Jacks

I've been doing a fair amount of work over the last few days, but probably not as much as I should. Right now I'm working on the above quilt. The jacks fabric is the front and the stripes are the back. It's stitched in rows of loops, but of course it's not done yet. I'll take better photos when it's finished. I also did a little embroidery, but haven't gotten far on that. The banner will say "I ♡ Napoleon."

I got my city business license last week, and filled out forms for my county and state licenses and my tax id. Also talked to James about my website, so work is starting on that. It seems every time I sit down to do some actual quilting, though, I have to get right back up again. Either I don't have the right color thread or I need interfacing or something like that. Pretty frustrating, but eventually it'll all be sorted out.

There was a lot of cooking over the last few days, too. I made olive oil cookies from a recipe on Mark Bittman's NY Times blog Bitten. I made the sugar cookie variation, sans rosemary because I didn't have it on hand. They were really delicious and everyone at Michael's potluck seemed to like them. They come out quite small (not a whole lot of spreading during baking) so they're sort of bite-sized and awesome. Evan and I also made steak with caramelized shallots and mustard for the potluck. It's a recipe I think I got from Martha Stewart Living a few years ago and never made. Very easy and pretty inexpensive.

Devon was in town this weekend, so bars were out, but we had an impromptu party at our place Friday night. It was a lot of fun despite some less-than-stellar dramatic moments. However, thanks to Mark and beer, crisis was averted. In the morning I made breakfast for the itinerate drinkers who ended up staying the night and then settled into a deep and fulfilling laziness. I plan to extend that laziness until 6 o'clock tonight at which time I will gorge on delicious food at Taj India and probably go into a food coma.