Halfway Point

When I was an undergraduate, I took exactly one philosophy course...mainly because it fit into my schedule, and I needed an elective from a certain category. I had zero interest in philosophy. Nevertheless, I actually learned something and the class gave me some things to ponder. So as I typed the title for this post, I was reminded of Zeno's Paradox. Zeno said you can never reach the end point of anything because you can only ever get halfway from wherever you are. So, with quilting, if my quilt is halfway finished, I can only then finish half of what remains, and then half of what remains, and then half of what remains. You get the drift, right? And I think Zeno was a sadist...just sayin'. Maybe this was his way of compensating for his small...um...feet. Yeah. Feet. What did you think I was going to say?

So here's my contribution to Zeno's argument...only, I think I'm going to do it in reverse...or something. I'm actually quite confused as I'm writing this. I started here with two rows complete.

Then, I added the third row.

And then the fourth row, which means I'm halfway finished.

So, if you listen to Zeno, I can keep sewing, but I'll never really be finished because I'll just keep adding rows, but I'll never get past halfway. And this makes me wish I'd never heard of Zeno. Who's with me?

Smitty doesn't really care whether it's halfway or the whole way. If it's big enough for him, it's big enough.

But all this philosophy talk has him exhausted.

As I pondered Zeno, I decided it was a good time to make a meditative trip to the garden, where I discovered another poppy had bloomed. Yahoo!

Possibly I should have stuck with slow stitching yesterday. Block #2 for Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs is nearly finished. I took it out of its hoop yesterday and spread it out for its wrinkly picture.

Now just the words in the upper right corner and the running stitch around the outside edge remain. I expect I'll have this finished in the next day or two.

My next slow-stitching project after this will be a new one, which makes me all excited. I'll say more about that when the time comes.

Today I'm walking with Sue and then I'm going to be spending some time in the kitchen. The guys are heading off for a road rally this weekend, and I'm making some food for them to take along. I'll be making frozen breakfast burritos, some sandwich filling they can fold into a wrap, and some lasagna. It sounds like a lot, but all three recipes are pretty quick. I'll share in tomorrow's post. With all that going on, it doesn't seem as if I'll finish the Guatemala quilt top today, but for sure I'll get it finished tomorrow. One day late isn't half bad, no matter what Zeno says.

In memory of Grumpy Cat

This is Ringo. Mom wanted me to pose with our Grumpy Cat plushes. She said that Grumpy Cat died two weeks ago.

Why was she called Grumpy Cat? She looks pretty stuffy to me.

Maybe I can even put a little bitey on this one. . .

For anyone in the cat world, the loss of Grumpy Cat isn't new anymore. But, our human was traveling and didn't learn about it right away. We send our condolences to Tardar Sauce's family.

Remains of the Day

Matthew paid me a surprise visit yesterday, and so my plans for the day were put on hold. We passed one another as I was leaving to get my hair cut. By the end of the day, Smitty was downright despondent over the lack of sewing time.

Sadie gave up and napped in the cubby of her scratching pole. Sometimes she likes to get into that space where the toy mouse hangs.

Matthew stayed the day, ate dinner with us, and then stayed the night. He'll head back to spend the day with Lyndsey this afternoon. I'll be leaving this morning for my monthly pedicure.

For dinner last night, I was on a mission to use up some of the CSA veggies. We had a beautiful head of lettuce, and I used it to make this Butter Lettuce Salad with Oranges and Red Onion Dressing. The red onions are marinated/pickled in the dressing, and then fresh oranges are added. Otherwise, the lettuce is the star of this show. I had some CSA sugar snap peas too, and so I tossed those in as a way of dispensing with them.

Now, you'll have to use your imagination with this next dish because it isn't a looker. The other members have been raving about it on the CSA Facebook page, but this was my first time making it. This is a recipe from Smitten Kitchen, and her recipes are always winners. I used her Swiss Chard and Sweet Potato Gratin recipe to make this dish. It takes a good amount of Swiss Chard, and I didn't have enough, so I supplemented with CSA spinach and kale. Also, it can be made using regular potatoes, but I used sweet potatoes.

The recipe makes a ton of food, and it's supposed to be baked in a 9 x 13-inch baking dish. I split mine between two 8 x 8 dishes with a plan to freeze the second one. She suggested baking it first and then reheating after thawing the frozen dish in the refrigerator, and so that's what I did. Anyway...although it looks as if it's already been eaten, I can tell you that it was delicious. It's a bit of a to-do to put it together, but it can be done ahead of time. Greens are always the hardest CSA vegetables to use. It's always a treat to find a recipe that makes them taste good and uses up so many. I used a combination of chard, kale, and spinach, but really, I think you could use any greens you want in this dish.

Mike and Matthew needed to do some work outside after dinner, and so I was able to get in a little sewing time at the end of the day. It was time to start sewing the blocks together for the Guatemala quilt. I was just getting ready to sew on the first horizontal lattice strip when Sadie showed up.

You're doing lattice strips? Blech! I hate that kind of sewing! I'll come back when you start laying out little bits and pieces, and then I'll help you with the layout. Deal? Deal.

So if I was doing lattice strips, then you know I had at least one row sewn together. I laid it out on the floor to take a look...

and then with no help from Sadie, I sewed the first lattice strip to the bottom.

Your quilt is not large enough to accommodate my handsome and hulking furry body.

Well, I assured him that the quilt was only just getting started, and then I sewed the second row of blocks together.

I was in the process of pinning the second lattice strip to the bottom when I needed to stop for the day.

The quilt consists of 8 rows of 6 blocks connected by sashings, and then a lattice strip between each row. There is one narrow border around the whole quilt. Since I'll be working with this on and off the machine, I worried a little about the raw edge at the top fraying and stretching from so much handling. It seemed a good idea to sew a line of stitching across the top to stabilize it until I can sew the border on. That will be the last strip I sew, and the quilt will get a lot of handling in the meantime.

So, I didn't get much done yesterday, but I'll have all of this afternoon to work on it. I should be able to get well along by day's end.

A new wand toy!

I found this wand toy (new!) at a yard sale. It has interchangeable "worms" for the end, and I thought Ringo would like it.

He sure liked it! Lucy does too.

I'm carrying this so no one else can have it!

He loves it so much he carries it around the house.

Squirrely

When I finished up my slow-stitching yesterday, I looked out the window to see this:

It's a little squirrel kit. As I watched, I saw another one...

And then another...

By the time they'd all showed themselves, there were four.

They play rough and tumble like kittens.

They're awfully cute. When I look at them, I see cute baby squirrels. Smitty sees a delicious snack. These are ground squirrels we call "grey diggers." They can be very destructive, and so they'll need to mind their manners. About every several years, we have to cull the herd and find new jobs for some of them. When we drive up to the house after being away, we see squirrels of all kinds running off in different directions. Now, with these four joining the party, it's starting to look worrisome. Time will tell.

So I went over what I had on my agenda for yesterday. The weather was looking good, and so I decided to get after the weeds and then do my grocery shopping today, Wednesday. I spent about an hour weeding, and took some pictures of the purple rhododendron. It's the last to bloom, but it's my favorite...definitely, this one is my favorite.

Such enormous clusters of deep purple flowers.

And then I admired the poppy some more. The center is about the size of a ping pong ball.

I expect this one will be next to bloom.

Can you tell I'm excited about the poppies?

So, while I was standing there thinking about being free to sew for the rest of the day, I received a text from my hairdresser reminding me of my haircut appointment today. Holy sh*t! I forgot all about that. Oh well, not to worry, I told myself. I'll just go to the grocery store on Thursday. Only, then I looked at my calendar and realized I was getting a pedicure on Thursday. And no matter how I figured it, I couldn't find a way to put off grocery shopping. I had to do it yesterday. And it was a big shop. And as everyone knows, the real work of grocery shopping begins when you get home with sacks of groceries in the car. Bummer.

Well, before leaving, I baked off the third of three loaves of bread from the dough I made last week.

We had slices of toast for breakfast with plenty of butta this morning. I like mine with carrot cake jam. Of all the jams I've made, this one is my favorite. It's delicious with a toasted crusty slice of bread. If you like carrot cake, you'll love this jam.

And even though I was exhausted after I had the groceries put away, I still made it into the sewing room to finish off the 48 quilt blocks for the Guatemala quilt.

Now they're ready to be sewn into a quilt top.

Today I'll be getting my hair cut, and then I'll have most of the afternoon to start sewing these together. I'd like to have them into a finished quilt top by the end of the day on Friday. Think I'll make it?

Livin' the good life

Lucy in the cat tree, enjoying the view.

I see a bird!

A Full Day

We packed a lot into our Memorial Day yesterday. The weather was cloudy, but warm, and so we did some work in the yard early on. It was high time to plant the zucchini and one of the sunflowers. It's the only one that sprouted early on before I mended my ways with them. Also, I scattered some "candy" for the slugs.

For this, we got a nifty tool I saw on Instagram, of all places. Usually I avoid those ads, but this one caught my attention. It's a short auger that fits on an electric drill. It made digging a good hole in our clay-like soil slicker than hot snot on a doorknob. (Like that?)

And even though I first saw it on Instagram, I bought it from Amazon, and I can recommend it if you have trouble digging a good hole in your own soil.

With that finished, I took a little walk around to see what's going on elsewhere in the garden. I noticed the first cherry tomatoes coming on. They're just itty-bitty now.

Still hoping for more from the dappled willow, but it looks pretty just the way it is.

The first buds are appearing on the hydrangeas.

There are more chive blossoms, and I found one of those entranced bumble bees. He let me pet his furry body.

Another lily is coming up. I forget what this one looks like. The leaves look like a calla lily, but I really can't remember it. It was one Mike brought home from the grocery store.

The first buds are appearing on the echinacea.

We have an abundance of cattails.

Checking inside the greenhouse, the red leaf lettuce is big enough to start picking.

And the butter lettuce is making a stronger showing now.

There are lots of sunflowers coming along now. You can also see more poppies on the left of the image below.

Their seeds are so tiny, and so I just plant what I can pinch between my fingers and let them fight it out for space in the pot.

Back outside, this is a bush we call a "Burning Bush," or Euonymus alatus, if you must know it's snotty botanical name. In the fall it turns bright red. In spring, it produces these tiny white flowers.

And you probably wanted to see the poppy again, didn't you? Please say yes.

Okay, so enough of that. Let's get back to our sewing, shall we? Yesterday, I sewed these sections together.

Now I have all of these sections to sew together. I'll start with the ones in the lower right-hand corner and sew those to the ones above. Then I'll sew that to the left side of the block. The remaining gray strips on the far left are the sashings between the horizontal rows of blocks.

Here's how the blocks will look when they're all sewn together. I'll be using a random distribution of fabrics, and the blocks will be rotated in different directions when they're sewn into the quilt.

So, it's coming along. I believe I'll be able to finish it off by Friday, which is my #onethingwithAmy goal for the week.

By then, it was time to head to Erik and Mae's house. They have a beautiful tree in their front yard in full bloom right now.

These are Mae's poppies from Ireland. One of hers is purple.

The others are all this brilliant orange. Hers are from the same seeds I brought back from Ireland, but she was able to get hers growing sooner than I was.

I went in search of a picture of the original Irish garden where I bought these (seen below). They were a mix of colors when I saw them in Adare, and so I expect to get more colors among my own buds too.

Erik and Mae have done a lot of work on their garden and their yard, and everything was looking so nice. Here, they have tomatoes and peppers.

Below are herbs, different kinds of mint in the foreground, and more culinary herbs in the background.

These are different kinds of berries and flowers.

Erik knocked himself our smoking and barbecuing four different chickens in four different flavors. They were first marinated, then basted while they cooked, then smoked. There was one each of Teriyaki, Tandoori, Jerk, and spicy BBQ sauce from the farmer's market.

Mike helped quarter them with kitchen sheers. That's Erik's friend Eric in the background there.

When Mike was finished, we had a whole lotta chicken to split between ten people.

There were several different side salads and breads, and that was one tasty meal.

Making a rare appearance was Clementine the scaredy cat. She was rolling in catnip when I caught her in this image.

Clementine is next on my list of pawtraits. Hopefully, I'll get to her at the end of June. I've had this image below for a long time, but I think the one above will be a better one to use.

As expected, I finished up the fifth of the barn stitcheries yesterday. This one is called "Hole in the Barn Door."

Here are the five I have so far.

And that frees me up to start working on Block 2 for Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs. I have it hooped up and ready to go. I'm going to use some leftover metallic gold floss for the angel's halo, and so I decided to start there.

It's too soon to say what the rest of the day will hold. I'm either going to get after some weeds in the garden, or I'm going to go grocery shopping. I'll let the weather help me decide. It's cloudy, but dry. If there's no rain in the forecast, I think the weeds will get their due. And then I'll get back to my Guatemala quilt. By the way, Lyndsey (or somebody) suggested "Quiltemala" for the name. I kind of like that. What do you think?