Pies and Piglets and Punch-Needle Embroidery

We went ahead and pushed the date of this year’s plant sale back by two weeks, to June 1. The snow we got on Wednesday was demoralizing. (We had 3" of snow one year on June 10, so this is not unusual, just demoralizing.) Yesterday was sunny and warmer. Today is supposed to be stellar, just in time for our community pie social this afternoon. Another system comes through at the start of the week, but at least it isn’t supposed to get so cold.

I made a roaster of chili for the pie social. I would prefer to stand behind a table and dish out chili, but Susan and I discussed personnel and I am better utilized at the information table. I made up a big posterboard display yesterday afternoon. I can schmooze and welcome people for three hours. It won’t kill me.

Sarah and Susan are our resident pie-making experts. Sarah has been experimenting with adding natural coloring to her pie crusts and texted me some photos last night:

Isn’t that gorgeous? Sarah is so creative. I am not a baker. I did not get that gene. Gardening and sewing, yes, but cooking is my least favorite domestic activity.

One of the women in our sewing group, Beth, has been playing around with punch-needle embroidery, and she brought this to show on Thursday. She’s another maker with a fountain of creative ideas. This isn’t that large—maybe 4" x 4"?—but it’s adorable. Beth said this may end up as a journal cover.

Before the pie social today, the husband and I have to go pick up five piglets. The timing isn’t great, but it is what it is. The chicks also need to get moved to the coop soon so they have more room to run around.

I’ve been juggling about twenty different things this week consisting of a thousand tiny details. The schedule should ease up after this weekend—and having two extra weeks for the plant sale helps considerably—so I’ve been tackling some projects that don’t require a lot of mental energy. I cleaned out a couple of closets and made a pile of items to take to the thrift store. I hemmed two pairs of pants. I moved the inkjet printer upstairs to my computer because it needed a firmware update, so I did that and made sure it was operational. The husband uses it to print foundation plans and he gets cranky when tech stuff doesn’t work.

I messed around again with the coverstitch machine and the 12wt Wonderfil Glamore thread. The machine simply doesn’t like it. That thread is a metallic and it seems to be getting hung up along the thread path. I switched to a 12wt rayon thread (Wonderfil Accent) and had zero problems, so I ordered some spools of Accent to have on hand.

I am still having a great time with the podcast. There are so many interesting people to talk to out there in the sewing universe.