Trip to Grand Island and Morrill, Kansas

Last Monday, Tabby brought in a mouse he’d caught.  A black one!  I have never seen a black one around here.  Or anywhere, come to think of it.  He was still alive when Tabby brought him in.  I distinctly heard him cry, “Paws up!  Don’t chomp!” just before I snatched him by the tail and hurled him out the front door.

We caught another black one in a trap under the sink, the same day.  And, just to add to the Breathless Menagerie, on the front porch that very afternoon there lay a large brown field mouse, probably captured by Teensy and played with until it was, indeed, breathless.

I looked up ‘black mouse’ and learned that there are great varieties in mouse coloration.  Perhaps these were descendants of someone’s pets that had been released somewhere nearby.

Tuesday afternoon, I went to my friend Linda’s house and did a bit of upkeep on her computer.  AVG and Java needed to be updated, Eudora needed to be reinstalled, and a public folder needed to be put back in DropBox on the C: drive. 

Home again, I got back to embroidering the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.  There was no need to water the lawn; it had rained several inches in the previous two or three days.  Omaha got five inches Sunday night, complete with flooding.

Now here comes Teensy, wanting up on my lap.  He’s so funny... if we start to get up when he wants us to stay put whilst he’s sprawled on us, he stretches all out loooong (and he’s a biiiig cat), presses his front paws firmly down against us as if to hold us in place, squints his eyes up tight, and says mournfully, “Meoooooooow.” 

For supper that evening, we had pulled pork on miniature 12-grain loaves fresh out of the oven, sweet corn, plums, and fresh-baked banana bread with cream cheese on top.  And then I embroidered until my fingers and feet were too sore to continue.  Feet, you ask?  Yep.  Embroidering makes my feet sore... because... since I am doing said embroidery on this big, bulky lighthouse quilt, I generally wad it into a heap atop my cutting table in my sewing room, adjust my bendable floor lamp (Hester called such things a ‘goose necktery’ when she was little) so it is shining right on the spot I am working on, and then I stand and embroider the part I have positioned at the top of the heap.  There is no putting it into a hoop, and no need to in any case, since it’s so thick.  Sure seemed like I did more than 7 hours of embroidering that day, but ... that’s what the clock said.

Loren stayed at Lake McConaughy (we Neebraskyans call it ‘Big Mac’) that night.  He parked his pickup and camper in a ‘primitive’ camping area (no hookups, and only $10/night), and used his new generator for the first time.  It powered everything nicely, including the microwave, and ran quietly enough that he couldn’t hear it at all when he walked the short distance to the water.

Wednesday, he drove on west through the Nebraska Panhandle, turned south at Cheyenne, and went to Rocky Mountain National Park.  He loves the mountains almost as much as I do, I do believe.  He was enjoying his new pickup; it drove and rode and handled the camper a good deal better than the old pickup had done. 

It was sunny and 65° that day; seems like autumn is just around the corner.  I love balmy fall days, though the racket from the local cicadas is somewhat earsplitting.  The birds aren’t singing as much, either; they’re probably busy holding their ears because of those deafening cicadas.  But in the early twilight, the young robins and other male fledglings of various types try to imitate their parents’ evening songs, getting all practiced up for next spring’s mating rituals.  They warble and trill melodically for a few measures, and then at the tail end of their melody their voices unexpectedly crack and they hit high screechy notes that make the local felines’ eyebrows fly up.  The birds themselves jerk their heads around and stare, as if wondering, What in the world was that?!

Supposedly, only the males of most feathered genera actually sing; the females merely issue call notes and Skype invitations.  But every now and then, female birds of various species forget to read their instruction pamphlet, and go right ahead and sing, just as if they think they know how.

I embroidered until time for church.  By then, my thumb and first finger were sore.  The leather thimble with the little metal circle inserted in it had stretched enough that it didn’t stay on as well as it should.  My longer, softer, leather thimble with the elastic on the back has a wee hole in it.  Of course, one invariably finds such holes when one is trying to push the needle through something thick.  Aaaaiiiiyyiiieeee.

A friend suggested wetting the thimble to see if it would shrink, so I gave it a try.  I’d considered putting a few stitches in it to pull it tighter, but it’s very thick leather, and I couldn’t get the needle through it.  I thoroughly dampened the leather, and by the time I got back to embroidering on Friday, it was dry again.  It hadn’t shrunk one iota, but there was this:  the leather had become soft enough that I could finally shove a needle through it.  So I found some matching thread and sewed one seam deeper, and now my thimble is snug again.

Minor victory, perhaps; but it makes a big difference in how well I can embroider on this cumbersome quilt.

Thursday, Larry took the day off, and we escorted the Graceful Garden quilt to the State Fair in Grand Island.  The Fair runs from August 28 to September 7.  The big building where they will display the quilts is huge.  One of the ladies who works with the quilts told me that last year they had over 750 quilts on display.  She thought that was more than most other state fairs around the country.  All around the upper walls of the exhibit hall are miniature quilts, framed and behind glass, representing each of Nebraska’s 93 counties.  There wasn’t another soul in that huge hall, so Larry and I walked around and looked at each of the little quilts (probably about 24” x 24”).  I was wishing they either weren’t so high up on the wall, or that I’d brought my binoculars with me, the better to see them! 

After leaving Grand Island, we went on through southeast Nebraska to the small town of Morrill in northeast Kansas, where we picked up a four-wheeler Larry had purchased to take the place of the six-wheeled Big Boss he recently sold.  Most of the photos in this letter were taken on this drive.  We saw several flocks of wild turkeys, many fields lively with cute little calves, and even a few colts and lambs.

We stopped in the little town of Odell, Nebraska, to stretch our legs with a walk around the city park.  There was a large school bell hanging in an historical marker with the story of the town schools on either side.  Larry, of course, had to ring the bell.

It was louder than he’d expected.  And he had his hearing aids on.  See him cringing?

On the way back, we stopped at Indian Cave State Park and walked around a bit.  We couldn’t see the cave, because there was road construction on account of recent flooding, and the hike would’ve put us there after dark.  But we walked around the old schoolhouse and the broom-making shop, and went out on the viewing deck to look at the wide panorama of the Missouri River Valley.  In this State Park are populations of black squirrels, Eastern grays, fox squirrels, and the rarer flying squirrels, which have mostly disappeared from other parts of the state.  Around our neck of the woods, we have only the fox squirrel.

Next, we stopped at Wal-Mart to have a tire patched.  We must’ve run over something sharp in a field we drove in way out in the boonies.  Definition of Kansas ‘boonies’:  area where all you can see in any direction for 30 miles are fields of corn or beans, pastures full of curious lambs, and a friendly, lively farmer of at least 85 years of age, driving an even older John Deere tractor down a dirt lane leading to a tumbledown barn, beside which is parked a shiny 2015 GMC Sierra 3500 Denali HD truck.  (Didn’t expect that, did you?)

We had supper at a Valentino’s Grand Italian Buffet in Nebraska City.  I like all-you-can-eat buffets.  I like getting tiny servings of just about every type of food they serve – though this time I opted to stick mainly to salads, fresh vegetables, and fruit.  (I did go back for just a wee bit more bread pudding, though.  Mmmm, mmm.)

Friday, I washed clothes.  If it rains several days in a row, I get a bit behind, since the dryer still isn’t in operating order, and I must hang things outside to dry.  But by 1:30 p.m., the last load – sheets and pillowcases – was flapping on the line.  I like climbing into a bed made up of clothesline-dried sheets and pillowcases.  Ahhhhh...

Loren was home from his little excursion to Rocky Mountain National Park, and he’d managed to lose about six pounds unnecessarily, so I took him a couple of good meals the next two evenings.

Victoria didn’t have to work Saturday.  I think she’s busier on her days off than on the days she works!  I spent the day embroidering on the lighthouse quilt.  There are only two months before I must send in my application to the AQS quilt show, and I still have to put on the hotfix crystals!  I saw some long, skinny, multifaceted crystals at Hobby Lobby that I think I’ll put in the top of the lighthouse for the light.  If I could just embroider as fast as Bobby’s Great-grandma Stotts used to do!

I remember sitting in her little house watching in awe as her fingers flew so quickly over her cross-stitching, they were nothing but a blur.

That evening, I embroidered the last few ‘stones’ on the lighthouse tower, then did part of the fence.  That doesn’t seem like much, for how long I’ve been working on it; but if you consider that the area I have completed is 20 inches wide by 70 inches long, I guess that’s something.  J  Total size of the quilt is 79” x 94”.  And with that, I now have 665.5 hours in the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.

My fingers were glad for a day of rest yesterday.

Last night before our evening service, Larry went out to switch one sprinkler off and turn another on.  He came back in – after having stepped in what the neighbors’ dog left in our lawn.  I chased him back out, howling like a banshee, and mopped the floor (after stepping on the edge of the cats’ water bowl and upending it).  (Oh, well; I needed more water on the floor anyway.) 

And then we continued getting ready for church, quite a lot more well-scrubbed than we’d been before.

Today, clothes are hung on the line, dishes are washed, the front porch flowers are watered, and a black swallowtail butterfly, along with numerous bumblebees and an unknown white moth, have been duly photographed on the multitudes of white hosta blossoms. 

Victoria picked a huge boxful of tomatoes, both cherry and Romano, and one oversized cucumber from her garden.  She then spent 45 minutes searching for her gardening gloves, planning to work on the front-yard flower gardens.  I offered her my new gloves from Lura Kay, but she wanted hers.  Eventually, she gave up and took a nap instead.  So much for the yardwork.  Now she has gone off to have a bike ride with Bobby’s sister Esther.

This caused even more ado and bustle than the GGGS (Great Gardening Glove Search), as, first, the bike rack was AWOL.  She called Larry and discovered it was in his pickup at the shop.  So off she went to Walkers to collect the bike rack.  Home again, she used up a good deal of oomph installing the thing in the Jeep hitch, as her car doesn’t have a hitch.  After a bit, she marched into the house, showed me her greasy hands, and announced in a chagrined tone, “I look like a man!”

A little soap and water, and she was back to her regular ‘girl’ status, and heading back to town.

There goes the little tune signifying the washer is done; time out while I go hang up the clothes.

***  (time elapses)

***  Okay, I’m back.  Did you miss me? 

All right, you don’t need to know that I clipped my toenails and flossed my teeth, so I shall now get back to the embroidery on the lighthouse quilt.  Oh!  Speaking of embroidery (and floss) – I got a big old plastic embroidery floss case on eBay – and it’s chockful of floss (the floss is not old; it’s in very good condition) in all colors of the rainbow and more.  I paid twelve dollars for what I estimate to be $120 worth of floss.

To the embroidery!  To the embroidery!

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