A Good Day Ends Badly

Good morning, my friends. It's the last day of May. We're onto June tomorrow. Are you ready? On June 4, 1944, my mom and dad were married. They were married 52 years when she passed away in 1997. Also, my grandfather's birthday was June 14th...Flag Day. (Also the same day as...you know...he who shall not be named.) My grandfather always told me they put the flags out on Flag Day for him. He was a WWI veteran, and so it made complete sense to me.

As you're reading along this morning, you can feel purrfectly safe knowing Smitty is on the lookout for invading forces.

So, let's talk about yesterday. It was a a good day right up until I went out to take a look at the vegetable garden. I think we'll start there so that we can end on a high note. I was happy to see some of the corn sprouting. We'll leave these rows covered with gutter guards until they're strong enough to resist any crow activity.

Also, I was happy to see a bean sprouting.

But then I was chagrined to find every other visible bean sprout pulled from the ground and tossed aside, unceremoniously. This has to be the work of crows. I've never had them go after the beans like this before.

They also pulled up two of the zucchini. The stake is there to mark the plants so we don't go stepping on them.

Probably I have enough zucchini, but I pulled up the stakes and covered them with baskets to protect them for the time being. It's so exasperating when the critters destroy things like this. It's a lot of work to put in a garden, and to have it so easily destroyed is very discouraging.

You might notice all the little green sprouts surrounding things. Today I'll be getting outside to hoe down those invaders.

In other garden news, the Fairy Princess peony is putting on a good show.

So far, the blueberries have escaped the notice of the deer. I suppose they're waiting until the berries are ripe enough for harvest, and then they'll go after them the night before I plan to pick them...not that I'm a garden pessimist or anything. I'm just being realistic.

The replanted poppy container is making a good comeback. I had five little pots of many seeds (poppy seeds are tiny). Four of them are thriving, and they'll fill in this pot with no problem.

The Garden Treasures peony has put out another flower.

The Edda clematis is also putting on its best show of the season.

Here's a close-up of its pretty flowers.

Finally, the mint is filling in its whiskey barrel. It shares this barrel with several other things, some tulips and some iris. Mint is extremely invasive. When it started growing in this whiskey barrel, we decided that was a good way to keep it contained. Still, I'm pulling it up from other areas all the time. 

And it was put to good use yesterday morning when I made this Watermelon Salad with Rum and Mint. This is a summer favorite around here.

Also for last night's dinner, I made this Seafood Pasta Salad with Lemon-Saffron Herb Dressing. This is another once-per-year (at least) recipe. It originally appeared in Bon Appetit, and it became an instant family favorite. The original recipe calls for campanelle pasta. It's sometimes hard to find, and so I've substituted trottole. Any thick shape of pasta will do. Also, don't let that inclusion of saffron scare you off. You could leave it out and not miss it at all. Also, I use canned crab. Fresh crab is too expensive to use this way.

Okay, and so making last night's dinner ahead took up most of my morning. After lunch, I made some more progress on the quilting. I spent about 40 minutes on this before calling it a day. Here's a little peek at the quilting.

Here's a look at the back.

When I laid it out for its picture, I was surprised to see that it's more than halfway finished. I'll do something different in the border, but everything below the red line in the interior is done. 

I expect to spend another two days on the interior, and then a day on the border. So, I'm closing in on another finish with this quilt.

Okay, and finally, finally, finally I was able to get to my "Across the Wide Missouri" project. The pattern is published in this book:

As I mentioned when I started this project, I enjoy making quilts that teach us something. There is a story associated with each of the blocks. This second block honors an enslaved pioneer woman by the name of Bridget "Biddie" Mason. You can read more about her at the link I've given you. Wikipedia tells us this about her: 

Born into slavery in 1818, she successfully petitioned a California court for her freedom in 1856 and went on to become one of the first African American women to own land in Los Angeles. Mason was a central figure in the early Black community there and was a founding member of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the city's oldest African American church.

Born in the American South, Mason was enslaved by Robert Smith, a convert to Mormonism who forced her and her three daughters west during the exodus of the Mormon pioneers. After living in the Utah Territory, the household moved to San Bernardino, California, in 1851. Although California was admitted to the Union as a free state, Smith attempted to hold Mason and her family in captivity and later planned to traffic them to the slave state of Texas. With the aid of the local Black community and legal authorities, Mason petitioned for her liberty. In a landmark 1856 ruling, Judge Benjamin Ignatius Hayes granted freedom to Mason and her extended family, declaring that they could not be held in bondage in a free state.

Here's a picture of her included in the book:

Smitty was there to help me get started. He seems pretty excited about this block, doesn't he?

Well...not so much as it turns out. He really just wanted me to dole out some catnip, and then he told Sadie it was time for her shift.

Okay, so each block is dedicated to a pioneer woman, but they still have an associated story. This block notes that settlers beginning a new life on the frontier often brought along farm animals such as chickens, cows, sheep, geese, and turkeys. Not only were they needed for the new home, they were also a source of food for the journey.

I was able to fuse all the applique yesterday. The tree took a long time. Each leaf is cut individually. I'd reached the end of my sewing day when I had it this far.

Okay, and that brings us to the first gasp of the day. This is Tiny Treasure #53: Lazy daisy, blanket leaf, stitch, straight stitch, stem stitch, and French knots.

On today's agenda, I'll start by stitching Tiny Treasure #54. Quilting will continue, and I'll do the top-stitching for Biddie Mason's block. As I mentioned, I'm going to hoe the garden today, and we've decided it's a good day to mop the floor. So, there's plenty to keep me busy. 

If there's time left over at the end of the day, I'll get started on the next two blocks for Northern Wilderness. These are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

There are six blocks to go on this, and I forget what I'll be doing next.

Okay...good grief. It's after 11:00 a.m. as I sit here, and I'm still in my pajamas. We've already had our pancakes this morning, but there's still much standing between me and my sewing. But nothing is standing between me and my slow-stitching. We do have our priorities. Mopping the floor will have to wait.

Sitting and Stitching

Good morning, my friends. It's probably our last day of good weather here. We're told it will rain tomorrow. I have plenty of slow-stitching to keep me busy for the next several days. Yesterday, I stitched far enough on the Santa Quartet to decide to move my hoop to encompass the last of it.

Probably I have a couple of days left on the Santas, but I decided to trace the next 12 Tiny Treasures. I'm drawing lines to designate 2-1/2 squares for this, and then I center the design within the square.

It's hard to see in that image, and so here's a picture from the book. These are the Tiny Treasures I'll be stitching this time around. When they're finished, I will have completed 60 of the 72 included in the book. 

After that, I was ready to sew the binding on the Homestead quilt. But, uh-oh. There seems to be an impawdiment to purrogress.

I was able to ply him with catnip, but when I tried to spread it out for squaring it up...oh no! The quilt inspector is here!

There was another delay while the quilt inspector did her work, but eventually, I was able to get the binding sewn on. 

Now it's clipped and draped over a chair downstairs, awaiting my needle and thread action.

Okay, and with that finished, I was able to complete another block for the Stair Steps project. There is one more block to make for this go-round, and then one more row when it comes around again. This has been a great scrap buster, but I'll be glad when the blocks are all finished.

My last gasp in the sewing room was to trim and sort the leaders and enders I made while I was sewing together the pieces for the quilt block. I took a break from these for a few days. The sewing I was doing wasn't particularly conducive to sewing leaders and enders.

Okay, and so I took a little walk around outside after that. I noticed the Garden Treasures peony is close to opening. I expect we'll see this one by this afternoon.

I was out collecting lavender springs for our first Bees Knees of the season. Can summer be far behind? These are a little darker in color than usual. They're mixed with a simple syrup made from lavender blossom tea and honey. I used 100% clover honey for these, and it's a little darker in color than the honey I get at the grocery store.

And, oh my goodness. These children are celebrating 51 years of marriage today. Good grief. Where did the time go? We'll celebrate with dinner out tonight.

Okay, so my knee is feeling good enough this morning that I think I can safely resume some sort of exercise. I'm thinking the Bow-flex will get my attention today. No excuses. There's nothing else on the calendar, but I have in mind to bake some cookies. Back in December, I tested a cookie recipe for America's Test Kitchens. Their Espresso Iced Oatmeal Crunch Cookies are destined to appear in a new book tentatively titled "Cookie Swap." Just now I checked to see if they'd published the book yet. It appears not, and so I still can't share the recipe. Bummer. In any case, the cookies were good enough that I've wanted to make them again. Today seems like a good day for that. Aside from that, I'm going to spend the day sewing...mostly slow-stitching, but I'm going to endeavor to get the last Stair Step block finished too.

Enjoy your long weekend, my friends. Time for me to get on with my day. There's lots of slow-stitching ahead.

Big Quilt, Little Quilt

 It was a good quilting day yesterday. Of course, I didn't get to the quilting right away. First, I finished stitching the first Santa from the Santa Quartet. With him finished, I moved my hoop to the right.

When I finished with the stitching, I took a little walk around outside. The bird feeders needed filling, and I needed to check the watering. And wow...look at this lithodora. So pretty.

Here's our red azalea.

The fourth of five rhododendrons is starting to bloom. We have another dark purple one that is still in tight buds.

I noticed this blooming tree at the edge of our woods. My phone tells me it is a Hawthorne. This one is growing wild.

Here's a close-up of its flowers.

The rhodies at either end of the herb garden are nearly in full bloom. This pinky-peachy one is at one end of the herb garden.

This one is at the other end.

Not many chives came back this year. They change from year to year. I have enough chive blossom vinegar to get me through, and so it's okay if we don't get many this year. They're blooming just the same.

This is the Lavender Whisper peony. I'm so excited to see this one. It replaced a "failed clone" we planted when the rest of the peonies were planted. It would put out big buds that went straight to seed without ever producing a flower, and so this one took its place. This will be the first time I've actually seen it bloom, and it is sooooooo close.

This teaser is the "Joker" peony. It lives up to its name. It is covered in buds, and they are being impossibly slow to open.

I was excited to see plums on the plum tree. These won't be ready until near September, but I have a couple of desserts I love to make from them. I'm hoping we'll get a warm summer and they'll ripen before we take off on our fall trip. (And I'm hoping there's no gasoline shortage, or we might have to cancel our plans. That would be a shame because I'm looking forward to that trip. More about that later…and if we do it.)

These are some of the annuals I planted last month. They're doing pretty well. The squirrels want to dig around in the pots, but they've not done too much damage so far.

Back inside, I took a walk on the treadmill and then got to work on my quilting. This is the Block 9. 

When it was finished, I laid it out for a picture. These are the six of nine blocks that I've quilted. I'm pretty happy with how this is going.

Here's a little peek at the back. This is the left side, and the block I just quilted.

This is the right side.

Now, it's back on the machine. I've turned it upside down in order to keep the bulk of the quilt on the table, rather than in my lap. I like to work from left to right, and so I'll start with Block 3.

From there, I headed into the sewing room. Honestly, I wasn't sure I could force myself to sandwich another quilt...not even a small one. When I realized I could clamp it to my ironing board, I felt more motivated.

When it was ready for quilting, I set up the machine for free motion quilting and went to work. I ended up doing terry twists for the quilt blocks, and I used a heart-shaped cookie cutter to quilt some hearts in the background areas.

It took less than an hour, and it was finished. Smitty helped me squre it up.

Here, you can see the terry twists. A few of them twisted in the wrong direction. I decided it didn't matter.

In the lower corners, I did a little stylized heart.

At the upper "V," I did another heart with streamers heading off in either direction.

It's hard to see anything here, but this is how it looks from the back.

It ends up at 16-1/2 by 18-1/2 inches. It was late in the day by then, and so I cut the binding strips and left it for today. I'm hoping I'll have time to finish it off this afternoon.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we're having brunch with Erik, Mae, and Mae's mother today. I'm looking forward to that. And to all of you who are mothers, have a mother, want to be a mother, are a mother-to-be, or if you're just missing your mother today (as I am), then Happy Mother's Day. It's shaping up to be a good day. I hope you have a good day too.