Thinking of Zinnias

While appliquéing little plaid baskets during the winter months, I was trying to decide what to put in them.  Bright, beautiful, colorful zinnias came to mind.  Joyful flowers, I think, especially in the dead of winter.  So I've made a few to see what I think.  It was easy enough to cut and turn the edges of circle-ish shapes for the flowers and their centers.  But it was a little harder to decide how to make them look more like zinnias and less like generic flowers. 

The baskets will have two to four flowers each.  The leaves in the above photo were freshly cut with edges not yet turned.  They look a little large, don't they?  Zinnia leaves are unusual because the base of each leaf wraps around the stem of the zinnia and if looked at from above, they are exactly opposite each other.  A bit of a challenge to translate into fabric (if one is a little too much of a realist).

The centers of zinnias have what look like little secondary flowers, some yellow or orange or red or other colors.  But sometimes look like they have little lines of color, perhaps unopened petals.

How to interpret those little star-flowers with fabric?  Cross stitches, maybe?  With embroidery floss.  One, two, or three strands of floss.  Or is there a better way?  

In "You've Got Mail," Kathleen Kelly (played by Meg Ryan) claims daisies as the friendliest flowers.  I claim zinnias as the happiest flowers. 

In other news....  My mom used to say, "If it's not one thing, it's another."  I've adapted that saying to, "If it's not one thing, it's two or three." 

On the Saturday evening before the Fourth, I came home with groceries only to find that our oven had caught fire and no part of the stove was usable.  It had been empty, had been off all day, and it was cold inside.  It seems a miracle to me that my husband happened to be sitting in the kitchen and heard a pop (he's nearly deaf and would have heard nothing if he'd been in another room), then saw smoke coming from the oven.  He opened the door to see what was going on inside and quickly closed it when he saw flames.  He moved the stove away from the wall, unplugged it, and the fire went out.

It is incredible to me that a cold, empty oven can catch fire.  It makes me wary of leaving any appliance plugged in.  Well, the stove was nearly 23 years old, but still.  I don't even want to imagine what might have happened if no one had been home.  On Monday we ordered a new one which, the store says, will be delivered on July 21.  We're eating cold or microwaved food.  And toast.  Tomorrow I'm going to try hard boiling some eggs in the microwave for egg salad.

I know this is a first world problem:  people in many other countries cook over wood fires or bake in wood-fueled ovens.  But we get used to time-saving and work-easing appliances, don't we?  Which reminds me of something I heard years ago:

There, there, little luxury,
Don't you cry.
You'll be a necessity
By and by.

I don't even want to think about what the next problem could be....

Okay, that's it for tonight.  I hope everything is fine in your life!

--Nancy.