It rained several
days last week. We needed it; we’d been
receiving Fire Weather Warnings. The grass is bright green now.
Last Monday
evening, Larry put a new bulb in Lawrence
and Norma’s brake light. We got the
better end of the deal: she sent home
homemade pecan sandies.
I love pecan
sandies, and Norma’s are absolutely scrumptious. They beat
those yummy Keebler ones all hollow, and that’s really going some!
A friend was making her little granddaughter a baby
quilt. Somehow, it wound up a whole lot
bigger than she’d expected. She asked
what I thought she should do with it. So
I wrote: “Just look at it as being a
step ahead.”
I had things like
this happen when I was sewing clothes for the kids when they were young. I had to start making Easter things immediately
after Christmas and sew fast in order to get done with multiple outfits for
each child, and it was something of an alarming situation if more than one
dress, or vest and pants set, turned out too big. I’d run plumb out of
time, if that happened often! The only
thing worse than ‘too big’ was ‘too small with no younger sibling to grow into
it’.
One year, I used a
lovely vintage dress pattern. The back
of the pattern didn’t properly describe the sizes, and I wound up with both
Hannah’s and Dorcas’ dresses at least two sizes too big, which was quite a
surprise, as vintage patterns more likely wound up too small than too big. These dresses were constructed with all sorts
of gores, nooks, and crannies, and there was no way to make them two sizes
smaller without ruining the design.
But ... they were
made in dotted-Swiss ginghams that would also be just fine for our
Fourth-of-July picnic, so... I put them into the closet and figured I was all
done with Fourth-of-July dresses for Hannah and Dorcas, a year and a half in
the future. The dresses were still a smidge too big for Easter the next
year, but four months later, on July the 4th, they were almost just
right. Sure was nice to have them all done ahead of time!
“It’s not work
wasted or lost time,” I told my friend; “it’s just another project, already
partially done.”
One time when I was
about 9 or 10, Janice asked me if I liked purple (in clothing) (she knew purple
was my favorite color), and I, evidently having read some high-ka-flutin’
article about proper colors for various skin tones, said no and announced
pompously that purple wasn’t good for my skin color and made me look sallow,
and blah blah blah blah blah.
Turned out she’d
already made a purple gabardine cape for me for Easter.
You should’ve heard
me backtracking, explaining that this particular color was the right
color, and I of course had been talking about that other purple color
(whatever that was). haha
My computer decided
to update that night, and I was off doing something else and didn’t get the
opportunity to click ‘later, alligator’.
Because of the great amount of IST (Important Stuff and Things) on my
laptop, this process takes a while. So I
went downstairs and ironed the traced templates onto another sheet of freezer
paper and cut a few of them out before the computer finished its job and came
back to life again, acting all innocent and righteous.
It bugs me when I
must reboot my computer, because it never saves the touchpad scroll settings,
including chiral scrolling. So I have to pull up mouse properties and reset
them. Okay, it only takes 15-20 seconds, that’s true. But this is a known Windows 10 glitch. It’s
been months since they rolled out this OS! Why can’t they fix
it?!
I just played a youtube video of cats screaming at each
other and made Tabby and Teensy come rushing all bug-eyed to see what on earth
was happening. hee hee
When I was a wee
little kiddo, and Daddy would be studying at the kitchen table, or taking care
of correspondence, I’d run get my pencils and notebooks, and study and write,
too. I loved my Daddy, and I wanted to be by him, doing the things he
did, as much as possible. I wrote letters to Grandmas, Aunts and Uncles, and
a couple of penpals. And I wrote stories. Lots of stories. A
year or two later, I’d start rereading them – and pitch the whole works into
the trash.
I loved writing
from the time I learned to spell – well, truth be told, I liked writing before
I learned to spell. In my baby book, I found a page my mother had saved,
that I ‘wrote’ when I was two: a bunch of careful wiggles and squiggles
on lined paper, one row after another, with a few recognizable letters now and
then. She must’ve been proud of me, or struck funny, one or the other, to
save that paper!
When the older
children were young, we had a few penpals from all over the world –
Philippines, Ireland, Germany, Turkey, Trinidad, Argentina, Canada... For
a time, I did the majority of the writing, as my kids were actually too young
to participate in the program (I’ve forgotten what it was called). A young
man from Argentina even came to Keith’s wedding. He lives in Ireland
now. Two sisters from Canada came to Hannah’s wedding... struck up a
friendship with a cousin... and came to her wedding a few years later,
and stayed at Bobby and Hannah’s house. The first time they came, they
drove a little car that was falling apart. Literally. As they
crossed a big bridge in Chicago, a fender blew right off and whisked over the
edge of the railing! There were mechanical problems, too.
Well, during the
week they stayed here, Larry found a car of the same make and model, but a few
years newer and in better mechanical repair, at a salvage yard nearby. It
had been in an accident, and needed a rear quarter replaced. Fortunately,
there was another car in the same salvage yard just like it, but with no motor.
The owner, a friend, upon hearing what Larry was doing, sold the car and the rear
quarter cheap. Larry put the ‘new’ quarter on and painted that car – and
the morning the girls were ready to leave for their home in Ontario, he told
them he’d take their car off to fill it with gas, check the oil and the air in
the tires...
When he came back
in a little while, it was in the newly painted car. Those girls were so
astonished! One shrieked, the other cried.
They spent a
memorable time with us – the afternoon of Hannah’s wedding, the town sirens
went off, because there was a big, bad tornado just northeast of town. We
all dashed out into the street to see if we could spot it.
The girls were
laughing... “Wait ’til we tell our mother that when the sirens go off,
you don’t go to the basement, you run out into the streets!”
When the twister
came nearer, we did go to the basement; but it never touched down in the
city, thankfully. After the girls left the next day, we drove out in the
country to see the damage that had been done. Some fields had been
stripped right down to bare soil, trees were taken down to short, snowy-white
trunks, and several farm places were demolished. One lady got hurt, but
no one was killed. If I remember right, the tornado was an F4. Good
thing it mostly spent itself out in the open countryside!
I had a Turkish
penpal who was born and grew up in Germany, then married a distant Turkish
cousin, someone important in the Turkish military, and moved to Turkey.
She was a bit frightened to go there; she’d never been there, and she barely
knew the language. She wrote to me several times after getting an
apartment in Istanbul. Her last letter told of her sadness over a
miscarriage. And then there was that awful earthquake there, and in the
news were stories and pictures of apartment buildings that had come crumbling
to the ground, killing many people... and I never heard from her again. I
wrote to her parents back in Germany, but they didn’t speak English, and I never
heard from them, either. I have no idea what happened, but of course I imagined
the worst.
She was so pretty –
very dark brown hair, but light, vivid blue eyes. We’ve used a phrase she
wrote to me, ever since. She wrote, “I don’t remember if before this I
told you ever already, but oh well, twice holds better!” So if we repeat
ourselves, we say, “Twice holds better!”
Tuesday, I watered
the house plants and threw a load of clothes into the washing machine before
heading downstairs to work on the big appliqué block. I have a five-leafed plant that used to be my
mother’s. It’s one of the hardiest things
I’ve ever grown, and refuses to die even when I subject it to famine and
flood. When it was nearer the window, it was threatening to take over the
living room and would have doubtless punched through the ceiling, had the
branches not curved around and bent low. Now it is back in a corner and
not doing as well. It badly needs to be
repotted.
When I got it, I
didn’t know what it was called. Then I
saw a small one in the Hy-Vee florist shop and thought, Oh, good, now I can
find out what it is! I turned the plant’s ID card over and read – ‘Green
plant.’
Well, that was
brilliant.
I decided to see
what they called a beautiful blooming cyclamen. I turned the card
over. It said, ‘Blooming plant.’
Isn’t that clever
of them.
The five-leafed
plant, since identified, is an umbrella plant or Schefflera.
I spent a good part of the
afternoon and evening trimming itty bitty templates from double layers of
freezer paper. There were 269 itty bitty
pieces to cut. There would’ve been 303,
but I decided to embroider some of the most itty bitty pieces, as opposed to
making them of itty bitty pieces of fabric.
I got
about ⅔ of those little templates cut. I intended to finish that night,
but my back was protesting, and I decided to listen to it.
So I seated myself in my recliner, put a heating pad
behind my back, and a nifty Arthro Gold Joint+ heatable/freezable gel pack from
Loren on my neck, after warming it for 30 seconds in the microwave. Ahhhh...
The pack is not heavy, like heatable rice bags are.
Wednesday morning, a
friend wrote to say they were ripping up their shower to get at a burst pipe in
the wall.
Ugh, that’s a
bummer. We once had a pipe freeze and break right over my new sewing
room, which fortunately I hadn’t yet moved my machines into. There was
just one more little detail Larry had to finish, or I’d have been all moved
in. I kept hearing an odd noise that night, but couldn’t figure out what
it was. Then I went into my sewing room
just to admire it, never dreaming to find a spraying, spewing waterfall pouring
from the ceiling! Aarrgghh.
Fortunately, the
carpet was a porous type that can work indoors or out, so it dried really fast,
without any danger of mold setting in.
I headed downstairs
to finish cutting out the freezer-paper templates. A gentle rain was falling. We got close to 2” of rain over a 24-hour
period. There was a pair of cardinals at
the feeder, and the house finches and goldfinches were singing like anything.
It was Jeremy’s
birthday that day, the 20th; he’s 29. After church that evening, we gave him some
money; he can use it on something in the construction of their new house, if he
likes.
We found him in the
Fellowship Hall. We were looking at the beautiful
crown molding in the ceiling, and then Larry told me that Jeremy had made
it! He did it with one of the machines
in his shop.
After leaving the church,
we stopped by Bobby and Hannah’s house. The
boys got out the guinea pigs to show us, so we petted them while they chirruped
and purred (the guinea pigs, not the boys).
Levi and Joanna played a duet on the piano... then Joanna played a
song. Nathanael plays the piano,
too. Aaron is playing a French horn; he
played with our band for Easter for the first time.
We stopped for some
nachos from Amigos after church. Yummmm...
we hadn’t had those in a long time.
When we got home, I
worked on the appliqué for a while, getting all 269 little freezer-paper templates
ironed onto various pieces of fabric.
Thursday morning, a friend sent me a video
called Abdul the Skateboarder (only really it was a hoverboard). Funny... he whisks down the hill in his white
robes... he loses his balance... he falls — he blows up: Abdul the Hoverboarder
On youtube I found the original version.
It turns out, ‘Abdul’ is in Dubai, and though he appears to have been
injured, he did not explode upon
ground impact. So the blast was ‘overlaid’ – one video atop the other.
You know, suicide bombers must get a real surprise when they discover
that the final blast on earth neither ends everything nor transports them
immediately to their cobbled-up idea of ‘heaven’; contrariwise, they wind up in
the ‘lake which burneth with fire and brimstone’. And it will never end.
I think it’s
horrible the way our world leaders won’t stop terrorist groups in their tracks. They could, but they won’t! They have the wherewithal – but not the
want-to. A whole lot of our leaders are namby-pamby, rank cowards. They
think they mustn’t offend anybody, not even the vilest of the vile.
That day, I trimmed
fabric around templates. I trimmed... and I trimmed... and I trimmed. Finally, all the little pieces were trimmed
and curves clipped, and I began starching and pressing the edges around the
freezer paper. I got all the little
flower, leaf, and butterfly templates finished.
It was 66°, pretty
and sunny. And Victoria lost her wallet (again), and the battery was dead
on her ‘new’ VW Touareg – maybe something to do with the misbehaving sunroof from
the previous day. Why do sunroofs invariably misbehave when it’s raining?
So everything was
normal.
That evening, since
everyone was late getting home, and no one was around to place an order, I ate
what I wanted to eat for supper: two easy-over eggs on a piece of 12-grain
toast, 100% cranberry juice, and a little cup of rice pudding. With a Fiber One strawberry streusel bar for
dessert. Larry got home around 9:30 or
10, and I fixed him a more ‘normal’ supper – meat, vegetables, etc. Then, since I’m so sociable, I ate Schwan’s Black
Cherry ice cream with him. We sprinkled granola
clusters and dried raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries on top.
Friday I went on working
on the templates for the basket parts of my appliqué design.
A friend had her
eyes dilated that day, and then was all between and betwixt, because she’d
wanted to quilt, but her eyes were too blurry.
I very much dislike
having my eyes dilated. It always gives me a bad headache, and my eyes
are blurry for 2-3 days – almost like an allergic reaction, maybe?
Caleb had an eye
exam when he was a little guy. He came
home with plastic/paper sunglasses and happily and proudly announced to his big
sisters, “My eyes are dilapidated!”
They of course
screeched with laughter, so he tried again: “My eyes are dynamited!”
That time, they laughed so hard they sat right down on the floor and cried.
The orange cat with the
striped tail that has decided we are his best friends lately is trying to be
all lovey-dovey with Tabby. Tabby wasn’t
impressed with him (let’s call him ‘Tigger’) when he rubbed against his side, so
he made his high-pitched screech at him. But shortly thereafter, Tigger blundered his
way through the back door with Victoria and Tabby, and the two cats, the orange
and the yellow, walked side by side through the back hallway, tails entwining.
I took Loren some
supper that evening. He gave me a new
topical analgesic to try – Ultra-Strength ActivOn for arthritis. It’s a gel in a roll-up tube, and the active
ingredients are Histamine Dihydrochloride and menthol. Good stuff!
That night, I cut
the rest of the background blocks for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM quilt, which
will be about 55” x 73” – and, wonder of wonders, there’s enough fabric.
Just barely, but enough. This is a relief, since the store has no more,
nor can I find it online.
The templates for
the central piece were all ready to apply. The background blocks, sashings,
and corner stones were all cut, and the central part was together as far as
possible without pressing the seams. There are still some pieced blocks
and borders to cut, and four more appliqué blocks to draw. I stalled out
there.
When the next step
seems too tall to surmount, it’s time to turn off sewing machine, lightbox,
iron, mini iron, and lights, and head for the feathers. That ‘next step’
can be as simple and uncomplicated as filling another bobbin... changing the
top thread... or ironing a seam... but I sit and stare vacantly at my machine
and wonder absently which foot I should put forward first in my quest to arise
from my chair.
And then it occurs
to me, Oh. I’ve been sewing/quilting since noon, and it is now 2:30
a.m. So I gather my wits and start shutting everything down, and the
thought of flannel pajamas practically makes me purr.
Saturday morning
found me back in gear, and ironing a seam (or two) sounded like fun instead of
an insurmountable problem.
I got some Orange
Blossom Honey Body Butter in the mail; I found it online at an affordable
price, and it smells just like (or better than) the Tarocco Blood Orange lotion
samples we got at the Hilton Gardens Inn way down south. An 8 oz. bottle
of that Tarocco stuff costs $45! !!! !! So Orange Blossom Honey
Body Butter it is. It was $16 (free shipping), which is more than
I usually spend already. But... I really, really like it. That justifies it, right? Right??
That afternoon, I
spent half an hour searching for the best price for a gasket for the cap on my
Rowenta Pressure Steamer Iron, and ordering it ($3.99, + $4.95 shipping, the
common thieves) ------ only to discover that the thing quits losing steam if you just tighten up the lid.
It wasn’t me who filled it last. That cap has a mountain of threads on it; it takes more than 30 twists of the hand to get it tight. I can well imagine Victoria in a gigantic
rush right before work, spinning it down and quitting in exasperation before it
was quite tight.
Ah, well. Gaskets do need to be replaced now and then,
and now I have spare. (Of course I will put
it in a safe place and then be unable to find it when I need it, you know that.)
Larry and I went to
Menards that evening to get a new light for the lightbox he made me a couple of
years ago. This sure is an improvement
over the old light!
I’ve been using an
18” fluorescent light with a single bulb.
I had to wiggle it this way and that, sing Dixie, and cross my middle
toes to get it to come on. It glared in
the centers of the quilt blocks, and was dark around the edges.
I now have a 15”
square LED light, one of those that is made to sit flush against the ceiling. The top is soft white, so there is no
glare. Larry rewired it to a cord so I
can plug it into an outlet.
This is so much
better! I really needed it, because the
block I’m doing now – or at least the central section of the block, where the
appliqué work is – measures 17.5”.
I got 56 appliqué
pieces put in place that night. Just 213 to go.
Yesterday, April 24th,
was Aaron’s 15th birthday. He’s
our oldest grandson. We gave him a tie
tac shaped like the Pensacola Lighthouse in Florida, a book about Florida’s
lighthouses, a Cabela’s cap, a medallion from the Pensacola Naval Base, and an
LED flashlight.
Look what the lady for whom I made the Kody dog wall hanging, just wrote to the
CyberQuilters group (and she’s teasing me with that ‘getting excited and
squealing’ stuff; she knows perfectly well that’s not me, hee hee):
I posted another photo of a wall hanging of my sheltie, Kody.
This
quilt was made by Sarah Lynn. I emailed her a photo of my dog and
she created this little quilt. It measures 18 x 24. It is very detailed, appliquéd,
an original creation by her.
We had our local guild
quilt show this weekend. It is not a judged show, but visitors vote ”Viewer’s
Choice” in each category. There were 4 categories with 1st and
2nd place prizes in each one.
This piece of art
earned 1st Place in the wall hanging category. It is small town
guild and small town prize money, but I will split the prize with
her. She’s just finding out right now and she gets so excited over
things, so I’m sure I’ll hear her squeal all the way from Nebraska.
I wrote back, “WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!”
And that’s as close
to ‘squealing’ as I get. If I won a Cadillac (or ten million dollars) on
national TV, I’d crack a small smile and say sotta voce, “That’s nice.”
(And I might turn
my head and wink at Larry.)
Today I am doing
laundry. Four loads are folded and put away... another is in the dryer
(sheets, etc.)... and the final one is in the washing machine.
I’m typing away,
coffee mug at my elbow, pedometer in my pocket. I often stand and exercise
as I type. The bird feeders are all full, and grackles, cardinals, and
goldfinches are sampling the fare. I have the north windows and door
open, and am listening to the birds warbling.
Over on the hill north of the lane, the grackles are in full courtship
and making quite a scene.
Victoria’s
strawberries and onions are coming up... and I have flowers galore. I
need to spend more time on my flowerbeds... but I’m having troubles doing two
things at once!
*************
Later...
And now I’ve been to
the bank to deposit Larry’s check, and stopped at the dentist’s office to pay
Victoria’s bill. The bed is made with
fresh sheets.
The big old orange kitty
seems to have pretty much decided he belongs here. He’s such a nice
cat. Did someone dump him, I wonder?
He has gray around his muzzle; he’s not young.
He doesn’t seem to be the least big aggressive, and doesn’t mind Tabby
and Teensy – but Teensy acts spooked of him, and slinks around him. That’s
not normal for Teensy. Maybe Teensy tried to chase him off, and Tigger took
exception and took Teensy down? Teensy’s big, but the orange cat is
bigger. I’ll betcha he weighs 16-18 pounds.
Anyway, I’ve
started feeding him. He wants in the house. Obviously, he’s been in houses
before. Siggghhhh... I didn’t want more cats! But I like
animals, and I feel so sorry for them, when it seems like they’ve lost their
homes, somehow. Even the silly little squirrels pretty well know I won’t
hurt them (though I might fling a bit of water at them, when they’re gobbling
down the bird food while the birds sit atop the hanger and chirp unhappily).
It’s the black cats, evidently, who beat up on
Teensy. There’s a long-haired one with
white paws and white bib, and a shorted-haired all-black one. The short-haired one sometimes sleeps on the
back deck – and if he gets startled, he dives through the railing, scampers
down some boards that sort of hang from the flooring – and jumps all the way to
the ground, one story down! :-O
Teensy’s all
cuddled up on my lap, and he doesn’t want me typing, he wants me petting
him. He just wrapped soft paws around my arm, drug my hand off the
keyboard, and then buried his face in the crook of my elbow. :-D
Silly big ol’ cuddlefluff.
Right there on the
coffee warmer sits a mug of steaming Hazelnut Crème coffee. As my Daddy
used to say eons and eons ago, “I could whup mah weight in wild pussycats!”
And now, a quote from Thomas
Watson, 1620-1686:
The Art of Divine Contentment
“For I have learned, in whatsoever state I
am, therewith to be content.” Philippians
4:11
Contentment sweetens every condition. It is a flower which does not grow in every garden.
Contentment teaches a man how to abound—in
the midst of poverty!
Discontent sours every comfort; it puts vinegar into every mercy; it doubles every
cross. But the contented spirit takes sweetness
from every flower of providence. Contentment
is full of consolation; it is an alleviation to all our burdens.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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