, and so there aren’t nice, unbroken lines of sashings. I’ll do something meandering, but I had to decide where to start. I left it needle down on the second row of sashing, and I’ll just see where my hands take me. I expect to spend at least three more days on this before it’s ready for binding.

Okay, and finally, I was able to get back to the lemurs. It doesn’t seem like much progress was made, but I worked on it for a full hour before I needed to stop.

I’d reached a point where the middle lemur’s ear will be, and so I had to decide where to go next. My rule of thumb is to start with the eyes, and so that’s what I did. You can see that I’ve created the right eye. The left eye is made, but not placed yet. When I get back to this today, I’ll focus on creating the face of the middle lemur, and then work upward and downward from there. As I’ve been working on this, I realized I started with the hardest part first. The left side of the image is a lot less complicated.

Today I must hoe the garden. It’s already gone a day longer than it should have. I’m trying a new recipe for a zucchini soup tonight because, you know…zucchini. We’ll try it out and see if we like it. If it’s a winner, I’ll link to it in tomorrow’s post. I’ll be making some copycat Red Lobster cheesy biscuits to go with the soup. I’ve made those before, and they were pretty darned tasty. Aside from those things, I should have plenty of time to spend on my sewing. I’m hoping to finish off the face of the middle lemur today. As always, there’s plenty to keep me busy. Have a good day, Everybody!

Lemme at the Lemurs

Good morning my friends. It was a productive day yesterday. There were about a half dozen simple to-do's on my list, and I had everything done by lunch time. After that, I could get back to my sewing with no interruptions...except to let cats in and out. If you know cats, then you know they are always, always, always on the wrong side of the door.

My first stop was the garden to check the beans. It was the first day I didn't have to redirect any of them. I harvested two more zucchinis and another tomato. The zinnias are putting out more flowers.

In this next photo, the new flowers on the right were in shadow, and so I used fill flash for this photo. It blew out the colors of the flowers on the left. Oh well. You get the idea.

Back inside, I went to work on the final Tiny Treasure. This is Tiny Treasure #72. It has stem stitch, stem fill, backstitch and basket weave stitch.

Now all 72 Tiny Treasures are complete. I know what I'm going to do with these, but they'll have to wait their turn behind a few other projects I want to work on first.

And then I quilted the next row of Kittens.

These go pretty fast.

Last one of the day.

Now I've turned the quilt upside down to keep the bulk on the table, and I'll start with the second row of kittens. Thankfully, this quilting can be done in any direction without having to turn my brain upside down.

From there, I was ready to take the first steps on the Lemurs project. Sadie was my emotional support cat as I started this scary project.

As a reminder, here's my original photograph.

When I'm doing animals, I like to start with the eyes, and it seemed the most logical place to start was with the lemur on the right. I'll work my way from right to left on this project. With the one-hour rule in place, I started a timer for one hour. I went just a few minutes over because I wanted to try to finish the whole face. Here's what I have for my first day's effort.

So far, so good. The biggest challenge with these is going to be finding the proper shades of tans and grays. The lemurs have both colors in their fur, and the gradations are barely visible. For some colors, I'm using just a tiny spot of a larger more colorful piece of fabric. Now that I've started, I feel less apprehensive about it, but no more confident. Hopefully, future efforts will help boost my confidence.

Today is going to be kind of messed up. This afternoon I’ll return to my dermatologist for some more work on a spot he biopsied on my shoulder. It’s a basal cell. Nothing to worry about, but it is bothersome to have to deal with it. That’s probably going to take up most of my afternoon. I need to make a stop at the grocery store afterward. Thankfully, we’ll be having leftovers for dinner. There might be time for some sewing today. Maybe not. For sure, I’ll be taking the first stitches on Block 11 for the Snowmen & Reindeer. 

This was a take-along project for our camping trip, and then I never even touched it.

If there’s other time for sewing, the Kittens quilt is still my top priority. If there’s any more time, I’ll get back to the lemurs. For all they cause me angst, once I’ve started on one of these quilts from a photo, it’s hard to walk away from it.

Okay then…busy day ahead. Time to get going. Stay out of trouble today, okay?

It's a Start

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy day yesterday, with a trek into town for a haircut. Fortunately, the haircut was finished fairly soon...one of the benefits of short hair. I was home early enough in the afternoon to be able to fit in the day's sewing goals. There was some time in the morning, and so I was able to get my morning chores done too. As for sewing, I stitched up Tiny Treasure #71. This one has stem stitch, straight stitch, and fern stitch.

And if you’re keeping score, then you might know that the Tiny Treasure I’ll stitch today will be the last one. Yahoo! They’ve been fun to stitch, but I’m excited to sew them into a finished quilt top. I have some ideas about this, and I think it’s going to be cute.

Okay, and I’m visiting the garden every morning to check on the green beans. Today there were some new sunflowers. This first one is called “Ring of Fire.” 

It’s one of my favorites. The bees are loving these.

This is pale  yellow with a yellow center. Unless I’m mistaken, I think another one will bloom eventually with a black center.

This one is the Infrared Mix.

Okay…insert trip into town and a haircut here. Also, I made a stop off at one of our higher-end supermarkets. They have a shrimp roll that I like for lunch, and so I usually stop when I’m over that way. Today, I was also curious to see if they sold dill heads for pickling. I’m not ready for any pickling yet, but I’d like to know where I can find the dill heads. And, yes. They did. That was something of a load off my mind. 

When I got home, I had some lunch, and then I got busy with my quilting. I’m outlining the embroidered kittens, and then filling in the background with a hooking meander. There wasn’t a lot of room in the backgound of this one.

When my embroidery outline doesn’t have a heavy stem-stitched edge (note the left side of the one below), I did a sort of free-motion zigzagging line. 

And last for the day was this one.

That was pretty quick. Probably I could have done another row, but I’ll stick with my original commitment of three blocks per day. Now I’ve moved the quilt down to the bottom row, and I’ll start with the middle block there today.

Also, I wanted to trace out a pattern for the lemurs. As a reminder, this is the image I'm working from.

The traced pattern has a lot of detail. It’s always hard to know how much to include. As I was thinking about this later in the evening, I realized that some of the smaller details can be done by filling in with thread. As I work on these, I put an “x” in the pieces I’ve already done. For this, if a piece is very small, or if it can be easily done at the end with thread, I’ll mark that section with a yellow highlighter. That will make it easy to find when I start doing the thread work. These are collage (applique) quilts, but the thread work is every bit as important as the fabric.

It seemed as good a time as any to sort through my fabrics to see what I thought could be useful. Sadie gave them the snuggleability test. I told her that art quilts don’t have to pass the snuggleability test. My naivete and simplemindedness saddened her. What is the purrpose of such an item if it is not to be snuggled? The whole world could be a huge snugglefest if only the pawpulous would develop an appurropriately loving cattitude. Sheesh. How many times do we have to go over this?

As I organized my supplies, she considered taking a nap. Snuggleability nearly always purrcedes a nap, and so napping characteristics are also carefully considered.

So I think I’ve worked up the nerve to start working with fabrics today. For this, I’m going to institute the one-hour rule, meaning, I’ll work on it for a minimum of one hour. I can go longer if I want to, but I give myself permission to quit at that point and work on something else. It keeps me from going crazy. 

For dinner last night, I tried this recipe for Pineapple Chicken. It was tasty and simple. Mike grilled the chicken and the pineapple slices, but they could also be cooked on a grill pan. The chicken is marinated in a combination of seasonings, pineapple juice, and soy sauce. Prior to adding the chicken, ome of the marinade is set aside and then cornstarch added at the end to create a glaze. The glaze really makes the dish. We liked it. I served it with jasmine rice.

Our grocery store has been packaging different meats in $5 packages. It’s something different each time we go. This was one of those. For our $5, we were able to score four of these thin-cut chicken cutlets, and those worked well in this dish.

Smitty helped me write this post. I'd say he helped me with the editing, but you can see that he was asleep on the job. It happens when you're an old man cat. (Don't tell him I said he was an "old man.")

There are several things on the day's agenda. I’ll stitch up the last Tiny Treasure. My morning check-in with the green beans has been a pleasant way to start the day, and so I’ll do that too. There is a list of quick chores to do, but I think I’ll have plenty of time for sewing. I’m thinking I need to pick a day to get outside and pull some weeds. It’s not my favorite thing to do, but the movement would do me some good. (I swear I’m going to get back to my workouts…someday. Procrastination. Doncha love it?)

Okay, so I have a list of things to do…time to start checking them off.  Have a good day, Everybody!

Two Scary Starts

Good morning, my friends. Camping is fun. Getting back to normal is also fun. We had grocery shopping to do yesterday, but we were finished and home before noon. Earlier, I had time to stitch up Tiny Treasure #70. This one has stem stitch, stem fill, lazy daisy, and fishbone stitches.

The garden is looking good. The green beans are getting a once-over every morning as I train them to climb their poles. They’re getting the hang of it, and some are nearly to where the poles come together at the top. There are a few tendrils still too short to reach the pole, but everyone seems to have gotten the idea that they’re not supposed to wrap themselves around the protective fencing.

When I was able to get to my sewing, I did the top-stitching for the Blueberries block. 

Here are the 14 blocks I have for this quilt so far. There are two to go. When it gets my attention next time, I’ll finish the remaining blocks, and then ready it to be sewn into a finished quilt top.

Upstairs at the quilting machine, I turned my attention to setting up “Kittens” for quilting. Starting a new quilting project always makes me a little nervous. I have some ideas about quilting this. Probably I’ll outline the embroidery and then do some sort of simple filler in the background. In the borders and sashings, I have an idea for a specialty motif. So, there’s nothing fancy going on here, but I’m still apprehensive about getting started.

I’m going to continue with the same bobbin already in the machine from my last project.

It’s a 50-weight So Fine thread from Superior Threads. It behaved well on my last project, and so I’ll just keep it going.

For the embroidered blocks, I’ll ust a white thread. I don’t want to distract from the embroidery with another color or anything fancy. Keeping it simple. Plain vanilla.

It’s another 50-weight So Fine thread. 

For the borders and sashings, I wanted a variegated thread that would include the many colors seen in the fabric. The one pictured below did that better than anything else I had available.

It’s another 50-weight Valdani thread. The Valdani threads come in little spool-sized zip-lock bags. (As always, thank you, Ila.)

Okay, and then I threaded the machine, checked my tension, and left it needle-down at the first kitten. There are four rows of three embroidered blocks each. My goal will be to do three blocks each day before moving on to the borders and sashings. If I can stick with that goal, it should be ready for binding in about a week.

Okay, and that took me to the super scary part of my day. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m going to attempt to do an art quilt of some lemurs. This is a photo I took when we saw them at a Madagascar exhibit at the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, Florida. And let me just say that the Florida Aquarium is well worth a visit if you ever find yourself near Tampa. It was the aquarium that hooked us on aquariums (aquaria?) in general. When we’re traveling, we’ll never miss a nearby aquarium, and we became scuba divers so that we could see the really big aquarium of our planet.

So I spent some time digging through my stash, looking for appropriate fabrics. While I was at it, I reminded myself that sometimes the wrong side of the fabric is the best choice. I’m not sure yet what to do about that bland background, but I pulled some fabrics I thought had potential. Now the photograph is taped to the table, and there is a piece of plastic sheeting taped over the top. The tape prevents anything from shifting. Today, I’m hoping to trace all the elements and details onto the plastic sheeting creating a pattern for myself. For this I’ll use a fine point Sharpie. It’s the only thing that will write on the plastic without smearing. And there, I gave myself a couple of attagirls for not letting my anxiety get in the way of getting started. 

Here’s the thing: If you’ve been reading for a while, then you know I’ve made several of these art quilts from photographs. For some of them, it took me years to work up the nerve just to get started. (Now that I think of it, this is one of the ones I’ve waited years to start.) And, knock on wood, so far I’ve not attempted any that made me decide to give up. The “Tin Cup” quilt was among the most challenging. When I was able to complete it successfully, it boosted my confidence. Still, each time I try one of these, it is with considerable angst that this could be the one to defeat me. And as I’m writing those words, I’m asking myself, so what? Yeah, really. It’s supposed to be fun. Okay…shaking it off. [Straightens posture.] Thanks, you guys. It always helps when we can have these little chats.

Okay, and so I promised you some kitty news. There was no kitty help in the sewing room, although some loud purring would have gone a long way to calm my nerves. You know how when you’re too warm under the covers, but it’s too cold not to have them, and so you stick one foot out to cool off? (Maybe I’m the only one who does that, but I’m betting you do it too.) So anyway, Sadie, being a black cat, is too hot in the sun. But it’s not warm enough to just choose a shady spot. She does the opposite. She keeps most of her body in the shade, and just puts her paws out to soak up the sun’s rays.

Smitty purrfers the full-face sunbath. 

Okay, so I’m getting a haircut today, which will cut into my afternoon. There might not be that much time for sewing today. If there is, I’ll start with the quilting. Getting my backlog of quilts finished up is my highest priority right now. If there’s time to work on the lemurs, I’ll do that too. It seems doubtful, but not impossible.

Have a good day, Everybody! Try to stay cool.