Last Tuesday afternoon, I got a call from the Ag
Park offices: my Graceful Garden quilt
had won Best of County in the quilt division, and my Cathedral Windows pillow
had won the Country Piecemakers of Norfolk Quilt Guild Award and Best Quilted Non-Quilt
Item (funny division name, heh).
This gives the quilt the eligibility to enter a
special category in the State Fair.
The lady didn’t know about any of the other things I’d
entered; she wasn’t involved with those categories, and didn’t have the papers
with her. I’d find out about them later.
There was a temporary mix-up when she first called,
and told me my ‘Wedding Quilt’ had won. I
told her that wasn’t what my quilt was called, so she hung up to do further research,
and I prepared to gracefully congratulate someone else. But it turned
out, they thought it was a wedding quilt because of the embroidered label on
the back that read, “To Andrew and Hester, my dear son-in-law and daughter,”
etc.
So I didn’t have to be all graceful and polite after
all! I could just be conceited and egotistical. Right?
It’s sort of exciting... this is the first time I’ve
ever entered anything in the fair, other than the time Victoria entered the
Piano mug rug for me, and another time years ago when, unbeknownst to me, a
teacher entered a project I had done.
I saw a lot of other pretty quilts and crafts.
The lady who checked in before me had constructed a farm place – barn, house,
silo, shed, complete with animals and field of corn, yard with tiny flowers...
I couldn’t tell what it was made out of, but oh, my, was it ever neat. It
covered a space of about 2 ½ feet by 2 ½ feet.
People come up with things I could never even think of, let alone put together!
The lady who called requested that I be there Friday
evening ‘to be recognized’ and have my picture taken for the Telegram.
I wrote to Hester:
“I’m supposed to go to the fair on Friday at 7, stand on a platform and
have me pitchoo tooken, right in front o’ ever’buddy. :-P I’ll look
like Leah. Tender-eyed. (Think,
‘with sore eyes.’) :-P Sooo.... do you want to come with me? I
really, really hate to think of going there by myself.”
She did, thankfully.
“Sure, I will come with you!” she answered. “But only if I don’t have to get my picture
taken, or be on stage.”
“Ha!” I retorted. “I was hoping you’d help me
hold up the quilt, and at the last minute, I would duck behind it.”
”Lolololol!!!!!” was her predictable response. “Well, thank you for warning me!!!!”
She’s such a funny dear. She was a wee little thing – barely over 5
pounds – when she was born. She was our
6th child. The others were ages 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9. It was so funny,
when she got just past a year, if something happened outside and the children would
all run to the front door to look out... Dinky little Hester would come toddling
lickety-split behind them, find that she was totally blocked from seeing out by
all the elder siblings – so she’d stick her little arms straight out in front
of her, rotate them until the backs of her hands were together, and then, using
them as a wedge, she’d carefully stick them between a couple of the older kids,
and say in her high-pitched baby voice, “Kyoo me, kyoo me!” (excuse
me) Sometimes it was “Kyoo Hettuh!” (excuse Hester) They’d laugh and obligingly move over for
their cute baby sister.
We still say that, now and then, when we’re trying
to get through a whole flock of family: “Kyoo me! Kyoo me!” :-D
Lydia used to call herself Liddle Liddle-uh, when
she was one and two years old – so we called her that, too, for a while.
Tuesday night – well, actually, it was 4:00 a.m.
Wednesday morning – I finished the binding on the Mosaic Lighthouse
quilt. It measures 79” x 94”, including the tabs. It’s not perfect,
and some of the little cords want to wiggle this way or that way... let’s just say that it ‘adds to the character
of the whole’! I have embroidery to do
on it, to better define the lighthouse and the keeper’s house; but first I must
quilt the cross-stitch quilt for Loren – his birthday less than a month away,
on August 9th.
Wednesday afternoon, I went and helped him with his
computer for a little bit, then planned to load the cross-stitch block quilt on
my frame. I started through the kitchen
– and found a gazillion dishes littering counter, table, and sink. *Why must people eat, when I need to quilt?!*
Half an hour later, with the kitchen time-to-quilt
clean (that’s not in the same category as visit-from-the-queen clean), I
trotted downstairs. I had just enough time
to load the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt before church time. I got the king-sized
roll of Dream Wool batting out of the package. It’s sooooo soft and
nice... I’m usually allergic to wool, but not this stuff. I went to get the backing –
– and discovered I didn’t have enough. Not of anything that matched, anyway.
Bother! It
was getting a little late to go to any of the quilt shops. So... I cut a hanging sleeve for the Mosaic
Sailboat quilt, sewed it together, hemmed it, pinned it onto the quilt, and got
ready for church.
After church, we went to Wal-Mart and got some
backing fabric. They were having some sort of malfunction with their
electrical system, and it was quite dark in there; only their dim emergency
lighting was on. It’s hard to choose
fabric in the dark, you know that? Fortunately, there weren’t too awfully
many extra-wide bolts of white or cream to choose from. One was 108”
wide; the other was 120” wide. The quilt
is 106”, so the 120” fabric would be best. I shined the light from my
cell phone onto the most likely piece, thought it would work... and, sure
enough, it’s fine – tiny white leaves and flowers on off-white. I needed
3 ¾ yards. There were about 3 ⅞ yards on the bolt; the lady gave me the
extra ⅛ yard free.
Thursday afternoon, Loren came and watered our new trees. I quickly whipped up some jello so he could take
it home with him. He sure is a Helpful
Hattie! Well, maybe when it’s of the male
variety, we should call them Helpful Hanks.
I sewed the hanging sleeve onto the sailboat quilt,
then ironed the backing for the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt and loaded it on the
frame. The machine was oiled and
threaded, and I took the first few stitches to check the tension. It was set to go! But by then it was late; I would start in the
morning.
I got this picture from Hannah, entitled “Furry Friends”: It’s Misty the Australian Shepherd, with
Henry and Pigling Bland (à la Beatrix Potter) the guinea pigs. “Too bad you can’t hear them!” wrote Hannah;
“The piggies are ‘purring’ away!”
How do you like the way they’ve color-coordinated their
pets?
It occurs to me that I might have some ’splainin’ to
do to my daughter. You see, I was going
to surprise Hannah by entering the doily she’d made for me in the fair.
But! – in the confusion of entering multiple things
and not having the faintest notion what I was doing, the doily got entered
under my name, and I never gave it a thought.
That would surprise her, now wouldn’t it? – to go to
the fair and spot that doily, recognize it as one she herself made – and then
notice it has a blue ribbon (I fully expected it to get a blue ribbon, and it
did). And then she’d be even more
surprised when she saw that I had taken credit for it! :-O
Fortunately, the names aren’t printed on the
ribbons.
Thinking about taking credit for the doily reminded
me that no one at the Thomas Kinkade foundation had answered my emailed request
for permission to show Mosaic Lighthouse quilt. It’s possible I don’t
need permission, as I used a cross-stitch kit I had purchased for the
pattern. But I didn’t know, and wanted to be sure!
I hunted down a phone number and called.
You know, people in customer service should really
wait until the customer states his case before they butt in knowledgeably and
inform him (or her) that he (or she) has called the wrong department, and tell
him (or her) in no uncertain terms that they absolutely cannot help him (or
her). I barely got the lady told, “I
have a cross-stitch kit entitled ‘Light of Peace’ –” when she interrupted me. She didn’t really sound all that rude...
but... well, that is rude.
“We don’t handle that here!” she said, and continued
without pause a long volley of pronouncements, declarations, and assertions before
I could get another word in edgewise.
“We don’t even sell those anymore, so you have to take your complaint
back to someone else, maybe the store where you purchased it!” And on and on. She seemed to talk whilst breathing in and
breathing out, both.
When she finally wound down, I said, “What I wanted
to tell you is that I have made a quilt using this pattern, and I need to know
if I must have permission to show it.”
Silence.
Then, in a quiet tone, “Oh.”
Pause.
Then, “I’m sorry, I assumed wrongly.”
Didn’t she, though.
She went off to ask management about it. Finally returning, she told me, as I had
expected, that it was perfectly fine to show a quilt using one of their
purchased patterns. I didn’t need any
sort of permission note; it simply is not at all a problem.
So much for the crabby woman on a certain online
forum who practically insisted, “You can’t do that!!! Shame, shame, you plagiarist you! Hope they hang you from the gallows at
daybreak!!!”
Something like that, anyway.
“Oh, she’s just jealous of your quilt,” Victoria said
comfortingly.
Victoria sent me these pictures, taken when she was at
work at Earl May Gardening Center, caring for the animals. On the left, she’s holding a chinchilla; on
the right, a hedgehog. She wants at
least one each, of course.
After work that day, she stopped at Radio Shack and got
a Garmin GPS. She was planning to go to
Lincoln with her friend Robin the next day, and she thinks paper maps are
totally archaic, impractical, and unusable.
We’ll share it – it’ll come in handy when I go to quilt shops in Omaha
and Lincoln next week.
Friday, I marked the top border of the
cross-stitched block quilt and started quilting.
Then, at 5:30 p.m., I picked up Hester, and ... we
...
...went to the Animal Fair!
The birds and the beasts were there;
The big baboon, by the light of the moon,
Was combing his auburn hair;
The monkey fell out of his bunk,
Slid down the elephants trunk;
The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees,
And what became of the monk, the monk, the monk?
The birds and the beasts were there;
The big baboon, by the light of the moon,
Was combing his auburn hair;
The monkey fell out of his bunk,
Slid down the elephants trunk;
The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees,
And what became of the monk, the monk, the monk?
First, we walked around the stables, looking at bunnies,
puppies, kittens, calves, horses, lambs, goats, llamas, and donkeys; then we
headed to the main building, where I was supposed to git me pitchoo tooken with
other Champion Ribbon winners, standing on a stage and making like the Duchess
of Windsor. Or something. They’d
take my picture... I’d be famous... order a private helicopter... that sort of
thing.
This, I thought, I will not enjoy, particularly
because this Blepharospasm Purple Brain disease (it’s actually called Benign
Essential Blepharospasm – eyelid muscle and nerve problem that, in my case, was
brought on by rheumatoid arthritis) gets worse in public and when I’m
nervous. I figured I’d probably try so hard not to squint, I’d wind up
looking like this:
Some years, they give people their pretty ribbons to
hold while they take pictures. This wasn’t the year.
You know, if someone gets a picture of you with your
eyes shut, well, that’s not too terrible. Half shut; not as good. But if just one eye is half shut, oooo, why
then, you look pretty much like a halfwit!
Hester took a couple of pictures that weren’t too
bad. Hopefully, there’ll be a decent one for the Telegram. Oh, well.
I’ve had worse things happen to me than merely looking like a halfwit.
Here’s what I received:
6)
Cathedral Windows Pillow – blue ribbon, Country Piecemakers Quilt Guild Award,
Best Quilted Non-Quilt item
I enjoyed seeing all the things on display. But my favorite part was looking at all the
animals. And it was fun going somewhere with Hester.
As we were walking around in the big building,
looking at all sorts of craft items and baked goods, I heard someone say my
name. I turned around, and, lo and
behold, there was a lady named Carol whom I have known for a while on an online
quilting group, but never met in person.
She lives south of Fremont. She
and her husband were both there – she said they came to see my quilt. Too bad the thing was all folded up (as were
all of the quilts), so only a little part of it could be seen. Quilts will be hung, at the State Fair.
Home again, I quilted for a while, until I had
finished the top border of the Cross-Stitched-Block quilt.
Saturday, I started quilting the sashing.
These 15” on-point blocks are a bit of a problem, because I can hardly do even half
of the block at a time with my HQ16.
And then I remembered – Oh! Gotta make a label
for Bobby’s Mosaic Sailboat quilt (not the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt, but the
smaller one I did as a practice piece). His birthday is today; I wanted
to give him the quilt Sunday evening.
Soon my machine was embroidering away. I’m
trying to use up some old metallic thread, and it breaks now and then, so I
have to babysit the machine when I use it. I put a few drops of Sewer’s
Aid on it and stored it in a plastic bag, so the thread is hanging in there
better than it did the last time I used it (she wrote, as the thread broke yet
again).
Then I got back to the sashing on the
Cross-Stitched-Block quilt. I can’t do simple, it seems. But it’s
pretty! I’m getting excited to give it to my brother. You’ll recall,
perhaps, that his wife, who passed away a year ago, embroidered the blocks.
Another time out for supper (chef salad, Fruplait,
Chocolate Fudge Brownie frozen yogurt, and chocolate chunk/peanut butter chip
cookies)... and then I went back to the quilting machine.
Loren mowed our front lawn that day, then put the
hoses back in place for me, and I kept the water going until late that night.
It was hot, hot, that day.
By 11:30, I’d quit for the night and ensconced myself
in my recliner, a big mug of hazelnut crème coffee near at hand, and was editing
pictures. A new heat advisory was issued
for Sunday and Monday, too. The heat indices
might get up to 110°, so our new trees and newly planted grass and the flowers
need all the help they can get.
I was glad to see my blind friend Linda back at
church Sunday; she’d been to the National Federation for the Blind conference
in Orlando, for which I had gotten her plane and shuttle tickets. I sometimes worry a bit about that, and hope
I chose the right time slot for everything.
One shuttle choice might make one cool one’s heels at the airport too
long for comfort... but the next choice might have one galloping down the
runway after the plane as it taxis for takeoff, barely in time to grab the tail
and hang on!
After church, Linda gave me a nice keepsake: a mug with the braille alphabet on it from the
NFB. I still have my slate and stylus
that Penny gave me when I was nine, and I still remember about half of the letters,
too. I used to put braille in Penny’s
and Rita’s birthday and Christmas cards.
I should surprise all three blind ladies, and do it again sometime.
Last night, Larry was reclining on the loveseat,
looking at his tablet. Victoria was playing
the piano. She handed him a book: “Here, sing!”
He sang. The
song was Whispering Hope, but it sounded remarkably like Row, Row, Row Your
Boat. Larry started off slowly, Victoria
quickly. Victoria slowed to accommodate
him... he sped up... she sped up, too... he slowed down... Yikes, they’re on totally separate planets at
times. I cannot stand this, and go play
the piano, thumping out the tune so there can be no mistaking melody or speed
either one.
Larry offers this excuse for singing the song too
slowly: “Well, I thought I was asleep,
since I was lying down.” hee hee
I picked up my things from the fair this morning. I walked into the big building, expecting to
have to sign papers and prove my identity before they would release
anything. Quite the contrary. There were only three other ladies in that
huge room, and they were collecting their own things. I found my smaller items all together in one
of the glass-front bookcases, and my quilt and pillow in the larger glass case,
free for the taking. Nobody gave me a
second look as I gathered everything up and departed with it. That means, they wouldn’t have given anybody
a second look as they absconded with it, doesn’t it??! Good grief.
I hunted down the small building where they were
doling out the prize money. Fame and fortune!
Well, only a couple dollars of fortune... but fortune, nonetheless! :-D
Funny thing – there were hundreds of people who
entered things in the fair, but the lady at the counter knew my name as soon as
I walked in.
For the pincushion that won a second place ribbon, I
got $1.25. For the doily Hannah
crocheted, the World Map placemat, Cats mug rug, needlekeep, scissors case, and
even the pillow that won the guild award, they gave me $1.50 each. For the apron, $2.00. The quilt that won Best of County got
$2.50. The Braided Star table topper got
the most of all: $3.00. I have no idea behind the reasoning for all
this.
Not quite like the $10,000 first prize the Houston
International Quilt Show pays, huh?
Upon returning home and looking through everything, I
was quite surprised to find a $15 check from the Piecemakers Quilt Guild in
Norfolk stapled to the back of the pretty blue ruffled ribbon on my pillow.
Trouble was, it was made out to the Platte County Fair, and I was already home
by the time I found it – so I had to take it all the way back – 9 miles each
way – and exchange it for the cash. The nice lady there apologized several
times for not noticing it wasn’t made out to me. I used up part of my
prize money on gas, a-to-in’ and a-fromin’! :-D But she had a lot
to do, there aren’t many ladies in the office, and they’re all volunteers.
I didn’t notice until Victoria pointed it out to me that
the judges’ comments are on the back of the tickets fastened to each entry.
It was fun reading them. And there I
discovered the reason the pincushion only got 2nd place: because it had too many decorations on it, rendering
it impractical! heh If I wanted practical, I’d’ve bought a tomato
pincushion at Wal-Mart.
Victoria remarked, half in jest, “You should have
entered it as a paperweight.”
Actually, that’s probably exactly what I should’ve
done. J
Now I have to figure out how to enter stuff in the
State Fair. I have a dozen pages to read
and special papers to fill out for the Graceful Garden quilt, as it will be in
a special division since it won Best in County. Oh, the rigors of fame!
Last week we had unseasonably cool weather – only in
the 70s. It rained a few times, so I didn’t have to water for almost a
week. Since Saturday, however, it’s been
another story, with heat advisories issued every day. As I type, the temperature is 90°, with the
heat index 94° – a few degrees less than expected. The warning said, HEAT INDICES WILL RANGE
FROM 100 TO NEAR 110 MONDAY AFTERNOON & EARLY MON EVENING.
I pulled a few weeds from the front flower garden,
and nearly roasted to death. Imagine the
poor menfolk who must work in the heat all day long!
Loren brought us a bag of sweet corn on the cob he
just got from one of the Daniels produce trucks. Larry isn’t home yet, but Victoria and I have
had a couple of ears of corn, and mmmm, mmmm, is it ever good. A helping of applesauce and a nut-and-yogurt
granola bar, and that was supper.
In years gone by, Victoria would often not finish
all her food, and some of her siblings would be drooling over it... asking if
they could have it, if she wasn’t going to eat it... No, she wanted to ‘save it for later’. Trouble was, ‘later’ sometimes never
came. And then wasn’t everybody sad, to
find her food stashed somewhere, now too old to eat!
I decided I’d better turn the water on this evening,
even though it rained early this morning.
Already, there’s a young cardinal in the front lawn, trying to stay in
the water from the swiveling sprinkler, flapping and preening. The sprinkler keeps turning... and the cardinal,
suddenly finding himself out of the spray, stands up tall and straight, stares
around to see where in the world the water went, and then takes great hops
after it to get back into the shower.
Then he happily gets back to flapping and preening.
And now, my favorite shot from the county fair stables. :-D
This little donkey had been sound asleep, then woke
up, rolled onto his back, kicked and flailed, scrambled to his feet, and yawned
hugely. I saw it happening from some
distance away, and tried to get past a bunch of people to get the picture. But I was a little late, and only got the
tail end of the yawn. And that’s the
face of it. hee hee
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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