February Photos

Monday, March 2, 2015

Journal: Hope Chests & Biscornus

We just finished supper – chili, grilled cheese sandwiches (compliments of Victoria), apple salad, and, soon, muffins (also compliments of Victoria).  It’s 34° with a wind chill of 24° – not as cold as it has been recently, but still cold enough to make chili taste mighty good, especially to Larry, who’s been working outside most of the day.  He just headed back out to work on his scissor lift.  He’s very much regretting renting it out.  Those men messed up the wiring, and he hasn’t got it back in good working order since.  It now runs, and the lift can be raised and lowered – but only manually, from the ground, which is no good, if one is using it by one’s self, unless one carries a parachute with himself as he ascends.
Last Tuesday, February 24th, was Victoria’s 18th birthday.  She’s been wanting a hope chest, but we didn’t think we could afford a nice one (solid wood, cedar lined), because most are $400-$1,000 (or, if you get really fancy, $2,500+).  So we’d just about resigned ourselves to getting a ‘cheapie’ at Hobby Lobby – and even the fiberboard ones are $100.  But Larry talked to a man for whom he has done snow removal, Darrel Mckathnie, who owns an antique store – and he had a hope chest.  Larry went and looked at it – and it was a nice one.  There are a few scratches, but they are not deep, and will be easily fixed.  AND – the man let Larry have it for only $175, $10 less than the price on the tag, which is a very good price indeed.
Victoria is pleased with it.
Larry made my hope chest for me in high school shop class.  It’s quite big, made of dark walnut, sports fancy doors on the front, and is lined with cedar.  The top part was made to hold my cassette player, 8-track player, and record player.  We’ve adapted it for our DVD player.  The old speakers – big things – are still in it; Larry made everything to fit my components exactly.  Those old speakers still work and have a nice tone, but we haven’t used them for a while.  Someday, he plans to remove them and put shelves in the large openings instead – maybe for books, or perhaps for DVDs.  He gave it to me for Christmas when we were 17.  The other kids in his shop class had made an end table. 
Even my mother, who wasn’t sure her baby should have a boyfriend yet, was impressed. 😀
One evening, Victoria was at Bobby and Hannah’s house.  Hannah played the piano, and Victoria and Joanna sang – Victoria on soprano, Joanna on whatever counterpart struck her fancy; she switches around to whatever makes the prettiest harmonies.  Nathanael does the same – and Levi is just starting to, though he told me seriously, “However, I prefer soprano.” 
They recorded Singing I Go, and Hannah sent it to me.  Those girls harmonize very well indeed, as relatives so often doVictoria had started the piano, but finds it a bit troublesome to play and sing at the same time.  Her descriptions reminded me...
I can play and simultaneously sing alto, soprano, tenor – but just let someone try talking to me whilst I’m a-playin’!   😬 Daddy tried that once, right at church.
I hadn’t been playing for church too long, maybe a year or two.  He didn’t give it a thought, coming over to ask me something – he’d often done that when Lura Kay played the piano some years before, and she’d carried on with aplomb.
Not me.
Believe me, I done larnt ’im a lesson – he never did that again.
Come to think of it, his talking wasn’t what caused the trouble.  It was my attempting to answer that made my piano playing skip and lurch like a drunken jackrabbit.  Daddy looked amazed (and I probably did, too), said “Okay” quickly, and scurried himself back to his chair on the platform.  I grinned at Sandy over at the organ (she was looking at me as if I’d sprouted another head), and started in at the beginning, since I had no earthly clue where I’d been when I capsized.
What was Grandpa saying?” asked Hannah when I recited the story.
“No idea,” I replied.  “I doubt if he knew, either, after that fiasco.”
Loren has been cleaning and sorting things in his house.  He gave me something he found that I’m not completely sure what to do with:  a roll of 35mm 200-speed 24-exp film from PhotoWorks.
I no longer have my Minolta SLRs – we have nothing to put film into.  I offered it to over 6,000 ladies on the online quilting groups – and didn’t get a single nibble.  I wondered what to do with it ... and then I found this page chock full of crafts made with old 35mm film:  Pinterest Film Negative Crafts
Do I really need another project??  And...  shall I make my brother a bow tie?
Tuesday I made another biscornu pincushion and needlekeep; these will be for Norma.  Her birthday is March 9th
A friend wrote, “You know biscornus are addicting.”
It’s true!  It’s fun to sew a couple of offset squares together – and wind up with this cute-shaped little thing.
Wednesday morning, snow came down at a brisk rate for a little while; but it had tapered off by afternoon.  The wind was blowing at 30 mph, which neatly removed the half-inch of snow from most of the high ground and flat areas.  It was 30°, but the wind chill was only 17°.
I put a load of clothes into the washing machine... watered the indoor flowers... fed the cats... took three little Jackson kiddos to school at a quarter ’til one... and picked them up again at 3:30 p.m.  The road to and from the school seems shorter than usual, when the children are in the Jeep – because we can never finish telling all the stories we think of in the amount of time it takes to drive it!

Between and after these excursions, I hunted through my bins for color-graduated fabrics with which to make a table topper for my sister and brother-in-law.  Lura Kay and John H.’s 51st anniversary was yesterday, March 1st.
When I had 18 colors chosen, I took pictures , then switched them to black and white, the better to tell the values of the fabrics so I could arrange them from light to dark.
Just before church, Hannah sent a text with a quote from Levi:  “I need something going down my throat.”
“Couldn’t he just say ‘I’m thirsty’?” asked Hannah.
hee hee  That made me think of Lydia, and some of the funny things she said when she was a wee little think.  Such as this:  “I need a drink, because I’m thirsty of juice!” and “I need a piece of bread with anything not on it.”
Silly little kids.
Since Bobby and Hannah & Co. were going to attend a Bible Conference in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where Robert would be preaching over the weekend, and would not be home for Hannah’s birthday on the 28th, I gave her her present that night – a scissors holder, biscornu pincushion, and needlekeep.  She exclaimed over it quite satisfactorily – and had to stick her hand inside the scissors case to feel the leather (naugahyde, actually), which she’d read about on my website. 
Larry still had a bad cough (it’s still hanging around, though he’s better today), so he stayed home from church.  I told him he should go to the doctor, but he said, “Not yet.”  He said his “doctorin’ kids” were either going to cure him or kill him – Teddy gave him vitamins that, if one followed the instructions on the bottle, would cost $30 every five days or so (and, if one followed the instructions, I’m pretty sure one would acquire hypervitaminosis [yes, Mr. Gates, that is a word; just ask the good doctors at Mayo Clinic]:  jaundice from an overdose of vitamin A, diarrhea from an overdose of vitamin C, hypercalcemia from an overdose of vitamin D, and giddiness from an overdose of vitamin B12).  Lydia has some drops from the chiropractor that she’s going to give him, and Andrew told me about an OTC medicine that helped him (he still has a bad cough, too).
I planned to work on the table topper after I came home from church, but I went to the grocery store afterwards and did a marathon shopping excursion.  I was done in 45 minutes flat, but I wiped out three li’l ol’ ladies, two young burly men, and a small child.  Then I had to load it into the Jeep in 7° weather – and with the wind whistling through at 35 mph, the wind chill was -12°.  The lady who bagged my groceries is about my age, but she gamely pushed one of the carts out through the swirling snow and helped put my bags in the Jeep.  (I had only one cart when I got to the checkout stand.  Granted, it was heaping-full-to-overflowing, but everything expanded when I got it out and set it on the conveyor belt, and there was no way it would’ve fit back into the cart from whence it came.)  Anyway, I thanked her profusely; she had to have been colder than me, for she only had on a hooded sweatshirt – and no gloves!
Home again, I wrapped my scarf around my face, tied my hood, and carried in the groceries.  Larry came and helped, though he has a dreadful cold, and the wind and cold made him cough.
We got everything put away, I threw another load of clothes into the dryer and started one in the washing machine, and then I washed a ton of dishes that had been accumulating all day.  Well, maybe there were only three-quarters of a ton (I hate to exaggerate) (no, actually, I love to exaggerate) (but I try to make it obvious enough that there’s no question, heh).  We gobbled down some cheese curds with a few honey mustard pretzels, ate a cherry turnover for dessert, and then I retired to my recliner.  Soon I was all snuggled in with a soft, thick, purple microfleece blanket my sister gave me for Christmas, Caramel Crème French Vanilla coffee steaming away on the coffee warmer beside me, and my laptop on my lap. 
Tabby came and sat on the arm of my chair, staring beseechingly into my face, trying to pretend he was starved and needed his soft food.  He was obviously hoping I had forgotten that I fed him (or tried to feed him) a scant 20 minutes earlier.  He’d turned up his nose, having already gulped down some of the other cats’ dry food (I get the kind that comes in small round pieces, so that when Tabby swallows it whole, he won’t choke, and he’ll get some nutrition from it, besides).  His fluffy little head bobbed; silly kitty was about to fall asleep.
I found a website where the 50 cities averaging the coldest weather are listed.  I was surprised to see that four Nebraska cities made the list: #39, Lincoln, with an average monthly minimum temperature of 14.5° F and an average monthly maximum temperature of 65.6° F; #38, Grand Island, with an average monthly minimum temperature of 14.4° F and an average monthly maximum temperature of 64.7° F; #29, Norfolk, with an average monthly minimum temperature of 12.1° F and an average monthly maximum temperature of 63.6° F; and #24, North Platte, with an average monthly minimum temperature of 11.1° F and an average monthly maximum temperature of 60.4° F.
Thursday was colder than Wednesday.  At 12:30 p.m., it was 7°, with a wind chill of -9°.
The laundry was misbehaving – it was refusing to end!  I spent most of the day working on the table topper – while the birds worked on the newly refilled feeders, clustering in frantic froths around them.  They certainly go through a lot of seed, on these cold, cold days.
The owner of our Internet Service called to say that we’d used 50 gigabytes for the month so far, and they had shut down our Internet.  So much for the ‘infinite data usage plan’, huh?  I’d noticed the Internet was off a few minutes earlier, though my audio book had kept playing, as a good deal of it had already loaded.  Out of the goodness of her heart, though, she was going to reset it for me.  But if we keep this up, we’ll see additional charges on our bill.  Naughty, naughty.  (But why is the data usage so high, anyway?)  And the data won’t even come in well, a good deal of the time.  Ustream plays in fits and starts, making it difficult to listen to our church services.  Bah, humbug.
Lura Kay has not been well; she’s had a bad sore throat and cold, and now she’s having trouble with a very painful hip, thigh, and knee, until she can hardly get around.  She went to the doctor Thursday, and he took X-rays.  He thinks the trouble is a slipped disk, and hopes it will gradually get better on its own, as is sometimes the case. 
I wrote to her, “Do you need to borrow my cane?  It’s a nice one, from Tooleys.  What would’ve caused the slipped disk?  You were moving furniture?  Carrying an entire bookcase to school?”
She replied quickly, “No, I do not need a cane!  I prefer to just hobble around...it gets more sympathy.” 
The doctor asked if she knew of anything that she could have done to cause a slipped disk.  She couldn’t think of a thing, but as they were going home John H. mentioned that she had lifted some heavy boxes of pans a few weeks ago, and she did have a sharp pain in her back for a short while.  Also, she carried quite a few books over to the school – “...but it wasn’t a whole bookcase!” she informed me.  “And that was also a few weeks ago.  But if I really, really, need that cane I’ll let you know.  John H. has one, but it looks like something some old shepherd used out on the back 40.” 
When I called Loren that day to ask if he needed anything for supper, he told me that his supper was cooking away in his slowcooker – beef roast, potatoes, and carrots.  And he had a lettuce salad in the refrigerator.  “Would you like some apple salad to go with it?” I inquired.
He would, but didn’t want me to drive all the way across town (it takes ten minutes to get there) just for apple salad.  I quickly manufactured a reason why I had to go to Wal-Mart, and then of course I had to go there after delivering the apple salad, so as not to make a liar out of myself.  I did actually have a few things I needed:  printer ink, Noxzema, Aussie shampoo, and Q-tips.  Vital necessities.
Friday, I got the top part of the table topper finished.
That day, Loren drove to Beemer, 70 miles to our north, to pick up a fuel pump that was being repaired there.  That evening, he and Larry put it on the forklift and tried to get it started.  It finally fired once, but it never started.  Machinery can certainly be recalcitrant and refractory objects at times!
A little after 4:00 p.m. I got a text message from Victoria:  “Can I get a Betta fish?  *pleeeeeaaase*  I’ll take care of it allll by myself!!”
I replied, “Like you take care of the upstairs litterbox all by yourself?”
Victoria:  “Yeah but THAT’S not alive.”
Me:  “SOMEtimes it is.  :-O  And the poor kitties that use it ARE alive.”
I sent another before she could answer:  “Okay... but I’m not touching the thing.  Or cleaning its tank.”
Victoria:  “Okay :P  I can handle a little fishy.”
She didn’t bring home a Betta.  She brought home a GloFish Starfire Red Danio, a Peruvian Altum Angelfish, and an aquarium catfish (scavenger).  She had a 2.7-gallon tank, a filter/aerator, and fish food – all purchased with her employee discount at Earl May Gardening Center.  The fish are now whizzing about in the middle of our kitchen table.
In their cute little 2.7 gallon tank.
Saturday, she went back to Earl May for some plants (one is even live!), a log sculpture, a thermometer, and a small heater.  Today she took a small sample of water to the store, and they checked it for her to see if it was the right pH balance.  She got frozen brine shrimp for the angelfish.
(The catfish picture isn’t mine; I got it off the Internet.  I couldn’t get a shot of the one in Victoria’s tank, because he hides in the log.)
I imagined a quick completion of the table topper that day, sandwiching top, batting, and backing, quilting it, and then binding it.  Instead, I spent at least two hours trying to get my printer to print a pdf manual for Larry.  I thought it was settings on my printer or Adobe that were causing it to print in extremely light gray.  Turns out, it was the cartridge.  At least, I hope that’s what it was, and not my printer.  I did once put a cartridge in it without removing the little tab over the inkwell.  Siggghhhh....  Because the printer messed up the page order, I need to reprint the whole manual, and they don’t number the pages, the troublesome dummies.  This makes things difficult.
Larry spent the day trying to get his scissor lift to work – but he didn’t get it fixed.  He’s sorry he ever rented it out. 
Finally, late Saturday afternoon, I finished the Braided-Star table topper.  I have a few pieces left over; perhaps I’ll make a potholder to match and give it to my sister for her birthday in May.
Now I’m putting together a small piece – a mosaic sailboat – with the one-inch squares left over from the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt, putting them on the gridded Pellon.  It’s about 100” x 100” now, and will be about 50” x 50” after I sew the vertical and horizontal seams.  I will then give it a try on the HQ16 and find out what the machine thinks of that, and if it can quilt through many layers of fabric, possibly two layers of batting, and gridded pellon.  The answer to this question will determine the next steps on Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.  If all goes well, I shall proceed with the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt as planned.  If not, . . . . . .  a new course of action must be plotted.  Any and all ideas as to what to do about quilting, should the machine balk, would be greatly appreciated.
Sunday morning I discovered my website was down.  I have no idea why.  It had evidently gone down about 11:30 p.m. Saturday night, shortly after I uploaded pictures of the Braided-Star table topper.  A lady had told me she couldn’t get to the page, and I had assumed it was because of her slow dial-up service.  I emailed support at BlueHost, and a couple of hours later, the website was back up and running.  They didn’t seem to know what had happened, either.  Perhaps too many tried to visit the site at once, and crashed it? 
In answer to several questions I received about this table topper, I didn’t keep track very well of the hours I spent making it, but I suppose... maybe... 15 hours?  I’m guessing. 
I started instructions for this potholder:  el taller de georgina 2012/08 un-saludito-para-todas
Since I wanted a table topper instead of a potholder, I just kept cutting the pieces steadily bigger as I went along.
Here’s a funny:  when translated from Spanish with Google translator, the first line goes like this:
“Hey guys! Here I am happy to poke his nose again for the blog ... wanted to tell you I’m fine... and above all wanted to thank you messages of affection who wrote me, how much nice people there, thank you for so much love and so lovingly in my absence !!!!!”
When translated with Bing, we get the following:
“Here I am, happy to look again the nose on the blog...  ... I wanted to tell you that I am well...  ...and above all I wanted to thank you for the messages of affection that I wrote, how many nice people that there is, thank you for so much love and so much mimo during my absence!”
Hmmm.  She’s quite a nice lady; I seriously doubt if she poked anyone in the nose, looked up anyone’s nose (or down her own), or stuck her nose into anyone’s business.
Either she’s glad I poked my nose into her blog, or she’s glad she is back again, poking her own nose into her blog.  Something.
Sunday night, I think Victoria may have discovered what has been using so much data at our house.  We bought Larry an Amazon Fire box for Christmas – it turns our big screen into a PC/smart-phone/tablet/iPad monitor, and can play youtube videos on its own.  Well, Victoria just found this:
We wanted to know where the box was pulling all the beautiful pictures from that we are treated to on the Screensaver.  Victoria looked it up – and discovered the possible problem.
Amazon is working to fix this problem.  In the meanwhile, we’ll shut our Fire box down when we’re not using it, rather than let it go to screen saver.  We were really enjoying the pictures it was drawing from the Internet, and had often commented that those pictures were mighty high quality!
I sent the information to the ladies at Megavision.  Haven’t received an answer – this is why customers get irritated with that Internet Service Provider! — they often don’t reply to emails or return calls.
I think we’re going to switch ISPs, so I’m changing the email address in a bunch of accounts here and there from the Megavision addy to a gmail addy –
 sarahlynn.jackson2@gmail.com.  I now have that gmail set up to download into Outlook.  Outlook is becoming a bit of a muddle, on account of rules that cause email duplications.  I’ll wade into that after a bit.  I have over 100 folders with rules set to direct email... so when things start being directed into them from gmail, ... well, it’s sort of like this:
Ethiopia Intersection – Worst in the World  (For some reason, that video strikes me so funny...  Notice one truck that goes through with a person in the back.  Did he intend to be in there?!  )
Victoria made us grilled cheese sandwiches for supper, and we had the last of the chili with it, along with apple salad.  Now she has made some muffins; they’re in the oven.  Larry is trying out my new rotary cutter blade sharpener on some dull blades.
I still haven’t cleaned the litterbox... was going to do  that first thing this afternoon.  At least I ordered a birthday gift for Andrew – a glass ‘storm predictor’ and a sand picture from Bits & Pieces.
Wow, I don’t know when to stop.  What was the question?
Gotta hurry – I want to get back to that mosaic sailboat quilt!


P.S.:  They weren’t muffins, after all:  they were Molten Deep-Dish, Chocolate-Filled Sugar Cookies!  And therefore there is no milk for breakfast tomorrow morning.


,,,>^..^<,,,       Sarah Lynn       ,,,>^..^<,,,



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