Green beans - June 30, 2020

When The Boss left the office last Friday, she was going home to pack for her vacation.  The last thing she said to me was, "I don't care what you do next week."  I assumed she meant that I wouldn't have to come to work if I don't want to.  ;)

Seriously, The Husband and I had planned to be on vacation this week, too, but . . . you know . . . coronavirus.  We didn't make any reservations.  It's a good thing, too, because Nanny has three doctor appointments this week in preparation for a heart valve replacement next week, and she needs someone to drive her.  As The Boss was leaving the office Friday, I was reminding her of these appointments, which prompted her comment.

So yesterday when I got out of bed, I decided that I didn't want to go to the office.  I had other things I wanted to do.

First up was some digitizing, a little pod camper.  While I tested the design, I began straightening up my sewing room.  What I was actually doing was looking for a bag of embroidery design tests that I had promised to give to a local quilt guild.  Last winter, I gathered up all of these tests, set aside the few that  I wanted to keep, and offered the rest to my crafty Facebook friends.  Lots of people expressed an interest in having them, but nobody came to get them.  I stuck the bag in a closet, or so I thought.  Yesterday, I dug through every closet, drawer, and tub, and that bag of embroidery tests was  was not to be found.  But I still have the stack of designs I'd held out for myself, and I've added more new design tests to the stack since then.  The reality is that I will probably never do anything with them, so I offered them to the quilt guild.  I'm supposed to drop them off today on my way home from Nanny's doctor appointment.  The shopping bag full of design tests is already in my car.  I hope I can remember to drop them off.

During the sewing room cleaning, I found all sorts of things I'd forgotten.  One of them was a blouse that a co-worker had sent home with me more than a year ago; it needed two buttons.  I paused the cleaning to sew on the buttons.  I also found a bundle of burlap mini-baskets that I'd offered her for use at her son's wedding rehearsal dinner.  The blouse and the baskets are now in a shopping bag in my car, ready to be dropped off tomorrow.

The cleaning also un-earthed a quilt that I started as a wedding present for my nephew two years ago.  The top is finished, and I'd even started quilting it on my rickety old quilting machine.  But while quilting it, I sewed all the way through the pinkie finger on my right hand.  http://sfancy.blogspot.com/2018/08/quilting-is-dangerous-work-81818.html
This was not the first time I'd nipped a finger, but it was the first time I nearly fainted from it.  The quilt sat, abandoned, in the frame for months and months.  Finally, during a sewing room reorganization, I took the quilt off the frame, ripped out the quilting, and stuffed the whole business in a garbage bag, planning to either have someone else quilt it or do it myself on a rented long-arm machine at the local quilt store.  I found this quilt bag yesterday and dropped what I was doing to make an appointment to rent the quilting machine.  The bag is already in my car, ready for Thursday.

As suppertime approached, I stirred up a cabbage casserole to go with some left-over sausages we'd grilled on Sunday.  It was a new recipe I saw online (if you are my FB friend, you can find it on my page).  While the casserole baked, I went to the garden with a pickin' bag, and found squash and enough green beans for dinner!  Since we'd eaten squash a couple of times last week, I gave the squash to the neighbors, but brought the green beans home and sauteed them with mushrooms in garlic butter.  There are enough left-overs for tonight's dinner.

The sewing room is in better shape, but needs more work.  Maybe I'll tackle that after Nanny's appointment.  Or maybe not.  The garden needs a little attention.  I pulled up some grass while I picked the beans, but there's more.  Always more.  I need to check the cucumbers.  And I saw some poop on the tomato leaves, but couldn't determine its origin.  (It tasted more like bird poop than tomato worm poop.) ;)