Wednesday, February 20, 2019

When we went out to our Valentine’s dinner it was to a new restaurant – well not exactly new but an old restaurant run by a new chef. We saw online that he was offering cooking classes on a night when the restaurant was closed to the public.

My dinner on Valentines included a beet salad, lobster bisque, short ribs, dessert and a cheese plate. All very tasty. Pat ordered a similar meal but he picked a lamb shank. When the chef came to the table and asked how our meal was Pat’s comment was that the lamb was “flat”.

By the time we got home the chef had invited him to be a Facebook friend and they exchanged a few comments back and forth. It was all very friendly and the chef said he appreciated the feedback.

Then earlier this week Pat had another message from the chef asking him to come to his cooking class tonight and he could bring a guest. There was also mention that the bar would be open. So tonight is the night. We have no idea what to expect, but I’m thinking Pat will be cooking and I’ll be drinking!

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

I was quilting this morning and the thought was going through my head that my method is a little like hiking a new trail. I need to mark my quilting lines but didn’t want to spend a lot of time doing it so I’m using short lines (almost a dash) along the line where I need to stitch. When I sew, I line up my needle with the marked dash and follow it to the next one and so on. When I hike a new trail I’m always looking ahead to make sure I can see the next marker from the marker I’m currently at so I won’t get lost. It has worked so far for hiking – we’ll see how it works on the quilt.

And speaking of hiking, just when I thought it was safe for Moreen and I to start walking in the woods again we’ve got more snow. It varies between snow and rain and it isn’t sticking on our street yet but that may change as the temperature drops overnight. I managed to get out this afternoon to do some errands and had no issues with the roads.

After getting stuck in the parking lot at the quilting class on Saturday I decided not to even risk going to the bee today. I didn’t have anything in particular that I wanted to get done, although my bee list is quite extensive at the moment – cards, Guild blocks, Challenge bag, and more.

I stopped at Canadian Tire today and picked up ten shoe boxes. I really need to do some tidying up in my sewing room and a lot of projects that are in plastic bags will fit nicely in the bins and they will stack better. I’m a long way from being ready to do any of that tidying but the bins were on sale for less than $2 each so I stocked up.

My prize for the January UFO came in the mail today. The blog writer included an extra pattern that looks very nice. I will make the bag that was my prize; no matter how many times I say “No more bags” they seem to keep popping up.

Monday, February 18, 2019

Our last house concert performer was from PEI and she lives about five minutes from one of the Bed and Breakfast’s we stayed at (the one in the lighthouse). She is also a quilter and her aunt owns a shop. After dinner one night while she was here I dug out my journal of our trip to PEI and we did indeed stop at her aunt’s shop in O’Leary (pronounced O’Larry). I wasn’t “into” quilting then but it didn’t stop me from purchasing three cross stitch kits (none of which are done) – Peggy’s Cove, Three Churches of Mahone Bay and Lupins (the unofficial flower of PEI).

I enjoyed reading through all of that particular journal; I don’t have to even look hard and I can see four others. I’ve always intended to do “something” with them so, while it was handy, I started transcribing my ramblings. This journal pre-dates my online journal but I can see my writing change after only a couple of months.

What are the highlights of the first couple of months of 2007? I noted that I was working on a shawl for Kathryn (I expect it was eventually Alex’s baby blanket), a Cinderella cross stitch for Madison, a Winnie the Pooh magnet for Emma, and with only two months of the journal transcribed I’ve already fixed Dylan’s blankie twice! We watched lots of hockey and were involved in a couple of movie-screening groups.

Today, besides the transcribing, I’ve paid some bills and done some Cranberry Hall work. I headed out to Canadian Tire to purchase some bins they have on sale but they were closed. I knew it was Family Day but I really didn’t expect everything to be shut down. With what is left of the afternoon I’ll clean and oil my sewing machine and maybe get a couple of lines of quilting done.

Sunday, February 17, 2019

As if I didn’t have enough to catch up on, an update to my website has completely changed (and in my opinion not in a better way) how I write my posts. So if things look strange and different, I’m still in a learning phase.

The film festival continued, although I think we missed as many movies this year as we attended. Thursday afternoon was a movie date and, because it was Valentines, we had dinner reservations. The snow started to fall in the late afternoon and we had already decided we wouldn’t go to the evening movie. It’s a good thing as by the time we were finished dinner the movie would already have started.

There were movies again Friday afternoon and Friday evening and with the time I had left in the day I worked on some quilting and preparing for my Guild class on Saturday.

I was up early on Saturday morning so I could complete the quilting before heading out to my class. We were learning how to make a jelly roll rug (a jelly roll is made up of about 42 2.5″ strips). I intended to use some strips the Guild had cut up and then the finished project would be available for sale at the quilt show. But I never finish a project in a class and I didn’t want to have another thing to worry about finishing so I used some of my own fabric. I already had some strips cut but it took awhile to get up to 42 of them. As predicted, I didn’t come anywhere near finishing my rug but only one person did and she had done a lot of pre-sewing before arriving. It was a fun process and I’ll definitely make more.

Although it has warmed up a bit and we’ve had some rain the parking lot at the church where we sew was a disaster. There is a rather steep hill to get down to the parking lot and I was pleased when I was at the top of it to see it had been cleared. Not so when you got to the parking lot at the bottom. Two husbands had to be called at the end of the class to push most of the cars out of the lot – mine was one of them.

I currently have three books on the go – I never do that. As I was finishing The Space Between Us I thought how nice it would be to see what happened next in the lives of the characters. Because this time I was reading on my Kindle they had an excerpt from the sequel so I immediately ordered it from the library and started on the first two chapters on my Kindle. That night I started the Valentine’s day mystery book I picked from the library. And after I finished the two chapters of the sequel (The Secrets Between Us) I started another book on my Kindle while I waited for another movie to start. Now that the films are over I’ll get back to reading one book at a time.

I’m going to be working on my Farmer’s Wife quilt again today – I’ll get it trimmed, add the binding and then tonight I’ll have some hand stitching to do.