Last Tuesday, October 13, was Caleb
and Maria’s 2nd anniversary. It was also Caleb’s 22nd birthday and Teddy
and Amy’s 13th anniversary.
That morning, Victoria went with
Caleb and Maria to Central City to see some boxer puppies. A lady is selling them as soon as they are old
enough. (The dogs, not the kids.) Yep, Caleb has found his puppy. Maria’s folks, Larry and I, and Victoria are
helping him buy it, as our birthday gift to him. Yeah, that would be your clue that boxer
puppies are not cheap.
They are adorable, however. He picked a little fawn-colored female. Victoria came home laughing, “I think he’s
still in a melted puddle back there at the lady’s house.”
Some quilting ladies were discussing unfinished
quilt tops they’ve wound up with, some that they got at estate sales, others
they were given when a mother or grandmother passed away. Sometimes the tops are in sad repair –
perhaps sewn badly, fragile, or stained.
Some are heirlooms worth saving and completing as intended. Others are of inferior fabrics, and the
pattern is nothing exceptional.
One lady took apart and remade a pretty
vintage quilt top that had been put together wrong, with some blocks turned the
wrong way. The results made it well
worth the effort. However, she also came
into possession of a quilt top put together by her grandmother, and this one
she decided to divide into four smaller wall hangings.
“If you have inherited a quilt top
and don’t know what to do with it,” she wrote, “make something else out of
it. It’s okay. It’s yours now. Enjoy it.”
Hear, hear! I agree.
I wound up with a quilt top that’s partially put together, started by an
elderly friend who passed away several years ago. It’s made of squares of
children’s fabric put together – and the squares are not uniform sizes, the
seams don’t match, and there are puckers and tucks and unsewn seams everywhere.
I’ll use that fabric someday, but not as it is now. When I use it, I will
just cut it apart with my rotary cutter.
I made that remark once in polite (or
so I thought) company, and someone leaped forth from the crowded throng (not
anybody I know personally, or anybody related to either me or the elderly
friend; just an OPWTSK {Opinionated Person Who Thinks She Knows}) to tell me in
no uncertain terms, “NO!!!!!! You must NOT take that quilt
apart!!!!! You MUST NOT!!! You will remove everything it means!”
Oh. And ‘it means’ .... ?
What does it mean? I didn’t respond... but... as I said before, I’ll use
that fabric someday, but not as it is now. I refuse to continue working
on something that is a colossal calamity. (Unless it really does mean
something.) (In which case I’ll let the OPWTSK do it.) So there.
(...pondering...) I think what that quilt ‘means’ is that the
lady, who preferred crocheting over sewing, once decided to make a quilt, but
it didn’t go well, and she decided to quit while she was ahead. Or
behind. That’s what I think it ‘means’.
(I’m having troubles collecting my scattered
thoughts and writing anything, because Victoria has her iPod nearby, and a male
quartet is enthusiastically singing I’ve A Home Beyond the River. If I write something odd, I cannot be blamed.)
Tuesday morning, I finally got my
pictures from our last day of vacation at Keller State Park uploaded. That was the day Larry and Victoria caught the
rainbow trout: Keller
State Park
That afternoon, some of the double
knits I’d bought from ladies on an online quilting group arrived. One box came by UPS; another arrived via
USPS. It took the mail lady a year and a day to find it in the back of
her car and bring it to the door. A
smaller box that should have been with it was AWOL.
I wondered if the other box was in
the depths of her messy vehicle, and she’d missed it. She’s rather inept,
constantly misdelivering things all over this rural neighborhood. I no
longer put anything in our box for her to pick up, as I don’t trust her
competence. She has crammed books into our box – brand new books that I
ordered as gifts – even though it said right on the package in large letters, “DO
NOT BEND!” She destroyed the binding on at least two books, and made
creases in covers of several others. I left notes for her, asking her not
to do that, but it continued to happen. I complained to the post office...
so now she’s not quite as friendly as she used to be. Sometimes she seems
confused, though – probably because I am generally polite and friendly when she
comes to our door, making her think there’s some other crabby person in the
house who’s doing the complaining about the lost mail and ruined books, ’cuz I’m
such a sweet li’l ol’ gray-haired blow-over. Ha!
Oh, well. I don’t need the mail
lady to be friendly; I just need her to quit crumpling my books! I think
when they were passing out brains, she thought they said ‘rain’, put up her umbrella,
and deflected hers.
I wanted the double knits to make
more of those rag-shag rugs like I made Aaron and Joanna three or four years
ago. In one box of fabric, there are single
knits, too. They are quite nice; I think I will use them to make pajamas
for the grandchildren.
That afternoon, I was quilting the Amazing
Grace quilt – and Victoria was cleaning the downstairs bathroom. Wheweeeee, the bleach smell was overpowering.
I opened the big window and patio door on the walk-out side of the basement,
but even though a breeze was coming through, it wasn’t blowing the smell
away. My head started feeling like a balloon. Victoria, meanwhile,
was singing along with her iPod. She was
making all sorts of commotion scrubbing and running water, and probably had no
idea I could hear her perfectly fine. She has a beautiful voice (of
course you know I’m not a bit prejudiced)... she shouldn’t be timid about
it!
About suppertime, I rolled the Amazing
Grace quilt forward, and the ‘Amen’ at the bottom of the song showed up.
That meant I was almost to the first border at the bottom.
I put a second load of clothes into
the washer... filled my coffee mug... and peeked into the kitchen where Victoria
was making pumpkin chiffon pie. She gave me a little taste of the filling: Yesirree, she had the recipe right. Mmmmm, mmm.
She was making a large pie for us, and a small one to take to work,
since it was going to be National Boss’ Day.
When Larry got off work, he stopped
at the store for a couple of beef roasts and a bag of ruby red grapefruit,
which we gave Teddy and Amy for their anniversary.
I worked on the quilt until a quarter
’til two, and then my feet and ankles protested loudly enough that I decided to
listen to them and pitch in the towel. I’d
been quilting since 2:00 in the afternoon.
Wednesday morning, the box of double
knits made its way back to Des Moines from Chicago after loitering aimlessly in
the Chicago Metro facility for 48 hours, and then it proceeded to leave Des
Moines in six minutes flat.
Not too long ago, a box from Nevada
made it without too much ado to Omaha – then instead of coming on to Columbus,
it went toodling off to New Jersey, stayed for two weeks, and finally crept its
way back across the country, making pit stops in Atlanta, Nashville, St. Louis,
Kansas City, Chicago, Des Moines, and even Detroit, Michigan. I think it
must’ve been doing a Dr. Seuss impersonation of that little bird that trotted
all over the countryside asking everyone (and everything) it came to, “Are you
my mother?”
I paid some bills, lollygagged around
for a time reading the news and the funnies, then trotted back to the quilting
machine.
If you don’t want to peeved and/or
disgusted, you should make it a habit to never read the commentary under any
news articles. Invariably, someone
creates a giant fuss by bringing in politics and/or religion, never mind what
the subject matter is actually about. Under
one article, someone made the all-encompassing statement that every person who
has ever professed to believe in God has been coerced against his will to
believe that way. Others chimed in to
agree, giving their own experience of being ‘pressured’ to follow this or that
religion – which therefore brings them to conclude that everyone, in every
religion, is under pressure to stay in that religion.
(I could make the blanket statement
that since all those who had commented on that article had done so in the
middle of the day – which was true enough – I can therefore deduce that all are
lazy, jobless, ne’er-do-wells and sloths whose only occupation and entertainment
is to troll news websites and incite insurrections and insurgences. I could, but I won’t.)
No one is under pressure, when he is happy
doing what he is doing and believing what he is believing. Murderers, on
the other hand, are under pressure, because there are laws against
murder. Since I don’t want to murder anyone (most of the time), I am most
of the time not under pressure.
(And no, I didn’t comment on any news
article; I don’t wish to join crowds of blathering idiots. If I’m going to blather, I shall do it on my own
podium, thank you very kindly.)
Before church that evening, I made apple
salad and blueberry muffins, enough to give Loren some after the service.
Norma wrote to tell me that Lawrence’s
surgery is set for November 3rd. He’s
not doing very well. They doubled his
fluid pill, as he was having difficulty breathing.
After church, we went to Loren’s
house for ice cream and cookies. When we got home, I remembered something
I needed to look up – and then got distracted reading old columns of Dave Barry’s.
Okay, that’s wasting my time.
Quit! Now! (me, talking to me)
All right, all right, I quit. (me,
answering me) Instead, I listened to an
audio book and edited pictures until I could no longer hold my eyes open.
Thursday, the box of fabric finally arrived.
And, the mail lady who brought it is the very nice lady who used to bring our
mail. This one looks and acts quite a lot like she has a brain in her
head, as opposed to the other one who repelled hers with the parasol. I
was glad to see her. Here’s just a little example of what this lady is
like:
When I opened the door to greet her,
I discovered a couple of other boxes on the porch that had been delivered
earlier by UPS. The lady leaned down and helped me scoot them into the
house. That might not seem like a big deal... but one was heavy, and I
appreciated the little gesture of helpfulness and friendliness.
One of those boxes held a couple of
packages of coffee – so I was saved from turning into a frazzled alien, as I’d
used up the last of the ground coffee just the night before.
It’s funny, I want double knits to
make rugs – but I open the boxes... I find a gray tweedy piece... and I’m
immediately thinking, Oh! This would make a perfect suit jacket to go
with that mauve/gray plaid pleated skirt for which I’ve been looking for a top
to match!
The lady who sent the knits also sent
me a new quilting magazine. I like looking
through magazines and books, getting all sorts of ideas for future projects.
I finished quilting the Amazing Grace
quilt early in the afternoon, and started putting the binding on it. By suppertime, the binding was complete, and
I began making an embroidered label. I
didn’t finish that until a quarter ’til four in the morning.
For some unknown reason, the
embroidery dropped down half a line on the last ‘E’ of the abbreviation for
Nebraska, which is exactly what happened on the last word of the last label I
made.
Furthermore, it left off the ‘C’ on ‘Columbus’
and the ‘y’ on Anniversary and the ‘n’ on Jackson. I spotted the missing ‘n’ before it started
printing that line, and was able to fix it before that embroidery began; but I
had to add in the ‘y’ and ‘C’ later. I
did a crackerjack job inserting the ‘C’; not so good on the ‘y’. And that’s the way it will remain; I refuse
to redo it. :-\
The ‘y’ and the ‘n’ got left off
because I didn’t shrink the print enough – and the screen is small enough that
individual letters cannot precisely be seen.
I have no idea what became of the ‘C’.
Excellent argument for the new
Bernina 780, don’t you think?
This quilt started out aiming to be a
wall hanging. But, as usual, it grew, and now is 47” x 67” – about the
right size for a couch quilt or small throw.
More pictures are here:
Friday, I cleaned a bit in my little
upstairs office, the one I used to use for office work, sewing, and whatever
else I needed to do before the older girls got married and moved out, leaving
me with the entire basement. It was cramped, in that small room. I
now have two big boxes full of Caleb’s things in the back of the Jeep (though
he has insisted he had all of his stuff), and I filled two 30-gallon garbage
bags with empty boxes and other jetsam and flotsam that someone, for some unknown
reason, once thought he should keep.
I pointed out the little bowl, asked
him if he liked it... he exclaimed, “Yes! I love pasquetti ’n meatballs!”
(We had a little nephew who used to call it that.)
I explained why there was only a
small bowl of it, and said in a prim, schoolmarm tone, “If this doesn’t make
you sick, next time you can have a spoonful and a half!”
He laughed, of course.
Home again, I washed the dishes and,
while waiting for Larry to come home so we could go to Caleb and Maria’s
birthday/anniversary party, hunted for ideas for a wall hanging to make for the
people who rented the cabin to us in Long Pine a couple of weeks ago.
They loaned us their very own fishing rods... they gave us charcoal and lighter
fluid... and they let us stay until 7:00 p.m. the following day. So I want
to make them something.
I decided on a design, and started
putting it together. It got later... and
later... and later... and still no Larry.
I called him... but he didn’t answer his phone.
Turns out, he was baling hay at
Teddy’s, and his phone was charging in his pickup. And, I should have made sure he knew we were
invited! Wednesday night when Maria
asked if we wanted to come, and later when Victoria and I mentioned it, Larry
still had his hearing aids on after wearing them to church – but he turns them
down after the sermon when we sing the last song, and he hadn’t turned them
back up afterwards. Sooo... the hearing
aids act more like earplugs than anything else.
He hadn’t heard a thing.
Oh, well. It was just as well, since he was tired, I
had a stomachache, and Caleb and Maria’s house was stuffed with people. The quilt could wait a day or two.
Saturday afternoon, I took my brother
some supper early – chicken breast filet, mashed potatoes and country gravy,
corn, lime jello, and a poppyseed muffin – because I was going to help one of
my blind friend Linda set up her new computer, which she’d purchased through a
friend in Wisconsin who sets them up to be blind-user friendly. She’d had the machine for a couple of days,
but I’d asked if she minded if I finished Caleb and Maria’s quilt first.
“I’ve got my finger in too many pies!”
I commented.
She replied, “Not to worry. Just wash the pie off your fingers before you
come play with my new computer!”
Loren, in the meanwhile, came to our
house and took down another dead tree – and left the majority of the wood for
us, neatly stacked.
He frets and stews that he doesn’t do
enough in return for the supper I take him – but he spends a whole lot longer,
and works a whole lot harder, taking down trees than I do cooking suppers.
It took a little over two hours to
get everything up and running properly on Linda’s computer. It was missing a few of the menus she’d had previously
in the reading synthesizer, Window Eyes.
When I tried pulling up the program, the window would flash onto the
screen, then instantly disappear, so I could get to none of the settings. We couldn’t turn the voice off, nor could we
change the speech speed, or instruct it to refrain from reading all
punctuation, which is an aggravation.
Linda called her friend to ask if
there were keyboard commands we could use instead. She let me talk to the man on the phone. He was clearly concerned that I was going to
sabotage the programming he’d set up. I
wonder, how does one convince a perfect stranger that one is not a computer
program pillager and marauder? I suppose
one could say in a lofty tone, “Have no fear, for I, sir, am a consummate Einstein
with computers.”
The only trouble with that tack is
that one can then never again ask for assistance, especially if one has made a
boo-boo, lest one expose one’s self as being a fraudster and a braggadocio, to
say nothing of a total imbecile.
When I got home, I got back to work
on the little wall hanging. I designed
it using both Electric Quilt 7 and Paintshop Photo Pro. I’m using a photo I took of the cabin for the
center part of the hanging. This is the bottom two-thirds of the hanging;
the top third will be the tops of the trees and blue sky. We loved the way the cabin was tucked into those
tall trees on that steep hillside. Birds,
squirrels, and deer abounded.
I’ve printed the perspective-skewed
log cabin pattern on newsprint, and am paper-piecing the blocks. Some of the ‘logs’ are only 3/16” wide;
paper-piecing will ensure getting them together accurately. I made a trip to Hobby Lobby for
grass-printed and pebble-printed fabric.
With these, I’ll blend the triangular areas at the top of the log cabin
blocks with the area at the base of the cabin.
I wanted tree prints, cloud/sky
prints, and wood prints, too, but they didn’t have any. I’ll check with our LQSs tomorrow.
The last week has been full of
beautiful, sunshiny days, with bright blue skies. Those cute little
chipping sparrows – Loren calls them ‘chippers’, just like Mama used to – are
back full force; the yard is plumb full of them. Dark-eyed juncos are starting to show up, too.
Autumn is coming! But today, it got up to 81°.
We are just 50 miles east of the
migratory flyway for the Sandhill cranes, the spot that’s called the ‘neck of
the hourglass’. Half a million cranes come through each spring and fall,
and in the springtime they spend up to three weeks along the Platte River in
the harvested cornfields, eating and building up strength for the journey on
north to Manitoba, where many nest along Hudson Bay and the northern reaches of
Canada and Alaska. Tens of thousands also cross the Bering Strait and
nest in Siberia. There are often small handfuls of whooping cranes mixed
in with the Sandhill cranes.
It’s amazing to be along the Platte
River early in the morning when huge flocks begin rising from their overnight
roosts right in the river shallows. You can’t imagine the noise of both
their calls and their wings. Densities of more than 12,000 cranes per
half mile of river can occur.
Here’s an excellent website with
photos, videos, and audio clips: Sandhill
Cranes
I took this photo in March of 2006:One time we were parked on a country road west of Grand Island with a Suburban full of kids, watching Sandhill cranes. I had two cameras in hand – one with a wide-angle lens, the other with a 600mm mirror lens. We could hear cranes very nearby – so Larry took the 600mm and crept silently out of the vehicle, bent low, and went hunching down south through the arroyo between two cornfields to try for a close-up of these big birds.
The children and I, from our perch
higher up on the gravel lane, could see him sneaking along, watch every step he
took, red cap bobbing --- and we could also see the cornfields on either side
of him.
He thought the birds he was hearing
were located in the field to the west.
But... we saw a small flock of a
couple dozen cranes come nerking (good word learned in Jr. High) out from a
stand of trees into the field on the east. They were craning their necks
(cranes do that), peering this way and that, jabbering to each other: “Aawwk!
Did you hear something, Mabel?”
“Baawwwk! Yeah, Bert!
What was it, awwk awwk, what was it, do you think?”
“Prolly one o’ them thar
humanoids! Gladys, can you hop up and down and see if you spot one?”
Gladys obliging hops, rattling her
beak in a questioning tone.
“I think I see him, bawwwk, I think I
see him, right over thar in thet ditch! Gillicuddy, call the children!”
Gillicuddy obediently calls the
children: “Rackety-yackety-rackety-awwk-awwk-cawwww-RATTLE-ATTLE-baawwwwwk!!!”
Larry, meanwhile, had vanished from
our sight behind a thicket of wild plums and cattails. However, hearing
this commotion, he slowly rose from the gully, red cap glowing in the sun,
camera to face, pointing due west.
The Sandhill cranes, standing on
tiptoe in the field to the east, screamed in unison. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!! RATTLE-RATTLE-AWWWKKK!!!!! HUMAN ALERT, HUMAN ALERT!!!! EVERYBODY
FLY FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!!!”
And away they went with a tremendous
rush of wings like the sound of tall waterfalls, incoming tide during a
thunderstorm, and several whirlwinds and a small tornado, all at once.
The red cap was turning this way and
that, quite quickly now, camera scanning the western field --- and then the
photographer belatedly realized that the show was occurring stage left, as
opposed to stage right, directly behind him. He swung around and got off
several shots of the far-off rear ends of a couple dozen fast-flying Sandhill cranes.
And the disrespectful kids who had
their noses pressed against the windows in the big SUV up on the country road
collapsed in great throes of mirth and hilarity.
Have you ever noticed that if you
offer something to a group of people, some who have never before made a peep
will come rushing forward, hoping to get whatever it is you are offering? I have offered things to online groups a few
times, and I got more email from people I’d never heard of than from those I
knew! :-D
I will say that I once sent an
unknown lady something after pulling her name out of the hat – and got to know
a very lovely person.
A couple of others were probably the
same people we read about in the news who knocked li’l ol’ ladies and small children
flying and tromped bystanders down flat, trying to get one of those Giggling
Elmos at Christmas time a few years ago.
Last night after church, we gave
Caleb and Maria their quilt. I had it folded
so that the first thing visible upon opening the box was the label. The lettering was done in a very sparkly metallic
teal blue. Caleb, opening the box, stopped and felt the words (“Look at
this!” he said to Maria, who was already looking), and wondered what in the
world it was printed with, and how in the world I did it. He was surprised
to learn it was thread; silly kid didn’t know thread ‘came like that’, as he
put it, which made Maria laugh.
Then they opened it out, and oohed
and ahhed and exclaimed quite satisfactorily over it, saying, “I like it,” and “I
really like it,” several times. Then Maria, in her sweet way, while
touching the quilting, said, “Oh, my, you didn’t need to do that,” and quick as
a wink, Caleb pulled it up close and retorted, “Yes, she did!!!”, making Maria
laugh all over again.
I told them if they wish to use it as
a wall hanging, I can add a sleeve or hanging tabs later.
This is the main reason I especially
love to quilt: because I really enjoy giving quilts to people who really
enjoy receiving them!
A little while ago, Loren dropped off
some pants for me to hem, and prepaid me – too much. That brother!
I can’t keep up with his generosity.
It’s 81° this afternoon; I just
turned the air conditioner on. Victoria
isn’t going to work until 3:00 today. She’s
busily cleaning and rearranging the upstairs hall and landing, and doing some
cleaning in the room that used to be Caleb’s that she uses for her craft
room. When Jeremy and Lydia get their
house done, we’ll give them Caleb’s old bed for Jacob to use, and then Victoria
will have more space.
See the wind chimes Lura Kay gave me
for my birthday? She got the set at Earl
May Gardening Center. It was one I’d
admired when I was in there. Lura Kay
went there to get me something, and Victoria, knowing I liked it, pointed it
out to her. This set of six chimes with
its hand-tuned five-note scale was created by Garry Kvistad, founder of
Woodstock Chimes. He is a Grammy
Award-winning musician and instrument designer.
We will irritate the neighbors with
high-quality noise!
We hung the chimes on a heavy wrought-iron
shepherd’s hook by the front porch. They
have such a melodic sound. (After I took
the picture, I moved the hummingbird flag, since it was blocking the wind from
the chime’s clapper.)
Wouldn’t you know, we would have a
day that’s deathly still, right when I have a brand-spankin’-new set of beautiful
wind chimes.
Woodstock 'Chimes of Earth'
The dishes are washed... the kitchen
cleaned... and the rolls are done baking!
I even have homemade blueberry jam – made by my dear friend Helen Tucker
– to put on them. Mmmmm, yummy.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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