Last
Monday, my brother Loren headed off toward Colorado with his pickup and
camper. There were thunderstorms in
western Nebraska, just as there were the last time he went out there. He called me to inquire into these storms, so
I looked them up on AccuWeather.com, and relayed the information to him. The worst of the thunderstorm was north of
Sterling, Colorado, and he was just west of Ogallala, Nebraska. The storm was heading straight east; he would
soon be heading southwest. He wouldn’t
feel much more than a drop or two of rain, if that.
Dorcas
posted a picture she’d taken of a hummingbird at her house. Aren’t hummingbirds amazing little things? We don’t see them very
often here, mostly just when they are migrating through. Their hearts can
beat up to 1,260 times per minute, and their wings can beat up to 80 times per second!
The cutaway medium-weight stabilizer
I’d ordered arrived that day, so as soon as those deluxe tea towels get here, I’ll
put them together and give it a try, and see if the embroidered interior
stitches better match with the outline stitches. Maybe it’ll be
overkill... but that’ll be better than not enough. Those towels should be here by now! – I
ordered them August 2nd, but on the website it still says
‘Processing’. What in the world? I just sent them an email inquiring into the
matter.
I also got the new Keyspan serial
adapter. I finished some housework, then headed downstairs to my sewing
room to see if the PC and the embroidery machine would make nice with each
other.
They wouldn’t. First, the cover on the adapter prevented it
from attaching to the sewing machine.
Larry took off the cover... attached it... and it still refused to transfer a design from PC to machine.
I looked it up and discovered my
embroidery machine very likely needs an update.
I called the Bernina Store in Lincoln this afternoon to ask if they
still give updates for the Artista 180 – this machine was made in 1999. The tech told me they did, but gave me one
more option to try before going this route.
I’ll try it – as soon as this letter is finished.
A lady
on one of my quilting groups was lamenting (or wondering if she should lament)
her lack of success in life, after looking at long-ago acquaintances’ Facebook
pages.
I wrote back to her, “Most people
put their Best of the Best on Facebook – and we never get to see their Worst of the Worst. And then there are others! I could send you some Facebook pages of
people I used to know, and you’ll come away feeling extremely accomplished
and successful. You’ll be glad you never
had kids... glad you were raised by wolves and have no parents to contend
with... glad you have only one husband... glad you didn’t ever tattoo an extra
eyebrow on your face... and, as an added bonus, glad you’re not in
jail. Oh me, oh my, you’ll be singing Glory, Hallelujah the rest
of the day.”
If we believe there’s a God in
heaven who loves us, and sent His beloved Son to die for us, and if we do what
Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is
the first and great commandment. And the
second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” ... then
we’ll be happy and content wherever we are. Put a little sunshine into
your corner, treat people the way you want to be treated, pet the cats, fill
the bird feeder (bait for the cats?), and stitch little quilts.
But I do wish the roof didn’t
leak.
Loren went
through Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road twice Tuesday – first
heading west, and next, heading east. When
he got over the pass, he went on to Hot Sulphur Springs and parked at a free
campsite, planning to stay all night, maybe 2 or 3 nights. He unhitched – and the camper batteries went
dead. Since he didn’t want to run the
generator, on account of other campers nearby, he decided to head for
home. It was already mid-afternoon, and
he didn’t want to travel the high mountain roads at night, so he rushed to
hitch up – but the trailer tongue wouldn’t rise without electricity. So he used his jacks and stabilizers to get
it up high enough. A young man camping
nearby in a big motorhome came and helped him, then tried to convince him to
rest after everything was hitched up, but Loren was all set to go.
It
rained hard as he was coming over Trail Ridge Road. He saw one of the biggest herds of elk he’d
ever seen, up there in those Rockies.
He got
home Wednesday evening, in time to make it to church that night.
I
would’ve felt all defrauded and done-wrong-by, if my mountain trip had’ve gotten
cut short like that. But Loren didn’t
mind, not too badly. I think he likes
the coming-home part even better than the going-out-to-the-mountains part.
Larry, Teddy, Caleb, and Kurt got
Victoria’s piano moved into their house Tuesday night. After the struggle
it was getting that heavy thing moved into Kurt’s grandparents’ basement six months
ago, Larry went and purchased a set of straps that go around the item to be
moved, then around the shoulders, back, and waist of the persons moving said article.
It made the job a whole lot easier – plus, adding Teddy and Caleb to any job
that requires heavy lifting is a good plan from the start.
Tuesday
and Wednesday, I quilted on the borders of the Buoyant Blossoms quilt.
I find pretty quilting pictures on
Pinterest... think, I’m going to do that! – but mine never turns
out quite as nice. Instead of thinking, I need more practice! I
think, I need a new quilting machine!
Logical thought process, don’t you
agree?
It was Hester and Andrew’s 8th
anniversary on the 10th – and they were in Seattle, Washington, on vacation.
I sent Hester a note:
“Happy Anniversary!
“Your gift will be waiting for you
when you get back home. So don’t fall off the Seattle wheel or anything.”
She wrote back to say that they had
gone on the Ferris wheel the night
before, and it was ‘almost scary’.
 |
| Baby praying mantis |
We once had a big, temperamental
palomino mare who would arch her neck and prance – sometimes sideways, suddenly
and without warning – when Larry would ride her. Once in a while she
would rear, for no discernable reason. She
seemed to constantly pull at the bit and push the boundaries as far as she
thought she dared, with adults.
We hadn’t had her long; the people
who had her before us didn’t ride her often, and weren’t good at training
horses.
Teddy was about 8 or 9 years old,
and he loved horses. Especially that one. We called
her Fleeta. Anyway, when that little boy would climb up on her back, she’d
abruptly calm, and would walk or canter along as gently as could be. It
was something to see.
Both my parents grew up on farms in
Illinois where they originally used horses for all their farm work. Their
families were good with animals... and they passed their love of animals right
down through the generations.
After
church Wednesday evening, we took the hollyhock seeds to I’d gathered to the
friend who’d asked about them.
 |
| Baby praying mantis' brother? |
When we
got home, I returned to the quilting on the Buoyant Blossoms quilt, and kept at
it until I’d finished down through the top pieced border.
Hannah
sent me some pictures of Jonathan playing with a toad, and told a funny story
to go with them:
Hannah told Jonathan that his toad
was probably hungry and that it likes bugs, so Jonathan guided it along the
armrest of his chair.
“He’s looking for something to eat,”
he said.
He took it into the pool to ‘swim’ with
him. Jonathan was mostly on the floating
toys, and he kept the toad with him a good deal of the time.
Hannah was trying to get pictures of
him, but he was so busy with that toad, she couldn’t get him to show it to her.
Finally she thought to say, “Let’s take
a picture for Grandma Jackson!” – and she wound up with the cutest shots of the
lot. (So you see how important I am.)
The toad escaped a few times,
whereupon the little girls who were there squealed and quickly rounded it back
up for Jonathan.
Lydia said when she’d gotten to
Jonathan’s side of the vehicle to seatbelt him in before they had left the house
to go swimming, he was sitting there with the bucket (toad inside) on his lap
all ready to go. So she let him bring
it.
I got
the book I ordered from Amazon yesterday, No
Time on My Hands, by Grace Snyder.
It was
from an article about her in an old quilting magazine, along with pictures of
her 87,789-piece Flower Basket quilt, that I got the idea of making my Mosaic
Lighthouse quilt. There’s part of the article, along with pictures of her
quilt, here.
I’m
looking forward to reading this book. Grace Snyder’s home was in North
Platte, Nebraska, and she lived to be 100 years old. She came to live in
a sod shanty in Nebraska, along with her pioneer family, when she was
three. From the time she was 7, she said
she “wanted to make the most beautiful quilts in the world, marry a cowboy, and
look down on the top of a cloud.”
She got to do all those things.
Here, I’ll give you a paragraph from
page 489:
That was the winter that Miles built
a one-tube, battery-operated radio set with parts he ordered from Montgomery
Ward. It was one of the first sets in our part of the hills and the
neighbors came in to listen on it. You really listened “on” it, rather than
to it, for it had no loudspeaker. Instead, there were two sets of headphones,
but one earpiece could be unfastened from each set, so that four people could
listen at the same time. The first time one of Trego’s little
granddaughters clamped a set to her head, she waited anxiously while Miles
twiddled the dials and knobs. When a thin howl of static finally came
through, her face lit up. “Oh goody,” she cried, “I hear a coyote.”
Here’s a
golden tortoise beetle, found near the front porch on a wild grapevine. Don’t you think he looks sorta like he’s
encased in a glass bumpercar?
Thursday
I
did a bit of computer backup. While the
computer was doing its thing, transferring files to the external hard drive, I
ordered a few necessities online. I fed
the cats... watered the houseplants... chatted with my brother on the phone for
a little bit... made a new pot of coffee... and then the backup was done, and I
was all set to trot down to the quilting studio and get in gear.
A lady
on one of the quilting groups asked about a recipe with green tomatoes.
Green tomatoes! That reminded
me of an episode involving my blind friend Rita:
Many years ago, I went to visit
Rita. She gladly welcomed me in, as always. We sat down at the
table, and then she informed me that she’d just made some ‘apple crisps’ – only
really it was mincemeat, made mostly from green tomatoes from her garden.
Thus saying, she dished out a big helping onto a saucer and slid it over to me.
It looked good.
Looks can be deceiving.
I took a bite... tried valiantly not
to gag, glad my friend was blind, and worked it over into one cheek so that I
could ask, “Bay I gibb a drink, bleeze?”
“Sure,” she said, and rushed to the
refrigerator for a jug of cold water while I grabbed a glass and a napkin – the
latter for spitting the cheekful into. I discarded it into the garbage ((silently))
and sat back down. I poured myself a glass of water – and drank the whole
works.
Then I klink-klinked my spoon on the
plate for a little while... carefully cut off the corner from whence I’d taken
the bite... and then, ever so stealthily, slid that piece of mincemeat pie back
into the serving dish.
Things go wrong with Rita’s cooking
now and again; no one is ever sure exactly what.
I’d barely reseated myself before she
came to life. “Oh, you’re done!” she exclaimed. “Do you want
another piece??” and just as I was gulping and protesting, “No, no!” she
scooped up the very helping she’d once given me, the very helping I’d returned
to the dish, and deposited it right back on my saucer.
I’ve suspected ever since that Rita
can see.
A long,
long time later, I told her this story, and asked if she’d known.
She was laughing so hard she could hardly answer, but she assured me, no
indeedy, she’d been totally clueless.
And then
she said, said she, “So! Would you like some apple crisps?” hee hee
My sister still suffers guilt pangs
because once upon a time, when she was a wee little girl, she went with my
parents to visit a blind lady who went to their church. The lady did so
much, so skillfully, my sister couldn’t believe she was blind. At one
point in the visit, everyone but my sister and the blind lady went outside,
leaving Lura Kay and the lady alone in the living room.
Lura Kay made faces at her, starting
with a small grimace and working up to gargoyle-type contortions. The
lady carried on with friendly conversation and never changed attitude in the
slightest.
So Lura Kay was finally convinced
the lady was blind.
But then ----- she felt
really, really horrible that she’d actually made faces at that sweet blind
lady, and she didn’t get over it for a long time, never mind the fact that the
lady never knew! Lura Kay really loved the lady – those dreadful faces
had nothing to do with whether or not she liked her.
I laughed and laughed when my
sister, 20 years my elder, told that story on herself, some 60 years after the
fact. Sounded more like something her flippertygidget little
sister would do, not the ladylike, conservative older sister! hee
hee
The
candle I made last week from left-behind candlewax is sure making the quilting
studio smell nice.
Kurt’s
mother Ruth had surgery on her neck Thursday.
We were glad when we received news that afternoon that she was doing
well, and expected to come home by the next day.
By
evening, I’d finished quite a lot of stitch-in-the-ditch on the first row of
blocks on the Buoyant Blossoms quilt, and the Rose appliqué block in entirety:
Quilting quoibles:
1.
Do you ever sew/embroider/quilt something... think, That doesn’t look right, take it out,
resew/reembroider/requilt it --- and it winds up exactly and precisely the same
as it was the first time?
2.
Everyone knows sewing/embroidering/ quilting with black
thread on black fabric can be a bit hard to see. But I’m having a hard
time seeing white quilting thread on white fabric! I try turning off the
overhead light... turn it back on and turn off the side lights... turn off two
out of three... the other two out of three...
3.
Did you know that if you wind the big M-class aluminum
bobbins (that fit in my HQ16) too closely to the edges of the bobbin,
particularly with fine, strong, 60-weight poly-rayon thread, which has a little
stretch to it, the bobbin actually stretches and becomes a hair’s-width wider,
and thereby causes all sorts of problems? – The quilting machine won’t pick up
the thread... the needle hits the case and/or bobbin... and the case generally
winds up tumbling right out of the machine, bobbin and all.
If I find anything else to complain
about, I’ll let you know.
Regarding
the quilting of quilts... as I was growing up, anybody I knew who made quilts tied them
with yarn. For quite a few years, I pretty much felt like if I actually sewed (quilted) atop my quilt sandwich,
through all the thickness, over all the patchwork and piecing, I’d totally ruin it! But beautiful pictures in
quilting magazines and books caused me to rethink that position.
I thought of another quilting
complaint! (I told you I’d let you know, if I thought of more,
didn’t I?)
 |
| Baby grasshopper mugging for the camera |
I’m using Extra High Loft batting in
this quilt. It’s so thick and puffy that when I use my rulers to guide my
quilting machine, I have to push down fairly hard on the ruler with my left
hand as I ‘steer’ the machine with my right. Well, a few nights ago, hand
and fingers hurt so much I could hardly get to sleep. I pulled a tube of
Pain-A-Trate from the headboard, rubbed it in, and promptly went to sleep. But that hand actually woke me up a couple of
times during the night, aching. By morning, I’d realized what had caused
the pain – it was the pressing down on that ruler for so many hours! But my hand is evidently getting tougher, because
Saturday’s quilting didn’t cause much pain at all.
Motto: Pass the Capzasin, and stand
back out of my way.
When I was little, we went to an elderly chiropractor in
Kansas one (or two) time(s). He was a little, dried-up,
sawed-off-at-the-knees man. My mother said that she didn’t know if he was
doing her any good, because when he’d push on her back, she couldn’t tell if it
was his false teeth clacking together, or her back popping. :-D
Okay, next complaint (since you
asked):
Tiger cat has decided to show his appreciation
for my love and care of him by wrapping himself around my ankles, purring, and cuddling
up at my feet – whilst I’m traipsing back and forth in front of my quilting
frame, trying to ((carefully and precisely)) guide that big quilting machine.
((...considering...))
All right, that’s not a complaint
after all. That’s just a little extra kitty love.
Here’s a better one (better
complaint, that is): It takes so long to
quilt each row that the part of the batting that is hanging over the front bar
is getting all roughed up, evidently from me rubbing against it as I quilt.
Hope it doesn’t feel lumpy, once it’s encased in the quilt. It’s Great
Glory III Extra Loft Batting by Morning Glory, and it’s thick.
One full inch thick, it is.
Gotta remember... Don’t
rough up the batting. Don’t rough up the batting. Don’t rough up
the batting.
A fellow
longarmer offered a good solution: Lay a piece of fabric over the batting where
you are brushing up against it.
Good idea. But instead of fabric, I’m using a leftover piece of batting; it sticks to
the batting that’s lopped over the belly bar.
I tuck it in a bit, and it stays in place perfectly.
Here’s a 12-spotted skimmer chowing down on a little
moth.
On the way back from Loren’s house after taking him
some supper, I stopped at the mailbox... got out, went around the front of the
Jeep to get the mail – and the Jeep died.
I got back in, started it, shifted and took off quickly before it died
again. Pulled into the drive... put the
vehicle in Park... it idled for 15 seconds – and died. Aarrgghh!
This needs to be fixed!
One of these days I need to fix
Loren our favorite meal, just to find out if he likes it: Stuffed peppers! My stuffed peppers are
the best. I bake the peppers by themselves, make the rest
of the ingredients separately, and put it all together later. This makes for a variety of flavors, flavors
that aren’t all homogenized and merged together. There’s picanté sauce. Bacon bits. Tomatoes.
Rice. Hamburger, but not the cheap greasy stuff. Lots (and
lots) of seasonings. >>...lockjaw...<<
By 8:30 p.m., I’d started the second
row of blocks on the quilt. Sometimes I
do something spectacular... and sometimes I nearly demolish it. As I
mentioned, I like variety!
Here’s something you might want to
mark down for future reference:
It’s hard to do an outline stitch
when you haven’t done the interior stitch first.
I knew you’d want to know.
By the
time I hit the feathers that night, the top row of blocks was done, and I had a
good start on row two. See more photos here.
I’m really loving the effect I’m
getting from this batting – Great Glory II Extra High Loft, by Morning Glory.
I planned to cut satin and chiffon
for the wedding Saturday, but I discovered that the peaches that were ripening
in the refrigerator ... were ripe. They needed to be peeled, sliced,
and frozen – right then.
So there it was, just another Saturday afternoon at
Jacksonhaus: I was
standing at the sink slicing peaches, when I caught movement out of the corner
of my eye. I turned my head --- just in time to see a tail, long,
skinny, and wriggling, vanish under the stove.
Both cats were sitting motionless
less than a foot away from said tail, near their food bowl, watching with big
eyes. As the tail disappeared, both cats’ heads went farther and farther
down, the better to see the thing as it slithered from view, until finally
their heads were nearly resting on the floor as they peered under the stove.
And then the tail was gone.
Both cats sat back up straight, then
turned and stared at me: Whooaaaaa! Did you see that?!
What was it, anyway?!!
((...rolling eyes...)) I
thought cats were supposed to catch small stray tailed critters that get
into the house?
I didn’t see it soon enough to get a
really good look at it, so I am not sure if it was a) a large field vole
with a very long tail, or b) a very young garter snake. I quickly
pulled the drawer out from under the stove, but whatever it was, it was no
longer there. I did, however, discover that it was mighty dirty
under the stove, so I swept it out and scrubbed under there.
The drawer was soon back in, the
cats were again conducting business as usual (that is, sleeping upside down on
the carpet, paws folded like little kangaroo feet on their chests), and I’d
washed my hands and resumed the slicing of peaches.
The
critter is most likely a vole. I put a fresh dab of peanut butter into
the electronic trap and turned it back on. Not much else I can do, short
of tearing down the wall behind the stove!
And that wouldn’t help, because the wee beast would be long gone anyway.
A box of small-but-sturdy ivory-colored
paper plates and pretty little round photo stickers of Kurt and Victoria arrived
– supplies for the wedding reception.
The stickers are for the favors boxes.
Finally the
peaches were done, and most were in freezer bags in the freezer. I saved
enough to put a good-sized helping into a large fruit salad that also included
apples, plumcots (hybrid
plums/apricots), and pineapples, with a miracle-whip-and-powdered-sugar
dressing. I like them, but not as well as plain plums or apricots (though
that might be because they were picked a bit green, rather than ripened
naturally).
I baked
a couple of carrot-raisin cakes and liberally slathered them with cream cheese
frosting. We shared salad and cake with
Loren, along with mixed vegetables and asparagus spears.
Then I washed a heap of dishes, including some candle
jars for Lydia. She makes the most
beautiful candles. I hoped the dish-washing
would take away the discoloration around the fingernails caused by all that
peach-slicing!
Teddy
came to bring back a vacuum they’d borrowed.
It was his 33rd birthday that day, so I gave him one of the
carrot-raisin cakes and a card that I’d asked Hannah and Joanna to make for
him, tucking a check inside since I’d heard of a few things he planned to get,
if he got some birthday money.
The card features Canada thistles,
an old rotary lawn mower – and one thistle saying to the other (in a speech
balloon), ‘Thistle be the end of me!’
Down in the corner: “He fought the lawn... And the lawn won.” Inside are the words, “Oh, well.
Wishing you a happy birthday, and many mower
to come.”
I got
most of the second row of blocks on the Buoyant Blossoms quilt finished that
night. That butterfly in the pink
lily-of-the-valley block looks upside, to me. I was trying to make it fit
nicely into the corner, you see. Well,
it fits – and it looks upside down.
I commented on this to a friend. She replied, “Butterflies do fly downwards,
you know.”
“Yeah,” I answered, “but his curly
little antennae are on the upper end o’ the flitter!
Daffinition:
flitter 2
[flit’ - er]
1. a critter that flits.
She
responded, “Now, I know I’ve seen a flying insect that had what looked like
antennae on the end of their ‘tail’. What kind of bug was that?”
The
little grey hairstreak butterfly has tails that look like antennae and spots on
its hindwings that look like eyes, and it moves them around in order to look
bigger and scarier than it really is, to predators. Here’s a video clip of one: Grey hairstreak
There
are a number of bugs with such tails, though maybe not for the same purpose.
Andrew
and Hester got home late Saturday night, so Sunday after church, we took them
their gift: a set of tea towels with
fruit machine-embroidered on them, in a wicker basket. I opened one up and put it in the basket with the corners draping
out so the embroidery showed, and also stuck in a package of fat,
oven-ready Italian breadsticks.
A friend told about her husband
fixing the foot pedal cord on her sewing machine... so I told my story,
too. This tale is circa 1988 or
thereabouts:
My dogs used to camp out at my feet
while I sewed. Ebony, our Black Lab, once chewed through my sewing
machine cord. There I was, sewing a loooong ruffle lickety-split, really
going full bore. It was the middle of the night, and not another creature
was stirring, not even a mouse. Neither, so I thought, was the dog, who,
so I thought, was sound asleep under the table.
Wrong.
She was chewing the cord.
And then she chewed through
it.
All at once, my sewing machine
stopped in mid-seam, the light went off, the dog yelped, sprang straight up,
and ka-blanged her head on the underside of the table.
I, who am not jumpy, went directly into
the attic without benefit of a ladder.
It was right before Easter, and
those little girls had to have their ruffled dresses. Sooo… I awoke Larry
and implored him to come repair my cord. He clambered groggily out of
bed, put on his slippers, went out into the garage to get his electrical box,
came back in, and spliced the cord.
I thanked him profusely and went
back to sewing.
He replied, and I quote, “Grum grum
grum.” Yosemite Sam in person.
The dog did not again chew
cords. One of the children’s Bibles, yes. Cords, no.
Labs love to chew. Later we
had a big Siberian husky who didn’t chew nearly so much as the lab.
However, the times she did
chew were memorable.
She once pulled the drainpipe off
the side of the house and chewed it flat shut, from top to bottom, all ten feet
of it. We would never have believed she could’ve done that, except...
there she was with it in her mouth, and as we watched, she finished the last 12
inches, cha-crunch, cha-crunch, cha-crunch.
Then she sprang up and came loping
to meet us, big fluffy tail waving high in triumph and gladness.
The Topic of Discussion in one of
the online quilting groups yesterday was this:
What do you do with fabrics that aren’t 100% cotton? Throw them
out? Make kids’ quilts? Charity quilts?
‘Throw them out’?!! Good grief!
I’ve made rugs with double knits...
a Christmas tree skirt with satins, brocades, velvets, taffetas and
corduroys... doll clothes with anything under the sun... clothes with almost
anything... and a quilt with wools, corduroys, and velvets. I’ve accidentally
put patches of cotton/poly into quilts and aprons, never breathed a word, and
no one was ever the wiser. I used up the last of a chunk of faux leather
for some cushions in a camper... heavy woven stuff of who-know-what for
cushions in another camper... and heavy raw silk that I found at the Salvation
Army for curtains.
One time our oldest, at age 10,
needed a suit for the Christmas program. Money was tight. We’d just
learned that his next eldest sister, age 9, had asthma, and we were taking
fibers out of the house – replacing carpet with wood flooring, for instance.
I’d taken down some dark blue silk dupioni curtains, leaving only the
swags and lace sheers. Well, I cut up the dupioni and made Keith a
sharp-looking double-breasted suit with nautical pewter buttons and cuffed
pants. I used the less-shiny side, which still had the trademark nubby
look. Several people asked me if I’d gotten that suit from The Wooden
Soldier, a pricey children’s outlet! I was pretty proud of myself, I
was.
I have a bunch of double knits that
I plan to turn into rag rugs one of these days, and numerous pieces of single
knits that I want to use for pjs and nightgowns. One very fine piece of
knit would make a lovely skirted suit. Will I ever do it?? I
quilt!
There
was a fly in church yesterday, bothering us both services. Why did
it have to choose us to bother, both services?! Maybe it liked the soap we used? The lotion?
Hairspray? Maybe it just fancied
our kindly demeanor? It came to greet us
when we arrived, followed us up the aisle for Sunday School, and came back to
our pew with us afterwards. It patiently
waited for us during the coffee break, and then played tiddlywinks and
Parcheesi with us all through the morning service.
And there it was again last night,
faithful as an old lapdog.
Then it landed on Larry’s wrist, and
crawled up under his jacket sleeve. He
rolled his arm over against his leg, and the fly has not been seen since. I later checked his sleeve to see if it
looked like it had come through the Boer War, but there are no signs of trauma.
I filled
the bird feeder a little while ago – and finally remembered to put some suet
blocks into the suet cake holder. The
last load of clothes is folded—
And look what I just got in the mail! – 86 spools of
Sulky thread. There are metallics, rayons, variegateds, twists... I’ve looked
up the price, and see that the majority of these spools cost $5.49 at Joann
Fabric. I have about $450 worth of
thread, plus two $10 cases – and I paid $60 + $12.45 for shipping. That’s $72.45, total. Wheeeeeeeeeeee! 😄😃😀😜
There are 250 yards on most of the
spools, though a couple of the metallics have only 165. I got them from a
lady who advertised them on SewItsForSale.
The ladies on a quilting group are
discussing how to handle menfolk when they hurt our feelings. They advocate letting them know what they
have done... speaking to them lovingly when we are calm...
I couldn’t
help it. I wrote, “You mean my method of
putting cockleburs in the underwear drawer isn’t right????!!!”
I put a
chicken casserole into the oven for supper.
Tabby, hearing the noise, came rushing to see if it was for him. “Me-me-me!” he exclaimed. I promptly gave him his soft food. Poor little skinny thing needs all the food
he can get.
Ooops,
the cookie sheet on which the casserole tray is sitting in the oven just made a
loud clanging noise (expanding in the heat) and startled Tabby, who is eating nearby. A little while ago, I trimmed some mats from his
fur. He gets sap in it from our pine
trees, and then it mats.
Victoria
has given me the patterns for one of her bridesmaids and her candlelighters
–granddaughters Joanna and Emma. That means... tomorrow I cut satin
and chiffon.
Time just flies these days.
And would someone kindly tell the
weeds to stop growing by leaps and bounds out in my flower gardens??!!!
Once
again, I’m going to send this without proofreading it. There were a couple of mistakes in last
week’s letter; do you now consider me a country hick?
,,,>^..^<,,,
Sarah Lynn, chewing on wheat
kernels, a straw of hay between her teeth.
Yeee-hawww!
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