Journal: The Butterflies Have Returned!

The butterflies are back, with platoons and regiments!  Tuesday, a sulphur; Wednesday, a couple of cabbage whites... and by Friday, there were a dozen or so having all sorts of fun flitting about the dandelions.  Good thing there are dandelions for them; there aren’t many other flowers in bloom yet.  Why did someone decide dandelions are bad, anyway??!  The idget.

Last Sunday, I got up with a stomachache.  Thinking it would go away, I set about getting ready for church.  But instead of going away, it got worse.  So I stayed home.  I thought I’d go to the evening service, but by afternoon a headache had joined the stomachache, sort of like Winnie-the-Pooh’s woozles that kept joining each other.  Remember that story?

Pooh and Piglet follow what they assume to be woozle footprints, intending to catch up with the animal.  When the footprints become more numerous, Pooh explains to Piglet that woozles often travel with wizzles.  They eventually come to the chagrined realization, however, that they had been walking in circles, following were their own footprints, which increased by two sets each time they retraced their circuit.

I’m standing in front of my laptop, which is on the kitchen table... wireless keyboard on a pillow to bring it to a good height... mouse on a little wooden hand-carved stool to the side, so it’s at the right height, too... pedometer around my neck, and as I type, I exercise – walking vigorously in place.  It’s early evening, I’ve been at it the last half of the afternoon, and I’m up to 4,819 steps.  It would be more, but I keep having to stop moving in order to get the mouse positioned on this or that.

I don’t get nearly enough exercise, according to that 10,000-step thing – less when I sew than when I work on journals and pictures.  Or at least that’s what the pedometer thinks.  ‘Course, it doesn’t start counting until I’ve taken 13 steps – and many times, scurrying around in my sewing room, I take less than 13 steps before I stop.  Often, I stop just before activating the thing, and then trot hither and yon again after it goes dormant – but again, not enough to activate it. 

So on an intense sewing day, the pedometer might record only 2,000 steps or practically nothing at all... but I probably have at least twice that.  I had to fiddle around with the stride length to get it to record my in-place steps along with my regular steps. 

In any case, standing is better than sitting.  Can’t sit for too long ... arthritis in the ol’ acetabulum, or, as Hester called it when she was about three years old, ‘karumpasetter’.  She was such a funny little fixin’s.

Some days I get a lot of steps by doing a bit of gardening... hanging clothes out on the line... carrying things up and down the stairs (my coffee mug, for instance, heh)... and walking to the mailbox.

I just got a notice from PayPal, heralded by the ‘ka-ching’ sound I have it set to play when it comes in.  Another pattern has sold.

I want to draw up some patterns for children – puppies... kittens... bunnies... teddy bears... there are lots and lots of cute animals in the world.  J  I’ll do some butterfly appliqués... some birds... and some pieced designs in EQ7.  Why didn’t I draw patterns I could keep, when I was making all those mug rugs a couple of years ago, for pity’s sake?!  I could’ve been selling patterns all this time.  Had no idea there was any money in it.

Dorcas sent me some pictures of her kitchen; Todd has just put in wall cabinets.  The cabinets are beautiful, very much like the ones I chose for the house we moved into just before Hannah was born. 

“I’m jealous of your dishwasher!” I told her.

She laughed and replied, “Well, you might not really like it so well; it’s old and the bottom piece inside it comes off at times.  It spews something on the dishes so they come out worse than going in.  I learned it helps to use baking soda and vinegar to clean the garbage disposal and it helped a lot.  It works most of the time.”

“So long as it doesn’t leak all over the floor like our old one in town did,” I reminded her.

Someone would walk into the kitchen and shout, “We need towels!!!” and others would come running with armloads of them.  Once, Teddy walked in after a particularly bad leak, and shouted, “WE NEED AN AIRBOAT!!!!!!!”

Dorcas said that most nights there are deer in the field across the road from their house, on the side of the hill.

That reminded me of the time there were a doe and fawn in our back yard early one morning.  I spotted them out the open bathroom window, and rushed silently off to get Larry.  He came scurrying in, still half asleep — and stepped on the edge of the cat’s bowl of water, sending it sloshing all up his bare foot and leg, whereupon he immediately yelped loudly. 

The deer and fawn were in Cherry County before we could blink.

Dorcas got a ‘baby wrap’ that lets her carry baby Trevor around, all snuggled against her, as she’s doing housework and suchlike.  The baby is content in his wrap.

“And some people think it ‘spoils’ babies,” she told me.

Bah, humbug!  This is the sort of thing that makes me rant and rave.  People’s ideas of ‘spoiling’ a baby are nuts.  Taking care of him the moment he needs taken care of, comforting him when he needs comforting, that’s not spoiling, at all, at all!  That’s loving him.  People who think taking proper care of a child is ‘spoiling’ them are idiots.  ‘Spoiling’ a child is letting him be a brat and doing nothing about it.  People need a good dose of the Bible!  Remember Isaiah: “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” then he answers himself in some amazement, “Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.”  

Last Monday was grandson Ethan’s 12^th birthday.  He was born on Easter Sunday, 2004.  We gave him some things from our trip to Florida:  a big book on Florida lighthouses, a Pensacola Lighthouse tie tac, a brass commemorative medallion or coin from the Pensacola Naval Museum, a squished, elongated penny from the Pensacola Lighthouse, a Cabela’s cap, a long red LED pen light, and a pair of suede bedroom slippers with Sherpa lining and cuff.

Teddy and Amy’s oldest is 12 years old!  How can this be??  He was just a toddler, a couple of years ago!

Speaking  of ‘growing up’, Caleb is now just past 6’ tall, and he seems to be continuing to grow!

Reckon this is because of that “Thanksgiving feast” he ate when he was 3?  There I was, sewing away in my bedroom... he was playing, trotting in and out... What I didn’t know was that he’d gotten into the groceries I’d just bought and into the boxes of fruit a friend had just brought: I later found three empty raisin boxes, half a loaf of bread gone, pits from plums, apricots, peaches, and nectarines, cores from apples and pears, many, many cheese wrappers, and only half a cluster of grapes left.  All et in one afternoon.  By evening, his hands and cheeks (to say nothing of his tummy!) looked plump.  (He don’t look plump no mo’, huh-uh, nosiree.)

I once found him with his entire short little arm – not just ‘hand’, ARM! – in the peanut butter jar, scooping out a huge fistful of the stuff.  hahaha  I exclaimed, “YUCK!!!  AAAUUUGGGHH!!!  That’s awful, and you’re all a mess, and it’s yucky to eat handfuls of peanut butter all by itself!” while I scrubbed him up. 

Later, I heard him say sadly to Lydia, “I thought it was really yummy.”  

Lydia was all cracked up, trying not to laugh in little brother’s face.

Tuesday afternoon, I hung another load of clothes outside – and the wind was gusting at 30 mph.  “They should get dry quickly,” I remarked, “but they might be wrapped around the church steeple when they are!”

An hour later, I heard an odd noise on the back deck, went to see what it was – and discovered the clothesline had broken.  The plastic bracket that held the line to the wall had cracked right in half. 

“Could you kindly nab Daddy’s shirts out of the sky as they go whistling past?” I asked one of the girls, with whom I happened to be talking at the time.

Several people have asked me to offer possible designs, along with background fabric requirements, for the various quilt sizes of the Buoyant Blossoms BOM.  I hadn’t figured it out yet, since I’ve just been using leftover scraps and pieces from other projects.  So...  here’s what I came up with that afternoon:  Buoyant Blossoms BOM Quilt Designs

I used Electric Quilt 7 for these designs, importing my own photos into the program for the first time.  I was pleased with how nifty it worked.  Here’s a possible finished design in the wall-hanging size.

When Larry got home that evening, he took his chain saw out back and made short work of the pile of trunks and branches from the trees he cut down last Saturday, and then hauled the wood to Loren’s house and stacked them with his firewood. 

Loren’s lawn is already green and pretty, and he has flowers coming up all over the place.  He really keeps everything nice, inside as well as outside.  He worries that he’s not keeping it as nice as Janice did... but I assure him he is. 

In the early evening, I smelled something burning.  It seemed to be some distance away, as the odor was somewhat indistinct – that is, I couldn’t make out exactly what it was.  Sometimes it smelled really, really bad... sometimes it sort of faded out.  Later that night, it was baaad... and I am extremely sensitive to smells like that.  I checked around the house and in the garage to make sure nothing was burning.  It smelled sort of like bleach, or that new diesel they’re burning in tractors and big trucks around here ... but when I stepped outside, I got whiffs of something like rubber burning.  Ugh, it was awful. 

Odors like that make my throat swell a bit, until it’s a little hard to swallow.  My eyes and nose were burning, and I had a headache.  I closed the house all up – but that didn’t help; in fact, it seemed to make it worse, pinning in the smell.  So I opened it all up again – windows, front door, patio doors – and turned on the ceiling fan.  It was only 53°, so I cranked up the furnace and the infrared space heater.  Then I put on fleece socks... flannel nightgown... fleece sweater... crocheted tam... and a silk scarf before ensconcing myself in my recliner with a microfleece blanket.  Sarah Lynn, ze haute couture fashionista!

I made myself some hot tea; that would help my throat. 

Three minutes later, I was turning off the space heater, cranking the ceiling fan up to high, and peeling off tam and fleece socks.  I never was known for moderation. 

Wednesday morning, a friend in Washington State reported seeing the first hummingbird of the season.  Hummers already?!  That means I’d better get out my feeders and fill and hang them!  Ours come around about the same time hers do, generally.

That day, I machine-embroidered a label for the old quilt (the 1936 3D Dahlia) my mother gave me, and sewed it onto the back of the quilt.  Then I started on the next flower appliqué block for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM, getting it drawn and all the templates cut from freezer paper before church time.

Thursday, I continued working on the flower appliqué block.  This one is a poppy.  Hopefully, I can get this quilt done in time for Mother’s Day for Norma.  If not, well, I’ll get her something else, and just give the quilt to her when it gets done.  Meanwhile, I’m taking photos and getting the pdf pattern ready so I can post it at my Craftsy and Etsy stores at the end of each month.  The patterns are selling well – and I only have 7 available so far.

Noticing that the peach tree was in blossom, I grabbed my camera, put on the 90mm Tamron macro lens, and trotted out to get a few shots.

I shooed a fat squirrel off the bird feeders, and frightened a plump, dark-eyed junco.  The squirrels are so well-fed from the black oil sunflower seeds, it’s a wonder the birds don’t look skinny!  Within minutes, the shooed squirrel’s brother was hanging upside down on the suet cake holder, the cheeky rodent.

That afternoon, I learned that I wasn’t just imagining things; the air was unhealthy, and it had descended upon Omaha:

Subject: Breaking News from Omaha.com: Air quality in Douglas County in unhealthy category due to Kansas fires.

By the time I got the notice, however, the air was clear and fresh, over here in Platte County.  It was a relief to have good air to breathe.  I forwarded the email to Larry, who has a penchant for acting like I either don’t smell what I know I’m smelling, or have misidentified the stench.

Larry, who is almost never troubled by the odors that bother me immensely (especially gas or diesel fumes, mildew, or smoke from anything other than a simple wood fire), and often argues with me over just what is producing the smells that cause me the most distress, even though my olfactory detection sensors have proven to be nearly infallible, answered my email:  “Yes, smoke isn’t healthy no matter where it comes from; that is carbon monoxide poison.”

I promptly replied, “Who are you, and what have you done with Larry?!”

Some years back, a friend of mine who had a penchant for lengthy shopping at Wal-Mart was greeted by one of the workers who asked her, “What department do you work in?  I see you in so many different places, I haven’t yet figured out which department is yours.”  :-D

One of the reasons the workers thought she was an employee:  she was a fussbudget who couldn’t bear it if towels, clothes, etc., were messed up, so she was forever refolding, rehanging, and straightening things.  She often spent a good part of her days wandering aisles of stores here, there, everywhere.  My all-day wanderings are more happily spent out in the woods, or in the mountains or hills, or alongside rivers or lakes.

I like shopping online at Wal-Mart.  If the order is over $50, shipping is free.  It’s really nice to have the UPS/FedEx/USPS people carry heavy things right to my front door, as opposed to me putting those things in a cart, trundling them about that large store, bagging them, carting them out to my vehicle, and then reversing the procedure when I get home. 

Now, if they’d just bring back the milkman.

Stubby is back!  The little squirrel with the frostbitten ears, that is:

Meanwhile, I wasn’t too awfully happy with the flower block I was making.  The pattern was good – the fabric I chose for the flower petals wasn’t quite right.  But I kept at it.

By midnight, I was sewing the leaves down.  It was growing on me... 

By 2:30, it was done, and I liked it.  The reason I was originally unhappy with it is because I fussy cut the petals from poppy-printed fabric, and various designs in the print wound up in odd places, making it look like a couple of small bouquets of flowers, many of which had been whacked and cut into strange shapes.  So ... I took my Letraset Promarkers to them (the ink dye markers I use on silk ribbon) and colored in some of the fabric so the print didn’t show up so much.  I’m happy with it now, but if I had it to do over again, I’d just use some mottled fabric or batiks rather than the poppy print.

I didn’t think I’d like the tediousness of appliqué, before I tried it.  But the method I use is the one that was in the book, Graceful Garden, that I used on the quilt I made Hester 3 or 4 years ago.  I really liked the fabric I got for that quilt... and then as it went together, as I’d glue down all the pieces and watch it, well, blossom, I was just so delighted with how it looked.  The next year, when I made all those mug rugs, I used that same method.  While making all the pieces can be tedious (and I make it more so, by making them too small and too many, heh), the way it turns out is well worth the effort.

My needle turn method looks sloppy, in comparison.  It’s the starched edges, folded so neatly around the freezer paper, that gives it that tightly-tailored look.  I can use a contrasting blanket stitch... wide or narrow... or invisible thread (the new stuff is so much better than what they used to have, as it’s soft and pliable)...  Actually, I could even stitch it down by hand, and still have those sharp edges, once they’re starched and ironed.

Maybe the next flower appliqué will be pansies.  Pansies were my mother’s favorite flower.  She called them ‘the face in the flower’.  I love snapdragons, too, ever since Mama showed me how to pinch them and make them ‘talk’. 

Just another thing I love in the Rockies – way up in the High Country, they have wild yellow snapdragons – and they are called ‘Butter and Eggs’.  (They’re also called ‘yellow toadflax’, but that sounds dreadful.  Let’s call them ‘Butter and Eggs’!)

I’m not going to run out of types of flowers to appliqué any time soon, am I? 

Victoria has been promoted to a full-time supervisor position at Super Saver.  She still has her part-time job at Earl May Gardening Center, but there just weren’t enough hours for her.  When one is looking for a house, one needs hours!  Working, paid hours, that is.

Kurt worked with his grandfather’s excavating company last week, driving trucks and large equipment, instead of working at Walker Foundations, where his job is a whole lot more physically demanding.  But he has now returned to Walkers, a bit sooner than his doctors would have liked.  It’s hard to hold Kurt down. 

Look at this email I just got:

My Dear Beneficiary,

Greetings, could you tell me the main reason why you have not receive your funds up till now, thanks and God bless.

Yours Faithfully, Rev. Victor Brown

Shall I write back, “Cuz ya doodn’t senate to me, ya big oaf!” ?

That evening, I took some supper to Loren, and then stopped at the UPS Store to send a box full of photo albums, songbooks, etc., to Dorcas.  Problem:  it was too heavy for me to carry.  I hoped someone else could lug it to the post office, but no one ever had the time.  Larry took it out to the Jeep for me Thursday.  At the UPS Store, I went in and begged for help.  If you cry pathetically, someone is bound to feel sorry for you.  :-D  The lady came right out and got it.  I mailed it media-mail, so it wasn’t too awfully expensive.  That same lady adamantly assured me that they often open media-mail packages to inspect them, and if there is anything else in the box other than books, I will be tarred and feathered, put in stocks and publicly flogged, and then strung up by my toenails and shot at daybreak.

Yipe.  {I wonder what’s in the bottom of that box?!}  I do hope my next return address won’t be Sing Sing.

First wasp sighting that evening!  I dislike wasps (they turn their heads and look at me, and not with benevolence, either!) ... but I’m forever taking photos of them.  Larry laughs at me because, while peering through my lens, I get closer... closer... closer... then I look around the side of the camera to size things up --- and yelp and leap backwards because I’ve gotten practically right on top of the critter.

Remember the scrumptious meal we had a Paul’s Steakhouse in Helen, Georgia, sitting at a table right over the Chattahoochee River?  Larry had a steak meal, with a perfectly done, melt-in-your-mouth steak that was about an inch thick.  A bowl of green beans came with it – and they were the best green beans I’d ever tasted, with some sort of delicious flavoring.  Someone told me that it is common in that part of the country for them to throw a piece of salt pork into the beans as they are cooking.  Gotta try that.

I had a humongous garden salad, served on a plate that looked to be the size of a meat platter.  They gave me a Styrofoam box to take part of that salad with me.  The un-et portion (scientific term meaning, ‘dat wut ah didn’t et’) filled the Styrofoam box completely.  That was one biiiig salad!

Friday and Saturday were spent working on a large center section for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM.  This block will be 17 ½”, finished size.  Finally, early Saturday evening, I had it all drawn and was ready to number the pieces.  There are so many, I couldn’t possibly get them right the first time around; so I penciled them in first.  Doesn’t it bug you, those of you who appliqué, when you are following a pattern, and the numbers are wrong, and you have to pull up a piece you’ve already glued (or even sewed) down in order to insert another piece underneath it?  Sometimes, granted, there is no choice, as a piece weaves its way over and under others.

I’ve been working on the borders for the various sizes of quilts, using EQ7.  You know, when I’m drawing up my own things in EQ7, I just make whatever I think is pretty... and if the size of a parallelogram winds up with some odd fraction of, oh, say, 5/16” or something, I just cut a hair’s width more than a quarter of an inch and don’t sweat it.  But I don’t suppose I should make patterns for other people with those goofy measurements, eh?  So I have to play around with it a little more.

I really like the Electric Quilt program, but I imagine I’m only skimming the surface of all it can do.  I keep my book handy, big, fat manual that it is, and I look things up now and then – but a good deal of the time, I can’t find in the index what I’m wanting to know.  Sometimes looking for it online produces a long page of people debating over what the program might or might not be able to do. 

EQ7 is certainly not as intuitive as Publisher, or Excel, for instance.  Or maybe it’s just because I don’t use it often enough.  One of the things I wish it could do is to clone colors from an imported photo.

Friday morning, Larry’s average speed on his 29.9-mile bike ride was 18.5 mph.  Now, that’s really pumping right along!  He’s staying right up with the younger guys he’s riding with.  He’s doing good, and he feels better, too!

And me?  I’m up to almost 2,500 steps on my pedometer at the moment (mid-afternoon).  Good grief, I’ve gotta get moving!  Well, I did forget to put it on, this morning.  I regularly forget to put it on.  So this begs the question, Do pedometers cause senility? 

I went to Wal-Mart to see if they’d gotten in the fabric I’m using for background for the Buoyant Blossoms BOMs, but they haven’t.  Maybe they never will.  I looked for some at Hobby Lobby... nothing even comes close.  Our two LQSs (Local Quilt Shops) were closed, so I came home and looked online.  Nothing.

Maybe I have enough of the fabric left... maybe I don’t.  I need to measure and cut the rest of the blocks I need for the appliqué flowers for the personal-throw size ... and if there isn’t enough for the in-between blocks, I’ll use other fabric (after first checking the LQSs).  If the new fabric is in every other block, it will be an ‘on purpose’ instead of an ‘oops, I ran out!’

This fabric shortage happened because when I started with the appliqué blocks, I had no idea where it was going to go.  I made that first one, the iris, for the ladies of the quilt group here in town who invited me to come give a ‘show and tell’ on the recommendation of my former home-ec teacher, who belongs to the group.  Then people started clamoring for more... and all of a sudden, quite without warning, I was doing a BOM!  At about month 3 or 4, it occurred to me, I don’t have a whole lot of this fabric left.  Since it came from a huge bolt of 108”-wide fabric at Wal-Mart, I didn’t think there was anything to worry about, so I didn’t go for more right away.  Mistake.  It’s a small floral white-on-cream print; you can see it on the poppy block.

By the time I quit Saturday night, the big center block for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM was drawn, numbered, scanned, and made into a four-page pdf file.  I then traced the templates onto freezer paper.  There are 303 templates, although some could conceivably be combined, if one prefers.  A new box of freezer paper and a jug of liquid starch arrived recently via UPS, so I’m all set. 

The crabapple tree is in blossom:

I like candied crabapples.  And crabapple jelly, mmmm-mmm.  This is a little tree; the children gave it to me for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago.  I think last year it may have had two little apples?  But it’s putting out a lot more blooms this spring than it did a year ago.  Maybe there’ll be a bigger crop!

It rained off and on Sunday.  Kurt, Victoria, and Robin went out for a walk after dinner – and promptly got rained on and came rushing back in. 

A friend just got a Fitbit –something on the order of a glorified pedometer.  She writes about trying to avoid a neighbor lady who sees her coming (as they just put up new surveillance cameras), when she’s trying to go for a walk.  The neighbor lady, who is unconcerned with such things as Walking for One’s Health, runs out, hops on her golf cart, and comes racing to intercept her and chatter away.  My friend wants, needs, to walk for her health, and doesn’t want to get stymied every single day.

I used to know a grocery store clerk like that.  Now, I like friendly clerks, and all that, and I always try to be friendly, too.  But when they start waylaying me in aisles beyond the register, when they can’t get my groceries bagged for gabbing (and I’m always in a hurry), when they start prying some distance beyond name, rank, and serial number, and I find myself peeping around the bread rack to ascertain they have a line of customers before I gallop headlong into another checkout row before they see me, and keep my head averted so they don’t recognize me... when I feel I must don wig, fake moustache and nose, and speak in a foreign accent... that’s too much.

I rerouted myself.  All the way to another grocery store, I did.  :-D

Hannah just sent me this picture:  “Misty crashed the party.  The sign says, ‘Stuffed Animal Party Do Not disturb.’  Levi (he’s 5 ½), set this up this morning, and wanted it left so he and Nathanael can play after school.”

What’s really funny is when they have their three guinea pigs out, playing with them... and they tell Misty to ‘bring the piggies back’.  She goes into sheepdog mode, head low, eyes intent, and dashes to the far side of the room in order to start ‘herding’ them back toward the cage, rushing from one to the other in order to bring them together and ‘push’ them in the right direction.

One of the guinea pigs is more territorial than the others, and if Hannah tries holding two at once, the “Me! Me!” pig will scramble higher and higher until he’s practically under her chin, turning sideways in order to ward the other piggy off and keep him from getting closer.  They purr and chir-chir and make all kinds of funny noises.  Their names are Henry, Alexander, and Pigling Bland. 

The guinea pig they named Pigling Bland (after the little pig in the Beatrix Potter books – as was his brother, Alexander) ------ is the blandest piggy of them all. 

There’s a pair of grackles marching about in the front yard.  The female is in front, jerking along in that funny way they have, peering about, bug-hunting, ignoring the male behind her, who is alternating jerk-walking and puffing his feathers, wings, and tail out hugely whilst simultaneously uttering long-drawn-out, unmelodious squawks.  The female, beak pointed high, stalks on, haughtily ignoring him.  The male, having been stalled out by such a majestic feather-puff it evidently paralyzed his legs, hurries pell-mell after her in ignominious abashment.  Or at least it should have been ignominious abashment, were birds capable of embarrassment.

Okay, I need a couple of slices of dried, sweetened mango.  Mmmmm, I like that stuff.

((chew chew chew))  ((slup slup slup))  (That was the coffee.) 

“Why can’t I get a drink of coffee without winding up with a big droplet of coffee smack-dab in the middle of my right lens?” I inquired of Larry.

He didn’t tell me why, but he did give me a solution:  “Put smaller tadpoles in there.”

Daily note:

Did you know that, once coffee has made a bubble at the top of your cup from trying to fill it as full as possible, one more drop makes it run over – and it doesn’t just run over one drop?

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