Almost there . . . - May 30, 2025

It's hard to believe we're at the end of May, already.  This year is flying by.  

Next month, we have a rash of birthdays to celebrate - Nanny, Son #2, and Granddaughters #1 and #3.  Last week, #3 asked me if I am going to make her a birthday cake.  When I asked her what kind she wants, she said, "One with fondant!"  I've never worked with fondant, don't know the first thing about it.  Probably should practice, eh?  And maybe watch some videos.  

Today, I am going to finish (mostly) the wedding quilt.  Just need to finish sewing on the binding, which I will do on the machine.  It would be technically ready for gifting after that, but I may play with some "big-stitch quilting," using some pearl cotton thread I've had for years, just to jazz it up a bit.  

Actually, that's a lie.  I'm not "jazzing it up" with the pearl cotton quilting, I'm hiding mistakes.  Because I am sometimes an idiot, I inadvertently quilted the top half of the quilt with horizontal lines and the bottom half of the quilt with vertical lines.  I did not realize this until I sewed the two halves together.  Maybe if I run some big, colorful stitches through the diagonal color pattern, it'll look so mixed up that the crazy quilting can be a "design element."  😉

I'll decide about the big-stitch quilting once I see how hard it will be.  

Mushroom Day - May 29, 2025

 

I wish you could hear the ruckus going on in my back yard right now.

There is a pair of hawks sitting in a tree, and one or more of their fledglings (I assume) flying around the area, all of them screaming their heads off.  They are loud!  I'm thinking all this screaming is the hawk equivalent of Life 360.  ;)  

And there's a turkey gobbling somewhere in the field behind our house.  I am beginning to think the turkey may be in a pen, for the sound always comes from the same direction, multiple times every day.  On second thought, I wonder if it's a high-tech turkey call, set to repeat at certain times.  

* * * * * * * * 

My sister invited me to breakfast yesterday with her and our aunt and uncle, at a restaurant less than 15 minutes away from me.  After breakfast, she planned to visit her daughter (also less than 15 minutes away) to tour her garden.  I was a slug yesterday morning and didn't make it to breakfast, but I did make it to my niece's house in time for the garden tour and a little visiting.

From my niece's house, I went to the grocery store.  (Big yuck.)  Both The Husband and I are in a food funk; we can't think of a thing we'd like to eat if we could have anything we wanted.  Grocery shopping is a challenge, and cooking seems like wasted effort.  

I came home, put away the groceries, made some breakfast muffins and a fruit salad - waaaay too much fruit salad for us to eat before it goes bad.  I bagged up a quart of it and took it to Nanny.  

Our vegetable garden is in Nanny's back yard, so while I was there, I checked on it.  The spot where I want to plant purple hull peas is a puddle (and it's supposed to rain again this weekend).  The tomatoes are bearing fruit, but their leaves are yellowing at the bottom, probably from all the rain.  The fruit may split if this keeps up.  The squash plants are a little yellow, too.  (I still can't tell if they're butternut squash or summer squash.)  The second planting of anasazi beans sprouted sparsely, like the first attempt.  I'd hoped the warmer temps would help them sprout better.  Maybe I should try them again it July.  

Our lawnmower stays in Nanny's workshop when not in use (we mow her yard, too).  After checking on the garden, I drove the mower home and mowed our yard.  

When I finished mowing, I came home and made a mushroom bed.  I didn't do it *precisely* the way the instructions said to do it, which was to layer cardboard, straw, mushroom spawn, and wood chips.  I chose to make the bed in a spot where, 30 years ago, I dug a hole for a fish pond that never happened.  For the past two summers, I've been throwing leaves, weeds, old potting soil, small sticks, etc. in the hole, trying to fill it up.  Yesterday, I dug out some of the debris, put cardboard down in the hole, and used the debris on top of the cardboard instead of straw.  This might have been a mistake, as the leaves were a bit "moldy," already.  If that "mold" is actually some form of pre-mushroom slime (I believe the correct term is "mycelium"), and if it sprouts mushrooms, I might not be able to tell the native mushrooms from the wine cap mushrooms.  Maybe I'll wait to worry about that when something actually sprouts, which may be 6 months, or longer.  The mushroom bed needs to stay fairly moist until then.  When monsoon season finally ends, I'll have to remember to water it.

* * * * * * * *

I haven't decided what I'm going to do today - work on the wedding quilt or do more yardwork.  The quilt is laid out on the sewing table, ready to go.  I should probably start there, then when the sewing goes sideways, I can work off my frustrations in the yard.

 

Birthday Shopping - May 28, 2025

The Husband and I had planned to take the Grandson out to dinner at 5:00 yesterday for his birthday.  A little after noon, The Grandson called to see if I'd like to take him shopping.  I agreed.  He picked me up about 2:00, and we headed out.  Our first stop was an antique mall, where he got a cassette tape to play in his truck, then we went to a video game store.  After that, we hit pawn shops, looking for unexpected treasures until time to meet The Husband for dinner at an Italian restaurant.  

I enjoyed our outing, but I expect that The Grandson was glad to be rid of me after dinner.  As a driver, he is fairly inexperienced, and he is not very good at observing speed limits.  I nagged him the whole time:  "Slow down!"  "Don't get so close!"  Etc.  But he took it like a champ.

He's a good kid.  Young man, rather.  After dinner, he told The Husband and me, "I appreciate y'all."  

* * * * * * * * 

The wedding quilt is just a wee bit away from being ready for the binding.  The two halves are joined.  There's a little bit of quilting left to do in the center of the quilt where the joining occurred, and the edges will need to be squared up before the binding goes on.  I've decided to keep the binding simple, since the quilt is so "busy."  I could finish this quilt by the weekend if I'd get cracking.  

I'm itching to move on to something new.

My BFF sent me a kit to make wire-wrapped jewelry.  I've fooled with jewelry-making in the past and never was very good at it.  Maybe this kit will improve my skills.

Today I need to make a bed for the wine cap mushroom spawn that came in the mail yesterday.  

 

Rainy Memorial Day - May 27, 2025

It's a good thing we did not plan a cookout for Memorial Day.  It rained, off and on, all day.

I spent the day working on the wedding quilt.  

Job #1 was to sew the two halves together.  I'd already sewn the backing seam, trimmed the overlapping batting, and glued the top seam in place.  All that was left of the joining process was to run that top seam through the sewing machine, which would, in theory, also serve as the final quilting line.  

It was hard.  The quilting line came out crooked as a snake.  Worse, the needle didn't catch both seam allowances in some places.  It just wouldn't do.  I spent most of the day picking out the machine stitching and re-sewing the seam by hand.  This morning, there's about a foot left to stitch.

While I had the quilt laid out on the worktable, I realized that the quilting lines on one half of the quilt go north and south, and those on the other half go east and west.  How I managed this feat of idiocy is a mystery.  

There is no way I'm picking it out.

There's also no way I'm adding more machine quilting to make the two sides match. 

It is what it is.

Rainy Sunday - May 25, 2025

We had a hard time getting a head count for how many folks were coming to The Grandson's birthday celebration, so we ordered enough pizzas to feed everyone we'd invited.  The Husband wanted wings, so we ordered those, too, first adding 12 wings to the pizza order, then, to be safe, adding 18 more.  The additional order of 18 somehow didn't make it on the order, so The Husband picked up 2 dozen fried chicken strips from the grocery store deli.

Of 15 possible guests, only 5 showed up.  I sent food home with anybody who'd take it.

The Grandson was a little late getting here (he's a working man, now, at least for the summer), and I had to hide the oatmeal-raisin cookies he'd requested to make sure there were some left for him.  Nanny gave him a photo album with pictures of him and his family.  I was heart-warmed at how happy the gift made him.  After everyone left, he got out the album and went through it again.  We dragged down a box of pictures from the closet shelf, and he selected a few more to add to his album.  He even asked for copies of photographs on shelves and walls at our house.  It was touching.

He went home with what was left of his oatmeal-raisin cookies. 

I worked on the wedding quilt yesterday, getting that last section ready to quilt.  Inserting the batting was a little troublesome.  Basting spray was my friend.  I did not start the quilting because the sewing machine needed to be moved from the sewing cabinet to the worktable to give me room to maneuver the quilt.  But I expected kids at the birthday party and didn't want to string extension cords around the room.  I'll finish the quilting today.

Because I screwed up the quilt-as-you-go method I'd intended to use, I'm likely going to be stuck hand-sewing the top half of the quilt to the bottom half.  Six months ago, this would have been unthinkable, but making Granddaughter #3's quilt by hand upped my confidence and my sewing skills.  It's do-able.  

It's time to start planning the binding. 

Rainy Saturday Birthday Party - May 24, 2025

The Grandson's birthday is near, and we've invited the folks on the hill over for pizza this evening.  I should be in the kitchen, making oatmeal-raisin cookies (the Grandson's favorite) for the party, or at least making a list of things I need from the grocery store.  Right now, it's raining (again!), and I don't want to go to the grocery store.  

(I just checked the cookie recipe against the pantry; no trip to the grocery store will be necessary.)

I really want to be in the sewing room, working on the wedding quilt.

Yesterday, this quilt nearly gave me heart failure.  

I went into the sewing room expecting to sew the two lower quadrants together on the sewing machine. I had finished piecing the top, but I had not cut the backing or the batting for the lower left quadrant. I BARELY had enough backing left for the left quadrant, and had to splice a chunk in the batting.  Luckily, before I sewed everything together, I remembered that I wanted to embroider the couple's names and wedding date on the backing.  This required taking off the walking foot, changing to an embroidery foot, and installing the embroidery unit onto the machine.  My niece had brought over a jacket for me to embroider her company logo on, so while I had the embroidery unit on the machine, I did the logo before taking off the embroidery equipment and re-installing the walking foot.  

It was about 2:00 before I finally got around to sewing the left bottom quadrant to the right bottom quadrant, using the quilt-as-you-go method I'd seen in a video.  The left quadrant backing goes right-side-up underneath the already-quilted right quadrant.  The left quadrant top goes right-side down on top of the right quadrant.  The seam is sewn, then left quadrant backing and top are folded out, batting is tucked between them, and then the left quadrant is quilted.

That's how it was supposed to happen.

To be on the safe side, I initially basted the two halves together.  Good thing.  I'd left out a row of blocks on one side and added an extra row to the other.  (The really sad part is that I'd caught my mistake earlier and had made a note on the diagram to fix it before moving on.)

The weird part was that the color pattern of concentric diamonds was correct.  It took me an hour to figure out where the mistake was, and another hour to correct it.  By this time, it was close to margarita time.  The two lower halves are laying on the sewing room table, clipped together and ready to sew (baste!).  Assuming I've got it right this time, I'll add the batting and do the quilting while the cookies are baking.

In other news, some birds have finally discovered the fancy-schmancy bird feeder installed earlier this week, and pictures of their visits made it to my phone, as do pictures of me in my nightgown if I step outside for some reason.  I am not sure I am comfortable with this feature.  :)

On the gardening front, we still haven't planted the purple hull peas and other things I intend to grow.  I may have to plant in mud if this rain keeps up.  We haven't put the first dent in the pile of wood chips the tree-cutters dropped off.  It may be compost by the time we get to it. 

On to the sewing room . . . .

Calculating - May 23, 2025

It was a mistake to take out the fabric for the new quilt (which we will call "the lavender quilt" from now on) to photograph it for yesterday's post.  It was still on the worktable when I went back to the sewing room, and I ended up fooling with it, in one way or another, for the rest of the day.

Let's look at it again for reference.

There's only a yard of each of these fabrics.  I bought them several years ago, thinking I might make zippered cosmetic pouches, so there's little chance of finding more.  I've gotta work with what I've got.

I absolutely love that top piece.  The "lavender field" part of the design is 5.5" tall and repeats 4 times across the width of the fabric; I can get 24 (finished) 5" squares from it (not enough for a full or queen quilt).  The 1" tall stripes repeat 10 times, and the 2" tall daisies repeat 5 times.  If I cut them apart, I can get 360" of the stripes, and 180" of the daisies.  

I spent all day yesterday calculating and drawing, trying to figure out the best way to use the various parts.  Eventually, I came up with something like this, a framed "lavender field" block alternating with a dresden plate block:d

In the process, I realized I don't have enough of the background fabric to make the quilt as shown.  

Back to the drawing board.  

Or the fabric store.