Journal: Weddings & Fish & Sailboat Quilts

Beside me sits a steaming mug of huckleberry coffee.  I got a 2-lb. bag of huckleberry coffee beans from Amazon.  It was made near Gardiner, Montana, just north of Yellowstone National Park.  The huckleberries are grown in the Sawtooth Mountain area there.  We got some when we went to Yellowstone 2 ½ years ago, and it was soooo good.  Since we aren’t planning another trip to Yellowstone any time soon, I hunted online... found a bargain... and got some.

Did you ever accidently hover your mouse over one of those drop-down quantity selectors --- and then scroll with your mouse button, in an attempt to scroll the page?  Instead of the page scrolling, the quantity scrolls!  If you don’t notice, you might be startled when you go to the checkout page and discover your amount is, oh, say, $1,302,928.59.  (!)

A lady on one of the online quilting groups was talking about putting zippers into the ankles of Carhartt overalls.  Brought back memories – I’ve certainly done that a grand plenty of times.  Or at least it feels like a grand plenty of times.  I used to charge $5 a zipper for that job.  I got pretty fast at it – one time I put zippers in ten pairs of bibbies in one afternoon and evening, which made me $100.  That was in the early 80s.  Wowie ker-zowie, I thought I was a-gonna be a millionaire soon, I did, I did.

I changed my attitude about that little job when a local pig farmer brought me half a dozen of his overalls to put zippers in and patch.  WhewEEEEEEEEE, those things were ripe.  The moment he exited my house, I grabbed them up (gingerly! – between thumbs and forefingers), raced down to the washing machine, and flung them in.  One wash (with Tide)... another wash (with Borax)... another wash (with vinegar)...  Finally I gave up, dried them, and just breathed shallowly whilst I sewed as fast as ever I could, while still being as neat as possible.  When done, I scrubbed my hands, blew my nose, wiped my eyes, scrubbed my hands again, dashed to the phone, called the man (I still remember his name, how ’bout that?), and told him his overalls were done. 

“I’ll pick them up the next time I come to town, maybe next week,” he told me.

I considered that, glanced over at the folded stack of coveralls on an end table, where I imagined I could almost see those wiggly odor marks like they draw in the funnies emanating from them.  I didn’t want those things in my house for another day, let alone another week!

“We’re going for a drive tonight,” I improvised lickety-split, “and we’ll be going right by your farm.  Could we drop them off?”

“Well, sure,” he sounded surprised – probably nobody had gone ‘right by’ his remote farm for months – “that would be great!”

And so that’s what we did. 

Half an hour later, we drove up his lane, I knocked on the door... and handed him the stack of overalls.  He looked at them, was all pleased with the work – and remarked, “And you even washed them!  They smell good.”

They didn’t either, any such thing. 

But ... he gave me an extra $5, just because he thought so.  Who am I to judge someone else’s olfactory sense?

Tuesday evening, I took Loren some supper – chicken breast filet with chicken and dumplings poured over it, peas, corn, apple salad, and apple/cranberry/nut pie with whipped cream.  He called later to thank me for the ‘scrumptious meal’.  He was lonesome, I think; he talked for half an hour, which is a bit unusual, for him.  He and Janice always used to talk together in the evenings before they went to bed; it was a special time for them.  He misses that.  So every now and then, he calls and talks to me for a while.  I reckon I’m a sorry substitute – but at least I’m a substitute!

I got a bunch more little squares put in place on the mosaic sailboat quilt, using up some of the excess of one-inch squares I’d cut for the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.  By bedtime, I was about three-quarters done placing the squares.  The quilt measures about 100” x 100” now, so it will be about 50” x 50” after I sew the horizontal and vertical seams.  If it looks good, I just might give it to one of my sons or sons-in-law or grandsons.  {Or, contrariwise, if it looks really good, I might get all greedy and keep it.  Hmmm...  50” x 50”...  that would make a nice-sized wallhanging in my quilting studio... }

I headed to bed, and found Larry standing beside the bed taking a picture – of Teensy, who was snuggled up on the quilt with his head buried under a pillow.  I grabbed my camera and took a few, too.

It was only 10° when we came home from church Wednesday evening, and the wind chill was 0°.  Brrrr... cold, cold!

Thursday, I headed downstairs to my sewing room to work on the mosaic sailboat quilt.  After tallying up how many one-inch pieces are in this ‘small’ mosaic quilt, I realized why I’d been working on it for three days and wasn’t even done with the placing of the squares:  there are 8,550 pieces in it. 

!¡! 

I thought this was just going to be a ‘short practice run’ to find out if the lighthouse quilt can be quilted on my HQ16??  As usual, I’ve turned a short run into a marathon! 

Sigggghhhh...  I just can’t seem to learn the art of moderation.

I took my brother supper – chicken breast fillet (again), mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli, and apple salad, and then got him a couple of things at the grocery store, since I was going there myself.  Turns out, since my sister had given Loren chicken one day last week too, he wound up having chicken four days in a row.  Not the same kind of chicken, and not cooked the same way, but chicken, nonetheless. 

I asked, “Are you trying to tell me, you’re all chickened out?”

He laughed and said he guessed he was.

The Schwan man came that night, so next time I take Loren some food, it will be ancient-grain cod or the very tender roast beef he likes so well.

Friday, I finished putting the squares in place on the sailboat quilt.  I began sewing the vertical seams Saturday.  It got up to 65° that afternoon!  The birds have been singing like anything, and the skies are full of long lines of Canada geese heading north, with a few V’s of ducks mixed in, just for good measure. 

Black Kitty is 19 ½ years old, and feels quite frail and weak when we pick her up these days.  She can still jump up onto chairs and the bed... but now and then, because she’s mostly blind, she lands unsuspectingly on an already-there cat, who takes exception to being jumped upon in such an unceremonious manner.  Luckily, I usually see these things before or when they happen, and if I say quickly, “Be nice!”, the already-there cat, being a good, obedient Christian cat, does be nice.  Teensy and Tabby usually understand she means them no harm, I think.  Poor kitty.  Someday soon we’ll have to bid her adieu.

Victoria thought she might need to take her angelfish back, because supposedly the little red Danio is more aggressive, and will pick on the angelfish.  She intended to wait a week, so as not to stress the angelfish with too many changes in too short a time – but in the meanwhile, the angelfish settled in, got his dark stripes back (he’d gone pale from stress), and one of his fins that had been nibbled on before we got him actually grew back and is almost entirely whole again.  One of Victoria’s coworkers said he had kept Danios and angelfish together for years with no troubles.  As it turns out, the Danio and the angelfish are coexisting perfectly peacefully, no troubles whatsoever.  Victoria is glad.

By Saturday night, one-fourth of the vertical seams were done on the mosaic sailboat quilt.  That’s it!  That’s all.  Eso es todo.  Sin go léir.  C’est tout.  Das ist alles.  Quod suus omnes!

But not for lack of working on it!  In fact, I worked on it for about eight hours, and during the majority of that time, my sewing machine was going flank speed emergency.  Then I had to stop and, for nearly an hour, I re-pressed and steamed the little pieces onto the fusible Pellon.  Turns out, steam with heat works much better than heat alone.

I’ve sewn... hmmm... 24 seams, each of which was 95 inches long.  That’s 2,280 inches of seams!  Well!  No wonder I went through three bobbins and finished a spool of thread.

A friend wrote to remind me to set my clocks forward, “ – so you don’t arrive at the church in your glad rags only to hear the doxology.” 

Years back, I used to regularly call up some of our older parishioners (or anyone who had been known to forget), and ask them if it was okay if we set the clocks forward that Saturday night.  I should do it again sometime, just for old-time’s sake.  

I know people who go to bed an hour earlier, since they’ll lose an hour in the middle of the night.  Then, come fall when we set the clocks back again, they happily rattle on about an ‘extra hour of sleep’. 

Silly people.  I figure, “Tonight is tonight, the lost hour isn’t bothering me yet; I’m busy, go away, hush up, leave me alone.  I’ll just put a Stay-Awake tablet in my purse in the morning, so I won’t fall asleep in Sunday School.  One Stay-Awake tablet = one lost hour.” 

Next fall, I’ll be figuring it this way:  “Yaaaay!!  Another hour to play before I have to go to bed!”

There was just one problem with all this positive thinking:  I was about to fall asleep.

Last night was my great-niece Lynette Walker’s wedding.  She is the daughter of my late nephew David, and Christine Walker.  She married Brandon Tucker, a cousin of Jeremy’s.  Robert walked Lynette (his niece) down the aisle.  During his sermon, he mentioned David, broke up a little bit – and a good many of the rest of us did, too.  I was already halfway there after watching Robert and Lynette walk down the aisle, wishing David could’ve been there for his oldest daughter’s marriage.  She looks a lot like her father.  It was a very touching sermon... a beautiful wedding.

Here are pictures of the ringbearer, Alvin Tucker, and the flowergirl, Rachel Seadschlag, my niece Susan’s little girl.  The pictures of the chillen and grandchillen were also taken at wedding.

After the luncheon, the bride and groom opened their gifts.  Somehow, even though I saw the bride’s sister remove the wrapping paper from our box and slide it down the table toward Lynette and Brandon, I missed them opening that box. 

Then, the frosting (or lack thereof) on the cake:  I was taking pictures in the school, chatting with this one and that one – and totally missed the wedding party going back into the sanctuary for pictures just before they left.  Botheration!

Ah, well.  I did hear a funny story:  In January, Hannah made a cute little outfit for Joanna’s birthday.  That morning, Joanna put it on, and was getting ready for school. 

Levi, not knowing Hannah was listening, said to his sister, “You should tell your mother thank you!”

“Why?” asked Joanna.

“Because she made it by herself!” Levi told her.

Do you remember Lucy, of Peanuts fame, once becoming ‘aware of her tongue’?  It all started with Linus: 

There he is, sitting on the living room floor, anxiously clutching his mouth.  Lucy enters and asks what’s wrong.

“I’m aware of my tongue,” he explains.  “It’s an awful feeling!  Every now and then I become aware that I have a tongue inside my mouth, and then it starts to feel lumped up.  I can’t help it, I can’t put it out of my mind!  I keep thinking about where my tongue would be if I weren’t thinking about it, and then I can feel it sort of pressing against my teeth.”

Loudly declaring this the dumbest thing she’s ever heard, Lucy marches off scowling ferociously.  But a few steps down the hall, she stops dead in her tracks.  She clutches her own mouth.  Suddenly she’s aware of her tongue, too.  She runs back and shouts at Linus, “You blockhead!”

Well, I once, when I was, oh, maybe about 8 or 9, became ‘aware of my neck’.  We’d recently learned in school all about the jugular vein; maybe that brought it on.  But suddenly I was thinking, Just look at the size of my body, compared to my head, which is vitally important – and they’re only connected by this skinny string of a neck!  I could feel the pulse in my jugular vein, just ka-thump-ka-thumping away, and I thought, Well, mercy me, it’s so close to the surface, all that has to happen is that I bump the point of my pencil against it, and I’ll be done for! 

I considered this for a time, and then, with a characteristic mind shrug, I decided, Well, this is just something I will have to leave up to my guardian angel.  And off I went to consider the next new and novel consideration.

Did you ever, as a small child, suddenly wonder, What if this isn’t really me, behind my eyeballs, looking out? 

Heh heh... I kept most of these odd thoughts to myself, the better to seem normal.  And now I learn that one or two of my daughters have thought nearly the same thoughts, when they were little!

Have you ever started off on a saga with a certain goal in mind... get there... go on past a wee bit, perhaps for clarification, or because, once into the story, you remember the rest --- and then, all of a sudden, you realize the tone and timbre of the entire tale have taken a turn?  Sometimes you just have to go with it, and wax eloquent in this new tack; other times you reluctantly get friendly with your delete function (although, if you’re actually talking to someone, right out loud, and don’t get stopped in time, well, then, I guess you’re done sunk like a submarine, with no remedy at all).

Well, the clothes are all washed (except I see someone has had the audacity to throw a pair of socks into the hamper)... the dishes are all washed (except there is now a saucer in the sink – someone certainly has nerve)... and off I go to my sewing room to work on a mosaic sailboat.

Don’t let me forget to plug in my hard drives and start a mammoth backup!

If a mammoth backs over a person, does it hurt?

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