February Photos

Monday, May 8, 2017

Journal: Kats, Kids, and Ribbon Embroidery

Here’s Tabby, looking a lot like he fell asleep in mid-stretch.  Excusable, when you’re 19 ½ years old, which is equivalent to over 92 human years.  Hannah once said his fur looks like unraveled yarn.  hee hee  His fur is soft and silky.  He never used to get mats, but as he’s gotten older, he does get a few now and then.  I wait until they’re not too close to his skin, and then clip them off.
Last week, a friend was out of electricity for several hours.  She pulled out her treadle and sewed away. 
My treadle sewing machines would work – the lady who gave me one of them showed me it worked.  The other one would work if it had a belt.  But I’ve never tried to use either of them.
On those rare occasions when our electricity goes off, I sometimes grab my camera and hunt down something to take pictures of.  I can charge batteries in the Jeep.  If it’s bright enough, I cut fabric.  The battery on my laptop is usually at full charge, so I could write in my journal, edit photos, design a quilt in EQ7... and if Verizon is up, I can still be online, too.
I should learn to use the treadle.  I’m looking forward to having those treadles in my new sewing room on display.  If they’re right there in my sewing room, I’ll be more likely to give them a try.  On the other hand... Larry has a generator... 😉
By last Monday night, Tabby was getting a little better.  He smelled our clam chowder, and came to stand up against Larry’s leg and pat his kneecap.  Larry, of course, gave him tidbits and then let him lick out the bowl when he was done.
On one of the online quilting groups, we were discussing our ancestry.  I send a post each Monday night called ‘The Winding Thread’, and anyone can join in the discussion.  Last Monday I asked, “Where are your ancestors from, where did they originally settle if they came to the States, and how long ago?  Did any of your family travel west via covered wagons?  How many of our members live across the Pond (whether East Pond or West Pond), I wonder?”
I’ve been fascinated with History and Social Studies since I was in early Elementary School.  I used to wish I had lived in the middle 1800s, when life was fun and exciting.  I eventually got a little wiser and realized I should be thankful I hadn’t lived then, but live in much safer times, with many conveniences the pioneers would never have dreamed of.
My ancestors are Scotch, Irish, English, and German – and when one of my uncles did a thorough genealogy, he discovered that his 12th-great-grandmother (making her my 13th-great-grandmother) was Pocahontas.  She married John Rolfe, my 13th-great-grandfather, April 5, 1614.  Their only child, Thomas Rolfe, my 12th-great-grandfather, was a plantation owner with his wife Jane Poythress in Virginia in the mid-1600s.  (There is another Thomas Rolfe who married an Elizabeth Washington and lived in London during that same time frame – some mistakenly claim descent from Pocahontas through him.)
My uncle carefully listed all the family names, places where they lived and died, all the way to the present generation.  We have numerous copies of handwritten censuses – though some data from the very late 1800s is missing because of a fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. in 1921.  I said all that to say that I guess we really are descendants of Pocahontas; it’s not a mistaken claim, heh.
The (dominating) nationality that my father’s family has always been the proudest of is Irish. 
Larry’s great-great-grandmother on his father’s side was a Sioux who married a French Canadian.  There’s English on that side of the family, too... don’t remember what else.  His mother’s ancestors came from Sweden, England, Germany... 
A group of my ancestors came west from Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois in the early 1800s, traveling in wagon trains.  Some of them tried to winter east of Omaha, but they were unaccustomed to and unprepared for the severe blizzards and cold of the Plains.  Many died.  There is a very old cemetery near the Missouri River, Winter Quarters Pioneer Cemetery, where some are buried.  The survivors continued on west in the spring, on their way to Utah.
It snowed Tuesday morning; but it didn’t stick.  By noon it was 59°, bright and pretty.  The birds were singing like anything.  It’s so funny to listen to a close combination of a robin warbling, with an oriole throwing in a few melodious phrases now and then, whilst a grackle grackles his head off in inharmonious exuberance, and a turtledove coos away.  Above all that, the finches twitter and twee.  So we’ve got a couple of sopranos, a nice soft alto, several high tenors, and J. D. Sumner at his best, a-shoutin’ out the bass.
A quilting friend wrote that afternoon, “My grandmother used to tell a story of a relative who was an outlaw and went down with guns a-blazing!”
Funny.  Well, funny about the grandmother telling the story...  I suppose the incident itself wasn’t too so very awfully funny! 
We’ve been told (though nobody is positive it’s true) that my father’s ancestors changed the spelling of their name back in the late 1700s because someone had a Big Bad Fight over a Cajun queen in New Orleans ----- oops, sorry, that was Jimmy Dean’s Big, Bad John.  Well, there was a fight, anyway, and our great-great-great-somebody-or-other won (which means the other guy lost, permanently) ..........  and great-great-great-whozit fled from Kokomo, Indiana, to southern Illinois, and changed the spelling of his name – though not the pronunciation.  Those Irish Swineys/Sweenys/Sweeneys/ McSweenys/etc. were proud of the name, tempers and fights included!
Many years ago, an ex-wife of one of my uncles announced that she was dusting herself off from those “Cussin’, fightin’ Swineys!” --- and my brother, always (and still) quick of wit, remarked, “Well, that’s rude!  We don’t cuss!”
(Think about it.)
Another lady wrote to say, “My mum’s family was from Yorkshire and there is a castle there that is connected to her ancestors.  She and my dad finally had an opportunity to go and visit it once and she took numerous photos.  This was back before the time of digital cameras and phones and such.  When she got back to Canada, she discovered that the camera had malfunctioned and she had no pictures at all.  Fortunately, they were able to get in touch with someone over in Yorkshire who volunteered to get some more shots for her and send them to her.”
That can happen with digital cameras, too, if you’re so wrapped up in the moment that you don’t bother to take a peek at your screen (I like to use the viewfinder when shooting pictures, rather than the screen).
We were in Yellowstone National Park in 2012, and we went to see Old Faithful Geyser.  It wasn’t expected to erupt for an hour or more, so we went into the beautiful old Inn and wandered around all over the place.  I, wanting natural lighting in that huge and rather dark log building, adjusted my shutter slower and opened up the aperture in order to draw in more light.  I checked the screen, got everything set just right, and took many good shots.
Then we went outside to watch Old Faithful.
You know exactly what happened, don’t you?
Yep, I forgot to reset my camera.  And it was a very bright day.  I took shot after shot of the geyser blowing high... people all around on the boardwalks... rainbows in the mist... ravens circling on the thermal spirals -------------- and every last shot was a total whiteout.
Aaarrrrggggghhhhh!
Fortunately, we had more days at the Park, and a day or two later we stopped again at about the same time of day.  I did my best to re-create all the original shots, plus a whole lot more besides, to make myself feel better.  This time, they all turned out fine.
Done larnt me a thang or two, that day!  I haven’t been so feebleminded about camera settings since.  (It’ll probably happen again tomorrow, since I said that.)
We took the older children there in 1993, a couple of months before Caleb was born. 
Hester was four years old.  We were sitting on a bench waiting for Old Faithful to erupt, hundreds of people all around.  Everyone was chattering away—and then, with a rumble, a tall, thin stream of water shot out.  Silence, while everyone stared expectantly at the geyser.
And then, into this quietness, came Hester’s high, piping voice:  “It’s about to sprout!!!”
It seemed like the entire crowd burst out laughing.
By midafternoon Tuesday, one load of clothes was put away... another was hanging on the line... and a third was in the washing machine.  There were two more loads to go.  The houseplants were watered... Tabby had been coaxed (and re-coaxed) into eating... the bathroom was scrubbed... bills paid... groceries and necessities ordered online... 
I called my brother for our usual afternoon chat.  He’s been busy.  He finally gave up trying to save the cherry tree that the wind blew down last year.  He’d pulled it up and staked it, and it seemed to recover.  It flowered this spring... put out leaves – and then a windstorm blew it partway down again.  He restaked it.  It seemed all right.  But yet another bad windstorm blew it down the opposite direction.  When he tried pulling it back up, he could tell the roots had been snapped off, so he gave up the effort and sawed it into logs.  They’ll be dry enough to burn by wintertime, and cherrywood burns long and hot.
It’s no fun living by troublesome neighbors.  I’ve probably said this before... but I’m happy to repeat it, and I’m happy to say that the neighbors who threw such fits every time Larry tried to work on lawn, house, garage, or car have moved, and been replaced by friendly, normal souls.  Normal is nice! 
We live out in the country... our houses are some distance apart... and even in town, ‘quiet time’ doesn’t start until 10:00 p.m.  Larry works 65+ hours a week.  When he comes home, he tries to get a little done around the place while the sun is still shining.  It’s disconcerting to suddenly find the neighbor lady(?) directly in your line of travel (whether via lawn tractor, four-wheeler with snowplow, or scissor lift), shrieking like a banshee to “TURN THAT THING OFF!!!!  TURN THAT THING OFF!!!!”
We didn’t complain about their various noise and racket – including heavy metal in their open garage, loud enough to vibrate the pictures on our walls. 
Sometimes they acted fine – other times, ... whew.  The woman would scream at Larry when I wasn’t around, but finally one day I was hanging clothes on the line and heard her.  It was early evening, and he was rototilling the front yard in anticipation of planting new grass after we’d removed all the Austrian pines that the pine sawyer beetles had destroyed.
I rushed around the corner of the fence and there she was, about 10 feet away, mouth open wide, screaming ’til the veins showed on her temples and the tendons stood out on her neck.  I said (loudly, so she might stand a chance of hearing me over her own cacophony), “AW, CUT IT OUT!” 
She nearly jumped out of her hide. 
I added, “You’re really awful.” 
She pointed at Larry, who was on the far side of the lawn by now, said something jumbled and incomprehensible, so I repeated myself:  “You are awful.
She took a menacingly step toward me.  So I grinned and took a step toward her, and put one hand on my hip.  (I’m Irish, remember?)
She was bigger than me by, oh, maybe 25%.  But for some reason, this seemed to frighten her.  She turned and headed somewhat rapidly back toward her open garage, listing slightly to the left – and nearly ran into the back of her own SUV. 
“You’re filthy, filthy people!” she screeched back over her shoulder as she went.
I considered retorting, “Oh, no, ma’am; we take baths every day!” but she was going, so I let her go.
Now, I’m pretty naïve about some things, and specific possibilities don’t occur to me until the evidence nearly smacks me in the face.  I went in the house and looked up ‘recreational drugs’ (hope nobody finds that laptop search and uses it for evidence against me) (yes, I know how to delete search histories; y’all don’t need to write and explain it to me) – and I discovered that some drugs do indeed make the sense of hearing ultra-sensitive.  I looked at all the symptoms and thought, Well, that fits.
Whatever the case, I’m certainly glad we don’t have to contend with it anymore.  Larry talked with the new neighbor man, told him what he still needs to do on garage and house, and the man was friendly and encouraging.  This gives Larry incentive – and he’s been getting some long overdue work done on our property.  Now, if he’d just finish my sewing room, and quit starting other things before he finishes the previous project!  😏  Sewing rooms are important!
Here’s another photo from last week’s wedding reception.  I told Josiah that the canopy over the gift table was going to do double duty as a tent, and the bride and groom were going to stay in it on their honeymoon.
He always starts grinning when I tell him a bit of nonsense... but looks at me long and hard... then finally says, “Really, Grandma?” 
I laugh and tell him I’m teasing, and he says with a nod, “That’s what I thought.”
Wednesday, I finished some housework, put away a load of clothes, and then headed to my sewing room to work on the coffeepot cozy.  A little after noon, I was reading the news. 
Here, look at these two paragraphs from a story about a plane crash in Washington state:
“On its way down, the two-passenger plane clipped powerlines and hit a street light, which raptured a fuel cell.  Despite the ensuring fire, no one was seriously injured and the pilot and his passenger walked away from the crash, investigators said.”
And here’s a comment from a reader:  “Perhaps the fuel cell was very evangelical, and it ensured that this would indeed instigate a fire?”
Do news agencies even hire editors anymore??
A friend’s husband had to make a trip to Australia last week.  He got to the airport... handed over ticket and passport... and the agent at the desk informed him that there was no record of him ever coming back from his last trip to Australia in 2003. 
So then... the person standing there in front of the airport personnel was a figment of their imaginations, right?  (Or, as one of our boys said when he was little, a ‘fig Newton’ of his imagination.)  (They eventually got the passport record resolved.)
Wow, that flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne is almost 16 hours nonstop.  That made me curious... so I looked up some information on travel to Australia:
It takes 29-34 days to go by ship ------- oh, here we go, Crystal Cruises will get you there in 19 days. 
Or you can take the Grand Voyage by Seabourn:  76 days.  That’ll take you from Los Angeles to Australia and all the way back to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  Here’s what it says on www.traveltips.usatoday.com:
This epic, 76-day voyage presented by Seabourn takes you from Los Angeles, across the Pacific to French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, around New Zealand and Australia, then back to California via New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, American Samoa, Kiribati and the Hawaiian Islands.  From Los Angeles, the ship continues southward to Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama.  It traverses the Panama Canal, visits Colombia and crosses the Caribbean to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where the long journey ends.  Four Australian cities – Burnie on the coast of Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – are featured on the itinerary among more than 30 ports of call.  Some notable destinations include the lush, volcanic island of Nuku Hiva, one of the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia; Rarotonga in the Cook Islands with its pristine lagoons and picture-perfect beaches; remote and tiny Fanning Island, part of the island nation of Kiribati; and Puerto Caldera, a port surrounded by dense rain forest in Costa Rica.
Ooookay.  I won’t be doing that any time soon.
This crazy-quilting was taking quite a lot of time – in part, because I didn’t sew pieces onto the shaped foundation sections before sewing the sort-of hourglass-shaped sections together.  It would’ve been easier, had I done that – but I wanted a Grandmother’s Fan and half a Lemoyne Star to cover more than one section.  ((...pondering...))  Guess I could’ve just put them on top of everything, after sewing already-crazy-quilted sections together.  The thickness wouldn’t have mattered – other than the fact that it would’ve been harder to pull ribbon embroidery through all those layers.
I seem to have a penchant for painting myself into corners, with my Big Ideas!  Some of the pieces are going to be origami forms by necessity, because of the shape of the coffeepot. 
It looked a little sloppy to me.  So, once it was all together, I started applying embroidery floss, silk ribbon embroidery, and beading.  I’ll keep at it until anything sloppy is all covered up.  (If the embroidery and beads look sloppy, I’m sunk.)
I found a pretty stitch on my machine:
One of these days, I’ll use that stitch with a variegated pastel embroidery thread.  Wouldn’t that be pretty?  More photos here
Larry came rushing in from work that evening, having barely enough time to take a bath and get ready for church.  But we skinned in with just a couple of minutes to spare.
Thursday, I filled the bird feeders... discovered I was out of suet for the suet feeder... and hunted down Tabby to feed him his soft food.  Last Sunday, I was afraid he wouldn’t live much longer; but he’s rallied, despite being so little and frail.  Many times a day, I coax him to eat a few more bites of food.  He purrs, and tries to oblige me.
Compare him to Tiger – I think Tabby probably weighs only about 5-6 pounds, while Tiger is close to 20 pounds.
Teensy is about 13-14 pounds – a good weight for his length and height.  We thought he was big, until Tiger came along!  Tiger is obese.  I’d try to limit his food... but I feel I need to leave dry food out for Teensy and Tabby.  I buy Iams for older cats, a special blend that is supposed to give them all their nutrients while not contributing to weight gain.  It consists of small pieces, so that Tabby at least gets some benefit from it, even though, because he’s lacking a number of teeth, he swallows it whole.  I give him soft food often, so it’s okay that the Iams is for weight control.  And Teensy doesn’t get fat on it.
But Tiger was too fat when someone dumped him over a year ago, and he has stayed too fat.  I thought at first that he was eating somewhere else, in addition to here at our house; but if he was, he isn’t anymore.  Since I’m not willing to be even more of a slave to the cats than I already am, measuring out and keeping track of each cat’s intake, I guess he’ll stay too fat, unless the other cats die before him!
Why would people overfeed a cat... and then dump him?  They’d obviously been mean to him, too.  He was limping at first, and was scared to death we were going to kick him.  Poor old thing.  He’s slightly gray around the muzzle; I’d guess him to be about 10 years old, perhaps.  He’s a gentle kitty, big as he is.  But when he decides to get all lovey-dovey around our ankles (usually when we’re trying to get ready for church and don’t want orange-furred ankles), he sure can slow us down and trip us up! 
Tabby was dumped, too, back when we lived in town.  He came to us when he was just a year old or so, according to the vet.  Maybe they say that about all cats of unknown age, so people will keep them?  He was very small, and his little ribs were squared off instead of curved nicely, because of malnutrition and malnourishment.  His front teeth had been kicked out – at least they were gone, and he was frightened out of his wits of men’s boots, never mind whether there were feet in them or not.  Larry was so kind to him, so careful with him, as were our boys, that he soon got over that, and took to running figure eights around our ankles and between our feet in his quest for love and attention, cutting us off at the pass, and in general endangering both himself and us – and the habit persists to this day.  We yelp and holler and try not to murder him (or kill ourselves), and he goes on purring and trotting (and stopping) directly in front of us. 
I fed him kitten chow for a good 6-8 months so as to give him more nutrients, and when we had him back at the veterinarian’s office in, oh, maybe a year or so, the doctor was quite surprised to find that his little ribs had come out of their malformation, and were curved as they should be.  He had expected the damage to be permanent. 
Yes, he’s tiny, and now rather frail; but when we pick him up, we can tell he’s been eating, because his little tummy is plump.
Uh, did someone ask about my cats?  You ought to see me go on and on (and on) when people ask about my kids and grandkids!  😲
I continued work on the coffeepot cozy Thursday.  This will probably be another of those gifts that makes the groom stare and frown at it and wonder, What on earth is this?! 
When I was young, I loved perching in trees, reading books, writing letters, and spying on unsuspecting passersby.  There was a big tree that grew a little distance from the walk-out door on my father’s big garage where he parked his camper and several cars.  That tree was supple and flexible, and it was glorious fun to get way up high in it and set the branches to swaying.  (I never gave a solitary thought to the possibility of a branch snapping and depositing me unceremoniously back down onto terra firma.)
I found a low-middle branch that, when put to rocking, would bend right down almost to the ground outside that door.
So one day, upon hearing my father shutting things down inside the garage, I got the branch to swaying hard ----- and just at that precise moment when he opened the walk-out door, I brought that branch down low, plopped out of the tree, and landed smack-dab in front of him.
Made my brave, fearless Daddy jump out of his hide, I did.
And he said just what he always said, in such circumstances:  “Why, ... Sarah Lynn!”
By bedtime, I had some beading and ruching done, and was adding more fabric, more lace... more this, more that...  until all the rest of the foundation area of the coffeepot cozy was covered with various bits of fabric, and some of the seams covered with fancy stitches.  That took long enough.  It’s tricky, as the cozy is oddly shaped in order to fit the pot. 
More photos here.
Friday morning, as usual, I got up, made the bed, took a bath, washed my hair, made some coffee, headed back to the bathroom to blow-dry and curl my hair, and then ----------
Aarrgghh, there was a wasp in the bathroom!
I hate wasps worse than I hate snakes.  Snakes don’t fly and divebomb my head!
“Bring flyswatters!  Bring bazookas!  Bring grenades!  Bring surface-to-air missiles!” I wrote Larry.
He laughed.  He laughed!
I turned off the bathroom lights and opened the window, then swung madly at the wasp with a flyswatter (he was too high above my head for me to make contact).  He decided it was safer outside and made his exit, looking back at me over his shoulder with a threatening look.  I’ll get you later, little girl.
I took a final swing at him, snarling.  He kicked in the afterburner, and away he went.
I curled my hair, ate breakfast, and got back to work on the coffeepot cozy.  I added more fancy stitches, more beads, and did some ribbon embroidery.  I cut the slit for the spout, sewed the last curved seam together, and then cut the cozy right in half where the handle will be.  There will be loops and buttons to hold it together.  That last cut was scary, as there would be no easy recovering if I got it wrong.  And there were already a lot of hours in that thing.
Tape measure... check.  Pins... check...  Scissors... check.  Hair up on end... check.  Reactors Online.  Sensors Online.  Weapons Online.  All Systems Nominal.
And... here... we... goooooooooooooooooo...
Did I get it in the right place?  I measured.  I wrapped it around the coffeepot.
Yes!!!  It was in the right place!  It was perfect.  Now for the ribbon embroidery.  First, though, I cleared off my worktable and put away all the fabric and laces I’d finished using.
I took a little break to order some things from Wal-Mart, including a couple of cans of Raid, in case the wasp’s brothers, cousins, and friends come visiting.
I’d been getting shipments from Wal-Mart for the past three days.  That morning, FedEx delivered a tall double shepherd’s hook, and now the beautiful wind chimes that Lura Kay gave me are hanging on one hook.  I have a wind spinner that she gave me to hang on the other side, but I need a chain or wire for it.  Larry will doubtless come up with something. 
Scroll down to the bottom of this post and you’ll see the chimes, with a description of their design and designer, and a little video clip of them playing:  Wind Chimes
I had to get a new shepherd’s hook, because the one that used to be out there belonged to Victoria.  She has it in her yard now, with baskets of flowers hanging from it.
That afternoon the UPS man brought four big boxes down the drive and then along the walk to the porch on a hand trolley.  He began setting them on the porch.  I pulled a couple into the house... then, seeing that the bottom box was heavy enough that even he, a strong young man, struggled with it, I asked if he would please set it inside for me.
He hesitated.  I tried to look as charming and helpless as possible. 
“We aren’t supposed to go into people’s houses,” he told me.
I held the door open and grinned at him.  “How about if you just sliiiiide it right in there, without setting foot inside, and I’ll never tell?” 
He smiled.  (Did you ever notice it’s really hard to keep from smiling at people when they’re beaming at you?) 
“I’d really appreciate it!” I added, for good measure.
And so he did it.  I thanked him, he wished me a good day, and I happily went to opening boxes and putting things away.
I once went shopping in Omaha with a friend when we were teenagers.  Everywhere we went, people were friendly to me, and ignored her.  Finally she was all put out, miffed, and in a snit over it. 
“You just wait!” she told me peevishly.  “Someday you’ll be old and not so cute, and everyone will ignore you, too!”
I laughed at her.  She was tall and slim, nicely dressed, and had long, wavy blond hair and blue eyes. 
“That’s not it at all!” I said.  “You just don’t get it, that it makes all the difference in the world how you treat people!  If you are friendly and nice to others, they will be friendly and nice to you.”
She was not friendly to people she didn’t know – and sometimes not even to those she did know.
Well, now I’m old and not so cute, and have Blepharospasm troubling my eyes.  But I still try to be friendly and nice --- and guess what?  People are even nicer to me now than they were when I was a teenager.  Even teenagers are polite, and often hold doors for me.  How ’bout that.  (They do call me ‘ma’am’ now, though.)  😉
Speaking of shopping in Omaha...  I’ve loved Orange Juliuses ever since my friends and I used to get them at West Roads Mall back in the late 70s, when we were in our teens.  Well, now you can make them yourselves:  How to Make an Orange Julius
I went back to the coffeepot cozy.  You’ll recall I was making it for my great-nephew and his bride-to-be, who are getting married June 11th?
But...  May 17th is my sister Lura Kay’s 76th birthday.  She is 20 years older than me.
Facts:
1.         I don’t have anything for her birthday yet.
2.         I like to give her things I’ve made.
3.         The more I get done on this coffeepot cozy, the better I like it.
4.         My great-nephew’s wedding (he’s my sister’s grandson) is not for another month.
5.         My sister likes coffeepots and teapots.
6.         My sister likes handmade pretties.
7.         I have the pattern templates I made for this coffeepot; I can reuse them.
8.         I know where to buy another coffeepot just like this one.

I asked all the ladies on my favorite quilting groups who they would give the cozy to.  It was unanimous:  they would give it to their sister.
Sooo... the sister it is!

I should mention that the mother of the bride-to-be is the one who made that adorable Noah’s Ark quilt that I did the quilting on just before Christmas.  So Josie would appreciate the coffeepot cozy.  So I’ll make another, less elaborate, one for Josie and Matthew, my great-nephew. 
Here’s a funny:  One evening when Matthew and Josie were first dating, and everyone knew an engagement was in the not-too-distant future, the family was in Josie’s living room visiting and having a good time.  Matthew’s sister Danica, who’s a little younger than Victoria, found Josie’s little sister Julianna in the kitchen all by herself, looking like the world had ended.
“Oh, what’s the matter??” asked Danica, all concerned.
Julianna, who was about 7 or 8, shook her head, scowled, and said in quite a disapproving tone, “Josie is waaay too young for all this.”  😆
After working on the cozy until evening, I took a break to drink some V8 cocktail juice and play the piano.  Larry was finally off work, AND! – he was bringing home Mexican food from Amigos!  😋
It was a beautiful evening, so we ate our supper on the back deck.  No wind, no mosquitoes... how often does that ever happen, both at the same time, in Nebraska?!  It got a little chilly after the sun went down, so I made a big pot of Folgers Hazelnut coffee.
I think what Larry got us were Southwest Chicken Salad Wraps.  Whatever they were, they were scrumptious.  It was more than enough ------ but Larry must’ve been starved, because he also got each of us a large carton of The Works Nachos.
Now, The Works Nachos have always been one of my favorite things to get from Amigos.  Imagine my disappointment (discounting the problem of already being full) when I took a bite and discovered --- they’d changed the corn chips!  The kind they used to have were crunchy and yummy, a lot like the Tostitos brand.  These were soggy and bitter, like the cheap store brand we once got by accident, giving the whole meal a bad flavor.  Bleah! 
I didn’t want them anyway; I was already full.  I saved them for the next day.
Is there anybody out there who thinks yucky nachos improve on Day Two?  No?  Didn’t think so.  And you’d be right.  So the next day I ate a few bites and gave the rest to Larry.
I’m generous like that.
Larry went for a 22-mile bike ride Friday night... came home... stood his road bike up next to his motorcycle, and backed up to take a picture of them together.  Wanting an artistic shot, he backed up a little more to get into the exact right position.  A little more... a little more...
---- and then he tripped over some of his own Important Stuff and Things in those riding shoes with the odd, uh, ... things underneath that clip onto his pedals, and down he went onto his karumpasetter (as Hester called it, when she was about three years old).
He recovered without harm, fortunately.  He uses Map My Ride on his smartphone to record his bike rides.  He averaged 16.8 mph – but coming down a couple of hills, he got up to 32 mph, and maintained that speed for several minutes.  He’s doing good!
Saturday morning, I heard a baby bird twittering at the bird feeder, and rushed for my camera and big lens.  It was a baby house finch, looking bedraggled and working hard to pry open a sunflower seed.  The Papa finch is on the other side of the feeder.
There were various other birds flitting about, including the English sparrow in the first part of this letter.
After shooting some pictures, I returned to the sewing room and began adding silk ribbon flowers to the cozy. 
And then the ladies on the quilting group began sharing stories of their kids and all their various calamities.  I offered a few of my own tales to the mix:
When Victoria was not quite one year old, I thought as I tucked her into bed one night, We need to lower the mattress in her crib. 
We should’ve done it right then.
The next morning when I opened her door, she was standing at the crib rail.  She grinned when she saw me, held out her arms --- and tumbled right out of the crib onto the floor, head first.  Her head bent back so far, it scared me half to death, thinking she’d doubtless broken her neck.  But she popped up, looking dazed, and said cheerily, “Oops!” 
It took my heart some time to get back in rhythm.
And then there was Hester, who at age three learned to do a somersault while her little sister Lydia, age one, was taking a nap.  Then Lydia awoke, and Hester, all excited to show off her new skill, exclaimed, “Watch, Liddle-luh (we called Lydia “Little Liddle-luh for a while, just because that’s how Hester said it), I can do a thunder-salt!”
And with that, she pitched herself headfirst at the floor, without bothering to put her hands down onto the floor first.  It was a thundersalt, just like she’d said!
Once again, my heart stopped, and I feared for her neck.  I sat Lydia down as fast as I could and rushed toward Hester. 
But she sat up, looking stunned, and then informed her little sister, “That wasn’t quite right.”
“One more story, and I’ll quit,” I told the quilting ladies.  “Maybe.”
One time the older six children were outside making snow angels.  Lydia, age 2, was peering out the window.  She turned and looked at me, eyebrows up, a quizzical expression on her face. 
“What they doin’?” she asked.
“They’re making snow angels,” I told her.  “Look at the snow after they get up… doesn’t it look like an angel?”
She stared doubtfully.  They sometimes floundered so as they were getting up, one couldn’t really tell much of anything about the print left behind; it looked sort of like a small buffalo had wallowed there.
After a few minutes of watching, Lydia giggled and went dashing off down the hallway.  Then, suddenly and entirely without warning, she threw herself over backwards with a loud ka-THUMP, flapped and kicked vigorously, and got back up again, staggering a bit from her exertions. 
“Now I’m an angel!” she proclaimed.
“Remind me to tell you about Lydia and the dump truck and the road grader one of these days,” I ended my email.
A few hours later, one lady wrote, “Oh, do tell us right now!”
So I ran a search and found the story in an old journal:
Once upon a time when Lydia was three years old, she was playing with the boys’ big Tonka trucks and equipment.  Here she came, pell-mell down the hall, pushing the dump truck, hands clasping both sides of the front of the box, running lickety-split.  Her head was down, and she wasn’t looking where she was going—and the huge Tonka road grader was dead ahead.
I yelled, “LYDIA!!! STOP!!!”  — but the clackety-clacking of the dump truck tires on the floor were making way too much noise for her to ever hear me.
CRRRRRRRRASSSSSHHHH!!!!!
She smashed into the road grader, which held its ground.  The dump truck tipped forward, and Lydia flew head over heels over both truck and grader and landed flat on her back on the other side.
Before I could get to her and discover whether or not she was mortally wounded, she scrambled rapidly to her feet, leaned down, and peered into the cab of the truck. 
“Just what I thought,” she muttered in disgust, shaking her head, “It was a lady driver.”
I returned to the ribbon embroidery.  And then several people, having seen pictures I’d posted, asked me, “Where do I get beads?”
Amazon has beads by the gazillions.  But late one night I was in a pinch, and the only place open in this burg was Wal-Mart.  I called customer service, inquired into whether they had beads for beadwork, and was told they did.
So off I went to Wal-Mart, snap-sizzle.  I rushed in, trotted back to where I thought the beads might be located, and glanced around fruitlessly.  I found a man working in housewares and asked him where the beads were, describing them, even showing him with thumb and index finger how tiny the things are.
The man smiled politely (women are dumb, when it comes to estimating sizes, don’t you know), pointed, gave me precise directions.  I followed them – and wound up in the toy department, looking at fat Fisher Price snap-together plastic beads for babies.
I looked for myself.  Uh, that is, I looked on my own.  (I already knew where I was.)  English, tsk.
Lo and behold, in the crafting/sewing department, squarely between wedding supplies and scrapbooking and directly across from baby yarn, were ----------- high-quality glass beads!  Furthermore, they had all sizes of metallic beads, including tube beads, which were exactly what I needed.
I’d have never guessed I could’ve gotten those things at Wal-Mart.  The price was comparable to pricing of beads at Hobby Lobby or the stores on Amazon.
That afternoon, Victoria came.  You will recall she didn’t want anything else that she’d left behind, won’t you?  Won’t you??
Well, guess what.
You guessed, didn’t you?  Didn’t you?!
Yep, she came to get her pink exercise mat.
I gave that thing to the Goodwill looong ago, when she said she had everything out of the downstairs bathroom that she wanted.  She was sad; she’d paid over $30 for it.  Aarrgghh.  I really, really don’t want to give away things the kids want!  The kids are careful with their money ... they don’t just run out and replace things, if they lose them.  At least I’d found a little battery-run dermabrasion thingamajig that she was glad to have back.
After she petted all three cats and departed, I found a purple mat for her on eBay.  It was only $7.58, and shipping was free.  It comes from Malaysia, so it’ll take a couple of weeks to get here.  But at least it wasn’t $30. 
Victoria took her nifty little blender, too, that she used to make smoothies.  She likes vegetable smoothies, in particular.  Thankfully, I knew better than to give that away.
I set to work trying to make a fold-and-twist ribbon rose, watching a tutorial on youtube.  The lady doing it has skilled fingers, and her little rose center is beautiful.
In my clumsy fingers, the narrow, slippery, fine silk ribbon slips and slides as I wad, tangle, wad, tangle, and wad some more.  Before long, I couldn’t even tell which side was supposed to be the top of my little wadded mess.
Here’s the tutorial on youtube, in case anyone is interested: 
These are the roses I wound up with:
Sunday afternoon when we got home from church, Larry made his scrumptious pancakes, and we had eggs, sunny-side-up, with them.  I put blueberry syrup on my pancake.
It was 86°, and we had the air conditioner and the ceiling fan on.
Late last night, we heard a strange noise – sort of like a turkey getting stepped on at the same time one of those vintage child’s soft plastic tooting trains is getting the daylights squeezed out of it, while in the background an aardvark is getting strangled.  Not that I’ve ever heard an aardvark getting strangled.  But I have a good imagination.  The first time I heard that noise, not long after we moved out here, I hadn’t the foggiest notion what it could ever be.  I thought possibly it was a woman screaming, but when I scurried outside and listened, I could tell it was not a human.  But what?  A bird?  A pterodactyl?  A four-footed furry thing?  Baby Sasquatch?
I typed a description of the noise into Google – and almost every single entry suggested ‘fox’.  I clicked on an audio clip of a fox calling – and was immediately listening to the identical sound we were hearing in the nearby wooded area.
Last night’s fox was calling/screaming/barking in the woods northeast of our house, across the lane.  What a noise it was!  It made Teensy growl.  Listen to it here:  Fox Call
My nephew Kelvin, who has colon cancer, was able to make it to both church services yesterday.  But tomorrow he will get his 4th chemo treatment, and it always makes him sick and exhausted for several days thereafter.  He barely starts feeling better before it’s time for the next treatment.  He gets them every two weeks.  After the 6th treatment, they will run tests to determine if the cancer has shrunk so that they can do surgery.

Time to get back to the coffeepot cozy!  A little more beading to do... maybe some silk ribbon bluebells and a small daisy... and then I’ll draw a pattern for a partial spout cover, cut it, sew it together, and attach it to the rest of the cozy.  Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to line it.  I’ll put thermal Insul-Bright in it, along with a layer of cotton batting, to keep the coffee or tea hot.

Now I’m really, really looking forward to giving it to my sister.


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



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