Great Sleeping Weather
The windows on three sides of our home stayed open all night long. It could not have been more conducive to good sleeping if we had been up north in a cabin off of Lake Superior. Who knew Stauffer Avenue had so much going for it? These temps and low dew points may not last, but I will take this reprieve right up to November.
Monday mornings seem to trip the housework mode entirely on its own. Sorting laundry, loading a clean Swiffer and using a spray of Windex here and there, I was in the zone. Dennis felt the compelling morning energy by going on a shopping trip for new tires for his little red Ford pickup. We bought the 2005 used pickup in the summer of 2008. Dennis felt we had really gotten good mileage out of the tires that were on the pickup at that time. Shopping locally Dennis was very happy with the quote for tires, balancing, alignment and wiring needed for pulling a trailer for the price of $700.00 plus tax. He received a heartfelt “Thank you for buying from us” from the owner’s young son. Sweet.
I had asked Dennis to bring home milk and an onion for the evening meal fixings. You got it! Dennis scored cucumbers on Saturday and we were short an onion for creamed cucumbers to go with his left-over hot dish that he had fixed for last night’s supper. I did get a call from Dennis as he was hefting different onions in the store. It was a choice of yellow, white or red. He came home with a white onion as the the yellow ones were showing their age and he passed on having chopped red onions in his cucumber dish. As tomorrow is the farmers market here in town, he knew he could pick up some really choice onions there.
I hop around from task to task as it keeps me from overdoing those areas of the body that have arthritis ready to make its presence known. I was pleased to have gone through the refrigerator to take a check of what needed to be sorted. The front of the shelves are for those items that need to be used in the next several days; condiments that don’t need to be kept as cool go to the shelves in the door. They do tend to wander at will throughout the refrigerator. Room was made for the creamed cucumbers and I headed for my sewing area.
Continual sewing of two patches at a time for later pressing really takes less thread and no mess of ends of thread being clipped off after each block has been run through the machine.
I may sit at the sewing machine for no more than an hour and then head over to the ironing board and continue swapping back and forth. It is so much easier on the back rather than having a portion of it seizing up. The scrappy quilt will need time at both the machine and the ironing board. This is not a project to finish in short order. My Mom taught me years ago to do the chain sewing when multiple pieces of the same size are in a quilt. It takes so much less thread and the 
time saved of clipping the tread on either end of the sewn item really counts up. Now if only they would take themselves over to the ironing board – that would be the neatest thing since sliced bread.
I did get the paper and pencil out to see just what would be required for a queen sized quilt from my scrappy squares. I do believe I have enough of the 2.5 inch squares that will result in the 4.25 inch center each 6.5 inch finished quilt block.
It’s time to enjoy more of this great day and take a stroll out to the gardens and I know Butter Ball will be right beside me the entire time. We may even find a stray weed or two to pull. We have supper preparation totally in the bag so I can’t think of anything better than some patio time.