OMG: It's a Finished Flimsy!

Good morning, my friends. It's something of a red letter day. The sun has moved into the propurr position for Smitty to get his morning sunbath. When I left him downstairs just now, he was grooming himself. When one is settling in for a nap, one must have every single strand of fur in place.

He's looking pretty self-satisfied, isn't he?

Happily, I've finished the quilt top for The Story of My Day, and I can move on to something new. I didn't really expect to finish it when I made my way to the sewing room yesterday afternoon, but it all worked out. 

The morning was spent baking some Chocolate and Pistachio Biscotti. This was Mike's choice for our next morning snack. It comes out nicely crunchy. 

It was nearly lunch time by then. I still needed lunch and a nap, and so it was mid-afternoon before I made my way to the sewing room. There, I started on the bottom border for The Story of My Day. First, I pieced together the two windmill sections for the left side of the border.

Smitty helped me pick through my scraps for the windmill pieces.

When they were top-stitched, I could sew the two sections together.

Then, I made the sections for the right side of the border.

When they windmills were finished, I could sew it all together.

And then I could sew it to the bottom of the quilt. And...TA-DA!!

It ends up at 62 x 62 inches. Finishing this quilt top was my goal for April's

and so I'll link up when the party starts in about two weeks.

It was time to stop then, but I grabbed out one of the big pieces of yardage I received in the my recent gift box of fabric. When I first saw this piece, I was thinking it would make a good back for The Story of My Day. What do you guys think?

I worry that it will be too boring if I use a neutral color like this. On the other hand, it goes with the background of the quilt top. Also, if I choose this backing, I can continue using the same off-white thread when its turn to be quilted arrives. I'm not confident enough about my quilting to do anything too forward, and so being able to use the same thread both top and bottom is a plus. I can jazz it up with a fun striped or scrappy binding. So, I'm still mulling this over, and I haven't looked through my stash at all. Still...what do you guys think? Should I use this? Or should I strive for something more colorful?

Okay, so I took time to clean up the colossal mess in my sewing room before turning off the light. When I make my way there this afternoon, I'll be starting with a clean slate. My first task will be to finish of April's assignment for the "Sewing Room" quilt. I've finished the embroidery, but it still needs borders and three more pieced blocks before I can set it aside.

These are all the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Also, I'll want to make April's Kitten in a Cup. April's color is red, and I'll be making another block like the one you see in the middle.

It will have a longer striped tail like Smitty's tail.

When those are finished, I'll be ready to quilt the mini I made back before Christmas. This is the Blue Blazes quilt. It'll be quilted pretty simply, so it shouldn't take long.

At the top of my list today, though, will be to trace the first block for Le Jardin. I'm going to need something new for slow-stitching very soon.

I'm going to enjoy my Monday peacefully. Tomorrow, I'm going to need to do some cooking. Our neighbors are coming for dinner on Wednesday. On our menu will be some stuffed pasta shells, a Caesar salad, some Italian bread, and a Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake. I can do the pasta shells tomorrow, but the rest will all need to wait until the day of. These sorts of things can stress me out as I anticipate the work involved. Like so many things, the anticipation is always worse than the actual effort. 

So with that, I'll let you get to your day, and I'll get to mine.

Water Woes

Good morning, my friends. It started as an ordinary day...playing word games, checking email, perusing the news to see if the United States is at war with Europe yet. (Just kidding about that last part...sort of.) When I'd had my coffee, I asked Mike if he'd like breakfast first or if I should write my blog post first. He opted for breakfast. And everything was going along fine until I went to wash out the bowl emptied of pancake batter (pancakes on the griddle by then). When I turned the faucet on...nothing. Not a dribble. Not a gurgle. Nada. Zilch.

Well. This can't be good. We checked everywhere in the house for any leaks. We found nothing. Mike walked around outside to check for any obvious leaks outdoors. Again, nothing. As I'm writing this, he's down at our pump house checking the pump. And as I'm writing, I don't have an answer to this conundrum, but I expect I will by the time I reach the end. I'm almost hoping it means a pump replacement since that would be an easier fix than some leak in the long lines that lead from the well to the house. It's always something, isn't it?

Okay, so let's talk about something else for a bit, shall we? It was a nice day off yesterday. I did some sewing, but mostly I was lazy. Erik and Mae and I had a very nice morning at the Beaverton Farmer's Market. We got most everything we wanted. I was on the hunt for rhubarb, but it's a little early for that. Instead, I scored a half dozen Willapa Bay oysters and two pounds of Willapa Bay clams. We had those for dinner last night. With the oysters, we made our own Oysters Rockaway.

With the clams, I made Linguine Alle Vongole. This is so yummy, and pretty easy to make too.

But I'm getting ahead of myself because I had two whole days of sewing since we chatted last time. You might remember I had the "Snow Happens" runner sandwiched for quilting.

Friday afternoon I went to work on the quilting. That white metallic thread performed beautifully. It broke one time...not sure why. Otherwise, it gave me no trouble. I did some meandering in the snow at their feet, some meandering falling snow above their heads, a looping meander in the narrow white border...

And some easy snowflakes in the diamond border.

Here's how it looks from the back.

So that didn't take long, and it was ready for binding.

Before I turned out the lights in the sewing room, I made up March's block for "The Sewing Room" BOM. This one is a sewing machine. It says "my machine" at the top. She had several options for sewing machines: Janome, Juki, Husqvarna, Pfaff, Singer, Brother, Elna, but sadly, no Bernina. My travel machine is a Pfaff, but I decided to go with the generic "machine" option. I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

And so Saturday was our farmer's market day. I stopped off at the grocery store on my way home to pick up a few things we needed to get us through the weekend. When I got home, I went to work hand-sewing the binding on "Snow Happens." It didn't take long, and I had myself a finished quilt. It ends up at 30 x 17 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

Since I knew rain would be returning today, I spent the rest of the afternoon filling the bird feeders and then taking a little walk around outside. I noticed one of the mini iris is blooming in the barrel where we plant our cherry tomato. These are little gifts left to us by the squirrels, one guesses, because I didn't plant these.

Also, the poppies are coming back in both barrels. I'm always happy to see they've survived the winter.

Also, all five peonies are showing signs of life...another happy discovery.

The kitties have been loving these past several days of good weather. I caught this picture of Smitty out in the catio. I always bring in the towels and kitty beds in winter. They're wet all the time, and so I might as well. Recently I put them back out, and so the kitties have been enjoying their time outside more.

For today's sewing, I'm going to finish off the little Catmint piece.

I'm pretty well settled on the two border fabrics shown below. The white leaves in the piece on the left is actually a metallic silver. It doesn't photograph very well.

I selected a gray paw print fabric for the binding. But I'm not sure about that. I might stick with the darker blue. What do you guys think? Please think fast because I'll probably finish this today with or without your input.

And what the heck...I guess I'll use this one for the back. I have about a fat quarter-sized piece, and so it seems a good time to use it.

And that brings me to the exciting conclusion of our water woes. Mike showed up a few minutes ago, holding this in his hand.

See that round thing on the right? It's a capacitor, and you can see how it's all corroded. It's what starts the pump and makes it run. He's pretty sure it just needs replacing. The item he needs is available locally for $100, which sounds cheap in contrast to the price of a new pump. This is one of those times when I know I married the right man.

Okay, so with that update, it's time for me to get a move on with my day. We did manage to eat our breakfast, but clean-up will have to wait. Sounds like a good time to do some slow stitching. It'll help calm my nerves. I hope your day is starting out better than ours. We'll probably be back to what passes for normal by this afternoon. And, hopefully, we won't go to war with Canada in the meantime. Just kidding, Canada...sort of.

Snippy

Good morning, my friends. It's the start of a brand new week. There's plenty on my to-do list today, after taking an NBS day yesterday. I still think there will be plenty of time for sewing. So let's see...what's going on?

Well, Smitty is taking to his new geriatric kitty pole. It has taken him a while to warm up to it. We thought it might be just too chilly next to the window. With snow on the ground, it's a better place to keep an eye on his domain than to be outside expurriencing it furrst hand.

You might recall that I'd left the Great Outdoors quilt on the floor when I quit the previous day. I wondered if the kitties would have suggestions about alternative arrangements for the blocks. When I went downstairs, they'd made just one minor adjustment. I think I can work with this.

Both kitties have been very concerned about the goings-on with this quilt. It's been their snuggle quilt since their first day as kitties at the Three Cats Ranch, and so they feel some pawsessiveness of it.

Smitty thought he'd lie down to offer it more purrtection. But what's this going on below his table purrch?

Sadie is trying to usurp his authority over this quilt. 

Begone, foul knave!!!

Well appurrently it wasn't that impurrtant to him. He retired to his HR office for a nap.

Sadie was able to take over guarding the quilt. Happily, there was no violence.

Okay, and I just stayed busy finishing off the rest of the blocks. It was mindless and tedious, and I was glad to have it all finished.

It ends up at 61 x 53 inches...still a good snuggle size. Here's how it looks from the back.

Now it's lying on the table in the dining room for snipping with my nifty Fiskars snippers.

No time like the present, right? So I snipped two rows, and then Mike snipped two rows. We'll snip all the horizontal rows, and then I'll rotate it 90° to finish the vertical rows. I'm hoping to have it snipped and washed before day's end.

I was kind of tired of sewing by then, and it was late in the day. Before turning off the lights, I traced out the final three blocks for The Story of My Day. These are fun to stitch. This one is "Try a new hairstyle."

Fish for tea. (Seems kind of weird.)

And finally, water the plants.

Okay, and so I tried a new recipe last night. I neglected to take a picture of mine, and so I'm swiping the image from the internet. This is Chicken Taco Dump Dinner. Looks tasty, no?

It's a little like a chicken taco salad. Think of it as a Mexican lasagna. It has two layers of corn tortillas in place of the lasagna noodles. The recipe makes enough for a small army. It's supposed to be made in a 9 x 13 baking dish. I split mine in half and made it in two 8 x 8 baking dishes. It starts with the tortillas, and then it's layered with a mixture of chicken, black beans, corn, mild green chilis and jarred tomato salsa. It was easy to make and it made a good weeknight dinner. We'll have leftovers for another night.

One of mine went into the oven (a toaster oven, in my case), and the other was prepared for freezing. We'll eat this during our trip to Alaska. (I probably have more food than I can fit in the small refrigerator in our camper, but I keep making more.) When I do something like this, I write the instructions on the foil covering.

Then I give it an identifying label and instructions for anything else I'll need before I can make it. In this case, it's baked covered for 35 minutes, then uncovered and sprinkled with Monterey Jack cheese. And since I've halved the recipe, this will need just one cup of cheese when I bake it down the road (literally).

While I was making dinner, Sadie discovered the heating pad Mike left on the floor. His back has been bothering him, and so he's been using it when he's sitting down. Sadie likes it as a nice warming bed.

Okay, so I finished up February's block for The Sewing Room yesterday morning. It still needs borders, and then I'll also need to make three more small pieced blocks. That's first on the list for today.

Before I start on the blocks for The Story of My Day, I'll stitch up the names and places for the next Shop Hop blocks.

Aside from snipping the rag quilt, I'll probably get started quilting the Vintage Linen quilt today. Since I took yesterday off from working out or doing anything else, I'll need to do a Bow-flex workout today, and I'll need to do a couple of housekeeping chores. None of that will keep me from my sewing for very long.

Right now though...Sunday morning pancakes. I can hear Mike downstairs. He's probably hungry. Time to go save a life.