I didn’t have to worry about watering new trees and
new grass all week long, thankfully; the sky did it for me. Victoria wasn’t as thankful as I was, because
a couple of times she forgot her clothes out on the line in the rain, and she
needed some of those items for work. But she hung them in front of a fan
in her room, and managed to get to work in mostly a dry state.
My computer makes various sounds when I get
emails. A different audio clip plays for
each person who writes. I thought all
this was so nifty, when we first got a computer. I could be in the kitchen cooking supper, hear
my computer playing a sound clip, and know exactly who wrote to me. But one
day a friend(?) learned that the PC played Singing in the Bathtub when she
wrote – and she never wrote again! What in the world. What’s so
objectionable about Singing in the Bathtub, I’d like to know??
Oh, well; people like that are too HM (High
Maintenance) anyway.
Let’s hope one of my friends doesn’t think I am
somehow insinuating she’s a frog, because I picked the ‘Tree Frogs’ clip to
signify the arrival of one of her emails.
Sometimes my choice of audio clip has nothing to do
with the person with whom it’s associated; I might choose it just because it’s funny,
or cute, or maybe it just stands out, and I’ll be sure to notice it. Or maybe I just closed my eyes, wiggled the
mouse around, and clicked any ol’ thang.
Well, that’s my story, and I’m a-stickin’ to it.
Have you been hearing about the wildfires in California?
These pictures are from what is called ‘The Rocky Fire’. By yesterday
morning, it was 85% contained. It had
burned nearly 70,000 acres, with 3,100 firefighters fighting it when it was at
its worst. 43 homes burned, 53 outbuildings were destroyed, and 8
structures were damaged. 13,000 people were
evacuated, though they have now been allowed to return home. About 30 fires are burning in California
right now, most of them in Northern California.
I spent the majority of the week working on the
Cross-Stitched-Block quilt for my brother.
However, I got sidetracked for a little while now and then when I looked
out the window and saw hundreds upon hundreds of butterflies swarming the
purple coneflowers.
What did you expect me to do, ignore them?!
And now there’s a cardinal, a wren, and – oh, look! A squirrel! – on the
back deck.
Gotta keep telling myself, The squirrel will
return. The squirrel will return. The squirrel will return.
I like to have nature documentaries playing as I
quilt. I miss a lot of the pretty pictures, but there is constant
commentary, so I do know what’s going on, and learn all sorts of interesting
things.
By 2:00 a.m., I’d made it to the final row of the quilt.
Those tedious micro-stitched sashings were all done, every last one of
them. The cross-stitched blocks were all done. The half-squares on
the bottom of the quilt were all marked and ready to quilt; they wouldn’t take
long. After the narrow bottom border, I would need to take the quilt off
the frame, turn it, reload it, and quilt the ten half-squares along the sides.
I found a little daisy that had been overlooked
during the embroidery. I hunted in my small collection of embroidery thread
– and found a skein that was exactly the right color. Too bad I didn’t notice
before the quilt was on the frame. Oh, well; I know how to hide
knots. In theory.
People have been asking questions about my Windows
10 upgrade. Here are a few observations: Live Photo Gallery is pretty much the same as
it was before. My pictures started opening in ‘Photos’ by default; I
switched them back to ‘Photo Viewer’. Then I changed my mind and switched
back to ‘Photos’ to try out the editing tools – and discovered it compresses
photos when it saves. I couldn’t find a
way to change that, nor could I find any information about it online. Furthermore, the photos display in a
compressed form, so that if you zoom in, they look pixelated. Yuck, that’s no good. I switched back to Photo Viewer. I use both viewer and gallery all the
time.
Win 10 Viewer is slightly different. I like to see the properties of a photo when I
click on it, rather than having to open it or right-clicking and then clicking
Properties. This is now displayed in a wide
bar on the right, rather than in a narrow ribbon at the bottom of the
window. The function for enlarging or shrinking thumbnails is at the
bottom right... or you can get to it from the large toolbar ribbon at the top,
which you can set to show all the time or only when you click on a tab in the
toolbar. There are more tools, too.
I like experimenting with new stuff, and I like the
challenge of making everything work exactly like I want it. A couple of
months ago, I had signed up to receive a notice when Win 10 was ready, and the
notice, when it came, scrolled up from the Notification Area of the screen
(bottom right). I checked around online to make sure nothing dreadful was
happening when people installed it, saw that there were mostly only a few
cosmetic issues, thought, I know how to cope with that, and clicked Install.
My laptop is faster, and even more importantly,
cooler. It had been running much too hot lately. My computers
generally only live about three years ... but this one is past that, and still
working pretty well. I use the daylights (and stuffin’s) outa them!
A friend wrote to one of the online quilting groups,
“Yesterday I joined Sarah Lynn’s Dead Dryer Club! DH and I went out and
bought one last night...”
I responded, “You can’t belong to the DDC if you
already purchased a new one! That’ll make the rest of us all jealous and
malicious and rascally and stuff.”
Signed,
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah
Lynn, Pres., DDC ,,,>^..^<,,,
Membership by Request
(We interrupt this station because we have just noticed
a couple of large yellow swallowtails, a viceroy, a Red Admiral, several
skippers, an Eastern comma, and a plethora of white and yellow sulphurs fluttering
around the front-yard flowers, and must grab camera and go get a few shots.)
* * *
Okay, I’m back.
Oh!!! Hummingbird alert! Hummingbird
alert! Female rubythroat!! --- and just like that, she’s gone. No
chance to trot out with the camera. We rarely see them in the middle of
the summer. This means... we need to put fresh nectar in the feeders!
Wednesday I finished the main part of the quilt and reloaded
it so as to do the half-squares on the sides. Maybe, maybe, maybe, I
would get done in time! Here it is, midway through reloading:
Loren called before church that evening to tell me
he had a sore throat and didn’t feel well, so was going to stay home. I
worry about him when he gets sick. It doesn’t
happen very often, though. He still has
a bit of a cold, though he’s feeling better now. Most of the time, he’s quite healthy.
The first couple of months after Janice passed away
(May 29, 2014) were difficult for him, especially since while he was dealing
with the grief and loneliness, financial matters had to be dealt with – getting
things changed into his name... supplying one place after another with a copy
of the death certificate... canceling insurance... all sorts of things that had
him feeling overwhelmed. Now he’s gotten into a good rhythm, and he’s
generally a happy person, always busy, always helping one person or another,
and doing quite well, really. Every now and then when he thanks me for
fixing him a meal, he’ll get a bit emotional about it. Last week, he got tears
in his eyes as he said that in addition to the meals, he appreciates our
friendship... so I said that all the mowing and weed-eating he had done around
our yard earlier took a whole lot more time and energy than the mashed potatoes
I’d made! – and then he laughed instead.
He’s always been my confidante... and these
days, I am his, too. So is Larry; they are the best of friends.
They’re so friendly, in fact, I suspect it was Larry who gave him the sore
throat!
Lura Kay, upon reading a note wherein I remarked
that Loren’s birthday was Saturday, wrote to remind me that his birthday was Sunday,
August 9th.
I replied, “Oh!
That’s right... I’ve gotten his birthday mixed up ever since Lyle (Larry’s
father) came along with a birthday on January 8th. (Or at least it’s the best excuse I can think
of at the moment.)”
Then I added, “Hmmm... I just checked back in my
notes, and I see that, back on July 11th, I actually knew Loren’s birthday was
on the 9th. So that proves my mind is
still a-comin’ and a-goin’! It’s always
good to have an active mind.”
So I have an extra day! (Not that I’d stay
home from church to quilt.)
Larry got home earlier than usual Tuesday night –
6:30 p.m. instead of 9:30 or so – and was going to work on the large garage,
but just as he was getting all prepared to commence with vigor, Victoria called
from town: something had gone wrong with the steering. So off went
Larry to rescue her. He put a new hose on the car, put steering fluid back
in, and they got home – at 11:30 p.m. (The old hose wouldn’t come off... the
new hose wouldn’t go on... the usual.)
While Larry worked on her car, Victoria transferred
nearly 700 songs from her iPad to the mp3 player on the Jeep. When I
climbed in it to go to church Wednesday night, lo and behold, the Old Fashioned
Revival Hour Quartet was singing that lively song, Hold Out Your Light! I’m
so pleased! I’ve been meaning to do that
ever since we got the vehicle, way last fall.
Wednesday night Larry didn’t get home from work
until a quarter ’til midnight. And he had to be back to work at 5:30
a.m. He was just about asleep when Victoria got home and informed us that
her car had once again lost the steering fluid. There was another hole in
another hose somewhere.
She would be driving the Jeep Thursday. And Friday.
And Saturday. And today.
I would be hitchhiking. Or employing the ol’
shankhosses. Or borrowing the neighbor’s wooly old donkey. Or
staying home.
I got one side of the quilt done and rolled it to
the other end to finish the next day. I finally remembered to time myself
quilting one of those large half-square triangles: 22 minutes.
There were five left, and I hadn’t marked them yet. It would take at
least 2 ½ hours to complete, if I didn’t take any breaks. But my hands
(and other parts of me, too) were protesting.
A short break now and then is good!
A short break now and then is necessary!
I must remember to take short breaks now and then.
When the quilt was done, it needed to be washed to
remove all the marks – blue marks originally printed on the cross-stitched
blocks for quilting lines, marks I’d put on it with FriXion pens and Crayola
markers, and a few bloodspots from when Janice was embroidering it. I looked at WeatherBug and discovered there
was a 50% chance of storms on Saturday. And, you’ll recall, I belong to
the Dead Dryer Club.
I wonder if anyone has ever presented someone with a
quilt – dripping wet? You could say, “Here’s your birthday gift!
Just run it through the dryer for half an hour, and there you’ll be, then, with
a freshly laundered quilt. And you’re welcome.”
I will admit that the electric bill is lower, when
one doesn’t have a dryer.
But I need a dryer!!!!!!!!!!!
A friend who lives in Colorado sent me a link to
news story about a car hauler who tipped his truck over on an Interstate in
Denver. Denver seems to have more than
their fair share of accidents. It’s no
wonder, the way people drive in that city.
Larry once had a driveshaft break on a truck as he
was towing a car trailer through there – and he was in the middle lane of five.
He was coasting, turn signal on, and the rig was slowing fast on account of the driveshaft dragging; but he
would have had time to pull to the shoulder, if anyone would’ve let him!
But nooooooooo... no one would. So he wound up stopped smack-dab in the
middle of the interstate. Hazardous, to say the least.
However, he hadn’t been there five minutes before
the tow trucks started showing up – five of them! Like vultures they are,
hovering, waiting for vehicular demises. He didn’t have enough money to
pay a vulture (nor even a canary), so he waited for the police, so they could
turn their lights on behind him, protecting him while he got out and locked in
the front hubs. Then, while they stopped traffic, he drove to the
shoulder, front wheels pulling. He removed the driveshaft, drove to the
dealership where he’d been going, fixed his truck, and got back to business.
Thursday when I called Loren to see if he would like
some supper, I told him, “If you want supper from me tonight, you’ll have to
come and get it, because Victoria is driving the Jeep!”
I could tell right away that he wanted to come, and he’d
like to eat with us, rather than just pick up the food and take it home.
So he called Larry... convinced him to quit work a little earlier than usual...
and soon they were both here, and we had a nice supper together.
Hannah sent me a note:
She was making supper.
Levi, who loves to help his Mama cook, asked, “May I
stir this now?”
Hannah, still adding ingredients, replied, “Just
a minute.”
Levi, taking things quite literally, as he does,
answered sweetly, “Okay.” And he proceeded to set the timer for one
minute. hee hee
After supper, I left the dishes in the sink for the
maid (ha) and scurried back to the quilting machine. I turned on a documentary about China’s red
pandas... then continued with a Nature Special on Alien Reefs – deep ocean
critters. I learn all about groupers,
snappers, and jacks. And let us not forget oceanic snow. I like learning about, ... oh, ... just everything.
(Almost everything.) There are certainly
a whole lot of amazing things in this world of ours.
I had to turn and look at the screen when a
deep-ocean walking red prawn (some type of crustacean that looks like a huge,
deformed, granddaddy longlegs) almost got too close to a lurking monkfish, big
ol’ ugly mouth wide open and ready. (I’ve seen modern-day ‘singers’[?]
that look just like that.)
Larry, meanwhile, was outside using the jack hammer
(or something mighty like it) on a big chunk of cement outside his ‘new’ garage
that was getting in the way of his scissors lift and making it topsy-turvy when
he tried positioning it there. He quit
shortly before dark. (Mrs. Crabbypants
from next door did not show her face.)
At 11:00 p.m., I finished the quilting, removed the quilt
from the frame, and prepared to start the binding. It was already cut; I only had to sew the
strips together and attach it to the quilt.
Tabby came to greet me. I leaned down to pet him, saw what I thought
was a small bright green piece of yarn in his tail – but it was a tiny caterpillar!
So I had to take a few minutes to rush for the macro lens and get some
close-ups of it. It was such a funny little thing, with a horn on its
tail, thin white stripe and tiny orange dots... but it’s a bold little creature,
too! Even though it was tiny, barely as
big as my thumbnail, it stood up tall, lifting the entire front half of its
body, trying to look as scary and intimidating as possible, every time my lens
got too close for comfort.
I believe this little guy is a fresh-hatched, white-lined
sphinx caterpillar. But I could be
wrong. I’m no authority on the matter of
caterpillars. I put the caterpillar
outside and got back to business.
Before I could begin on the binding, though, I had
to install a new light bulb over my sewing table. They always burn out when I’m in the biggest
hurry. I went hunting for my
stepstool. Where was it?!
Five minutes later, I found it. Wouldn’t you know, Larry had borrowed it, and
it’s out in the garage with greasy ol’ tools on it.
I brewed a new pot of coffee (Cameron’s Amaretto
with overtones of almond and apricot) (really! – that’s what it says on the
bag!). Thusly fortified, I then made
like an acrobat, shinnied up on a wobbly sewing chair, stood on tiptoes on the
marble sewing table to brace fingertips on a rafter I could barely reach, and,
with a great deal of shimmying, shaking, quaking, and quivering, I screwed a
new light bulb into the socket. This will need to be repeated sometime
soon with a brighter light. And
hopefully with the stepstool instead of the wobbly sewing chair.
I launched into the binding. It’s a loooong way around this quilt – it
measures 105” x 131”. When the binding
was sewn to the top of the quilt, I quit for the night. I would finish it the next day.
Friday, I folded the binding around to the back of
the quilt, pinned (vewy, vewy ca’fully), and then stitched in the ditch from
the front, catching just 1/16” of the edge of the folded binding on the back.
When Victoria got off work, she got two different
types of OxyClean, which I applied to the stains on the quilt before putting it
into the washing machine.
This was somewhat hair-raising. I wondered, Will
Janice’s cross-stitched blocks still be in one piece when it comes out? I
set the washer on the Hand-Wash Gentle cycle, on cold, to try to get the blood
spots out first. Then I cringed, pressed ON, and hoped for the best.
In the meanwhile, I started on the machine-embroidered
label. The quilt had to have a better name
than ‘Cross-Stitched-Block quilt’, as I’ve been calling it. I asked friends for suggestions... then settled
on ‘August Bouquet’.
A lady on a quilting group wrote about her
difficulties. She looks at award-winning
quilts, sighs, and thinks, That will never be me. How do people do them? “Does anyone else ever feel like this?” she
asked.
Yes, yes, me! Me!
I have all sorts of calamities and catastrophes and
potential twubbles and twials (à la my Caleb, when he was a wee little guy)...
and just press on anyway and try not to look at the problems. For
instance...
(If I tell you this, you’ll never tell, will you??)
(I knew you wouldn’t, so I shall proceed.)
There are several actual tucks in the back of this
quilt I made my brother! I wanted it to be sooo perfect... and I tried
willy, willy hard... and then I got it off the frame and found the
tucks. And there they shall stay. This happened because my frame is
14 feet long, and the poles are really not sturdy enough for that length when
supporting a large, heavy quilt, and they sag in the middle. I roll it
tighter as I get to the middle, looser as I get to the edges, so the tension
will be just right. Obviously, I didn’t
get it quite right.
Next: there’s a little bit of raw seam showing
on my sister’s Folded Star table topper. I looked at it a while...
scratched my head... applied Fray Block (better than Fray Check, because it
stays pliable and soft)... and refused to look at it again. (And it won
first place at the fair – so evidently no one else looked at that spot either.)
Then there’s the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt. It had several areas where there was too much
fullness, evidently because each of the gazillion seams were not exactly
identical to every other one of the gazillion seams. Sooo... I ker-smooshed it all down with
quilting. If anyone looks for it, they’ll see that the seams are not nice
and straight in some places, because they got all crooked in the ker-smooshing.
A couple of years ago, I made a schoolhouse quilt
for my father-in-law, Lawrence. Fortunately, I noticed a mistake in the
pattern of the roof angle before I cut the fabric, and fixed it. But the chimneys refused to sit in their
proper places atop the roofs – because I hadn’t noticed there was also an error
in the measurement of the top rows of the blocks! Aarrgghh. It was
an old kit someone had given me, with no extra fabric, so I couldn’t cut new
pieces. I decided those were magical chimneys, with the ability to hover
in midair.
Lawrence loved it. He’s sentimental, and was so
pleased that I would make him something.
These things happen almost every single time I ever
make anything, not just a quilt. As my friend Penny once said after a
song we were working on went awry during a public singing, “We cringe and press
on.”
And sometimes, we even laugh and press on.
People complimented the singers on that song, as if
nothing had ever gone wrong.
So... the moral of the story is this: people
don’t care nearly so much about perfection as they do about love,
kindheartedness, and compassion. Be generous with all that, and no one
will ever notice if you have more bad hair days than good, or a dreadfully
nasal voice, or if you remove so many feathers from your Flying Geese that all
they can do is waddle and honk.
At five ’til eleven that night, I finished entering
the lines for the quilt label into my Bernina, saved the design, threaded the
machine with dark blue metallic thread, and pressed the Start button. Then I went to see how the quilt had turned
out.
At 1:10 a.m., I put the quilt back into the washing
machine – for the fourth go-around. The
original small blue marks for quilting lines on the cross-stitched blocks had
not come out. They didn’t look too
terrible, and weren’t too noticeable. I decided
to treat them like I do garden spiders:
live and let live. The old blood
spots came out better than expected – most were entirely gone. The FriXion pen marks were not coming out
well. The purple Crayola marker that
made such dark lines my hair stand up on end came out fine in the very first
wash. I rubbed the pen marks thoroughly
with OxyClean gel, and gave it another try on the Warm/Warm setting. The last setting was Hot/Cold – maybe the
cold temp brought the marks back?
Back in my sewing room, I scribbled on a scrap of
fabric with the FriXion pens, then ironed them — and presto, the marks all
vanished. So I would try touching up the
marks with an iron, if they were still there when the quilt dried.
At 3:30 a.m., I posted the final newscast of the
night on the online quilting groups to which I belong, in case anyone was
poised breathlessly on the edge of her seat, waiting to see how the quilt
turned out: After the fourth washing,
the manufacturer’s little blue marks on the cross-stitched blocks were
gone. The bloodspots were gone. The FriXion pen marks, however, were
still there. Fainter, but there.
The quilt was drying on my quilting frame, and when it was dry, I would use heat
to remove the marks.
Janice’s embroidery still looks vibrant and lovely,
and not a single stitch came loose. I looked on the back of the extra
block for the pillow, and saw why: she embroidered with knots. Nice fat ones! Thank goodness.
Saturday afternoon, I wrote the next episode in the series:
About FriXion Pens – and My Brother’s Quilt
First, I have the following news: all the
marks except the largest and darkest bloodspot (which is now so light as to be
nearly unseen) are out, including the blue marks originally stamped on the
cross-stitched blocks.
Now, I’ve tried simply ironing the marks from the
FriXion pens, and they do indeed vanish. They will reappear when
cold. They can leave ‘ghost marks’ on some fabrics. The chemicals
that make up the ink, according to many articles I’ve read, also need to be washed
out, so as not to leave residual amounts in the fabric, and to better preclude
them from showing up again. And they might anyway. Here are a few
of the many articles I read – interesting, and well worth reading:
After my quilt dried, I steamed the few marks left
by the FriXion pens. I didn’t want to press, much, because the wool
batting has given it a nice loft, and I didn’t want to squish it. The
marks are gone; the quilt looks pristine and new. No, that’s not
correct. It looks ‘heirloom’ crinkly. (And it smells terrific, and
is soooo soft and cuddly... mmmmm.) I love crisp and flat and new
quilts... and I love soft and crinkly and cuddly quilts.
I know that if the quilt gets down to, oh, say,
freezing, those FriXion marks might very well show up again. Another
steaming will get rid of them – to a point.
After either numerous reheating and/or a number of years, the marks seem
to become permanent.
The pens are fairly new, so no one can say what will
happen in 10-20-30 years.
Fact: There are many and good uses for these
pens, but I will not be using them again on a quilt, unless it will be in an
area that will never see the light of day again. This seems to be the
general consensus of a good many people who have experience with the pens. I will instead use Crayola’s washable markers
or the vanishing-ink pens or quilt pencils.
I suddenly noticed – it wasn’t raining, it was
bright enough for pictures, and the sun was periodically behind cloud
cover: perfect for quilt photos. So I took the quilt out on the back deck and
conducted a photo session.
That done, I sewed the label on. Next, the pillow project. I went to get a pillow from the sewing room
closet – but it wasn’t there. I looked on shelves, in drawers...
Not there. I’ve evidently used it already.
Well, I had just enough time to dash to town before
I needed to start supper. I crammed my feet into my sandals, grabbed my
purse, jerked open the door ------ and realized, No Jeep. Victoria was still
borrowing it, because Larry hadn’t had time to fix her car.
Aarrgghh.
I put down my purse, got back into my bare feet, and
cleaned the kitchen. It did need it, and it was nice, having everything
nice and clean when I started cooking. But,
... still! Don’t you just hate it when the wind stops so abruptly your
sails descend all over your hapless pate?
I fixed Angus meatloaf burgers with brown rice and
gravy, green beans, apple pie, and put a big scoop of Black Cherry frozen
yogurt into a small Thermos bowl for Loren. Black Cherry frozen yogurt
and apple pie make good dessert-plate mates. (Unless, like Keith when he
was little, you think the cherries are June bugs.)
Then I wrote a note to Victoria, who would be
getting off work soon: “Could you get me
a big square pillow from the Goodwill? A nice one, firm, not lumpy, 18-20”
– that’s elbow to tip of middle finger plus 4”.”
Loren came to pick up the supper I’d fixed — and I
gave him the quilt, along with a birthday card that had a picture of a wolf
that looked a lot like a big German shepherd he used to have. Inside, I wrote the verse from Psalms 118, “This
is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
He said with surprise, “I just read this verse!” He smiled, then added, “We
do that, rejoice, that is, when we’re thankful for our blessings.” And
that’s what my brother is like.
He was amazed about the quilt... oohed and ahhed
over it... read the label two or three times... thanked me several times... and
then he carried the quilt and I carried the food out to his vehicle, and he
went home again.
I walked back into the house and spotted my camera.
I walked back into the house and spotted my camera.
Aaaauuuggghhh! Me, forget to take a picture?!
Well, I’ll take a picture of him with the quilt when I give him his
pillow.
He turned 77 Sunday; he’s a little more than 22
years older than me. He’s always been a mighty special big brother.
Since several people have asked... I have a sister and two brothers. Loren was
22 and had two boys when I was born. My sister Lura Kay is 20 years older
than me, my younger brother G.W. is 17 years older. My mother had an
ectopic pregnancy when G.W. was about two and nearly died. After her surgery, nobody thought she’d be
able to have another baby.
Fifteen years later, the doctors were proven wrong.
My mother was 43 and my father was 45 when I was born. And if you wonder...
were they glad? Here’s the answer: my father said he chose the name
‘Sarah’ from the list he and my mother had written because ‘Sarah’ means ‘princess’,
and he felt like a king.
Victoria got home at about 6:30 p.m. I saw her walking along the sidewalk,
carrying the pillow – and knew it was only 15 or 16 inches wide, tops.
She came in, handed it to me – “Here you go!” happily.
“It’s too small,” I said.
“No, it’s not!” she protested. “I measured!” –
and she proceeded to show me, laying her arm across the pillow ---- *diagonally*,
like one measures a computer screen. HAHAHA
My extraordinarily-smart kid sure does some funny
things sometimes. :-D
So, a little after 7, Victoria and I headed to
town. I dropped her off at the church
for choir practice, then headed to the Goodwill for another pillow. I wound up with four – two large square ones,
and two neck rolls. Those are sometimes
hard to find. I paid $5.50 for the
lot. Not bad.
Lura Kay wrote me a note: “A little motherly (or sisterly) advice...don’t
stay up all night getting that quilt done!!”
I responded, “The quilt is done! I gave it to him this afternoon. I’m staying up all night to make the matching
pillow.”
It might’ve gone fast, if I hadn’t decided to put a
gazillion tucks into each of the borders.
And then---------AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
There was a bat in the basement!
Call up the Brigade! The Mounties! The
National Guard! Save me!
Before the bat came along, a dragonfly had tried to
sew my lips shut (remember Snoopy!). Now
a bat, to add insult to injury!
I hate bats.
Well, I don’t hate them if they stay outside where
they belong, and don’t lay eggs in my hair. But when they get in my house,
that’s cause for combat and war! Especially since they have a penchant
for divebombing me. Bat: “There she is!
Ready... set... now aim right at her head!” “Look
at her duck and dodge! Wheeeeeeee! This is fun!”
I hate bats!
I turned out the lights in the front of the
basement... turned on the deck lights, one story up, and opened the downstairs
patio door, to Larry’s great dismay, so that the bat could exit whenever he
dearly well wished. Larry hates mosquitoes worse than I hate bats.
I informed him, “My phobia is more important than yours!” and he laughed.
He laughed!
When nothing seemed to be flapping frenetically
about my head any longer, I returned to the sewing machine. En garde,
Microchiroptera, ye ol’ vespertilio. Ah haff a tennis racket.
Please send bat helmets.
(For me, not the bat.)
We had a cat named Socks who could make a six-foot vertical
leap with ease. Any bat that got into the house immediately had a
tortoiseshell cat leaping wildly after him. I worried, lest he should
find one that had rabies. But so far, every bat we’ve ever seen around
here has acted perfectly batty. (That’s
normal, for a bat.)
A bat got in our downstairs bathroom once, and
Hester was suddenly looking at it eyeball to eyeball. She screamed bloody murder, scaring the poor
critter out of its livin’ hide, whereupon it took flight, and then Hester and
bat were both diving and dodging and screeching (Hester) and twittering (the
bat). She said when it was flying directly at her, it looked as big as a
bald eagle.
HAHAHA
In case my quilting friends were tired of my
quilting sagas, I posted Chronicles of the Bat.
It wasn’t long before a couple of ladies were
writing to explain that bats, being mammals, do not lay eggs; they have live
young.
Yeah. We
learned about bats in second grade. I
enjoy watching National Geographic and Pure Nature videos about them.
Incredible little creatures, aren’t they? (But I don’t much appreciate
them in my house.)
Either everyone else knew I didn’t mean it, or they
all think the bat does lay eggs, or they decided to ‘let the ignorant be
ignorant still’. Shall I write and tell them about the platypus and the
echidna? heh heh
Nary a soul commented on the dragonfly sewing my
lips shut. That old joke from the Peanuts comic strip finally made sense
to me, years and years after I read it, when I discovered that there is a whole
species of various dragonflies called ‘darners’. Was I the only one who
didn’t know that??
The pillow was only half done when I threw in the
towel.
After church last night, we had a before-bedtime
snack – chef salad, and a slice of strawberry pie Hester made for us. Outside,
dark clouds were turning the sky pitchblack. Lightning was flashing...
thunder was rumbling... and WeatherBug sent out a severe thunderstorm alert.
It rained only enough to make WeatherCat slightly
damp.
Victoria’s tiger barbs died last week; we don’t know
why. Perhaps because the big goldfish made the tank too dirty for
them? She traded the goldfish for a
betta, which is a much cleaner fish. So
now she has two bowls with a betta in each, one bright red-orange, the other
pale aqua-blue. The larger tank still has the two plecos, too.
Kim Komando sent out a notice that an auto update to
Win 10 causes some computers to go into an endless loop – the install fails,
the computer restarts, then automatically tries to install the update
again. I checked my laptop ... and that
particular update installed flawlessly four days ago.
I haven’t gotten back to the pillow today. I’ve been washing clothes... hanging them on
the line... cleaning the bathroom... typing my journal... chatting with various
family members... Oh, well. Siempre
hay un mañana .
Loren said to me today, regarding his quilt, “This
is really a keepsake.”
I’m glad I could make him something featuring so
much of Janice’s work; most of what she made, she gave away, so he doesn’t
really have a whole lot of things she made.
Next on the agenda: the embroidery on the Mosaic
Lighthouse quilt. It’s time (well, between now and October 16, it’s time)
to send in the application to enter it in the AQS quilt show in Daytona Beach!
In my research of things to do around Daytona Beach,
I discovered that we could stay on a snazzy houseboat on the St. John’s River
in Florida: Holly
Bluff Marina Houseboat Rentals
I thought Victoria would think this was the best
idea yet (well, maybe ‘best’ after the stables B&B). Instead, she
turned her nose up at it! “Yeeeuuuck!” said my well-bred, cultured
daughter.
Turns out, she had envisioned something like these:
Now I should clean the kitchen (at least well enough that no one shudders when they walk in) and hit the hay.
Now I should clean the kitchen (at least well enough that no one shudders when they walk in) and hit the hay.
I hope I have wheels again soon; I need to make a
grocery run. Caleb used to tell me, “Mama,
don’t go to the store unless you’re hungry! – ’cuz then you get lots of good
stuff.”
Unfortunately, when Larry came home from work at
about 9:30 p.m., he told me that now his pickup needs to go to the hospital – some
sort of mounts have come loose, allowing the clutch fan to bump the radiator
and make a hole in it. His truck was
starting to get hot by the time he got here.
We need not one, but two donkeys!
You know, ever since I read Brighty of the Grand
Canyon when I was in 4th grade, I’ve wanted very badly to ride a donkey into
the Canyon. If I don’t hurry up and do that, I’m going to be too old and
decrepit to ever get it done!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn,
who’s probably too decrepit already, though not at all too old
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