Chum

I woke up early, alone. I did not hear Chris leave to work out at the gym. When he came back, (6?), he explained that the men he was going to work out with were not there. I postulated that they were getting ready for the Superbowl festivites. It is a big thing here and most people took the day off. I think it started at 7am. Chris stayed with me for awhile, then he got up to get ready for work.
I must have fallen asleep, and did not get up until 9:30. I drank some plain water, then swished while doing my exercises. Then I added vinegar to the remaining water and drank it. I checked e-mail and chose an e-mail to unsubscribe. For some reason it made me want to do it again. I think I unsubscribed to 5 different things. I used a telescoping wand to get crumbs from under the dishwasher. I got a lot, but the handle came off and wedged underneath.
From there it was the usual coffee/meditation morning. I used my new digital timer. I like that it doesn't tick, but on the other hand, it is almost impossible to read without lots of light. Then I started to clean the kitchen. Chris came home for lunch. There was no mail because it was a training holiday (Superbowl). I wiped off the Christmas lights that Dynee had lent me and struggled to get them back into their boxes.
I laid out the 9 extra blocks I had made. I decided to trim them to the size of the smallest one. I wanted to make a practice piece to try out my free-motion quilting before I did the one for the doctor. In looking through the leftovers, I found more blocks. So I laid them out in three on-point rows so I could have lots of practice sewing from fish to fish. I took a break to go outside and move the water jugs to the back. I used the goose egg to make a batch of banana oatmeal cookie dough. It was easier to spread it over a parchment sheet and make one BIG cookie. But it took forever to bake. While it was baking, I made seed cracker mix. While waiting for the cookie to finish, I took the quilt backing and attached PVC quilt frame sides to the left and right side. That helped it stay flat on the floor. I called Dynee to see if she wanted to see how it was done, but she was busy. So I spray-basted the batting on and then the top. I cut the excess batting off. There wasn't much left on the roll. Then the cookie came out of the oven and the seed cracker mixture went in. I talked to Myra for a bit. Later I turned off the oven and left the cracker inside to finish getting brittle. I went back to sewing.
I pieced leftovers to make triangles to fill in the on-point squares. I had leftover pieced border, but not enough to go all the way around, so I just did the ends. Then I took more leftovers and pieced them into triangles, which became a 2 ¾ inch wide strip. I cut it in half and sewed that to both sides. I decided to call it "Chum" since it was made from the leftovers of the leftovers of the fish quilt. Then I realized that all the raw edges were on bias, and I needed to remedy that before it stretched irrevocably. So, having used up most of the blue watery leftovers, I turned to the bright strips. I picked the one inch ones in purple, green and orange to make strips for all the sides. I liked it a lot, possibly too much to use it for quilting practice! By then Chris had come home and eaten his supper. In fact, by the time I pressed it and photographed it, it was 9:45. Chris said it was too late to watch TV. So I tried to catch up on e-mail. I took my evening magnesium and melatonin. I typed up my blog and went to bed.
* The fish got lost in the chum. *