You have no events scheduled today.

I like that email at the top of my mailbox today.

It is about time to start the fall, whatever true seasonal calendars or temps may say. Some local schools started up this past week or a few days earlier. It's going to be Monday for me.

My past week was full of meetings and arrivals and prep and more meetings. Tomorrow I have a different set of quarterly board meetings. (who'dathunk? grown-up sounding, innit?) Today I have nothing on my calendar. Google said so.


So I made mint tea (hello, allergy season), spent a little desk time blog reading, tumblr turning, and hardly any pin peering. Here is what i observed, on the morning of a day with nothing scheduled:

I see that there is time for late summer picnics. My house neighbors across the way must agree, as they start setting up for their block party. I may have to make a cup of coffee shortly and go a-visiting. They actually put invitation on the apartment building doors this year, not just move your car notices.

I see that waistlines are starting to sport belts. I will need to take mine out for a walk. I don't want to look like a belted Weeble when the look returns in earnest.

I may have to make pancakes or muffins or pie, waistline remarks notwithstanding. End of summer fruit draws near. I am sure I am not alone in feeling the lure of good food bloggy photoggy.

I see my method of posting yesterday's blog post - right on the computer at the blogger site - may have eradicated all paragraph returns. I see my quick post wanted a proofread viewing. I see I must get batteries for the camera, as phone photoblogging is not very glam.

(Ugh. I see my day of nothing is already generating a to-do list. Visit and coffee, ok, pancakes, on, but batteries?? Really?)

My no events day needs a little summer. I would like to knit some, read some, walk a while today. Blueberries at the farmers market may be required.

Unscheduledness aside, I do really need to do some to-do-list somethings for Monday, because I would like a nice Monday and not a panicky start.

Friday's Salad

When you are away from your kitchen for most of several weeks, going to the farmer's market feels like Christmas Morning. I might have over purchased local produce, just a touch. And I went to Stanley's Fruit & Veg Market the next day for some not-as-local produce and some yummy local bread. There have been yummy tomato sandwiches on toast. Some good sandwiches. Scrambled eggs with onions, mushroom and swiss chard. Pickled four pints of dilled green beans and blanched the remaining beans for some salad with red onion. Today's salad was BRILLIANT. I will do this again. I was worried I didn't have much time, so everything was large and fast: Friday's Salad: One avocado, coarsely chopped. One small lemon, the juice of. One red bell pepper, big pieces Half an ear of corn, leftover and off the cob three big green leaves of basil, rolled and cut up a drizzle of olive oil a splash of rice vinegar sea salt coarse black pepper And because I didn't have time to chop up onion so I chucked in a couple kalamata olives and a couple pickled onions. OMG. None to share, sorry. Ate it ALL. Can't go to the farmers market tomorrow if I have too much produce in the house. Berries and peach for breakfast. Cherries for my snack. Must be in need of some swiss chard for dinner. Ooh. And maybe a frittata for the morning. I love my farmers market.

Where's the Knitting?

This airport has such presence of place.

Traveling for work is what I have been up to. I have some knitting with me. However, I'm only clever enough to email posts one photo at a time.

That's okay. I'm trying to relearn some focus. It suits. I have only a little knitting with me, only a bit of reading and work I can do on the road. I will not finish up any of these, so glad I focused and did not bring more. I may yet in the end have made progress on what I did bring, so that too will be progress.

I may have to go to a national gallery today, just to focus.

I might take my knitting.

With Thanks

The cat approves too. He hasn't seen a foot in a sock for months.

Elizabethsable knit these for me from yarn I brought to camp for swap last year. Imagine!

They are lovely. Many thanks!

Next?

Mailing out the quilt for machine quilting.

Next, I think, last winter's holiday placemats. And maybe a skirt. Or pants.

Baba might disapprove

Another quilt top quickly done. True, this is one of the ones which are for charity. But Baba was reported to hide the scissors on a Sunday. She might scold.

The cat Is scolding in her stead, as I iron seams.

Actually Playing on a Saturday

I am determined to use up the remaining fabric for the backing.

No one says you can't be determined while playing.

Competitive? Me?

Hot Spots

It's not news:  there is a lot of extreme unseasonable weather for this part of the summer.  Pick your place on a map:  it's either unbelievably hot or, in a few spots, unseasonably cool.

If I had to choose, I'd be in a cool spot.

However, I'm fortunate.  I don't have power outage in my living space.  My work space was shut down for a bit with power outage.  Today I'm using my office as my personal cooling center. 

In other news, my sewing machine has been the hot spot for hopping activity lately.  Made a graduation quilt for my niece*, finished at my mom's on the way to the event.  Nothing fancy - had a perky bundle of flannel purchased from a quilt shop in Iowa.  I had another plan for it, but the idea was only an idea for several years.  In the end I made nearly the same quick, big piece quilt I think they'd featured.  Tied, not quilted, but quickly loved and put to use on a very chilly graduation weekend.  

(Sorry about photo quality.  I need to get the camera back into use.  It's been awol and/or without batteries lately.)

Following that, I have been sewing some quilt tops to help with the grade school charity quilting project at the school where I volunteer. I don't usually help with that project - designed for the upper grade kids to do with the nearby senior center, the project involves the kids learning to sew, making large block quilt tops, and tying them.  The upper grade classes are currently pretty small - and the kids were kind of disappointed they didn't get many made.  New strategy, the project coordinator thought:  get some tops sewn up in advance so the kids can start tying, make progress in terms of quantity, and then start some to do beginning to end.  I totally get the excitement of having a LOT of quilts to donate.  The project coordinator was pretty clever, and she made up some quilt top "kits" to have ready at the volunteer luncheon.  I took one home, zipped it back the next week, and she promptly gave me three more.  I'm game.

And I don't mind some sewing to do while I plan the next sewing.  Witness the quilt of guilt that came out for finishing.  I knew one reason it stalled out, but I'd forgotten the other reason - I still had blocks to build.  Found a few stray triangles and squares cut out amidst the rest of the fabric.  And the fabric was AWFUL for triangles.  Way too much biasing,  I had one of the cardboard templates.  Who knows what kind of miscalculations there were in the math.  I don't know how many more I planned - probably another eight blocks, and those eight blocks inadvertently put this project on pause for YEARS.

I did the only reasonable thing.  I went for the finish line:  frames around the squares. wide sashing with contrasting blocks at the intersections, and a pair of wide borders.  I'm still contemplating one extra round of border, but I may call it quits.


On to the back.  I have nothing suitable.  I don't want to go shopping, when I have an embarassment of fabric to use.  Or at least that's what I thought until yesterday when I melted in the heat.


Looked at some of my fall purchase of blue quilt plaids I'd left here in my shop.  Not enough of them to substitute for a whole back.  I'm back to the first plan. I smell some kind of artsy finish.

I hope it isn't too odd.  It's hot.  My senses may short circuit.

*a quilt which is NOT the quilt begun when said niece was an infant..... that one went back to the back burner

Ugh. A flaw. Moving on.

Why does a flaw in the fabric surface after cutting and stitching. Why?

On to the reverse manual.
And on to piecing a section of the border, as naturally, not enough for a full piece.

That ugh also signals the path for machine quilting. Easier to camouflage that new seam....

From the Land of UFOs

A Guilt Quilt -

The blocks have been languishing for decades. Blocks are imperfect - fabric not all pure for quilt sources, and there's a bit of bias wobble and iron shrinking. (Golly, there's fuel for ignoring quilt finishing....)

Blocks were framed up with navy print two weeks ago. Sashing done this weekend. On to the borders and the backing!

Can't decide if I will tie it as was my circa late 80's plan and custom, or if I will ship it off to my former local quilt shop for machine quilting.

They may mock me. Some of those prints are lightly brushed, and there's a whack of polyester along with the cotton in those fabric blends.

Oh - the guilt part. I checked in with the friend. She'd be pleased to have it.

Some UFO's I can dispense with. This one I'll finish. The space opened up in the fabric drawer AND in the guilt pack will be amazingly free!

Blasts From Culinary Pasts

Carting these off to thrift store. Mother had them out, did we want them before they left. I took them home for a fast look before they head out.

That was only winter. What? I didn't look until today. Bag of thrift headed out, so one quick look today.

First Blast - Soup cookery!! Remember? Casseroles with creamed anything. Meatball stew. Stuff we kids could make on Saturdays when mom was working.
Things I didn't remember:
A whole chapter on surprising cakes and breads with the undefinable something and rosy glow of tomato soup. Eep.

Second blast: Altrusa's Favorites
What, who was Altrusa, we asked. Mother has no idea where it came from. Front leaf : Altrusa Club Objectives reflected a focus on supporting women in business and the professions as well as an array of educational outreach, public service, and nonpartisan political engagement.

A little Internet snooping showed that the history of the organization goes back to 1917, initially formed (in Tennessee?) by/for women to support the progress of women entering the profession during World War I. It has expanded in gender and in location, international perspectives and humanitarian concerns, including literacy projects.

Cookbook is decidedly still from a women's group, based on the printed objectives, and decidedly about the same vintage as the soup cookbook. Recipes with cake mix, canned soup, a taco dip to serve with taco flavored Doritos.

Blast three: a church cookbook from 1987, on Belmont in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago. I am copying out a recipe or two - see the notecards sticking out?

Then it will go away.

What I am not (NOT) doing: taking the centennial cookbook to the local church in case someone wants their own blast from the past, nor the Altrusa one to the international headquarters located downtown.

There's only so much blast left in paper ephemera and cooking nostalgia.

Goodbye, cookbooks!

Daylight

F Leapin O

Thirty+ years ago, this was an intended pillow. I think it was a gift for my mother. Saw it last Christmas, carefully stowed in a drawer, two knit rectangles, neatly folded once.

Took it home to finish it up. Months more it sat.

Took it back to my mother's for a brief summer visit, along with supplies.

Happily, it will be staying. Her decor can still carry a curiously gold, Lydia's Rug Yarn pillow, made by her daughter. What a hoot.

Pardon the photo. ElizabethSable would despair of the photo aesthetic.

It took about two hours, with distractions, to sew and stuff a pillow form, stitch in a zipper by hand, and stitch ip the remaining seams.

Take note, UFO's. I'm rocking some finishing, kicking it old school.

So Long Mayhem, er, May

In addition to the usual May end of term events, the past days saw the following activity, in no particular order:

Office relocating - two of them plus three other rooms - for major renovation project;
Unpacking the office filled with storage moving crates - which resulted in looking like a cross between being in a giant Lego and being in an organized episode of Hoarders;
Graduation preparations, two sets;
Quilt making, one gift from start to finish;
Flower planting at the cemetery for Memorial Day;
Salad making, all sorts;
Road tripping with a couple teenagers, complete with a game of Botticelli and a whole lot of Rihanna;
Knitting on the road, xxx yards into a sweater and half a sock;
Registering for conferences;
Organizing workshops;
Making lists;
Crossing off lists;
House hunting;
Freaking out about house hunting;
Getting ready to decide I can't move this summer;
And getting ready to try catching up on sleep and laundry and cleaning and everything that was abandoned for the last several months.

Hello, June!

Now it's a holiday!

It really is the start of summer break if I'm sewing at my mother's dining table!

Basics

Basic math:

Too much work + too little time = Busy.

(Breakfast at home + two packed meals)x 7 days = Really want to eat dinner at home some day.

9 stitches X 11 rows = a reasonable square.

Wonky squares - blocking = Mystery.

I'm basically very busy right now and have no right to pretend this blog is active or that it is a link to friends.

But basically, I am an optimist.

(Oh, and I did finish this scarf.)

This Would Be the Problem

See the vine that travels center, starting at bottom, curving to right and then left?
See the curves on the lowest green section and the middle green section?
See the break in the top green section?
Skipped a couple rows.
Starting over.

This Would Be Before

Not sure the stripe will do. I can foresee changes in the yarn that won't mesh with this.

What's that they say about rest?

Do not know what possessed me.

Had wrestled my way through the little bump of red wool from mittenfarce over a summer knitting camp weekend or two. (Spindle from adriennec.)

Had begun to tackle the handdyed little bump from adriennec last summer, and even got past a single weekend of camp spinning, working on it during a visit with to my mother's.

Last night I finished AND decided to try to ply.

Next step, mini skein and bath!

Hard to figure, except a change IS almost as good as a rest.

An indulgent late night