Wednesday Wandering

Today I finished the last of my 35 Selvage Stars.  I hope to have the top assembled by the end of August. 

The Zinnias are starting to bloom. They are annuals and I save the seeds from year to year. I sow the seeds outdoors in early spring. I have several patches of them and I like to cut some all summer to bring into the house. Zinnias are sometimes referred to as Cut and Come Again - if you cut the flowers they will usually keep producing well into autumn.  I'm hoping that outside  they will be filled with butterflies soon. 

Some Strawflowers will be ready to harvest soon. They are one of many flowers I grow for dried bouquets and to make wreaths. I used to grow a lot of dried flowers and sell them at Farmer's Market. 

I was happy finally to see some Foxglove sprouts. I sowed the seeds in May and they sure are slow growing. My husband bought me a whole box of tags for me to use this year so I could remember where I planted seeds in the flower gardens and what I planted.  The funny thing is that a raccoon or something removes the tags and throws them down elsewhere. Rascals!

I finished the rest of the chicken scratch I need for my Grandma's Apron Strings quilt. I ran out of Blanc embroidery floss when I only had one more strip to finish.  I took another look through all my different threads and found four more skeins of Blanc floss mixed in with some white Glow in the Dark embroidery floss that was in a project box with a Glow in the Dark crazy quilt project started long ago.  This is another top I hope to have finished by the end of August. 

Just when I thought I would have to go out and hand pollinate the squashes, zucchini, cukes, cantaloupe and watermelon I found some pollinators at work in the blossoms. 

So I hope to see some results soon. 

The watermelon are doing just fine. I tried two different varieties of mini watermelons (6-8 lbs) this year and I think this is one called Yellow Doll. I'm not sure I'm going to like a yellow watermelon but the description made it sound delicious and the vines are compact. 

Books

I do a lot of my reading in the middle of the night on my Kindle. Most of the books I read are free with Prime but from time to time I do follow up and read what I see recommended on some quilting blogs I read. So I decided I might as well mention my reading list.  The following is the list of books I read in June and July. I enjoyed them all. 

1. Emerald Horizon (book 2 of Star & Shamrock) by Jean Grainger.   WWII historical fiction. 

2. Almost Home and

3. Missing Isaac by Valerie Fraser Luesse.   Both are nice stories. 

4. Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson.  I learned for the first time about the blue people of Kentucky and the WPA packhorse librarians. 

5. Chase the Wild Pigeons by John J. Gschwend Jr. - a novel about the adventures of two boys, one black and one white, during the civil war. 

Last night I started reading The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. 

I've webbed together all twenty of my rows of  30 Half Rectangle Triangles ((HRTs).  I started making the 2 x 4 inch finished HRTs back in September 2018 as a Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) project to use up 4.5 inch width scraps. Now I just need to sew together the rows and since I think that is a very boring task I will probably just sew together a few rows a day. So this should be another top finished in August. 

While I was sewing together the rows I was thinking that I still have a 16 quart bin of 4.5 inch width of scraps and I don't currently have a RSC project in the works that will use up those scraps. This year I wanted to empty all my bins of scraps so...

I started cutting parts and started making these coin type blocks of five 2.5 x 4.5 inch scraps.  

I will alternate blocks with the D-L-D-L-D configuration with blocks of the L-D-L-D-L configuration.  I've been pressing seams toward the darks. 

I hope to have sixty blocks of each configuration in no time and hopefully an empty bin too. 

Broccoli heads are starting to form. This variety is new to me this year and is called Blue Wind. I just thought the name was funny so that's why I picked it. I start seeds for these inside under lights in a corner of my sewing room. 

This year I'm also trying some sprouting broccoli for the first time. Instead of one big head and then several side shoots like most broccoli these just send out lots of side shoots. I thought they would be good for stir fry and broccoli cheese soup as well as broccoli au gratin. I started these under lights too. 

Cabbage heads are starting to form. I have seen lots of white cabbage butterflies lately. Their larvae love to feast on cabbage so I hope they leave some heads for me. Last year I found a little nest of baby rabbits in a hole under one of the big cabbage leaves. That scared the heck out of me to see big eyes peeking out of a hole and moving when I picked up a cabbage leaf that looked like it was being eaten.  You know I really wanted to just take a hoe to that hole but I let them and the cabbage be. And one day they were gone. They are probably the rascally rabbits doing the destruction in my flower gardens this year. 

 I started the cabbage under lights too. This is a variety that is good for making sauerkraut. I never really liked sauerkraut until I tasted homemade. My husband always liked it and requested I try to make some one year when we had a surplus of cabbage. Now I make some every year. 

And that's it for this Wednesday's wandering.