Tuesday's Orts January 2020

Tuesday's Orts--bits of thoughts and happenings that land here occasionally....

• I just finished my first week of intermittent fasting and lost 3 lbs.  Since I'm not usually hungry in the morning, but ate mostly out of habit, breaking my fast at 12 noon works well for me. I stop eating at 8 pm--again not a problem since late night snacking isn't a habit of mine.  Otherwise I have not changed much of my diet, however, need to get off the sugar and carb train if I want to lose more lbs!
• My fractured molar from some Secret Santa popcorn has been crowned.  That was an expensive gift.  Thank goodness we have dental insurance as the crown was priced at $1295. Gulp.
• Mini nap-tested my Lucky quilt almost immediately and a-purr-ooved.

•  Our avocado tree is loaded with fruit and we pick a few at a time to ripen together.  Yummy avocado toast was my treat at lunch one day this week.

 I found, however, that my recently purged spice cabinet was lacking some necessary ingredients--namely cumin.  I suffered through it with extra garlic salt :)

•  Our first guild challenge was to make a project from a letter tile we were given in December.  I got the letter L.  I went fairly literal in my project but virtuously used only scraps and leftover triangles to make some  L blocks ...

 ...which turned on point become hearts.  I didn't add the final set of triangles yet but intend to make a pillow cover.  It was fun to play with the leftovers.  Not that the scrap drawer was much diminished, tho!

• A lot of other scraps have been being run under my needle.  In trying to get projects moved along, I pulled out the Bonnie Hunter My Blue Heaven pattern project.  Having completed all of the purple blocks for my two color version, many green pieces were cut and sewn for the star blocks.

Lots and lots of greens and neutrals.  I tried to mix some of the earlier cut pieces with the newer batch to distribute the colors around.

For my version I'm making 24 of each color.  I'm getting pretty close to having the center blocks ready to play layout. This is a free pattern on Quiltville.com.

•  Traffic Rant:  Besides the usual zoomers and slowpokes, there is hardly anything new to complain about--and yet, still I find something:  People who park on the corner of the street.   I don't understand why people do this when there are plenty of straight curbs to park against mere feet away!  We live on a street with a lot of kids and it really makes it hard to see them, having to creep around vehicles. 
• We watched our grandsons over the weekend and I spent the evening after their bedtime stitching a cute owl. 

 The paper is relatively thick and pre-printed with the owl eyes and beak.  I did not have the recommended floss colors, but had no trouble selecting from my stash.  I bought this at JoAnn's Fabrics, I believe on clearance.

The Cross Stitch Style Kit came with several different precut animals and each had several choices of cross-stitch designs.  Love the kitty, of course, but the others are darn cute too. I plan to give this to a friend who loves birds and flowers.