Towels and Sheets and So Forth

Last Tuesday and Wednesday I worked on the silk ribbon embroidery picture for my sister.  And I kept the washing machine chugging away.

This, because we discovered that mice had been in the big cupboard in the bathroom where we keep all our towels and sheets, and so forth.  Soooo... I’ve been washing towels and sheets and so forth.  The washer churned away constantly for two days – and it looked like there were a lot more towels and sheets and so forth that still needed to be washed than there were towels and sheets and so forth that were already done.  I hung some things outside, dried some things in the dryer... and never let the washing machine rest.

I got the cupboard all scrubbed out, including the top shelf, which is just under the 9-foot ceiling.  I had a scary moment when I discovered that it really was too far of a step down from the shelf I was perched on (like a clumsy baby bird) to the two-step stepstool.  But... I made it; I’m still here to talk about it, too.  Steps that are too far down aren’t fun, especially when one is having a rather nasty rheumatoid arthritis flare-up, which I had the first three days of the week.  At least, that’s what I thought it was, until I learned that a few of my offspring also had leg aches, etc., and Caleb and Maria both had the flu.  So maybe it was just a virus, with the usual accompanying aches and pains.  Bother!  I had stuff to do!

There are three large drawers at the bottom of this cupboard that I will have to clean out, too.  Mice like Moringa body butter, it turns out, and they like Ivory soap.  Ugh.  Horrible little beasts.

Mice aren’t the only rodents we’re contending with.  The squirrels are enjoying our house, too!  The eaves and the addition, to be precise.  Tuesday evening when I came home from Loren’s house, I parked in the drive, climbed out of the Jeep, greeted Teensy as he in turn greeted me (“Mrow mrow mrow mrow mrow-ow mrrrrow mrow-ow!”) (translation:  “You’ve been gone a really looong time!”), walked around the corner of the house on the front sidewalk – and heard a scrabbling noise overhead.  I stopped and peered up, shielding my eyes from the sun.  Teensy stopped beside me and peered up, too.  There, up in the eaves, was a cute little squirrel, a young one, peering right back down at me.  I held still and looked at him.  Teensy held still and looked at me.  The squirrel’s brother (or sister) skaddled up beside him (or her) and peered down, too.  Tabby came along, me-me-meeeeing and creating a general ruckus, making Squirrel 1 and Squirrel 2 nervous.  Squirrel 3 scampered up and peered down.  Tabby mee-meeed louder, since no one was paying him any nevermind.  The squirrels opened and shut their mouths and wiggled nervously – and along came Squirrel 4 to see what there was to look at.  I thought perhaps I’d heard a scritch-scratching a little farther back in the eaves, so went on standing there, and fifteen seconds later, there appeared Squirrel 5.  So there they were, all lined up, one after the other, staring down at me. 

Cute little critters, that they are.  But oh my, they’re so destructive!  They belong in trees, not in eaves!  Especially not my eaves.

Wednesday night I finished the silk ribbon Basket of Flowers picture, and put it into the frame with several layers of batting.  You can’t tell it from the pictures, but it puffs out of the frame about half an inch.  Those lavender flower clusters look a bit like lilacs, don’t they?  The pattern I was copying from called them ‘Veronica’ (aka Speedwell, ‘Lauren’s Grape’, or Blue Candle Flowers).  The flowers make a good ground cover, and bloom in late spring to mid-summer.  The foliage only rises 3”, though the flower spires are about 12” tall.

I was fretting that it looked a bit of a mishmash — “Should’ve had less flowers!”  “Should’ve had bigger flowers!”  “Should’ve had more 3D flowers!”  ... but Victoria informed me, “I know exactly what Aunt Lura Kay is going to say:  first, she’ll take it carefully from the box, then she’ll say, ‘Ooooooooo.  Oh my.  You made this, didn’t you?!’  She’ll spend some time looking at it, and then she’ll say, ‘You shouldn’t have!’  And then, ‘I can’t imagine how many hours this must’ve taken.’”

Now I can hardly wait to give it to her, partly just because I like to give her things, and partly because I want to see exactly how close Victoria was at guessing what her dear auntie will say.  I’ll betcha anything she pretty well nailed it.  Her birthday is May 17th.  That’s a loooooooong time to wait.

Since I would have a customer’s quilt to work on as soon as batting and backing arrive, I wouldn’t be loading my Mosaic Lighthouse quilt yet.  I have decided not to add a ‘hang’ and make it a bed quilt; it will be a wall hanging or just a bed covering, and we’ll probably keep it, as I think it is too heavy for my mother-in-law.  I’ll make her ... uh, sumpthang else.

Sooo...  I had four things to choose from to start on Thursday (or finish, as the case may be):

1. Complete Victoria’s tumbling blocks quilt that she started almost two years ago (she never finished it, because it’s green, pink, and off-white – and her sister had the nerve to have a boy).
2. Put together the Sunbonnet Sue blocks Lura Kay gave me – she found them in Mama’s basement; aunts, cousins, grandmothers, a great-grandmother, and a couple of our mother’s favorite teachers appliquéd them.
3. Put together the cross-stitched blocks Janice did – I think perhaps I’ll give it to Loren for his birthday in August.  She gave them to me shortly before she passed away.
4. Sew the flannel baby quilt kit my sister-in-law Annette gave me three or four years ago.

I transferred a few more posts to my Mitered Corner blog, and was about to fall asleep over it when I was rudely brought back to my senses by the washing machine galloping out the patio door and escaping down the deck stairs.  Somebody toss me my lariat, quick!!

By the way, switching to Blogspot was a timely thing to do, it seems:  I got an email from my webhost, informing me that support for FrontPage server extensions will be discontinued and the extensions disabled June 1, 2015.  I wonder how many people that affects?  Could it be that I was the only one of their customers still using that old software program, and when I didn’t renew my subscription to their webhosting, and they saw that I haven’t used the website for a couple of months, they decided to end the FrontPage support?

I recruited Larry to hunt up the taller stepladder for me, so I could more easily put things back into the bathroom cupboard.  He dutifully hunted.  Didn’t find.  And then, in true ‘Larry’ fashion, he took a before-bedtime nap to better consider, contemplate, and ruminate on just where he might have stowed that thing.

As the taller stepladder is still AWOL, it seems Mr. Sandman did not reveal any secrets.

Thursday I went to Hobby Lobby and Sew What, one of our LQSs, and got the fabric to go with the cross-stitched blocks Janice made.  She gave them to me not long before she passed away.  I will probably give the quilt to my brother when it’s done.

He was really sentimental over a soft cross-stitched towel he found when we were going through her sewing things.  She was probably making several for gifts; there were other towels in the box that hadn’t been cross-stitched yet.  He was in the ‘who shall we give these things to’ mode, but I handed it to him and said, “Here, maybe you’d like to just hang this in your bathroom or kitchen and keep it.” 

He stopped with his sorting, turned quickly and looked at it, and then took it carefully and said softly, “Yes.  I would.  Thank you.”  And off he went to hang it up.  It’s really a hand towel for the bathroom, but it’s always hanging from his stove handle, because he likes to see it there.

Loren is doing well.  Last week he bought a Ferris 2100Z riding lawn tractor, trading in his larger John Deere and a Cub Cadet, which gave him a pretty good deal on the new one.  It has springs on all four tires, making the ride a whole lot smoother, which is so much better for his back and neck.  They delivered it Wednesday, and he put an hour on it then, and an hour on it Thursday.  He enjoys working outside, and his yard is the nicest looking of all those nearby, even though and many of them use a lawn service.

That night, I cut the new fabric, then trimmed the cross-stitched blocks so they were all exactly the same size, 16”.  The quilt, which I designed in EQ7, will be 100” x 124”.  It shouldn’t take too awfully long; it’s not nearly as complex as some I’ve done.  I’ll use a lightweight wool batting, and there aren’t many seams in it, so it’ll be a whole lot lighter than most quilts.  The first one I made for Loren and Janice was too heavy – I didn’t know cotton batting would make it weigh a ton!

The washing machine was still swoosh-swooshing away... towels and sheets and so forth were still flapping on the line... but it was beginning to look like there just might be an end in sight.

By 2:00 a.m., the fabric for the cross-stitched quilt was cut and ready to sew.  Another load of clothes was in the washing machine, and, after that, there was only one comforter to go.  Larry nailed a board into place in the huge bathroom cupboard, so the mice won’t be able to get into it again.  Horrid destructive critters!  What a lot of work they caused me.  I certainly wasn’t going to chance drying myself off with a nice fluffy towel (or sleeping on a sheet) that a mouse had used before me! 

Friday morning, I went up into the unfinished addition to reboot the router – and found a young squirrel in one of the corners!  Aarrgghh, they’ve made a mess of the insulation.  That bedroom is so close to done I can almost taste it.  Now something needs to be done quickly, or the squirrels are going to undo everything Larry’s done!

Just before noon, the backing and batting for my customer’s quilt came.  Before heading downstairs to load everything onto my quilting frame, I went to get the comforter from the washing machine and hang it outside.  One look out the window had me changing my mind – it’s was about to rain.  I dashed out onto the deck and grabbed the last of the sheets and towels and so forth.  I’d been folding and stacking and organizing for four days.  Several stacks of sheets that no longer fit any of our beds went into bags for the Goodwill.

Here’s something funny that I haven’t seen before:  robins are eating suet from the suet feeder.  They have a difficult time trying to perch on it.  One circled around it, flapping hard (they aren’t cut out to be hovering birds, you know) – and managed to peck a beakful of suet from it, then circle back around to land on the deck rail.  One doesn’t realize how very much bigger than the little finches they are until they land right beside them.  The block of suet they like has dried fruit in it. 

Here’s an interesting and fun way to find things you might not usually see:  type into Google search something like, oh, say, ‘scalloped quilt border’.  Hit enter... then, when you get 35,203,684,291 hits, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click page 10 (or whatever page strikes your fancy).  Now pick a link.  Hmmm... Let’s choose a post from Moose Bay Muses.  And whataya know, there’s an entire page of beautiful quilts!

I hunted through my pantographs and sent my customer several to choose from, then loaded backing, top, and batting on my frame.  I cleaned, oiled, and threaded the HQ16.  By then, the lady had chosen the pantograph she liked, so I taped it onto the table and started quilting. 

Early that evening, I got sidetracked when I heard a bird outside singing like a mockingbird.  I ran upstairs and grabbed my binoculars... looked all over the place for it... and it finally flew when I stepped farther out the door.  I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, as it was getting dark, but I could see that it was about the size of a robin, though with a longer tail.  I decided it was probably a brown thrasher.  They’re in the mockingbird family, did you know that?  I only learned that fact five or six years ago, and was quite surprised.  No wonder they sing like they do!

I looked up ‘brown thrasher’ at All About Birds, and discovered that it was indeed a brown thrasher.  Just listen to all these sounds and calls:  Brown Thrasher Sounds.  I just love to hear them.

I quilted a little while, then called for help.  The stitch regulator was having quallyfobbles.  Larry straightened an off-kilter track on the carriage so that the wheel of the regulator rested on it constantly no matter what position the machine was in, and then extracted a wad of thread and lint from a forward wheel.  Meanwhile, I sewed sashing strips onto the cross-stitched blocks.

When he finished, I gave it a try – and found that it worked perfectly again.  Lydia told the truth, at just two years old, when she said in a confident, admiring tone, “My Daddy can fix anything.” 

I quilted three rows on my customer’s quilt that night, and finished it Saturday night.

Hannah sent some pictures of Hamlet, their guinea pig, with Misty, their Australian shepherd.  She wrote, “Hamlet likes Misty now, and purrs and squeaks contentedly when he cuddles up to her.  The dog wags at him now, and acts like she might actually like him back.  But she’s nervous when he walks toward her.  Maybe his claws poked her one time?  She looks at me with a woebegone expression if he moves around next to her too much.  I still don’t trust her with him.  That wild dog in her is just below the surface, I think.  ‘If it moves, chase it.’  In the last picture, Hamlet backed away from the camera.”

I took Loren some supper that evening – and noticed that his hydrangeas are coming back to life again.  They come up later than other flowers, and he had feared they hadn’t survived the winter.  We helped him plant them last year after he got three of them for Janice’s funeral, and he’s sentimental about them.  He’s happy they’re coming up again.

I helped him a bit with his computer, showed him how quickly one can find an answer to any question.  Someday, he just might discover he likes that thing!  There was a storm coming, so he wanted accuweather.com up and running.  He does enjoy that much, at least.

Rain and hail moved through that night in two separate waves.  The hail was quarter-sized or slightly bigger; I don’t think it did too much damage.  Some areas of the state had golfball-sized hail, though.

Larry and I decided to go to Menards when the first wave of stormy weather subsided.  When we got out to the Jeep, I thought it was running, as the air conditioner fan was going full blast.

It was not running; Larry had forgotten and left the key on after checking the sun roof to see if pine needles were stuck in it and thus causing it to leak.

The battery was flat. 

He retrieved the charger from the garage... started the Jeep... and we went to town.

We got an electronic device that emits a high-pitched noise that is supposed to chase off rodents.  Larry intends to get the squirrels out of the addition, then fix the spot where they got in.  I picked up a couple of mouse traps that are supposedly a whole lot better than these old-fashioned ones that allow the mice to gobble up the peanut butter and go their merry way, fat as ticks.  By bedtime, one had already caught a mouse.

It poured rain on the way home, with huge bright lightning streaks lighting up the heavens.  A tornado was reported near Prague, but there is no known damage.

I finished my customer’s quilt that night, removed it from the frame, photographed it, and packed back in the box.  She calls this quilt ‘Newspaper Quilt’, because it’s black, white, and red (read) all over. 

I sewed a while on the cross-stitch quilt before bedtime.  Wheeeeeeee... this quilt is going fassssssst!

I have three questions:

1. The cross-stitched blocks have blue dots on them – markings for suggested quilting lines.  Will a normal wash take them out?
2. There are a few small spots on these blocks.  I believe they are blood spots – my late sister-in-law did NOT like to use a thimble, thank you very much (it got in her way, she said), and she sewed lickety-split and was forever poking herself (which didn’t slow her down in the slightest).  The spots have been in the fabric quite a long while, and I may have touched a couple of them with my iron before I noticed them.  What’s the best way of possibly taking them out?
3. Does anybody ever remember seeing a quilt of two colors – indigo blue on a white background – featuring one very large Ohio Star made up of many smallish (two inches, maybe) squares?  It may have been set against a triple Irish chain; can’t remember.  I think I saw it in one of my multitudes of books or magazines, but I’ve been hunting for it off and on for months now, and can’t find it.  I’ve looked online, too.

Here’s a fact:  when you are sewing a bunch of blocks together that have sashing between them, it doesn’t work out right to sew a strip of sashing onto both right and left sides of every block, for then you wind up with two strips between the interior blocks.

Now this I might have well known at 1:00 p.m., seeing as how I have been sewing this and that for nigh unto 45 years.  However, at 1:00 a.m., this truth eludes me.

Fortunately, the fact of the matter dawned on me before I was quite done (mainly because I began wondering why I was running out of sashing before I was running out of blocks), and I stopped with the folly in time that I only had three sashes to remove.  Sew and Learn! (or not)

All the diagonal strips are together now.  There are only the triangles around the edges to add, and then I’ll be ready to sew the strips together and add a border, and the top will be done.  I discovered something I had forgotten:  the quilt I designed in EQ7 for Janice’s cross-stitched blocks has 23 cross-stitched blocks in it.  But... **Janice made 24!**  So I have one extra block for a pillow.

Sunday morning, we trotted out to the Jeep, all decked out in our glad rags – and the Jeep wouldn’t start.  Larry had to charge the battery again.  Victoria’s car was in front of ours in the drive, so she had to wait until we got the Jeep started.  This, of course, turned her into a pretzel and made her wring her hands.  But we were soon all on our way, and none of us were late.

Victoria couldn’t sing in the choir last night; she’s had a bad cold and a sore throat since Thursday.

Though the Jeep started fine the rest of the day yesterday, the battery was flatter’n a pancake once again when I needed to take my customer’s quilt to the post office and Larry’s check to the bank this afternoon.  Bah, humbug.  I don’t like to get stymied!  It was raining, so I didn’t want to drag the heavy charger up the drive, pop the hood, attach the cables... then drag it back after the Jeep started.  I’d have to leave it running at the post office, since it probably wouldn’t be fully charged by the time I got there, and I wouldn’t want to risk getting stranded.

Well, Larry got off work a little early and chauffeured me to the post office, just 15 minutes before they closed.  He even took the box in for me, since it had started raining again.  We put fuel in his pickup... came home... ate supper... and now he’s working on something in the garage.

Black Kitty is so much better, she's rediscovered the pet door, and has been happily going in and out, in and out, for the last couple of days.  She just leaped up onto my lap without too much trouble at all.  She’s curled up purring now, and I’m reaching over the top of her to type.

Victoria worked 63 ½ hours last week.  After she got off work today, she went with a couple of friends to Menards, and they bought Mother’s Day gifts.  Victoria, true to form, gave them to me immediately upon arriving home:  a hanging bird bath, brushes for cleaning out the bird feeders and hummingbird feeder, a couple of chocolate bars, and – something I’ve wanted for a long while – a bluebird house.

Now to see if we can attract some bluebirds to our property! 

Please pass the mealworms.

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