Last Tuesday
was a lovely day, and I considered going out and working in my gardens – except
there was a possibility that I would go with Larry to retrieve one of Walkers’
boom trucks in Omaha, and I didn’t want garden dirt all over me when (or if) I went.
Good excuse, right? Instead, I worked on a quilt that I’m going to give
Emma for Christmas.
By 3:30, we
were on our way to Omaha.
We went to the
dealership where the truck had been worked on, found it sitting in the parking
lot waiting for us, as expected (the company closes at 3:30 p.m. every day, and
no one ever works overtime). But what
was supposed to be fixed – wasn’t.
So we left the
truck there. We ate supper at Cracker Barrel, using a gift card from one
of the children.
Larry had chicken and
dumplings, broccoli, lettuce salad, fried apples, cornbread, muffins, and
raspberry tea. I had grilled rainbow trout, broccoli, corn, and
strawberries and fresh pineapple, and coffee. We both had blackberry
cobbler with ice cream for dessert.
It was a long way to drive
just for supper, but at least it was a good (and almost free) supper! It was a
pretty drive. Everything is turning
green, and the blossoming trees are in bloom.
I like to look around Cracker Barrel’s gift shop;
they have a lot of pretty things. I
rarely buy anything; it’s a bit pricey.
In the clothes section, there were some pretty skirts, around $40 or
so. Each skirt had several sections and was
fully lined and had soft, wide elastic at the waist. I really don’t know that I could buy the
fabric much cheaper. If I add the time
it takes to make it, it would probably be better to buy the silly thing. Ah, well; I don’t need more clothes.
There were some cute children’s items, but
nothing very fancy. Same as with adults’
clothes, not very often can you make something cheaper than you can buy it
ready-made, unless you buy cheapo fabric and don’t add lots of ruffles. But what’s the point of that?
I like to sew, and I always enjoyed sewing the children’s
clothes. Back then, it certainly was a
lot cheaper to make clothes than to buy them – and people often gave me chunks
of fabric. I daresay that while a few gave me lovely pieces of satin, velvet, taffeta, shantung, and the like, others gave me stuff
they didn’t like, and it wasn’t very good quality; but I coordinated and
matched, and used pretty patterns, and did my best to turn sows’ ears into silk
purses (not always successfully).
About the time we got to Fremont, Larry started trying to
nap and drive at the same time, so I drove the rest of the way home. Once home, I went back to my sewing room and put
the borders on Emma’s lavender and green quilt.
A gentle rain
fell Wednesday morning, and the birds were singing like anything. I headed to the sewing room to put together
the backing for Emma’s quilt. I started this quilt while I washed some
pieces for the coffeepot cozy last week, and then it went so quickly, I couldn’t
get stopped. There’s still plenty of time for the cozy... and maybe my
brain will figure out how to do a few tricky things on it, while I’m working on
something else. One can always hope!
The kit for this lavender-green
quilt was
missing the instructions, and there was only a very small diagram of the quilt
on the front of the box. I think it may have also been missing one of the
fabrics, judging by the description. Sooo... I looked at the diagram... counted
squares... measured fabrics... and saw that if I cut squares as it showed, there
would a bit of waste. But if I cut
rectangles, there would be practically no waste.
Problem: Now there wasn’t enough fabric for the strips
between the rows, since the rows were longer. So I pulled some
coordinating fabric from my stash for those strips. This turned the quilt into a girls’-size
quilt, as opposed to a baby-sized quilt. Just the ticket, since I’ve
been wanting to make a quilt for Emma.
The pattern for the quilt is supposed to look ‘random’.
Instead, to my eye, it looks like the pattern got messed up! :-\ Sigggghhhh...
I turned and twisted and flipped
those blocks this way and that, settled on a configuration, and left it at that.
Ah, well. Emma won’t be judgmental.
After church
that evening, I pressed the quilt backing and loaded it on the frame.
Then I shampooed a large section of carpet downstairs that some dumb cat
decided would make a nice place to make a puddle, despite the fact that there was
a fresh, clean litterbox not 25 feet away.
Grrrrrr! This isn’t the first
time it’s happened. Thus, I only let the
cats down there when I am down there,
and I try to watch them closely. They
obviously watch me every bit as
closely, and wait for that exact moment when my back is turned. I even put half a dozen mouse traps in that
area (hoping it wouldn’t be little Tabby that got caught) – but although the
traps got sprung a couple of times, the cat, whichever one it is (I’m nearly
certain it’s not Teensy) (“Of course not!
He’s a gentleman!” exclaimed
Victoria, upon hearing this story) brazenly repeated the crime. Aarrgghh.
A quilting friend was given an older, unwanted quilt – and
discovered upon getting it home that it smelled. She washed it, but it still smelled. She asked for advice.
Here’s a
recipe that almost always works:
1.
White
vinegar, no detergent, hot water
2.
Wash
again using Tide with Fabreze, hot water
3.
Dry
on hot
4.
If
there is any lingering odor, hanging outside in sunlight – sometimes for
several days running – may finish the job
This works
well on most odors. Repeating the above a couple of times on really
stubborn odors is sometimes necessary, but the first round works most of the
time.
One last
piece of advice: if there is any chance the smell could be urine of any
sort, don’t use ammonia, as urine actually breaks down into the same
components. It could very well make matters worse.
Some people have successfully removed odors by soaking their
quilts in baking soda, then rinsing, and drying them. That works well, too, unless the smell is
persistent. Then the vinegar/detergent/sunlight
routine is usually the best answer.
In the case
of an antique or vintage quilt, here is some good advice from the International
Quilt Study Center & Museum at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln:
Do you ever go to the store to buy a spool of thread – and
wind up like this?
A few days ago, we had the last of last-year’s peaches.
I thought there was one more package of them in the freezer, but when I pulled
it out, I came up with puréed pumpkin, instead. And Larry said
sorrowfully, “I haven’t had any pumpkin pie for a looong time.”
It sure was nice, having those peaches in the dead of
winter. Because I sliced and froze them right when they were perfectly
ripe, they tasted like fresh-picked peaches as soon as they thawed.
About 7:00 Thursday
morning, I discovered that one of the neighborhood stray tomcats had gotten in
through the pet door and sprayed somewhere. We blocked that pet door for
several weeks because of this problem, and that of course turned me into our
own cats’ valet, letting them in... out... in... out... in... out... When
they can’t go in and out freely, they want in and out frequently.
And since they can’t go out whenever they want, especially during the night, there
is twice the work keeping their litterboxes clean. We use good litter and
large boxes, so it’s not all that difficult; but I usually clean them out at
least once a day so they don’t offend my olfactory senses.
When neither
Larry nor I had seen hide nor hair of any stray cats for a few weeks, we unblocked
the pet door. Everything was fine for
three or four days. Thursday morning, it
was no longer fine.
It’s
practically impossible to find the precise location the beasts spray, as
sometimes tomcats just put a fine mist in the air, and not much actually lands
on any surface. But it sure permeates the air throughout the entire
area! It’s really, really horrid.
I grabbed the
Pet Odor Surface Cleaner and used it throughout the main floor (thankfully, I
keep doors shut to the upstairs, the basement, and our bedroom). Then I found the exact spot: a folded stack of Larry’s winter Carhartt
overalls, in the back hallway near the pet door. So into the washer went
the overalls, with lots of detergent and the water on hot. That helped immediately. I opened a bunch of windows, too. It was
chilly and windy – but the house had to be aired out.
Since I was
already going strong, I slung on a coat, headband, long socks, fleece leggings,
and shoes, and headed outside to work on the flowerbeds. It was only in
the mid 40s out there. I found the
wheelbarrow under the back deck, trundled around to the front, and started
extracting old growth from the gardens.
Let’s hope it doesn’t freeze now! – old growth provides protection.
Then I
noticed the garbage cans out front. It occurred to me that the garbage
truck would soon be coming, and there was a bunch of junk in the garage that Larry
never manages to get hauled out, as he’s always in a giant hurry to get to work
in the mornings. So I marched into the garage and got busy.
I hauled box
after box, old lamps, old space heaters, a huge old cassette player that used
to play 99 cassettes in a row, one after the other (pretty nifty, in its time,
and before lightning struck it – Larry kept thinking he’d fix it) (he thinks he’ll
have time to fix everything – therefore, he never wants to throw
anything out), an old stool, and a gazillion more boxes, big and little, out to
the lane.
By now it was
8:30 a.m., and the wind was picking up, and it wasn’t getting any warmer,
either. Suddenly I thought, Uh, oh. What if the garbage
collectors don’t come today, on account of Easter last weekend? Maybe
they’re running a day late, as they sometimes do after a holiday!
It would be a
fine thing if the neighbors found gazillions of boxes and their scattered
contents strewn all over their yards! I dashed into the house and called
the office of the trash collectors. The nice lady who answered checked
the schedule and assured me that the truck was on the way, but she’d give the
driver a call to let him know about the stuff awaiting him. Whew.
I went on
working in the gardens. It was about 9:30 when the garbage truck came
rumbling (in reverse) down the lane to our drive. I escaped into the
house; didn’t want to scare anyone with my cherry-red nose from the cold and my
wild hairdo that had escaped the headband. Once inside, I stood well back and
peeked out the window. (My Mama taught
me how to do that.)
The poor man
had a big job, gathering up all that stuff. He ran the compactor multiple
times. He tossed in several more boxes,
including a big one that was chockful of Styrofoam packing peanuts. He
hit the button to restart the compactor... the hydraulically-powered packer
blade began descending...
But that big
box wasn’t quite far enough inside. The blade hit it... began crushing
it...
POW!!!
The side of
the box blew out. Styrofoam peanuts by the millions shot out in a
torrential whirlwind about the size of a Volkswagen bus.
The garbage
man had already turned his back to the truck to gather up more boxes. But
he sure whipped around for a doubletake, when that blast of peanuts came
swirling madly around his head! I tell you, it was a regular blizzard,
and I don’t imagine he could see a thing for a few moments.
I watched to see if he was going to try picking those
peanuts up, because if he had’ve, I would’ve run out and told him he didn’t
need to do that; I could do it. But by the time he’d tossed the next
couple of boxes into the back of the truck, there weren’t very many Styrofoam
peanuts left in the vicinity at all, so he didn’t even attempt to gather up
any. The wind was
whipping through with gusts up to 25 mph, so the peanuts were blown far and
wide, dispersing throughout a nearby cornfield, blending in with the old
cornhusks and stalks. They’ll never be
noticed.
A couple of
days ago, I saw a Cabbage White butterfly, and yesterday I saw a bright yellow
Clouded Sulphur butterfly. Then
something went flashing past the window, and I thought, hummingbird! –
but I don’t really know; I didn’t get a good enough look at it. Later
that day, I heard the house wrens warbling away, so perhaps that’s what I
saw. But I brought the hummingbird feeder upstairs, and am giving serious
thought to filling it. 😉
By 10:00 a.m.,
all the front flowerbeds were cleared out, for the most part. I took
three heaping wheelbarrow loads down the hill to the back edge of our property,
came in the house (it was down to 54° in here!), and took a piping hot
bath. Ahhhhh...
I then tossed
the overalls into the dryer and started the next load of clothes. I dried
my hair... curled it... and went to the kitchen. I was starving! I decided on a sunny-side-up
egg on toast. Next order of business:
a trip to Hobby Lobby for batting. Let the quilting begin.
For supper
that night, we
had bagel dogs, green beans, applesauce, and cranberry juice, with apple pie à
la mode for dessert.
At 10:00 p.m.,
I rolled the
lavender-green quilt forward in preparation to starting the next row. I was
using a pantograph called ‘Folk Irises’. But the last load of clothes was ready to be
put into the dryer... the dry clothes needed to be folded and put away... and I
decided to quit quilting for the night. It was high time to sit in the
recliner and keep my heating pad company.
Victoria came
visiting Friday afternoon, sonogram printout in hand. We discussed the naming of babies in general,
and this baby in particular. I’d tell
you more, but... it’s a secret!
Speaking of
names... Caleb very sincerely informed several people when he was four that his
nickname was ‘Club’. That, because that’s how his six-month-old sister
said it.
The first
morning she said it, she was about five months old. I was dressing her...
Caleb came trotting in to see her, greeting her as usual, “Hi, Victoria!”
She, always delighted to see him, flung out a plump little arm, grinned, took a
deep breath, and exclaimed, “Cwub!!!”
Caleb backed
up, eyes wide, and then happily exclaimed, “Oh, Mama, she knows me now!”
😆
I picked up five little Jackson kiddos at school that
afternoon, and thereby comes this Thought for the Day:
You know a little boy loves you, when he gives you the rest
of his Nerds. 😃
That was Josiah. He’s a sweetie. Well, they all are, of course. 😊
I got about half the quilt quilted, and then Larry got home
from work. We ate supper, and planned to
take Jeremy his birthday gift. He’s 30 years old! Hard to believe; he certainly doesn’t look it. The lantern we were going to give him – LED,
with a dimmer switch, pretty nifty – was missing one of the springs in the
battery compartment, and Larry needed to fix it. He rummaged around in
the garage, found a spring (“See why you shouldn’t throw out all the ‘garbage’?”
he said, said he), put it into the lantern, and ... Voilá! It woiked, it
woiked, it woiked!
Friday was actually the day after his birthday. Larry
had gotten home late the night before... and then, would you believe, that
husband of mine decided to try out his pickup after working on it a bit, and drove
to Jeremy and Lydia’s house without telling me he was going?
But a big truck had arrived at Jeremy’s house with a load of
lumber for him, and he was helping unload it... so after a token grumble at my
husband (wives have to do that periodically, whether necessary or not, just to
keep them walking the line, à la Johnny Cash), I admitted quietly to myself
that Friday night would be better.
Lydia gave us slices of the German chocolate cake she’d
made; it’s Jeremy’s favorite kind of cake.
Home again, I went back to the quilting machine. You know,
quilting would go a whole lot faster if I’d stop embedding safety pins between
top and batting.
Okay.
Stitches removed, check. Pin extracted, check. Design reworked,
check. Ready to roll quilt forward, check. For’d, harch!
Silly thing
is, I don’t even use safety pins with my quilts. I really don’t know where
it came from. Maybe it was lying on the quilting frame, and stuck to the
batting as I was taking it from the package? No idea. I’m surprised it didn’t put a burr on the
needle, it hit it so hard. But the needle is still straight and sharp.
I timed a pantograph row: it takes 12 minutes for one
row, and I can do two rows before rolling the quilt forward. At 11:30
p.m., I was about to the halfway point. And I was running low on steam. A couple more rows, and I threw in the
towel. There were more rows left than I’d
thought. Or maybe the quilt was growing
as I quilted.
A few days ago, Larry broke another tooth completely
off. He has had trouble with his teeth since he was a teenager –
abscesses and root canals and broken teeth.
There’s nothing left on which to glue a crown. He needs a lot of work done to his teeth –
dentures, probably – and our insurance doesn’t pay for dental work.
Saturday, a friend sent me a video clip of a John Deere robotic Lawn
mower. I wrote back to tell her, “We
knew a guy who came up with a self-mowing lawn mower when robotics were still a
thing of the future: he tied a long rope to the handle of his push mower, the
other end to a tree, and let ’er go. When the mower eventually ran into the
tree, he’d untie it, take it to another tree, and repeat the process. I
might mention that his yard looked... uh, unique.”
That night, I finished Emma’s quilt. The little quilt went together quickly. It’s soft and cuddly, what with the chenille
and flannel inserted here and there. And it’ll be even more so, once it’s
washed.
I got a
little more done on the coffeepot cozy before bedtime.
Last night after church, we had a late supper: leftover chicken pot pie, mixed vegetables
with bowtie pasta, lychee fruit, chocolate-chip/peanut butter cookies, and a
Schwan’s ice cream cookie to top it off.
That was one cookie too many.
I have not yet found my moderation!
This was the first time we’d ever had lychees, and
we like them. These were canned; I’ll
betcha the fresh-picked fruit is totally scrumptious. I looked it up to see where that fruit was grown, and how,
and if it has been exported anywhere, and what it looks like. I learned that it comes from south China, but
has been exported to various southern areas of the States, such as Florida,
south Texas, and southern California. It
has a thick red prickly skin, and looks a little bit like a very large
strawberry. The fruit inside is shiny
white and juicy, and there is a big burgundy-colored seed in the middle (the
canned variety had been pitted). Some
people pronounce it ‘litchee’, though that’s actually the genus it comes from,
and the fruit is more accurately called ‘lychee’. Now I very badly want some fresh lychees!
I don’t recall seeing the fruit in any of the grocery
stores. When the children were little,
we would pick up some odd foods that we’d never tried before, just for the fun
of it. I remember the first time we
found starfruit in the produce section.
First, they were intriguing because they were shaped like stars. Second, they were scrumptious! The children were highly impressed.
Our Schwan lady’s truck broke down a couple of months ago,
and it fouled up her schedule. She made
plans to bring me my order in a few days, but we were going to be gone. She made plans for the following week – but the
company scrapped her plans and sent her elsewhere. I never got that order for at least six
weeks. She finally came last
Monday. I should’ve just driven to the
farm place north of Monroe where she’d broken down and picked up my stuff! We were scraping the bottom of the freezer by
the time she came.
Yeah, I could’ve gone to the grocery store... but
1)
it’s
way off in town,
2)
Schwan’s
is better food, and
3)
it’s
nice to have someone else carry bags and bags of heavy frozen stuff to my door.
We are having a wedding at our church next Sunday. The young couple isn’t related to us, though
the bride is a cousin of both Jeremy and Maria.
I wasn’t going to make anything, as I was
busy with all sorts of other things. And I do have a set of wooden
bowls, wooden spoons, and chop sticks I could give them, along with various
rice dinner packets and boxes.
But... I always
sew something for wedding gifts! (Don’t I?) I finished Emma’s quilt... and the coffeepot cozy
can wait... and the housecleaning is at a good ‘Pause’ point... and I have five
days! No
time to do anything too complicated, but...
I pulled up EQ7... and here’s what I came up with for a
table topper. The pattern is called Tangled Stars:
When I start playing around with EQ7, or looking in my
quilting books, or looking for patterns online, it reminds me of what my sister
once said in regard to her cookbooks.
She said that she has so many wonderful cookbooks – some with stories
about the recipe and the cook – that when she sits down with a handful of books
to find dinner recipes, she winds up reading the whole book, and then she
doesn’t have time to cook and has to order a pizza delivery for supper. hee
hee (She’s kidding... she hardly ever orders anything or goes out
to eat.)
Ow! I finally
got the last splinter from the rose bushes out of my hand. There’s a tall pile of refuse from a couple
more of my flower gardens out front. I
need to get the wheelbarrow and haul them down to the south side of the
property.
Right now, though, there are Alaska salmon steaks
and ciabatta rolls in the oven, asparagus spears in the microwave, and cottage
cheese, apple sauce, and black cherry frozen yogurt to go with it.
Loren came, bringing us a package of ‘Biscoff’ – ‘Europe’s
favorite cookie with coffee’, a jar of Planters’ sunflower kernels (shelled), and
a can of sliced mushrooms.
Larry got home... sat down to eat... and one of his
coworkers called. He’d hit a deer
northwest of Madison, and the big pickup he was driving was leaking antifreeze
and water. Larry scarfed down his food,
then went to get a truck with which he could tow the enclosed trailer home. They called for a tow truck to get the
pickup.
I just bought 24 large cones of 50# thread, 4,000
yards each, from someone who listed it on SewItsForSale – and got it for $26,
including postage. The lady doesn’t know
what brand it is, as it’s unmarked. She got
it at a clothes-making store that was going out of business. It’s a good deal, no matter what type of thread it is.
Here’s a close-up of the quilting on Emma’s quilt:
And now it’s ten ’til eleven, and Larry is just
pulling back into the drive.
I should wash the dishes. Really, I should! But I’m sleeeepy.
As a friend of mine wrote this afternoon, “I’m off
like a herd of turtles!”
P.S.: If
Teensy disappears lickety-split under the cedar tree for several long minutes,
and then emerges calmly and sits down to daintily clean his whiskers and paws,
what do you think just transpired?
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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