Here
are Teensy and Tabby. They scream at
each other on the back deck – and sleep side by side on my bed. Cats.
Last
Monday before I picked up grandchildren at school, I took my customer’s three
quilts to the post office and shipped them back to her, hoping they would arrive
safely. I’m always nervous, until I know
a quilt has gotten to its destination. And this time, there were three. They got back to the lady in less than 24
hours, which was a relief.
Someone
asked me how many quilts I have made.
Not nearly as many quilts as some – only a couple dozen or so. I
made my first quilt when I was about 20, some 35 years ago; but for the most
part I made clothes. Lots and lots of
clothes. And every now and then, a quilt.
Quilts
are more relaxing to make than clothes are – it’s easier to get them to fit the
bed than it is getting clothes to fit a person!
Since
I really got into the swing of quilt-making, about ten years ago, I so often
wind up with some intensely complicated thing that takes hours... days...
weeks... months... so that cuts down on quantity. I’m going to
churn out some quick ones someday soon, though, you just watch and see.
As
I mentioned a week or two ago, I am now ‘co-owner’ of an online quilting
group. Every now and then, one member
tells me about something offensive another member has done. Most of the time, I let it go. I can’t police the world. I don’t even
have enough energy to try. I just want
to drink me leeto cup of coffee, scribble in me leeto journal, and have a nice
conversation with Victoria. She’s playing piano music by Kim
Collingsworth on youtube, at the moment. Whew, that lady can play.
Victoria listens for a minute, then rushes to the piano and attempts something
similar. Just try policing the world with that going on in your living
room.
On
a photography forum I’m on, deliberations now and then deteriorate into
rantings and ravings about this or that – and then the heavy-handed moderator
steps in and orders everyone to cease and desist. Ugh, that gets
old. The deterioration of the discussion bugs me a whole lot less than
the bossy moderator stepping in. Sometimes she has choked off arguments
that were downright entertaining, and I for one wasn’t nearly done being
entertained.
Do
you ever notice that it’s harder to keep your Internet friends straight than it
is to keep your in-person friends straight? – because of course with ‘in-person’
friends, you can match up face and voice with all the details you learn about
them.
It
rained again last Monday evening, and the temperature was going down... down...
down... but neither WeatherBug nor weather.com said a thing about snow,
only rain. I thought they surely must be wrong, as fast as the
temperature was dropping; but after getting down to 40° by 10:30 p.m., there it
stayed for a few hours before heading back up at about 4:00 a.m.
I
got Larry a starter kit from www.SnoreStop.com. It teaches people to snore.
...
...
Not...
really.
That
night he used the tablets (there are tablets, nose spray, and throat spray, all natural –
the starter kit gives samples of all three, and you decide which works
best). I do believe it helped. I certainly was able to sleep better.
Teensy
cat is on my lap... and he’s a BIG cat. He keeps putting his paw on the
touchpad – and then I wonder why my computer is doing odd things.
Tuesday
found me on the hunt for a Christmas tree pattern that would work for a Christmas
tree skirt and that I could put smocking into. I have an Amanda Jane pleater/smocker,
and I’ve never had the chance to use it before – other than running a piece of
fabric through it without any thread, and being delighted with the tiny,
perfect pleats – and I’ve had it almost two years.
I
was beginning to think I just might have to make up a pattern, as I couldn’t
find one I wanted; but then I looked in my Electric Quilt program, and found
exactly what I wanted in about 30 seconds flat.
Hmmm...
if I want a circular Christmas tree skirt, I could tie a string to a pencil and
create a giant circle. High-tech stuff. But maybe I’ll have a hexagon, instead.
Wednesday
morning about 9:00 a.m., I glanced out the window – and did a double-take: There were great big wet, sloppy snowflakes
showering down! Nothing stuck,
though. By noon, it was 46°, kind of cloudy and drizzly now and then,
winds at 15 mph with higher gusts.
WeatherCat
came in and explained that he’d much prefer if I turned it off, pôr fąvör, and
would I please sit down and let him up on my lap to warm his cold, wet paws.
Sorry,
Teensy. On both counts.
I
was ready for one of the fun parts of sewing and quilting: digging and
rummaging through my boxes and bins for fabric. I looked for taffetas and
satins, just for the fun of it, and so as not to use up my good quilting cottons. I found a few extremely stretchy knits; those
would make good T-shirts and pjs for the grandchildren for Christmas. But I’m running out of time. Maybe I’ll just buy them some, and make
pajamas at my leisure, for birthdays next year.
Speaking
of stretchy stuff... Do you remember Dr.
Seuss’ funny story about the ‘Thneed’ in The Lorax? It was a stretchy thing that was supposed to
fit anyone and everyone, and everyone supposedly ‘needed’ it.
Well,
once upon a time, Dorcas, who’d been crocheting for years, took up knitting and
made Aaron, our first grandchild, a lovely white blanket. 1) It
was large. 2) She was not accustomed to knitting, and her stitches
were somewhat loose.
Bobby
told the story this way:
Baby
Aaron awoke, Bobby went to get him from his crib, grabbed the knitted blanket
from the closet shelf, wrapped it around the baby, and trotted out into the
kitchen.
He’d
gotten all the way to the far side of the table when he heard a WHUMP from the
bedroom.
The
other end of the blanket, still folded, had finally fallen off the shelf.
On
a website that offers recipes and menus, the last couple of weeks has been
devoted to Thanksgiving recipes. One
woman recommended making cranberry tea rings and strawberry/ banana muffins last
Wednesday. Eight days early?!
Ugh,
why would anyone do that?! They’ll be either a) moldy, b) fermented, or
c) hard as brickbats by Thanksgiving. Whyyy?? I want my muffins and rolls fresh out of the
oven, thank you very much.
By
afternoon, I had a heap of mismatched fabric piled on my cutting table. Somehow,
I will turn all this into a Christmas tree skirt with smocked inserts
incorporated into it. Somehow.
I
emptied several boxes of fabric and put it into some of my new bins, which are
now resting on my new shelves in the closet in my sewing room. And then I was ready to cut fabric, run it
through the pleater, and start sewing. But
first, I needed to refill my coffee mug.
I
trotted up the stairs, mug in hand.
Guess
what happened next. (Did you guess?)
I
walked into the hallway to get the bag of cat food. It was dark in there
– and I accidentally grabbed the bag of mixed birdseed instead of the cat
food. Operating in a state of oblivion,
I then proceeded to pour the birdseed into the dispenser. The cats stood
nearby looking on.
Victoria
suddenly noticed what I was doing, asked blandly, “Why are you pouring birdseed
into the cat food dispenser?” and then “Oh, look, look, look at their faces!”
I
stopped pouring birdseed. Oops. I turned my head and looked at the
cats – and then Victoria and I cracked up and laughed ’til the tears streamed
down our faces. Their ears were sticking out from the sides of their
heads, their eyes were large, their noses were twitching, and their jowls were
hanging low at the sides of their mouths, with their lips drawn back far toward
their ears. Those feline faces were exclaiming very clearly, Whaaaa---???!
You mean, we have to eat birdseed now?!
Teensy
tipped his head, looked up at me, and made a small, “Meow!” as if to say, You
think it’s funny?! Why do you think it’s funny?! Then he stepped
forward, sniffed at the food, and actually licked up a sunflower seed and began
crunching away on it, lips pulled away from his teeth in a ‘this is bad, but
I gotta do what I gotta do’ grimace. This brought on a new shriek of laughter
from Victoria.
I
snatched up the dispenser, got the seed poured back into the bag with
Victoria’s help, returned it to the hallway, collected the bag of cat food, and
refilled the dispenser. Both cat mouths came unstretched and returned to
normal, their ears perked back up to the tops of their heads, and Teensy
stepped forward to sample the fare.
When
I need stuff to write about, I just do something dumb, record reactions of homo
Sapien and feline, and make everyone laugh.
A
friend, upon hearing this story, remarked, “I sure hope someone buys you a
heavy-duty flashlight for Christmas!”
Maybe
I should just buy myself one. I love
flashlights! I need flashlights! Why do the menfolk around these
parts always get flashlights for gifts, and never the womenfolk??
The
hands on the clock seemed to travel around (and around and around!) dreadfully
fast that day. At 5:30 p.m., I stopped with the fabric search-and-iron
operation, trotted upstairs, and dressed for church. By ten ’til six, I was ready. I had an hour and 25 minutes to cut fabric
and prepare the pleater. I discovered that the needles on my pleater were
a bit rusty. What in the world caused that?
A
few minutes after six, Larry got home. We didn’t need to leave for an
hour or so... therefore, he would think he had oodles of time, fall asleep in
the tub, and be late for church.
This,
I predicted.
After
church, I headed back downstairs. I would
get some fabric pleated before I went to bed!
I would! The day seemed to have flown by in a matter of minutes
while I petted the cats, folded a load of clothes (I’d already pounded them in
the river and left them to dry in the reeds along the bank Tuesday), made coffee,
and ate Corn Chex. I like Corn Chex.
My
Amanda Jane pleater, a 24-row with half-spaces, was listed at $85 on a regular eBay
auction. It never went any higher, because it didn’t say ‘Amanda Jane’ in
the heading (maybe not in the description below, either), and instead of
smocker/pleater, it read ‘smoker pleader’.
I
found a bunch of nice used books and magazines on smocking and heirloom sewing
on Amazon and SewItsForSale. Now... if I can just find more time to play
with my nifty little toy!
Victoria’s
pretty little chrome-handled 16-row smocker (with 21 half-spaces) is a Pullen
Pleater by Martha Pullen Co. The rollers on the Pullen turn like silk –
quite a lot smoother than the rollers on my Amanda Jane. A drop or two of sewing machine oil will fix
them up nicely, though. (I don’t suppose
I should run a piece of $$$ satin through it immediately after I apply the
oil?)
Half
an hour after I started threading the Amanda Jane pleater/smocker, I was still
threading it. Or at least I was trying. Why did I think I should
use thread that’s so thick it won’t go through the eye of a needle?! I tried using a needle threader – and broke
the threader.
I
eventually got all the needles threaded with the buttonhole/crafting thread –
and that was the last time I used that thread.
Contrary to the advice I’d found somewhere, plain old Coats & Clarks
Dual Duty sewing thread from Wal-Mart worked great. Great, I tell you. It didn’t twist and knot or ravel and fray,
as ‘they’ had said it would. And it was
simple as pie to thread through the needles.
(Who are these ‘they’ personages?)
Well,
the needles were threaded with that heavy crafting thread, and then ... I was
using my Amanda Jane smocker/pleater for the first time, finally. The first
piece I ran through was a woven gabardine, thicker than regular quilting
cotton. It went through just fine (though ‘they’ said it wouldn’t), and,
as a bonus, the slight abrasiveness of the gabardine cleaned the rusty needles
up like magic.
I
found the gabardine buried deep in a big old box on a high shelf in my storage
room. It was full of all sorts of odd (and sometimes quite good) fabric
from the 70s and 80s. I even found some nice silvery-gray upholstery
fabric in that box, more than enough to cover my kitchen chairs. You just
can’t imagine how badly they need to be recovered. Yeah, goin’ treasure
huntin’ in the basement isn’t half bad!
Some
people use their sewing machines to do smocking embroidery. There are
even computerized designs for embroidery machines such as mine. I’ll try
that... someday. But I’ll do embroidery
by hand on this Christmas tree skirt.
We
had a little calico cat years ago who loved to sit in my lap when I was
hand-sewing. She’d grab the thread with
her paw... bite the thread... tangle up the thread... And she was so cute
and cuddly, purring the entire time, that I just kept struggling along, cat in
lap.
Thursday
morning, I watered the indoor flowers (several are blooming away), and then off
I went to my sewing room. I should wash
a few dishes, I thought, but I’ll just betcha they won’t get lost or run away
from home or anything whilst I’m downstairs a-sewing away, hmmm?
Most
days when I go to town to collect the five little Jackson kiddos from school, I
take some cross-stitching along, hoping to get in at least a few stitches while
I wait for them to come out of the school.
And that’s exactly what gets done:
‘a few’ stitches. A very few.
My
cross-stitch bag is a super-duper laptop bag in red and black, with a gazillion
pockets of all sizes and shapes, and zippers and Velcro on most of them.
I got it for a former laptop – thought I’d hit the jackpot when I found a
$49.99 bag in Nebraska Furniture Mart ... for only $15.00. BUT. My
laptop was too big for the bag. Soooo... I pressed it into service as a
bag for all my hand-sewing things. It can hold 16” quilt blocks perfectly
flat. I think I could get everything but my piano (and the laptop) in
there.
That
evening, I took Loren some supper – ancient-grain-encrusted cod, broccoli,
mixed vegetables, orange jello, and cornbread and syrup.
I
talked to Dorcas on the phone that evening; they are counting down the days
until their baby arrives in February.
That
night was the Downtown Christmas Stroll, with many businesses along Main Street
having Open House until about 8:00 p.m.
Some of our schoolchildren play instruments there. Victoria went with Kurt and his brother Jared.
There
are treats, refreshments, and prize drawings.
In the park, there are grills burning away – and merchants provide
sticks and marshmallows to roast. There
are horse and carriage rides... limousine rides... Oh! I
just found an online picture of my great-niece Jodie playing the piano at a
Stroll of years gone by, probably at the Music Store.
Hannah
sent a photo of a couple of ladies sitting in rocking chairs right in the display
window of the quilt shop, quilting away by hand on large quilts they had draped
over their laps.
“How
would you like this job?” she wrote. “They
seem to enjoy everyone watching them, smiling cheerfully and waving.”
Well... I think I like my little downstairs sewing
room, where the world at large can’t stare at me as I sew!
After
running three pieces of metallic dark green taffeta through the Amanda Jane
smocker/pleater, I put the pleated pieces into a block with a cream satin
background – the first block for the Christmas tree skirt. It was ready for embroidering.
Friday,
I began the embroidery. I plan to make six blocks and put it together as
a hexagon, I think. Maybe. Who knows?
The
next block will be an ornament... and another will be a star... each of those,
smocked. The other three blocks will be
pieced. Or appliquéd. Maybe. Who knows?
The
English language is funny, with its multitude of words that are spelled the
same but mean different things, or are pronounced differently... or words that
are spelled differently but pronounced the same. I just read a sentence
in a lady’s post, “I’ve been repressing my fabrics...” and my brain promptly
went in a new and different direction. ‘Repressing.’ I didn’t think
of ‘re-ironing’ at all. Instead...
What,
were the fabrics getting too boisterous? Can’t you just hear it: “Hey,
you polka dots over there on the second shelf, settle down!” and “All right,
all right, I want you paisleys to behave.”
While
I sewed, Victoria cleaned the kitchen and went to the grocery store. Gotta give that girl a raise.
I
have a pretty little box on which my pleater sits, and it holds quite a few
spools. There is a thin board with holes at the front for the thread to
come through. I found the handmade box on a pleater forum somewhere, and
it’s made of a variety of woods of all colors, and covered with high-gloss
varnish, very pretty. I got a magnetic dowel to hold the fabric; quite a
handy little gadget.
I
should have fused my pleated pieces onto a backing (Pellon, or something
similar) to hold the pleats in place when I sewed them into the block.
The pleats wanted to slide as my presser foot traveled over them.
I
did some of the smocking embroidery with a metallic gold thread – and Martha
Pullen I am not! I would be covering up some of that stitching with
ribbon embroidery. At least it’s for me, and not a gift for someone, or,
worse, a paying customer.
Brought
back memories of those dumb little powder puffs I scribbled on with markers,
trying to make cute faces like the ones shown in a magazine I had. They
were gifts for my friends when I was 12. Wouldn’t’ve been so bad, if I’d’ve
only been 5 or so. Good grief, they looked more like ghouls than cute
little girl faces. And I’d tried so hard.
A
while back, I got some old Sew Beautiful magazines on SewItsForSale at a
terrific bargain, and shared some of them with Lydia.
“Only
take the ones I don’t want!” I told her as she looked through them.
“Which
ones don’t you want?” she asked.
“None
of them,” I replied. hee hee
When
I went to pick up the grandchildren from school, it was snowing! Exciting
stuff.
I
returned to the smocking. Ugh, it looked
worse than ever. I removed the first attempt,
and the second attempt was set to commence.
Well, most of my knowledge about this and that and the other thing is acquired
through research conducted in order to resolve a crisis I have brought on
myself. So... I soon had a good
book in front of me, and five websites with tutorials pulled up, including a
couple of youtube videos, showing me how to do lovely and easy smocking
embroidery.
I
will do this!!!
3...
2... 1...
GO!
(...staring
cross-eyed at book and screen...)
Victoria
asked me to make one of our favorite meals for supper, as Kurt would be coming: stuffed peppers. I made enough for Loren, and for Lawrence and
Norma, too. My stuffed peppers would
better be called ‘stuffed and over-flowing peppers.’
!
Well. Of all ze noive. I just discovered (by Google search) that
there are at least three other ‘Sarah Lynns’ out there who have posted stuffed
pepper recipes online. Bah, humbug.
Nobody has had stuffed peppers until they’ve had MINE!!! Arrrrr, ARRRRR.
(In an Anne Bonny tone.) (Irish lady[?] pirate of the mid-1700s.)
First,
I put a few leaves of lettuce on the plates…then the cooked peppers…slit them
so the two halves are lying open sides up... then fill them with well-seasoned
hamburger (speaking of spices rather than age), topped with a dollop of sour
cream; then spicy rice followed by a heaping spoonful of shredded taco cheeses;
next, sliced tomatoes; after that, a generous helping of chunky picante sauce,
all of which is covered with a sprinkling of bacon chips. By that
time, the green pepper is completely buried and cannot be seen at
all. Sometimes I put sliced jalapeño peppers on the lettuce around
the pepper in a pinwheel design, interspersed with half-slices of tomatoes; but
that’s usually garnish only, as I most often wind up eating everyone’s
left-behind jalapeños. The children don’t care to turn into
fire-breathing dragons, thank you kindly.
One
main difference between my stuffed peppers and most other stuffed peppers is
that I cook the ingredients separately. I often cook extra ingredients, too,
and then make something else with them the next day, such as stuffed potatoes,
or even stuffed tomatoes (which doesn’t seem quite filling enough for a main
course, but that’s just an opinion). Sometimes I put no spices other than
salt and butter into the rice until I put it into the green pepper, and then I
have rice with brown sugar (and more butter) for breakfast the next morning.
I
like to cook the ingredients separately so I can layer the hot things with cold,
which gives a twang to the ol’ tastebuds. Or maybe I just like to do
things in the most complicated way possible, in cooking as well as
sewing.
A
little before 6:00 p.m., I took Loren, and then Lawrence and Norma, their stuffed
peppers. The embroidery may not have
looked so great, but at least the stuffed peppers were a mouth-watering success! Or at least, those of us who liked them
thought so. ;-)
It
was cold and windy, with ground snow blowing around. The front porch was slickery,
as one of the boys used to say when he was a wee little guy. I stayed on
my pegs with difficulty. As I drove, I
called Larry and requested he bring home some rock salt to sprinkle on the
porch.
The
cats have been disgustedly cleaning salt off their paws ever since, and we have
been vacuuming it off the indoor rug. We’ve
had a very nice autumn... but it’s beginning to look like winter around
here! We got about half an inch of snow.
Saturday
morning dawned bright and pretty, with the sun shining on the new-fallen snow. I took some pictures... heard geese... looked
up... and saw several long lines of Canadas, very high in the sky, heading
south.
Keith
called that afternoon as he traveled through Wyoming with his car-hauler. He was just getting to Evanston, on the west
side of the state. He’d been in a bad
snowstorm west of Denver Friday. A 20-car
pileup had shut down the road, so he’d taken the north route, instead. He had four sets of chains on his pulling
wheels to make it over the icy mountain passes.
I
continued working on the Christmas tree skirt – or at least one block of
it. The smocking embroidery was done, and I began using ribbon embroidery
and beads to decorate it. I made ribbon poinsettias, added beads and
buttons, covered larger beads with silk ribbon to make ornaments, added chiffon
bows, and dyed them with my ProMarkers.
It was looking quite bright and gaudy.
If
I just keep covering up things that aren’t quite right, eventually you won’t be
able to see it, right? Or at least you won’t know what to look at first.
Right?
Do
you know, I’ve looked at 3,402,821 tutorials, 382,072 books (I nevah exaggerate),
and ... nary a one tells me when to remove the gathering threads from the
little pleats.
When
Hester was not quite two years old, she toddled up to me and asked, “Me? Nick’s Doot-Doots?”
Eh? I made further inquiry into what the child
was asking for.
“Nick’s
Doot-Doots!” she repeated.
“What
are they for?” I asked, hoping to gain a clue.
She
pretended to put something in her mouth:
“Omphph-nom-nom-nom!” she said, eyebrows high, all animated and full of
life. She carefully made the shape of a
circle with her index fingers and thumbs.
“Nick’s Doot-Doots!”
Ohhhhhhhh!!!!!! **Snickerdoodles!** The little dear wanted Snickerdoodles.
I
did the only thing I could do, after all that:
I set about making Snickerdoodles.
But we like to call them “Nick’s Doot-Doots” now, at our house.
The
secret to The Best Snickerdoodles in the World is first to use the recipe that
calls for Cream of Tartar. The other one
just tastes like plain ol’ sugar cookies.
Next, bake them a minute or two less than the cookbook says, getting
them out of the oven when there is still a soft mound in the middle of the
cookie (and don’t squish them down before baking them). Let them sit a minute, until they don’t fall
apart when you pick them up. Mmmmm, mmm,
they will be sooo soft and good, they’ll melt in your mouth.
One
time when Lydia was no more than three years old, she came marching into my
room, gray-green eyes wide, little oval face all serious, and she said in a
tone of great indignation, “Do you know what TEDDY just said?!”
I
replied, “No, I don’t.”
She
continued, “I don’t know eezer, but he said it!!!”
I
went off to see just what this was that Teddy had said, and found him in the
living room with that goofy, sheepish half-grin on his face, and his ears
somewhat red.
I
no longer have any idea what it was that he’d said. I only remember Lydia’s
remark.
The
diamonds in that back deck make it almost look like a quilt, especially with
the dusting of snow on it, don’t they? Larry
didn’t really want to take the time to do that when he was building the deck,
but I begged, flattered, and begged some more, so he did it – and now he’s quite
proud of his handiwork.
It
was after midnight when I decided the Christmas tree block was done; enough
time had been spent on it. Let’s hope the next five blocks don’t take as
long as this one did. I’ll run a few
more pieces of taffeta or satin through the pleater, and then sew them into a pattern...
somehow. The design that’s floating vaguely around my head hasn’t manifested
itself in any tangible form just yet.
Kurt
and Jared came for dinner Sunday afternoon.
Kurt likes things like beef roast and mashed potatoes and gravy.
And carrots. With brownies for dessert.
Now,
here’s Victoria, wanting to do the cooking when Kurt comes... though now and
then she’s working, so she enlists her mother to help.
The
way Victoria cooks is more like this: Find the biggest five cookbooks in
the house. Close your eyes, flip the
pages of book #1, stab a forefinger in amidst the ruffling pages.
There
you are; that’s course #1.
Repeat
the exercise with each book thereafter. You now have the roadmap for a
five-course meal. Bon appétit!
Kurt
has found a few previously unknowns that he now likes. He has found a few
he doesn’t particularly care for, although, being a polite young man, he
suggests that perhaps he might like it, at a later date. One thing is for
certain, though: his tastebuds are being well entertained. We do hope we don’t give him a case of food
poisoning. :-D
Last
night after church, Lydia’s little Jonathan went to great lengths to describe
to us how his hand ‘gots pincht in mouzse twrap, pinch!!’ He pointed out
a now-invisible owie. We sympathized,
and he waxed even more eloquent.
He
so cute and dear, and the way he talks is adorable. He’ll be two on December
17th.
The
mouse (and two of its siblings) got in because the front wall is partly down,
with plywood covering the opening, as Jeremy works on the new part of the house,
which is about twice the size of the original house. Thursday night Larry
got home after 1:00 a.m., because he stopped there after work and helped Jeremy
work on the roof.
A
mouse got into the boys’ room one afternoon when Jonathan was supposed to be taking
a nap, and all of a sudden Lydia heard him laughing and saying, “Oh,
bunny!! Bunny!” He thought the
mouse was a baby bunny.
Lydia
wrote to me last night: “Remember that
boat and fish toy (it has letters of the alphabet... the letters click into
place, and the thing tells what the letter is and plays a tune) you gave
Jonathan for his birthday? He plays with it all the time and we suddenly
realized he knew a bunch of the letters. He found an alphabet book with
pictures we’ve looked at a few times and now he knows almost the whole alphabet. I put it on the dishwasher.”
I
didn’t get enough sleep Saturday night. I took a 20-minute nap Sunday afternoon
before our evening church service so I wouldn’t fall asleep and get jabbed by
an usher with a goad. (I said that once to an elderly aunt of Larry’s,
and she thought I meant it.) 6 ½ hours is about right for me. I could
sleep longer, but then when I clamber and claw my way from the feathers, I’m so
stiff I can hardly wiggle for a couple of hours. Less than that, though, and I fall asleep at
the sewing machine, which could be hazardous to my health and the health of
whatever it is I’m sewing.
I
need to go fill the bird feeder! The finches are waiting.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Okay,
the bird feeders have been filled... and guess what’s out there snarfing down
the seed? A cute li’l squirrel, that’s
what.
Gotta
grab my camera... When I trotted into
the bedroom to get my camera, I found two photographic subjects on the
bed. Had to get shots of them, first
(see top of post).
I
posted some pictures from Saturday: First
Snow, Finches, and Canada Geese And
from this afternoon: Squirrelin’
Around
When
I picked up the five little grandchildren from school, I took my camera and got
some shots of the new school and Fellowship Hall.
Somebody
reminded again recently to take pictures of myself: “The camera is in front of your face so much, nobody
knows what it looks like anymore!” They
say that like it’s a bad thing. ?
I
used to take my glasses off for pictures. Not no mo’, no mo’, no mo’, ’cuz
ah cain’t see without ’em, and I might wind up facing backwards, thinking the
photographer was behind me instead of in front of me.
A
majority of the exterior walls of the school and Fellowship Hall are up, and
they’re setting roof sections in place. Each
prefab cement wall section weighs about 40,000 lbs., and the big crane must
swing it over a portion of the school and church, and nobody wants anybody underneath
those things as they’re traveling through the air, so the children get periodic
‘field trips’ out of the classroom and out to the far sidewalk, where they get
to watch as the wall is muscled into place. Thrilling times!
When
I was leaving the school, something underneath the Jeep (the brakes? the suspension?)
popped really loudly at least three times. Sounded terrible – and we were
right under the awning, too, so it echoed.
It usually happens when we brake or turn or both, at slow speeds. Rather worrisome. Larry took the vehicle back to the shop tonight
to look it over, but he can’t find what’s causing that nasty noise. It’s been doing it for a month or more.
On
the way home, Josiah was all excited about coming events tomorrow: “We’re going to have a feast!” he exclaimed.
Emma
turned her head and looked at him, bland of face. “It’s a snack, ’Siah,” she informed him.
Josiah
was a bit indignant. “No, it’s a feast!”
he told his sister adamantly. “’Cuz the
teacher said so.”
And
that was that. Emma grinned at me in the
rear-view mirror.
I’m
crunching away on fresh vegetable salad as I type. I’ll have fruit parfait for dessert... and
that’s supper.
Hannah
called; she’s making Indian outfits for Nathanael and Levi out of a faux suede
fabric – and her machine is making knots.
Since the knots are underneath the fabric, I recommended unthreading the
machine entirely, tightening the tension all the way, then backing it off to
approximately the right spot, dusting out all the lint, rethreading, flossing
the thread back and forth in the disks a few times, then continuing to thread
it, tightening or loosening the tension until it felt right.
It
worked – the sewing machine sewed properly again. The problem was likely lint in the tension
disks.
So
the Indians will walk at noon.
Levi
created another song and played it on the piano ... in 6 sharps. He named his song “Obamadairy.”
Hannah
considered that. Then she asked, “Dromedary?”
“Yes!”
said Levi happily. The song was about a
camel, of course; not a cheesy president.
I
have a customer quilt to do. And I have
a question: How am I supposed to load a
quilt on my frame and keep it square when it’s an irregular polygon, I’d like
to know?!
Good
grief, it’s a mess. Aaaaaaaccckkk!
You wanna explain to me how I’m supposed to cope with this?! Rows of Flying Geese are 6” at one end, 9” at
another. It’s crooked because the lady has thrown together scraps and
strips to make the Flying Geese – and the strips aren’t a uniform size.
When she gets the first part done, she doesn’t bother to trim the sides and
make the strip a uniform width, she just cuts a long piece of sashing and
plunks it down against the geese and sews willy-nilly – sometimes with the seam
winding up in an open V area of the Flying Geese, sometimes with the seam cutting
into the geese a good two inches. A
number of geese will never fly again, for their flight feathers are nearly
entirely annihilated.
Just
look what she could wind up with, if she would just take a little care:
Okay,
I’m done griping. Back to work. If it puckers and tucks and pleats,
it puckers and tucks and pleats. I’ll do
my best to smush and scribble it down flat, quilting right over the top of all
those rumples. It won’t look much like Sharon Schamber did it, that’s the
truth o’ ze mattuh.
If
my customer wasn’t such a sweet lady, trying so very hard to make things for
her family for Christmas... and if she wasn’t unwell... and if I didn’t know
she must watch every penny carefully... and if she didn’t always, always,
carefully pay me ahead of time (she thinks every single quilt costs $150 –
never mind its size or complexity, or what my receipt or webpage says) (no, she
doesn’t read my webpage)... (I just try to make my effort match her money
– though sometimes I put a little more effort into it than I’d intended.)
I’m
not good at telling people prices, and I’m not good at telling someone, “Hey,
this is a weeping, wailing mess!!!” I am, however, real good at
complaining on the sly to my friends.
“Do
what you’re good at,” that’s my motto.
Observation
of the evening: It’s hard to write my journal when Victoria is feeling conversational.
However,
as my days with her are shorter now than they used to be before Kurt came on
the scene, I am certainly not complaining. She’s one of the best little
friends I have.
We
now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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