Cookie & Elsie, patriotic paperclip top finished

Michael headed out to the grocery store first thing Sunday morning (1/28), while I got laundry going.  When my honey came home, I went up to help unpack groceries and found this:  

I just LOVE that little paw sticking out.

Michael made my standard breakfast (ya just gotta love that guy):  

and then I started to put borders on my Patriotic Paperclip quilt.  And I have to ask.....why do borders always take longer than I think they're gonna???  I put a skinny cream border and then a bigger dark blue border and Michael thought that really finished it off and made it look classy  :~):  

After that I got several more rows of quilting done on the second men’s quilt, while spending a good bit of time on a new pattern.  Mary Jo sent me a picture of a quilt I really liked, but I need to alter it to fit into the patriotic paradigm.  For me this usually involves lots of drawing and guessing and starting to write directions, which I then have to test out.  A made a bit of progress on that before working on more HST.  I had cut out 32 HST at retreat as part of the demo, so I spent a bit of time after that trimming and pressing them.  

Michael left at 5 PM for rehearsal and I spent some time in the kitchen.  BG has the most fabulous almond bar recipe, but it takes almond paste something I don’t typically have in the house.  Susie made something called Swedish Almond Bars at retreat, and she graciously shared the recipe with all of us.  I liked it because it used ingredients that I ALWAYS have in my house, so I finally got them made on Sunday, right before Pat came over.  We each enjoyed a large piece of them and they were yummy!  I cut the rest up for Michael to take to rehearsal Monday night, 

after which Pat and I sat in the living room and talked and talked.  We haven’t really seen each other lately and it was good to get caught up.  Michael came home at 9:30 and cancelled out of his Monday morning golf as it was raining steadily all day.

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