Cats and Birds and Quilts and Bugs

I just made myself some coffee – Cameron’s Maple Walnut.  Mmmm...  smells good, tastes terrific.  On the bottom of Cameron’s coffee bags, it says, “Hold this end.  Smell the other.”  On the top, as you’re unfolding it, you read, “This day is full of potential.”  When it’s all the way unfolded, you see on the other side, “This bag is full of coffee.”

You’ll recall that last week about this time, I was stranded at home on account of a dead Jeep battery?  Well, Larry left it charging all night long Monday night.  At noon Tuesday, I needed to go to town to get some cat food, a vital necessity, you know.  Before walking out the door, I wrote to a friend, “Will you wire me flowers and chocolate if I get stranded in the Hy-Vee parking lot?”

“Sure!” she replied promptly.

“I’ll get stranded, then,” I responded, and trotted out the door.

The Jeep wouldn’t start. 

How can you get stranded somewhere, if you can’t even get there in the first place?!

But Larry had left the charger on the drive, covered with a black garbage bag to keep the rain off of it, so I popped the hood, attached the cables, cranked up the charger, started the Jeep, and headed to town.  (I did disconnect the cables before backing out of the drive.  It’s always bit embarrassing to be trucking down the highway at 65 mph – with the hapless charger hippity-hopping along behind.)

Instead of Hy-Vee, I stopped at the Dollar General on the west side of town, and left the Jeep running while I went in, as I knew it wouldn’t start again if I turned it off.  Soon I was home again, and old Black Kitty and toothless Tabby were happily chowing down on Fancy Feast.  With gravy.

I declare; you give a feline Fancy Feast just once, and it’s ‘No, thank you,’ (nose in air in disdainful, snooty manner) to the Meow Mix Tender Favorites forever after!  Never mind whether or not it advertises with ‘Real Beef in Gravy’ right there on the lid.

!!!  How ’bout this?  I just discovered this photo, complete with caption, on the Internet: 

Guess my cats aren’t the only ones who prefer Fancy Feast’s 69¢ cans to Meow Mix’s 42¢ cups.

What I was looking for was this picture of Socks, being his usually snobbish self:

Wednesday, I finished putting together the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt except for the final border, and ironed all the seams.  I had just enough time to take pictures of it before hunting down (or hunting up) some glad rags for church that night.

I hope Loren will be pleased to have this quilt with Janice’s cross-stitched blocks.  The thing is, I expected this to be a throw, not a bed quilt.  It’s big!  Good thing I ordered a lightweight wool batting.  The last quilt I made for Loren and Janice had a cotton batting, and it was big and too heavy – so heavy they couldn’t sleep under it.  But this quilt top alone is not particularly light.  :-/

I plan to follow those printed dashed lines for quilting on the cross-stitched block, and add a bit more quilting besides.  I’ll use 40-weight thread in the hopes of covering the blue lines, in case they don’t come out when I wash it.  But it will be a miracle if I ever manage to land the stitching line right atop the printed line.

I have a pillowcase that someone, perhaps one of the girls, began the prettiest embroidery on – and then for one reason or another, washed before completing.  So of course the printed pattern vanished, and the embroidery was never finished.  I should scan it in my computer, reverse the print, and then draw it back onto the pillow case, using my lightbox to make the scan visible under the fabric.  Then I could complete the embroidery, and give it back to its original owner.

Late Wednesday night, I checked on my batting order – and found it listed as still being ‘processed’.  That was strange; I usually get orders from Fabric.com in three or four days.  What did they have to do, go out in the pasture and shear the sheep, wash, tease, and card the wool, then blend, crosslap, and thermal bond it themselves??

I sent an email of inquiry, but didn’t get an answer.

Well, I had borders to put on both the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt and the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt, and a pair of pants to hem for a former coworker.  If I get all that done and the batting has not arrived, I can work on Victoria’s unfinished tumbling block quilt.  Or the flannel baby quilt kit my sister-in-law Annette gave me.  And if worst comes to worst, I could actually clean the house.  :-O

Reading the news Thursday, I saw that yet another person had joined the presidential race for 2016.  Did you ever look at this once-great country of ours, and wonder how long we’ll have those freedoms we still have?  Just read what Jeremiah wrote in Chapter 5, verses 29 through 31:

• 29) Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
• 30) A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land;
• 31) The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?

In old English, the word ‘wonderful’ was often used to mean ‘amazing’ or ‘terrible’.

Wednesday night and Thursday morning, I hunted down airline and bus tickets for a couple of my friend Linda’s blind friends.  First, I didn’t have all the necessary details from them.  Next, I needed more details.  Third, there weren’t enough details!  Aaaaaaaaaaa...

Finally, I got their names, rank, and serial numbers, along with toenail clippings from their ancestors, and American Airlines was at long last satisfied.  Not happy, but satisfied.

I printed the tickets they would need to carry with them, put them into an envelope, and was done.  (Well, almost.  I discovered there was one more document I needed to print.)

That done (or almost done), I grabbed the dress pants I needed to hem for my customer.  I had just enough time to get them done before I had to pick up four little grandchildren from school. 

Or did I?  The pants had cuffs!!! 

Okay.  Measure, cut, serge, measure, hem, press, measure, turn up, measure, press, tack.  Done, just in time.

I gathered up bus tickets, pants, and my Better Homes and Gardens Quilting Pieces of the Past book, in case I got to the school early enough to look at pretty pictures.  (I did, and I did.)  

I dropped off the tickets, told Linda which was which so she could Braille the margin and keep them straight, and called my customer.  She didn’t answer... so the pants came back home with me, with nary a protest all the way.  I would later learn that LaVonne had been in bed all day, because the chemo she’s been taking has made her totally exhausted.  She’s always had a lot of energy and get-up-and-go, so this is disheartening and discouraging for her.  She is starting to lose her hair.

Home again, I cut the border for the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt and started sewing it on.  I decided on the blue rather than the dusty green – the green, I cut for cornerstones and binding.

The batting for both quilts should’ve been here by then, but when I checked online, I saw that it had only just left the Kennesaw, Georgia, warehouse at 4:30 p.m.  The order, placed early Sunday morning, was not even acknowledged until I wrote and asked about it – and even then they didn’t answer my email, but within the hour, I’d received a tracking receipt.  I think that the Quilter’s Dream Wool batting is so soft and luxurious, the little processing boy fell asleep on it, what do you think?

A little later, I sent a text to Larry:  “Could you please bring home crackers to go with the chicken and dumplings, Fancy Feast to go with the cats, and coffee to go with me?”

“OK,” he agreed... but, once in the store, he got all agog over Oreos with strawberry crème middles, and got milk instead of coffee.  To go with the Oreos, you know, rather than with me.  Oreos can do that to a guy.

I had two... and then one more.  They were kinda good.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I exited my sewing room, came upstairs, thought I’d have just one more cookie — and discovered the container on the table, emptied plumb clean.  There wasn’t so much as a teeny-weeny crumb left in it.  Guess I wouldn’t be gaining much weight on those things.

I would have to get fat on flatbread crackers, apple salad, cranberry juice, and grapes instead.  But after peering into cupboard and refrigerator, I decided, I’m full (said in the tone Teddy used to say it in, when he was a wee little tike in his highchair being offered something he didn’t want).

Friday, I spotted a little moth on the outside of the bathroom window sill peering in.  Macro opportunity!  I dashed for my camera and new Tamron 90mm lens.  Take a look at him, up close and personal:

The window was high enough that I couldn’t see the other side of the moth, and by the time I trotted out on the deck to take a look at his back, the sun had warmed him and, alas, he had flown the coop.  Or the sill, as it were.  So I’m not sure what kind of a moth he was, except that he’s in the cutworm family.  Even right here in our neighborhood, we have three or four kinds of cutworm moths.  

I imagine he’s thinking, Is it safer indoors with a few flyswatters, or is it safer here outside with all these racketing birds??

Macro certainly changes the way we look at things, doesn’t it?  I really like my new camera – it’s certainly making the best of my nearly-new 75-300mm lens and my brand-spankin’-new 90mm macro lens.

After I posted the photos, and a lady asked, “Wasn’t that moth hard to capture?”

“The hardest part,” I answered, “was standing on tiptoes and trying not to sway around like a drunken sailor.”  You can see more shots here:  Moth, Finches, Squirrel, etc.

The Phalaenopsis orchid Hester and Andrew gave me for Mother’s Day four or five years ago is blooming profusely.  It’s warming up outside, the flowers are beginning to bloom, and the butterflies are starting to flit through.  I saw several red admirals and a few sulphurs.  If they hold still long enough, maybe I’ll get some macros of them.  (But I think, in order for that to happen, I’ll have to get up before dawn and catch them bedecked with dew.)  (Big problem: I’m a night owl, not a morning chicken.)  The day the lens arrived, it was snowing, and the only thing I could see to take pictures of was my pincushion, until a boxelder bug was polite enough to come winging through.  

A fellow photographer on the Ugly Hedgehog photography forum told me where I could find a softbox diffuser to put on my speedlight, along with a ball-joint cold-shoe extension to make the thing tilt downwards properly.  Some of the setups I looked at were complicated enough that I had to sit down and sew a few seams on this quilt border I’m working on, in order to assure myself that I still had a brain molecule or two left (although it’s possible I was just doing it from repetitive memory, and my brain actually was numb).

My sister was properly appalled at what a moth looks like, close-up.  Wheeeee!  That’s one of the reasons I ‘needed’ a macro lens!  (Isn’t it?)  One must not go through life without giving one’s sister cause for a nightmare now and then.   (giggle)

The cold-shoe mount was $7.45, counting shipping, and the softbox was $5.97, also counting shipping.  Not too bad. 

I now await two slow boats from China.  The products are doubtless made with sawdust and formaldehyde; therefore I must not chew on them or smoke them, right?

Oh!  It just occurs to me that I need a hot-shoe sync extension cable to connect the flash!  Time out, time out while I hunt one down...  Okay.  Now there are three slow boats coming from China.

The cord cost $10.78.  How do ya like that? – the cable costs more than the softbox or the mount!

A big box with a heavy dark purple glass vase, two dozen roses, and a box of chocolates arrived – a gift from Keith for Mother’s Day.  I trimmed the stems, put them into the vase, and then took them onto the front porch to get pictures of them, because the sun was low in the sky and just right for photography.  Note who pops up, as usual, every time I take pictures.

I’d tell you that the box of chocolates arrived with one missing, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t believe me.

Victoria played tennis with some friends after she got off work, then went to her friend Robin’s house to help her plant some flowers for Mother’s Day.

I didn’t get into my sewing room until 11:30 p.m. that night, what with all the other Stuff and Things I’d been occupied with.  I cut my hair... took some pictures of this and that... edited them (they didn’t need nearly as much editing as pictures from my old camera had needed)... fixed dinner for my brother... took it to him... helped him with his computer a bit... and took my friend the pants I hemmed.  She wasn’t doing so well that day, nor the previous day.  She hugged me and cried as she told me about it.

After leaving her house, I got groceries, and when I got home, I swept and vacuumed and washed dishes... washed a couple loads of clothes... and reheated supper for Larry when he finally got home from work about 9:15 p.m.

And what did I do in my sewing room?  I ironed and steamed flat the multitude of seams in the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.  Then I measured the sides and middle... averaged it out (they should be the same)... and chose fabric for the narrow borders, the outside one narrower than the inside one, and the binding.  It’s been three months since I worked on that quilt.  I stopped in order to make the sailboat quilt, so I could find out if my HQ16 would quilt it... and then I needed to make a few birthday, wedding, and anniversary gifts and Joanna’s Easter dress.  I just might have a couple of large pieces of backing fabric for both the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt and the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt, big enough I won’t have to piece either one.  Imagine!  By tomorrow, I’ll most likely be quilting the Lighthouse quilt!

The new blue spruce trees and the little spruces from Hester and Andrew all have new growth.  I really need to get out and do some yardwork, but when I could’ve, it was too chilly and wet.  Bad storms were predicted a couple of days last week, and yesterday, too; but, other than rain, they didn’t materialize.

Does it ever bug you when stormchasers post pictures of tornadoes and such (admittedly spectacular photos), and write something like, “It was absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful!” 

Well, it might be breathtaking, and even amazing, but I wonder if the people whose lives and possessions have been destroyed by tornadoes appreciate his wording!

I spent a good part of the day Saturday working on the borders for the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.  After my experiment with the Mosaic Sailboat quilt, I saw that I would need to interface the borders in order to make them the same thickness and stiffness as the rest of the quilt, which is on fusible pellon, if I wanted it to hang nice and straight.

When Larry got home from work, we went to Wal-Mart to get a gift for Norma.  When we walked in the door, I spotted a rack with a few large, fabric-covered, aluminum baskets with handles.  The fabric was a pretty pink and green paisley print.  There were only about three left; most of the shelves were empty.  I snatched one, and decided it would look very nice filled with a set of thick, off-white bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths. 

Next, I headed over to the cosmetics to pick up some lotion and a few other necessities.  I chose Coconut-Lime Shea Body Butter by Tree Hut – and then got all carried away and splurged, also getting Coconut-Lime Body Wash, and some Coconut-Lime Sugar Scrub, too.  In sniffing the body butter, I got a bit on my hand.  I rubbed it in as we walked down the aisle... and it smelled soooo good, I turned back and grabbed another one to tuck into Norma’s basket.

Yesterday morning, snow was moving into western Nebraska.  But at 9:00 a.m. it was already 64° here, and expected to get up to 73°.  The snow was just west of North Platte, 250 miles to our west. WeatherBug said there was only a 20% chance of rain; the Weather Channel said there was a 50% chance, with some strong storms; and the man on the radio announced in trembling voice that strong storms would hit, by afternoon, and we were not to change the dial or remove ourselves from the radio or breathe any harder than absolutely necessary.  It turned out to be a false alarm.

In any case, I had a corsage of yellow daisies, pink roses, and pink azaleas pinned on my shoulder, and I was attired in a new sweater set (compliments of Victoria), a new scarf and new necklace (compliments of Hester and Andrew), and I was ready to go to church!

Bobby and Hannah and the children also gave me a pretty coffee cup with a soft, colorful washcloth and little purple scrubby, both crocheted by Hannah.  The boys made cards with paper quilling (coiling and shaping narrow paper strips), and Joanna colored a paper to look like a quilt.  I’m always happy to get handmade things.

After we got home from church last night, Victoria unearthed Andrew and Hester’s wedding DVD, and we watched it.  It was right after Andrew’s dreadful accident at work, and he’d barely gotten well enough to walk again.  But he insisted he was not going to use a cane, walking down the aisle – and he didn’t.  We watched Victoria and her cousin Michelle going up the steps to the platform to light the candelabras.  They look so little.  Hmmm...  They were only eleven years old.

Next, she put an old video cassette of Rudy Atwood, our favorite pianist, into our player.  He really was an amazing pianist.

Since I’m planning to put an edge of looped cording around the lighthouse quilt, I ordered a ‘fasturn’ brass tube and wire puller, the better to make fabric-covered cord.  Now, if I can only do it as well as the lady in the video, it’ll be nothing but fun and games!

As for quilting the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt ... I want to make symmetrically-quilted blocks, for once.  I really do like how they look... but asymmetrical is easier, and my frame and tracks haven’t always been up to the challenge of symmetrical.  Nor have I, novice that I am.

I was the little kiddo who, at age 2, carefully penned my initials into my little Golden Books:  SƧ.  Several people pointed out to me that the second S was backwards, but I persisted.  Nowadays, people would probably get all worried and concerned that I had dyslexia.  But back then, everyone laughed and accepted my explanation:  “It looks prettier that way!”

This afternoon, I’ve been taking pictures of the birds.  The robin is back, feasting on the suet.  He tries his best to hover whilst snagging chunks and beakfuls (should be a word) of it.  

What are you looking at?!

The baby house finches are out and about, and I saw a Harris’ sparrow in the peach tree.  There are chipping sparrows out front, and a song sparrow is whistling in the nearby field, though he can’t be seen.  Now and then the blue jays or the grackles land near the feeders, and the little songbirds scatter.  Mama squirrel and her babies are scampering about.  The youngsters try to nurse while she’s trying to eat sunflower seeds; she retaliates by grooming them within an inch of their lives.

Here’s a baby house finch waiting for Papa House Finch to come back down from the feeder and give him a tasty mouthful of seeds.  He craned his neck to watch another finch fly over – “Are you my father??”

A friend wanted a picture of me in the above-mentioned outfit, but I didn’t read her email until I’d already donned everyday clothes.  You know, if the rest of my family were as snaphappy as I am with cameras, there wouldn’t be such a dearth of pictures of me!  I have albums of vacation shots that make everyone wonder, Didn’t the mother go on vacation with the rest of the family?  :-D

And then there are the times you want everyone in the picture, so you risk the safety of your precious camera and ask a passerby to take a family photo.

Ah, those roped-in, walking-by photographers.  How do I always manage to pick the worst one in the country?  I thought I’d picked a good one, judging by his very nice camera, when I asked a man to take a picture of Larry, Caleb, Victoria, and me as we stood in Yellowstone National Park in front of the Lower Falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  This might make a good photo to put in our Christmas cards, I was fondly imagining. 

What we got was a photo of the sky, and way down at the bottom were the Falls – and over here in the very bottom left corner were our heads, and since I was the shortest, my chin didn’t quite reach the bottom edge of the photo.  hahaha

I have a good tripod... I carry it along with us everywhere we go – and rarely use it.  Gotta put that thing to work more often!  It’s just that one more thing to carry, especially when we are hiking steep mountain trails, is sometimes one thing too much.

It’s chilly and cloudy today – 48°.  Parts of western Nebraska got 1½ to 2 feet of snow, and some areas of South Dakota got 2½ to 3 feet.  It will be warmer in the next few days, though there are chances for thunderstorms.  Tomorrow and Wednesday we might see the sun. 

The weeds are tall.  I spotted a lion and two pigmy hippos skulking through the yard this afternoon, almost totally hidden by the dandelions and the buffalo bur nightshade.

I’m off to finish the borders on the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt! – tomorrow the batting arrives, and I can start quilting it.

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