February Photos

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

03-23-15 -- Sailboat Quilt on the Frame, and a Trip to Gallatin


Monday, March 23, 2015


Last week started with a good deal of cyber sleuthery, which, ridiculously enough, isn’t in the dictionary.  Noah Webster really did need me on hand to report needed and necessary new words to him at regular intervals.

I email my friend Linda fairly often.  She writes to me somewhat frequently.  Last Monday, however, I discovered that she had not received some of my email.  Since one or two others who use the same Internet Service Provider also had not received my email recently, and my ISP does not block outgoing email, the problem had to be on their end, one way or another.  I wrote to her from gmail... she got the email.  Perhaps her ISP was blocking my ISP's email?  I remember them doing that one time when I was working at our local ISP, and the owners were all in a steam over it.  They really got quite lathered up about it, saying that the bigger company was trying to run them out of town.  Maybe they were, too; who knows?  Big operatives do that to little businesses, now and then.

However, that theory was put to rest when the part-owner of our local ISP wrote to my friend Linda, and the email went through just fine.  Then I wrote to Linda from Victoria’s account, which is an offshoot of mine, and that email went through just fine, too.

“My emails wouldn’t be disappearing into some obscure folder somewhere, would they?” I asked Linda.  “I wouldn’t think so, since my address is in your address book, and we haven’t had a problem before.”

She replied, “I’ll call ----- and ask them to check my account settings.  Maybe they changed my spam filtering or something, and you’re now Spam.”

There’s a thought.  Maybe I am now Spam! 

She soon reported back, “They’re not blocking the local ISP emails.  It’s something with your email, says the guy from -----.  He said it’s the client’s email.”

It’s almost never the sender’s server that causes a problem when email is not delivered; it’s nearly always because the receiving server reads it as Spam. 

Facts:  1)  Linda’s junk folder was empty.  2)  I received no notice telling me my email could not be delivered.  I wondered if somehow a rule had gotten set in her email program (Eudora) that was moving my email to some unknown location where she didn’t see it.  She checked Tools, then Filters...

But she had not created any filters or new mailboxes.  Nothing goes into the Trash folder unless she manually deletes it from Inbox or the Sent file.  

It really had to be ----- blocking or filtering my email, since 1) email from my other addresses were getting through, 2) her emails were getting through to me, and 3) she was receiving emails from other email addresses (so far as we knew – this would prove false).  I didn’t know any other explanation.  But of course there are multitudes and hordes and swarms of things I don’t know.

Linda wrote, “I wonder if you could go to the web when you’re here and check my email from there.  Maybe something would show up?”

“I could do that from here, if I had your password,” I answered.

She sent the password.  I signed in.

And there were all the lost emails – several hundred of perfectly good email – in an online Spam folder that she did not know was there – in fact, she was told there wasn’t one there.  There were emails from the National Federation for the Blind ... and, get this, even -----’s own monthly bill!  haha

So much for the dunce who told her it was my email causing the trouble, and that they do not filter the mail!  A bunch of emails from a couple of other friends were in there, too.  I marked everything I thought was not Spam, and transferred them to Inbox, which would send them on to Linda.  I wondered, Why are there a bunch of things in the trash folder, if Linda’s emails are downloaded into Eudora?  There were things in there that I knew she’d received and read.  Are her Eudora program and the ----- online email program synced?  Our local ISP webmail is not synced; it is only a holding place, as it were, until it is downloaded to the customer’s computer. 

What in the world.  This was new and different.  I’ve checked her email for her before, and it certainly wasn’t like this.  I put a filter on my address to redirect it to Inbox, and then checked into it further to see if I could just shut that folder off entirely.  It wasn’t in settings, though I’ve found Help files that say it is.  

I researched more.  And... here’s the scoop:  ----- webmail is now ----- Yahoo webmail, and yes, it is indeed synced to the email programs on customers’ computers/tablets/etc.  I see by comments on various forums that other people are having the same problem – they are throwing fits and tantrums that they have to log in to webmail to find their lost email.  And the Help file instructions don’t match what’s on the page.  One person says that the filter directing important email to Inbox didn’t work; but it seems to have worked, for Linda’s emails.

I guess I’ll just have to check her Spam folder now and then, and make filters for emails that should be allowed through.  Ugh, this is not handy in the least.  The tech with whom Linda talked at ----- told her they had done nothing new – but obviously they have, since this has not happened before.  Really aggravating, when some know-it-all tech somewhere spouts what you know good and well is bonhomie!

I sent Linda a list of email she might possibly want, and added, “Everything else is junk, unless you want to send Miss Donna Gwen $250 in order to claim the millions and billions you won from the Lottery, or unless you want to contact Justin Ella Mark (odd name – foreign spammers often inadvertently combine male and female names) and let him/her know you are the next of kin to some unknown entity who has left you $13.5 billion, or unless you want the Metallic Silver 2015 BMW 7 Series car you won from the British Gaming Board.”


Ooof!  Teensy just landed on me.  Now he’s kneading bread on my lap.  He’s very insistent – now he’s cramming his head into my hand — “Pet me!  Pet me!  Don’t type!  Pet me!”

It was 88° last Monday, but only 36° at noon Tuesday, though it was bright and sunny.  The birds were squabbling ferociously at the feeder.  Earl May Gardening Center is picking up speed.  Victoria works about 25 hours a week, at the moment, but it’ll probably be 40 by next month.

Someone found a parrot somewhere around town, and brought the bird to Earl May.  So Victoria walks around some days with the parrot perched on her shoulder.  We are acquiring some of Earl May’s products in our house:  fish...plants they were going to throw out (which are now doing well)...

There was a price tag of $85 on a large plant she brought home last week.  She separated it into five large pots, as it was root-bound.  The plants are already growing and looking better.

Now Teensy is on top of my arm, trying his bestest to hold it down.  Typing is a chore.

Our poor old Black Kitty is getting quite feeble.  I think she was getting way too hungry in the last few days, because she wasn’t eating the dry food we always have out for the cats, and I generally only give the soft food to Tabby.  But it finally dawned on me that I hadn’t seen her at the dry cat food bowl crunching away for quite some time, and she was acting a little more frantic than usual to get to Tabby’s soft food.  I just thought it was because she is partially blind, more on some days than others, and she’d get all excited and run lickety-split after the food dish as I was picking it up to put it in the refrigerator.  But finally my feeble brain put these things together, and I got all alarmed, and gave her a fresh little container of soft food, and she ate nearly half of it.  Poor little thing, she was really hungry!  And she had to work at it, eating the soft food – I think her muscle tone has deteriorated, so that even chewing is a bit of a chore.  But several days of having all the soft food she wants has strengthened her, and her back legs don’t seem so weak now.

I don’t want my animals to suffer needlessly, but neither do I want to put down old animals just because they are old, if they can still be comfortable and happy.  She’s at least 19 ½ years old now.  She was a stray before she came to Larry’s shop, and the vet estimated her age at about one year.


As I sewed last week, I had those beautiful videos of Switzerland – they’re called SwissView – playing on my laptop.  Since there is no narrative, but only an aggravating noise some would term ‘music’, I played iTunes along with it, with my own music.  Ahhhh.  The best of both worlds.  Literally and figuratively, both.

A lady wrote to the quilt talk group telling about the neighbors’ big ol’ ram hitting her in the back – right where she had surgery after a car accident – and sending her flying, landing right on the road.  Her husband ran and picked her up before the ram got to her again.  She wasn’t seriously injured, but she was mighty sore for several days. 

Another lady then told about her great-grandmother:  “My billy goat stupidly went after my tiny great-grandmother while she was weeding the garden.  That day, we learned that Granny could really swing a hoe.  All of us cousins stood and hee-hawed until she ran after us.”

That reminded me of a story about my grandfather, who died long before I was born.  He was using his large mule to pull his plow, and this mule had a habit of stepping backwards through the traces if they stopped, and tangling everything up.  He particularly liked to do it when Daddy or his older brothers were driving him.  They told Grandpa their troubles, so one day Grandpa took the mule out to work in the field. 

Sure enough, as soon as he stopped, the beast began his backing-through-the-traces stunt.  Grandpa blocked him and started pushing him back where he belonged – and the mule laid his ears down flat and bit him.  He sank his teeth right into Grandpa’s upper arm and tried to remove a hunk out of him.

Grandpa, who was only 5’ 6” but solid muscle and bone, doubled up a fist and socked that big ol’ mule right in the middle of the forehead so hard that it brought the beast down onto its knees.  After a few groggy seconds, the animal stood back up again, looked around, stepped neatly back through the harnesses he’d backed over, getting himself right into his proper place without so much as a directive.  And he never, never ever, backed through the traces again, not even with my father or his brothers.  Mules might be rascally at times, but they ain’t no dummies!

Tuesday night I finished the top of the Mosaic Sailboat quilt, and Wednesday I put a border on it.  I decided one 2.5” border was enough, and got half the backing put together before church.

See those little green men on the sailboat?  The Martians are thusly colored because I was trying to use up the little squares I had already cut – and because I thought perhaps we could imagine they were dressed in tree moss camouflage.  heh heh  Victoria wants me to couch little wooden sticks into their hands, and not just embroider the poles onto the quilt.  ’Course, Victoria thinks all matters involving sewing and quilting is easy – so long as her mother is doing it.  ha!

I’d planned for this to be a wall hanging, and thought maybe I’d give it to Ethan, Teddy and Amy’s oldest boy, who’s 11.  But with the Pellon backing the top, it feels a bit stiff. 

I said to Teddy, “Either you need to finish building Ethan’s new room so he has a wall to hang this on, or I need to make a softer quilt! – because this thing doesn’t drape.” 

He laughed and remarked, “Ethan would love a quilt you made him – not a wall hanging, a quilt – even if it’s stiff.  It’s something to get under, isn’t it?  And Grandma made it.”

So that made me wish I could put fleece on the back... but I really needed to see how my machine responds, in order to know what to do with the lighthouse quilt – therefore, I need to put the sailboat quilt together just like I’ll be putting together the lighthouse quilt, and that is with a cotton back.  When it’s done, I’ll decide what it’s going to be – quilt or wall hanging.  I’ll put button-down tabs at the top with big sailboat buttons, if I decide on ‘wall hanging’.

I posted pictures on my old blog, which loads a whole lot faster than my website.  The website is published through FrontPage, Microsoft’s outdated software.  I’m planning to abandon the website next year in favor of the blog.  I also made a couple of new pages, one especially for quilts (Sarah Lynn’s Quilting), the other (Sarah Lynn’s Mitered Corner) for projects such as ribbon embroidery.  Nature’s Splendor will be for photos, and that’s where I will post my weekly letter, too.




And, if you’d like to compare venues: 
http://sarahlynnsquilting.com/Quilt_Gallery_VII.html 

The pictures on the blog should load much faster, and be easier to look at, too, as you can use the arrows on your keyboard to navigate through them.  Wednesday night after church, I uploaded the rest of February’s photos, and checked to see just how many stand-alone pages a blog on blogspot can have.  Twenty, as it happens.  I will make several other separate blogs (for poetry, recipes, doll clothes, etc.), and post links on each of them.  One big point in favor of the blog, as opposed to the website, is ---- the blog is free.  Plus, I wouldn’t be obliged to sign in to my website host files and delve into their tools to reactivate FrontPage extensions every time the host updates their servers.  Each time that happened, I wondered just how long it would be before they abandoned FrontPage entirely and left me high and dry.

I’m tired to death of FrontPage with all its foibles and bugs (unresolvable bugs are why Microsoft abandoned it).  Plus, my website at BlueHost costs $100 a year.  I started with blogspot... and then my boss at our local ISP saw me working on it one day when there wasn’t anything to do, and gave me FrontPage software (outdated, even when she gave it to me), and a website from them for a small fee.  I promptly made the site too big to suit them.  

(“We’ve never had anyone make such a huge website!”)

(Me?  Something too big???    How could that be???) 

So I moved to BlueHost with their ‘infinite’ web plan – and a year later, was informed that my website had ‘exceeded quota’.  Infinite, ha!  So now I have three separate blogs, all connected with links and profile, and will make a couple more for various pages.  Now, if someone would just migrate all my data to the new sites...    What a job.  I have created roughly 600 GB – that’s gigabytes – of data.  I’m just so... prodigious!  Proliferant!  Prolific.  Propagating.  Fructiferous.  Productive!

Too bad I’m not so profuse in the garden-work category.

Larry didn’t go to church Wednesday night, as he didn’t feel well.  He got sick Tuesday night, and hasn’t felt well until today, when he finally started feeling better.  I was beginning to worry – and was planning to insist that he see the doctor; but he was able to eat without undue discomfort, and that’s an improvement.  He continued going to work each day, despite being sick.

I like to chat with children and grandchildren after church.  I talked to baby Jonathan (who’s not really a baby anymore) after church that night.  Such fun to watch a bright little brain absorbing, learning, enjoying...  
Last Sunday night after church, Larry handed him a little VW car he’d brought for Grant, should he need to hold him while Teddy sang in the choir or men’s quartet.  Because the wheels were a bit noisy, Larry wrapped a rubber band around them, thus rendering them unmovable.

Jonathan started to run the car over Grandpa’s shoulder... noticed something amiss... turned the car over, and frowned studiously at the rubber band encumbering the wheels.  He glanced up at Larry.  “Car,” he remarked, and stabbed at the tires with one small finger.  “Car,” he said again, eyebrows lowering even farther.  He ran a finger over the rubber band, gave it an ineffectual pull, and then fixed a piercing look on Larry.  “Car!”

Larry took the rubber band off.

Jonathan grinned, and the car immediately began traveling over Grandpa’s suit lapel.  Jonathan pursed his lips and added the sound effects.

I admired a picture Jacob had drawn in his little notebook – and he promptly removed it from the notebook and gave it to me.  He’s a sweet, loving, generous little boy.

Thursday, I got a box from a lady for whom I have done some quilting... and, oh, my goodness, it’s crammed full with many dollars’ worth of lovely things!  It felt like Christmas, going through everything.  There is ribbon embroidery background fabric – just what I needed for my next project.  There are several Bucilla cross-stitch kits.  Bucilla makes such pretty designs.  One of the grandchildren will love the Noah’s Ark picture.  

The ladies on one of the quilting groups to which I belong were discussing grammar – or the lack thereof – and words people use, regardless of whether or not they are actually words (we will not mention ‘sleuthery’ at this time). 

One lady mentioned the word ‘irregardless’.  “It doesn’t exist!” she wrote.

It does now!  So many people insisted on saying it, they added it into the dictionaries.  Noah Webster is turning in his grave even as I type.

They added ‘pompom’ in, too, because so many people refused to say ‘pompon’.  Imagine my great humiliation when, in grade school, after informing another classmate (with a great deal of pomposity) that the word was ‘pompom’, she showed me the entry in the dictionary:  ‘pompon’.  And then imagine my consternation when, a couple of years later, after a lively debate over that very same word, I smugly flipped open the dictionary to show several other classmates a thing or two, only to discover – ‘pompom’ had been added.  I learned (painfully, at times) to keep my big mouth shut before spouting information I hadn’t verified.

As is usually the case, this thread of conversation was carried on until someone got offended.  The offended lady often writes with little punctuation and regularly uses homonyms that leave me scratching my head until I finally figure out what in the world she meant to write.  However, far from judging her, we are all properly impressed by her attitude and industry in the face of a number of physical limitations.

Bad grammar and punctuation and spelling bug me (especially when found in news articles and suchlike) – but not to the point of being impolite to others. 

Unless they deserve it. 

And anyway, it is one of Murphy's Laws that, as soon as one complains about someone else's bad grammar/punctuation/spelling, she will immediately make a glaring blunder herself.
Victoria spotted a picture of herself on my screensaver, taken when she was 8 or 9:  
 “Oh, look how cute I was!” she exclaimed.  “What happened?”  hee hee  She pressed PrtScn, and I sent her the photo.

That afternoon, I finished piecing the backing for the Mosaic Sailboat quilt, then pieced together enough batting for it.  By evening, it was loaded on my frame.  I cleaned and oiled my HQ16, threaded it, and got the tension just right.  By then it was a quarter ’til eleven, so I quit for the night.  The overhead lighting above my frame is not very good, and it’s difficult to see when one is quilting with dark thread on dark fabric at night.  I need get a light bar to go over it.  Since my quilting frame is in the front part of our walkout basement, and there is a patio door and a big window in the front wall and a smaller window to the side, it’s well illuminated during daylight hours. 

One thing that works better at nighttime than daytime is editing photos.  Sooo... after stopping with the quilting, I got on with the photo editing.  I posted a number of my February photos on my blog.  There are goldfinches, house finches, English sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, and cardinals congregating around the feeders after a big snow... and a bright-eyed squirrel eating the striped sunflower seeds that are a bit too hard to crack for the smaller birds.  (see sidebar)

Friday, I started quilting the sailboat quilt.  In the middle of the afternoon, I paused for a little lunch:  two egg yolks and a cup of orange juice.  I had to eat the egg yolks, you see, because Victoria made herself an egg-white/avocado sandwich on rye, and left behind the yolks.  So I ate them, like any good mother would do.

I got back to the quilting machine then.  Soon I was done with the top border and starting on the mosaic part – the part that is backed with lightweight fusible Pellow.  Would my quilting machine quilt through all these thicknesses, or would it won’t??

Quilting, quilting, quilting ----- and then... YAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!

It’s woiking, it’s woiking, it’s woiking!  My HQ16 is handling this thick, dense quilt like a trouper.  I’m so happy and relieved! 


I’m taking it slow and easy, so as not to break thread or needle, or, worse yet, throw the machine out of timing, and guiding the machine is a bit of a chore; but it’s quilting it – and with perfect thread tension, too.  Wheeeee!!!  I did have to raise the hopping foot two full swivels, but the hardest part about that little job was blundering around in Larry’s none-too-clean toolbox for the right size of crescent wrench.  Never did find one small enough; so I used one of those plier clampy things instead.  Oh! – it’s a vise grip, isn’t it? 

Some of my curves were not as curvaceous as they should be when I first began, until I found that I had to really get a grip on the handlebars and steer this big machine where I want it to go, when it’s traveling over all the seams on the Pellon.  But... the fabric is busy enough that (I hope) the uncurvy curves won’t show much.  And, after all, this is my ‘practice piece’!  

The next thing I need to know is, will it drape, is it usable as a bed quilt, or must it of necessity be a wall hanging?  Determining that issue will be the deciding factor in whether or not I add nautical blocks to the sides of the Lighthouse quilt for the ‘hang’ at the sides of the bed – or just put a couple of borders on it and call it done. 

I didn’t double the batting, because I was scrambling to find enough to piece together for one thickness, and didn’t want to buy any.  The HandiQuilter is quilting it nicely enough that I think it would actually do it just fine, with two thicknesses of batting.  Sooo...  I might... and I might not use two battings on the Lighthouse quilt.  Even this 57” x 57” quilt – the top alone – is heavy, on account of all the seams.

Late that night, I got to the approximate one-third mark, and quit for the night.  There are more pictures here:  http://sarahlynnsquilting.blogspot.com/

A friend wrote, “Glad your machine is working so well for you because Plan B – whatever that was – would not have been as easy.”

Truth o’ ze mattuh is, there was no Plan B.  Had the machine not handled the quilt, the only thing I could think of doing was throwing hands into the air, wailing and howling loudly, and then retiring to a dark corner to sulk.  And I don’t sulk easily, I’ll have you know.  I take others down with me.

Victoria went to her friend Robin’s birthday party that evening.  Robin turned 16 yesterday.

Saturday, we went to Gallatin, Missouri, southeast of St. Joseph, to pick up some sort of motor for a mower for Caleb.  At least, I thought that was what it was, and what it was for.  Something that goes ‘ĂĽden ĂĽden’.  

I collected camera... tripod... camera... laptop... camera... shoes... camera... socks... camera... sweater... camera... eyeglass cleaner... camera...

Don’t let me forget my camera!

Larry woke me up at 7:00 a.m., because we were leaving early. 

Except... we left at about 1:00 p.m.

That, because Larry went to change the oil in the Jeep – and the parts house sold him the wrong filter; and, next, because he helped a friend straighten the frame on his four-wheeler.  Oh, and because when he changed the oil, it splattered all over him and got in his hair, so when he came home, he had to take a bath and wash his hair.  And then he needed to take the big forklift back to Walkers’, and it only goes about 30 mph.  (see photo above)

We got to Gallatin, Missouri, at about ten ’til six.  The motor (which was indeed for Caleb’s mower, I learned) was loaded on our trailer, and we were on our way again in about fifteen minutes.

Thirteen miles south of Gallatin, population 1,762, is the town of Hamilton, Missouri, population 1,731.  As we drove through it, I suddenly spotted something familiar:  The Missouri Star Quilt Company!  A block farther on, on the opposite side of the street, there was another store – Penney’s Quilt Shop, a branch of the main store.  There are two others:  Sew Seasonal and the Mercantile.  A fifth building is undergoing restoration; it will house batiks.  Now, listen to this about Penney’s Quilt Shop, which houses solids, minky fabrics, and basics:  Hamilton is the birthplace of J. C. Penney himself.  While this large building most recently was a hardware store, many years ago it was a J. C. Penney's store, owned by J. C. Penney himself.  There are several museums dedicated to J. C. Penney in this town.  But, wouldn’t you know, it was late Saturday afternoon, and all the museums and quilt shops were closed. 

We ate supper at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in St. Joseph, Missouri.  Because of our late start, we had no time for any sight-seeing stops anywhere, more’s the pity.  And Larry still didn’t feel well.  There are a few pictures from our trip scattered through this post.

Look at this picture Victoria sent me – it’s entitled ‘Cat Latte’, and is drawn in the froth of a coffee latte.  Now, that seems like more of a waste of time than pulling weeds!  But it did make a prettier picture.

Victoria’s broccoli and celery plants in their little biodegradable pots are doing fairly well – the ones that survived the initial drought, anyway – and should be ready to plant outside when danger of frost has passed.  It’s supposed to drop to the mid-20s during the night Thursday and Friday.  In addition to using the UV light on them, she also got a container with a clear plastic lid, and they look quite a lot healthier now.

I just looked out the window and noticed that the stems on Mama’s old-fashioned roses are bright green!  One of these nice warm days, I need to trot around the house and see if the peonies are coming up yet.  I want to divide a few of them, and put them some in the front.

I love pretty gardens – flower and vegetable, both – but ... they sure are a lot of work.  My biggest gripe is that all that work doesn’t stay done.  Oh, well.  It’s mighty good exercise. 

And now, just as if they knew I was talking about them, BlueHost sent out a notice that their web hosting for my website is set to expire June 22nd.  Huh?  I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen until January!  Whataya know.  How ’bout that.  I need do nothing, however, as it is set to automatically renew, no further action is needed; the money will be taken from my account, and I’ll be all fixed up for another two years.

Looks like I’ve decided to change just in time.  And I have decided.  After using blogspot again for a week, it is quite clear that this is the way to go.  Everything is so much easier... and it’s free, it’s free, it’s free!

Without another moment of hesitation, I clicked on the link provided in the email, and changed my settings to ‘Do Not Renew’.  And that’s that.  According to the confirmation email, all information related to my account will be deleted when my account expires.  However, I have all my webpages saved on my laptop, and backed up on my external hard drive; so I will be able to add pages as I desire to blogspot.

Now to add a few pictures to my quilting page... and then to add a few clothes to the dryer, and some to the washer, too... and then I shall add a few stitches to the sailboat quilt.

,,,^..^,,,    Sarah Lynn    ,,,^..^,,,

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