Parasol Ladies Finished and Zucchini Report

This turned out so pretty.  The Prairie Points around the edge add a bit of a challenge when quilting because 1)  they add a lot of bulk on the edges when the quilt is rolled, and 2) you have to stay an inch or so away from them when quilting so they (and the backing) can be turned and slipstitched closed.

I placed a motif in the white cornerstones, a motif in the sashing, then outline quilted the embroidery and added curls to fill the background.

Very pretty on the white back.

As far as my recovering fractured foot - I am back on my feet (heh, heh - pun!!) for the most part, with a bit of a limp.  The foot hurts and the ligaments/tendons in the front of my ankle hurt from a month of disuse.  But the show must go on.  Today I have many stiff muscles in my lower extremities because I spent several hours yesterday weeding and harvesting in the veggie garden.  I have green beans coming out my ying-yang so I made a mad dash (by car) to a couple of the neighbours and foisted beans on them.  I took some to my nephew last night and I'm taking more to a friend today (I'm taking zucchini for her too.  But let's just keep that between us for now, ok?).  That will STILL leave me with enough in the fridge for a couple of meals.  But that's ok - I'm happy to eat those.  It's when I have so many that I can't put them in the fridge that I start to get frantic.

On the CANNING front, Saturday netted me 8 jars of Plum Sauce and 6 jars of Orchard Fruit Chili Sauce.  Even my poor stove was exhausted by 7 pm Saturday.

ZUCCHINI REPORT
Picked this week:  8
Picked YTD:        49

Parasol Ladies Quilt, Gimpy Cross-Border Shopping, Stash Report, Zucchini Report

I'm currently working on a Parasol Ladies quilt.  If you remember liquid embroidery, that is what was used here.  So you know it is a few years old.

We had our annual pilgrimage to Diane's in Grand Bend for Beach Day.  Which is really two days.  And we don't go to the beach.  I heffalumped out to the garden and picked a peck of peas to take with me.  It looks like I brought coolers, too.  :-)

There was no way I could shop the mall with my cast, so those crazy girls pushed me around in a wheelchair.  Even one of the sales clerks in Macy's came over and took me to a checkout.  It's a good thing she wasn't a psychopath - who knows where I might have ended up?  This was the haul:

We started at the Mary Maxim sale, where I fell off the wagon.  Since they are WORD prints (mostly) I have excused myself for my bad behavior.

I'm getting around much better these days, and hopefully on Monday the ortho doc will give me permission to go back to normal activities.  When I picked the peas on Monday I could see we'd have purple beans ready in a few days, so on Friday I sent DH out to shop in the yard for supper.  Yum yum yum... yum yum yum...  By the way:  purple beans are schizophrenic.  They are only purple on the outside, and they turn green after cooking.

Today I'm hoping to make a batch of zucchini relish and clean up all the leftover squash in the fridge.  That'll give me a clean start for next week's haul.
 
STASH REPORT 
Used this month:  0
Used YTD:        64.2 m
Added this month:  3.5 m
Added YTD:       119.25 m
NET YTD:        + 55.05 m

ZUCCHINI REPORT
Picked this week:  7
Picked YTD:       41
If you assume that a zucchini in the grocery store would cost $1 you can see that I am a good way towards a new pair of shoes.  :-)

Scooting, Quilting, Cross-border Picnic-ing, Zucchini

I took a scooter ride through Costco.  And, of COURSE the battery died in the middle of an aisle and made everyone back up their overloaded shopping carts and work their way(s) around me.  Poor DH was embarassed.  For years now I've been pointing a finger at him every time he does something UN-healthy, and telling him: "I'm not changing your diapers".  He's been so good over the past several years with all my broken bones that I've granted him up to 6 diapers now.  He should be good for maybe two days.

Here's the beautiful sampler I was working on when my, um, incident occurred.

This is the back.  Yum.

That quilt was SO much work, when it was finished it was time for a bit of a break, so I quilted some uber-cute rabbits on a baby quilt.

I washed up this quilt, made by the Caledonia ON guild, that is going to Caledonia NY to my sister guild.

Here's a bunch of us at the picnic hosted by the Caledonia, NY guild where we swapped the quilts.  One of the gals there is the local Nolting dealer, so we had a great chin-wag.

ZUCCHINI REPORT
Picked this week:  10
Picked YTD:        34

Today I think I'll make a batch of chick pea & zucchini salad.  It's great for lunch.  I make THIS recipe, using 1 can of chick peas and reducing the sugar to 1/3 cup.

When You're Growing Weeds: Bug Identification 101 (and weekly zucchini report)

I'm back at work.

I took a week off until my appointment at the fracture clinic.  Yes - the bone is fractured, but should heal in four weeks.  In the interim I have permission from the Ortho doc. to do whatever I like, as long as it doesn't hurt.  OK.  I can handle that.  The cast is going on and off, and the crutches are being used frequently but not always.

Monarch Butterflies are getting so much press these days - declining habitat and blah, blah, blah.  Like lots of folks I know, I am growing milkweed for them.  Poor DH.  He grew up on a farm where if you didn't plant it, you kill it on sight.  Whenever we're on the front walkway he looks at the milkweed, shakes his head, and says "I can't believe we're growing weeds".

Since I have permission to do stuff (isn't 'stuff' a great adaptable word?), I've been weeding the flowerbeds along the front walk.  Last night I found this weird, weird, caterpillar.  On the milkweed.

Because I love you, and I know you are curious too, I spent about an hour and a half this morning getting TOTALLY grossed out looking at bugs on Google, trying to find this sucker.  You're welcome.  This is a Milkweed Tiger Moth (a.k.a. milkweed Tussock moth).  HERE.  You can learn all about it.  The other bug is a milkweed beetle of some sort.  These guys will likely defoliate a lot of the plant.  As long as they leave my zucchini alone...

ZUCCHINI REPORT
Picked this week:  7 (can you believe that DH has been picking zucchini???)
Picked YTD:      24
We gave all 7 fruits away because I still had a large-ish one in the fridge.  DH cooked up half of it for me, then left the other half sitting on the kitchen counter for days.  Uh huh.  It's compost now.  If we get a decent zucchini today I may spend some time on my feet in the kitchen (first step:  clean it!!) and make some zucchini fries.  Recipe HERE.