Shades of Gray

Good morning, my friends. There were plenty of distractions yesterday, but I managed to make some progress on all fronts. We left early to take the truck into the shop to have its air conditioner repaired. It wasn't finished by day's end, and so I expect we'll pick it up sometime today. Also on today's agenda is to get my hair cut and colored. It needs it badly. I hate sitting for that process of coloring, but I'll be glad to get my overgrown mop tamed.

When we got home from taking the truck in, I spent some time with my slow stitching. I took the first stitches on the second of two sections for Block 6 of the Raggedy & Friends project.

It shouldn't take too long to stitch, which is good because I'm antsy to get started on the Sashiko piece. When we checked the mail yesterday, we found the floss I'd been waiting for had been delivered. These were the colors I was waiting for.

I've added them to some from my own stash, and so I now have about every shade of gray available. I won't use all of these, but I'm confident I have whatever colors I'll need to complete my project. And now that I have the floss, I'm excited to get started on it.

Okay, so I was ready to start quilting the sashing on the Stitching Wisdom quilt. I finally settled on an upsy-downsy loopity-boopity design. (Technical quilting terms. Try to keep up.) I wanted to do something that could cover the full width of the quilt without cutting thread, but I also wanted to make an "X" in those cornerstones. 

With this design I can go one direction on the "X" when I do the horizontal sashing. There were five rows of horizontal sashing.

That was pretty easy, and so I decided to do the vertical sashing too. In the image below, you can see that I went the other direction with the "X" to complete it.

Now only the two outer borders remain. Probably, I'll do the narrow one today and save the wider one for tomorrow. It's hard to see the quilting, but I'm hoping you can get an idea how it's looking in the image below.

Same goes for the back...hard to see much there.

After lunch, I went to work sewing together the Scrappy Plus blocks. I had one row done and was working on the second when Matthew called.

He and I had a long chat. When we hung up, I finished the second row and then sewed the two together.

It was getting late in the day, and I'd kind of lost my momentum by then. If there's time, I'll get back to this today. There are three more rows to do.

I'm not sure how much time there will be for sewing today. It seems like I'm going to be doing a lot of running around. I have a couple of errands to do while I'm out, and sewing might have to take a back seat today. There's always time for slow-stitching, though. I have some time before I need to leave this morning, and so I'll spend some time on that. 

Before I go, I wanted to tell you about this new breakfast we've been eating. The idea for this came from the book we've been following for the Mediterranean diet. I mentioned the book in an earlier post, I'm not necessarily recommending the book. So far, the recipes I've found there have been kind of boring. They are low in calories and high in all the good stuff recommended for this diet, but that's about the best I can say for it. Nevertheless, I tried this breakfast combination that we both really like. The way you see it here, it's about 200 calories. It's filling, and high enough in protein that it holds us until lunch. 

So what is it? Well, thanks for asking. It's 3/4 cup of Greek yogurt with a chunked up fresh peach and 2 tablespoons of slivered almonds. The almonds give it a nice crunch.

The recipe in the book had me using plain Greek yogurt with a teaspoon of honey. And even with the honey, plain yogurt is pretty flavorless. We like the Dannon Light & Fit Vanilla Greek yogurt, and it actually has fewer calories. Also, the recipe in the book used blueberries and walnuts. And, honestly, you could use any fruit and any nut here. Peaches are good right now, and so I'm using them. Also, we like the slivered almonds better than the walnuts. So if you're looking for a tasty, low calorie, easy-to-make breakfast, this is worth a try.

The weather is cooling off day by day. All the heat advisories have been canceled. It was cool enough to eat outside last night, and then we opened the windows when we went to bed.  Today's sky is pretty hazy, and that helps to keep it cool. On the other hand, the haze is from the so-called Flat Fire currently burning in Central Oregon. The fire is only about 2 miles from Sisters, Oregon, and it would be a shame if Sisters were to burn. Fingers crossed the weather will turn and give the firefighters (and Sisters) a break.

Starting Over

Good morning, my friends. There was a red sky this morning. I happen to know it isn't because a storm is coming. I know this because Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding Willamette Valley are under the first ever extreme heat advisory. Hot weather will arrive tomorrow. I suspect what we're seeing in our red sky is from wildfire smoke.

Smitty doesn't mind the heat. He soaks it up when the sun shines through the sliding glass door in the afternoons. Until he gets too hot. Then he moves to the shade to cool off, then back to the sun to soak it up. It's important to get your Vitamin D. That's "D" for "Daring" if you must know.

Sadie was my helper cat in the sewing room yesterday.

With her help, I finished off August's kitten in a teacup. I made the mistake of cutting the end of his tail from white fabric. It blends in too much with the background fabric.

It kind of makes it look as if the cat was too helpful when I was cutting and measuring. We have a few close calls around here most every sewing day.

So I laid those pieces side by side and it seemed an easy enough fix. I was able to switch out that piece in about five minutes, and then I sewed the whole thing together.

Here are the six blocks I have for this quilt so far.

So I still need to make blocks for June and July. For all I've whined about this pattern, August's block went together without too much trouble. I think I've made all the mistakes I can possibly make with these blocks, and my notes and highlighting helped when I sewed this one together. It probably has given me a fool's confidence that I can sew a second one together without feeling a need to use my rotary cutter to slit my own throat. Before I turned out the lights for the day, I chose fabrics for July's kitten, and I'll get started on that today.

Now let's talk about the thing I'm starting over. I've been showing you peeks of my "Sashiko" project. It's been going okay, but I've had doubts about whether its actually working. I was intending to continue on to the bitter end, and then just hope that it works. Toward the end of the day, I saw something that caused me to change my mind about it. Knowing I'm starting over, I can show you my first idea. I was going to try to do this image of Denali from our Alaska trip using different shades of blues and grays. Here's the original image.

To give myself some lines to follow, I printed it on Sticky Fabri-Solvy and then stuck it to the white background. Then, I used the lines in the photo to begin outlining the mountain peaks in different colors. With the photo there, it's hard to know if the stitching will make sense once I've washed away the Sticky Fabri-Solvy.

I could look at the back, and hmmm....it's still hard to tell. Having the threads buried and knots showing, I wasn't convinced this was going to work.

Before dinner I saw something that gave me more confidence I could pull it off. By the time we went to bed last night, I'd decided to start again. I might still finish this Denali piece eventually, but for this "Sashiko" project, I'm going in a different direction. So far, all I have is a picture. I haven't yet decided the best way to approach this. Here's your peek at my new picture.

Probably I'll start this today or tomorrow, but I need to think about how to get started. Of course, I'll keep tantalizing you with peeks as I go.

Last night's dinner was a recipe I'd saved from our Cooking Light Diet days. This recipe is in keeping with our new Mediterranean Diet goals. It was so tasty, I wanted to share it. These are Dried Cherry-Toasted Almond Turkey Salad Sandwiches. I didn't take a picture of mine, but this is the picture from the recipe. These were delicious, and so simple to make.

First off, I used one of the rotisserie chickens from the grocery store, so mine is actually a chicken salad sandwich. Also, we had a hard time finding pita bread in the grocery store. As we stood looking at the breads, we found them on the bottom shelf. (And who ever looks there?) So I ended up with these, but then realized I'd selected the wrong thing when I opened them up. These are "Greek Style" pitas. They're a flat bread. Some people might call it Naan.

So with that kind of bread, I ended up making them sort of like a Greek taco. I spread the sandwich filling on just half the bread and then folded it over. If you microwave it for about 15 seconds, it's nicely pliable, and it folded over without breaking. Then, I held my hand over it and smushed it just a little bit, and that made the folded over side stick to the filling. It was a tidy little package for picking up and eating. The celery and toasted almonds give it a nice little crunch, and the golden raisins and dried cherries gave it a good flavor. I'll definitely make these again. For now, we have leftovers for lunch.

And as long as we're talking about cooking, I might as well say that I'm making two salads this morning. Erik and Mae are hosting a backyard barbecue today. Matthew will be there as well. It'll be our first family get-together since arriving home. I'm so looking forward to seeing the kids. Erik is using one of his many Weber barbecues to make Pad Thai.

One of his barbecues has a wok attachment. It sounds fun AND delicious to me.

My contribution will be an Asian Coleslaw and a Snow Pea Salad. I'll take pictures and share the recipes in tomorrow's post.

Also today, I'll be picking another bucket o' weeds. Yesterday's bucket nearly laid me low. For whatever reason, I was completely wiped out after that. My knees were killing me, and so I came inside and iced my knees, had some lunch, and then took a nap. For the amount of effort, I was overly tired. Honestly, I don't have an explanation for that, and so I'm hoping it'll go a little easier on my body today. 

With all of that going on, I'm only hoping to have some time in the sewing room today. Just now it's time for some breakfast, and then I'll get busy with my slow-stitching. It's going to be a good day. I hope you have a good day planned for yourselves.

My Favorite Things

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing fast this morning. We have to drive into town to get the windshield replaced on Mike's truck. Yes, the windshield. Do you remember the windshield episode...the one where we weren't even two hours on our way for our trip to Alaska when a gravel truck threw a rock and broke our windshield? Oh yeah...that was fun...and annoying.

The crack spread out and made new ones during our trip until there was very little space on my side of the windshield that wasn't obscured by cracks. Fortunately, the driver's side was barely affected. I said back then that if it was the worst thing to happen on that trip, we'd be happy campers. In retrospect...it really was the worst thing that happened. There were plenty of close calls, but this was the worst. We didn't get caught in any wildfires. We didn't get inundated by any tsunamis. We didn't get eaten by grizzlies...or orcas. I'll say the mosquitos had a field day, but we both survived. So a broken windshield seems a minor inconvenience. Until this morning when it means I have to write fast, and I'll miss my morning slow-stitching. Oh well.

So backing up to yesterday, I had a day with all my favorite things: cooking, canning, baking, stitching, sewing, and cats. First, I restocked the pantry with my favorite Small Batch Tomato-Jalapeno Jam.

My yield was 3-3/4 pints. That should keep me in tomato jam for a couple of months. Happily, this only takes two pounds of Roma tomatoes, and so I can make it even in the off season.

Next, I made some substitutions to the recipe for Healthy Applesauce Oat Muffins to make it more compliant with our new Mediterranean diet guidelines. We each had one for our pre-breakfast snack this morning, and they turned out great with the substitutions. (I always worry about moisture and texture when I go mucking around with things.)

So, I linked to the original recipe back there. These were my substitutions:

for the milk, I used buttermilk

for the whole egg, I used two egg whites

for the butter, I used 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil

for the sugar, I used honey

Okay, and while those were baking, I finished off the 10th embroidered block for the Raggedy & Friends project.

The Raggedy & Friends project was my take-along project for our trip. Now that we're home, I'll put it into the regular rotation with my other embroidery projects. Next up, I'll be working on the 11th block for Grandpa's Bridges. This was another take-along project at one time. All the designs were printed onto Sticky Fabri-Solvy, and all the backgrounds were cut. All I had to do was stick the newest one to its background, and voila! It's ready for stitching.

While I was working on that, I was thinking about the next art quilt for The Endeavourers art quilt group. I didn't participate in the most recent reveal for August since we were traveling much of the time. Now the new prompt has been announced. This time around, we'll be doing "Sashiko." 

When a new prompt is announced, it sets my mind reeling with possibilities. After spending some time thinking about it and perusing Pinterest, I believe I know what I'm going to do. After I had the block above ready for stitching, I spent some time preparing a "pattern" for my Sashiko project. As you might guess, it will be mostly hand-stitched. Here's your peek:

When I'd taken that as far as I could, I went back to work on the Raggedy blocks. I needed to cut and piece the fourth block. It was Smitty's turn to be my helping cat yesterday. He took one look at the mess on my work table and uttered a big sigh-meow.

It was good he took a turn because poor Sadie was 'zhausted after three days of sewing.

With Smitty's help, I finished the fourth block.

Here are the four blocks I have for this quilt so far.

With the 10th embroidered section completed, I could go on and make the fifth block, but I'm getting kind of tired of working on this. It'll go into the regular WIPs rotation now, and I'll complete the pieced blocks as I come to them. For now, completing the first four blocks was my goal for August's

I'll link up there when the party starts at the end of the month.

Now I'll move on to the next project that requires catching up...the Kittens in Teacups. These are the blocks I have for this project so far. 

I've completed the blocks through May. To catch up, I'll need to complete June, July, and August. Since we're in the month of August, I'll start with August's aqua block. And, as you might know, these blocks drive me crazy. The pattern is poorly written and difficult to follow. So, I'll probably stick with August's block for the time being. June and July will get finished as I'm able to tolerate the frustration.

Okay, so I said I was writing fast, and I'm afraid that's all the time I have for our chat this morning. It'll be good to have the windshield repaired. In the bargain, Mike is taking me out to breakfast for my trouble. We're hoping we can sneak into McDonald's while they're still serving breakfast for our beloved Egg McMuffins. If not, we'll do something else. Yeah...that Mike...he's a big spender.

More Raggedy Blocks

Good morning, my friends. Our grocery shopping is done for the week. I'm happy to report we found everything we were looking for. It was a pleasure (if grocery shopping can be pleasurable) to be back in our "regular" store. We also picked up some bird seed to feed the hungry birds. So everyone is well stocked with food now...even the kitties.

Back home, I went back to work on the four Raggedy & Friends blocks I'm making. Sadie came ready to work. She and Smitty have negotiated some kind of shift assignment, and she was on duty again yesterday for the third day in a row. You'll never find a better sewing helper.

She helped me with my cutting accuracy.

And with her help, I cut all the pieces for the second block...

And then I sewed it together.

Here are the two blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Sadie held down the finished blocks while I went to work on the third one.

The embroidered sections were trimmed to size.

When I told Sadie we still needed to do more cutting, she fell over in a dead heap.

That was okay. I cut the pieces for the third block without her help.

And then I sewed it together.

And that makes up the top row of blocks. I won't sew these together until they're all finished.

It was getting late in the day by then, but I decided to trim the embroidered sections for the fourth block. The larger of the two worked out fine. 

This one was supposed to be 4-1/2 inches x 8-1/2 inches. It didn't have enough background fabric to trim it to the proper size. I had enough height, but not enough width. So...what to do? What to do?

Well, this section will end up at the outer edge of the block. With the way this is pieced, I decided to add a mercy strip of color to the left edge. That should work out fine, and no one will be the wiser.

Except for you guys, of course. Shhhhh....Don't tell anybody, okay? 

So all that cutting and trimming has activated the tendonitis I sometimes get in my wrist. It feels better this morning than it did when I went to bed last night. Nevertheless, I may take a day off from sewing today. There's plenty of other stuff to keep me busy. I'd like to get back to the weeding, since I didn't do any yesterday. It rained last night, and we're expecting more showers today. Still, I think I can walk around and pull a bucket of tall weeds...the ones that won't require me sitting on the wet ground.

Also, I want to bake some muffins. As I've mentioned, Mike and I have taken to eating a snack before breakfast. Problem is, we also started the Mediterranean Diet this week. You might recall a few years ago we had some success following the Cooking Light Diet. I was sad when the magazine ceased publication and discontinued its diet app/website. We didn't gain a lot of weight on our trip, but I knew we'd gain some. So before we even left for Alaska, I was already plotting our new weight-loss/maintenance strategy. When we returned home, I purchased this book:

I've been doing some reading, both in the book and online. You're probably already familiar with the Mediterranean Diet. It's been around and recommended for years. I'm only just now learning more about it. In a nutshell it's a dietary pattern based on the traditional foods consumed in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. It emphasizes fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. It encourages the use of healthy fats, such as olive oil, fish, and avocado. It suggests limiting the intake of animal products and encourages moderate consumption of lean meats, poultry, eggs, and dairy. It's recommended by doctors for its health benefits, including reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. 

What I like about it is that no foods are off-limits, and it encourages healthy eating rather than deprivation. Calorie-counting is not emphasized. Nevertheless, for weight loss, we're counting calories, and following the guidelines for keeping our foods low in fat and low in calories. With that in mind, I'm looking at some of the recipes I've used for morning snacks in the past and thought about how to reduce fat and calories in those. 

So, all of that to say that I want to bake some muffins today. I'm going to modify a recipe I've tried in the past for Healthy Applesauce Oat Muffins. You can find the original recipe right here. As written, it has just 130 calories per muffin. I can make it more Mediterranean friendly by substituting olive oil as the fat. (I'm told I should use 3/4 the amount.) Also, I'll use honey to sweeten them since the use of granulated sugar is discouraged. 

Also today, I want to make some Tomato Jalapeno Jam. It's one of my favorite condiments for adding to eggs, and I've made it many times. I've tried three different kinds of tomato jam, but I've settled on this one as my favorite. Don't let the jalapenos scare you off. I remove the seeds and ribs, and so there's no heat...just a nice tang from the jalapenos. It takes just two pounds of tomatoes to make a batch (about three half-pint jars), and it isn't terribly time-consuming. It's cooked in a skillet and that reduces the time it takes to boil it down to the right consistency. Since I'm completely out of tomato jam at the moment, it seems like a good time to break out some of the canning equipment and get to work.

If I can get all of that done, I'll get back to my sewing. For now...slow-stitching is next. The day awaits.