One more week until Christmas! I
still have quite a few gifts to buy, and nary a solitary item – except for the
gift I mailed to little Trevor today – has been wrapped or bagged.
I remember what grand fun it was, the first
time I chose and purchased gifts for my
parents. I thought I bought them with my very own money, because Mama gave me the money, and once she gave it
to me, it was mine, right? Thus, I bought them gifts with my very own money. I still recall my glee as I put them
under our Christmas tree.
I remember thinking, That verse sure
is true, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive,’ because this is so much fun!
In order to get my mother’s Christmas present,
she drove me uptown to Schweser’s... and then let me go in the store all
by myself while she waited in the car. I was soooooo thrilled,
and felt soooo grown up. The ladies in the store knew me, and a couple
came hurrying to help me. I told them how much money I had, for whom I
needed a gift, and they set about helping me find something to my liking.
I wound up getting Mama an aurora borealis
necklace – that is, the beads were of crystal, and cut with many facets, so
they shimmered and glimmered all sorts of colors in the light. I loved that necklace. I could
hardly wait ’til Christmas, so I could give it to my mother. The ladies
at Schweser’s wrapped the gift for me... I trotted back out to the car... gave
Mama back the change... and sat in silent, secretive rapture all the way
home. I suppose I was five or six; I know I was in school, and well able
to count out the money when I paid for the necklace, and to be sure I got the
correct change.
And since I know
good and well someone is going to ask what I got for my father, well, I can’t remember. Absolutely no idea. Whatever it was, it must’ve seemed
unremarkable to me. Maybe that was the
year I got him a package of monogrammed handkerchiefs? Schweser’s did sell those, after all.
But it was that crystal necklace that really delighted me, mostly
because it was a gift for my mother,
and partly because of the name, ‘aurora borealis’, and the dispersion and
refraction of colors and light. I knew
what that phenomenon was, and had seen beautiful pictures, and found them sooo
intriguing.
In my pictures from
southern Colorado is a well-drilling rig.
I labeled it ‘fire truck’.
A friend who lives
in Colorado kindly mentioned what that truck appeared to be. I found the picture, showed it to Larry ...
and he laughed. “A fire truck! 😆
It’s definitely
a well-drilling rig.”
I relabeled my
picture. I wonder how many other people are laughing at me? 😅
Larry takes any
possible opportunity to tease me. “What, did you think that apparatus on
top of the truck was a ladder? It was a hook-and-ladder truck? In
order to fight fires in all those skyscrapers?”
(There’s scarcely a
building around for a couple hundred miles – and any building in the far radius
is barely one story high.) haha
My great-niece Jamie,
who graduated with Victoria, has a little girl who just had her first
birthday. Jamie often tickled my
funnybone when she was little, and she still does. She posts pictures and videos of her little
girl and her big Black Lab dog on Instagram... and it’s so funny to watch
Mckenna giving the dog some of her own crackers and whatnot, and the dog – a
big puppy, really – standing there patiently waiting, and then taking it
carefully from baby’s hand with tongue and lips but no teeth. Jamie recently posted a couple of pictures
with the caption, “Just when I think I’m getting ahead with the house cleaning”
– and there was Mckenna, cute as a button in a little pink top with a frilly
tutu of a pink skirt and matching tights, sitting smack in the middle of what
looked to be nearly every single book that used to be in the bookcase. In the first picture, baby had her back to the
camera, and she has this perfect little round head with mostly peach fuzz on
it, and you could tell she was totally intent on her business. Next shot, she’s turning around looking at
her Mama who has the camera, and she has a sheepish little half-smile on her
face as if to say, Ooops, something
happened here, I think, but whatever it was, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my
fault, and you aren’t mad at me, are you?
I worked on my
customer’s quilt from Tuesday through Friday, adding another 40 hours to the
total, which is now up to 113 hours.
Yeah, the quilting is a little intense for the price I charged. Why
don’t I ever know these things ahead of time??
I got about 3 ½
more rows completed, bringing me allllmost to the halfway point. Pictures throughout this letter. More here. Keep clicking ‘Newer Post’ at the bottom to
see each day’s photos.
After quitting for
the night Tuesday, I sat down in my recliner long enough to soothe my back with
the heating pad and to post pictures of the quilt and of a squirrel and downy woodpecker that had been frequenting the bird feeders on the back deck. And then I toddled off to the feathers.
It was
50° here Wednesday, a would’ve been quite nice, had the wind not been whistling
through at about 40 mph.
A couple of friends have recently asked me if
I actually enjoy all the work of custom quilting.
I do like
doing custom quilting ... but I’m feeling pressured, because I have so much of
my own stuff to do, and I’m running out of time.
Then there is the fact
that my machine doesn’t have as good of a stitch regulator as the newer ones,
so my stitches aren’t as perfect as I’d like – and my customer is paying me
quite a bit, so I fret about that.
Sometimes I think
about quilts I did for people when I wasn’t as good at quilting... and I cringe
a bit. I remember one in particular when I didn’t know my bobbin race
(the entire thing the case sits in) was badly worn, and it caused me all kinds
of troubles with skipped stitches. I thought it was bad thread... or bad
tension... or bad needles... and I kept trying and trying and trying. I
took out many, many stitches, so I know there are starts and stops on that quilt,
and probably small skipped stitches in places I didn’t notice. So I feel
badly about that, and wish I could do it over again.
Shortly after that,
I loaded my Graceful Garden quilt and launched in. Since I was working from the front, with
different tension, etc., things went all right until I was about half through,
when the machine simply would no longer stitch when I’d push it in a
northwesterly direction, and it stitched poorly in other directions, too.
Techs tried to help me over the phone... I took my machine to a tech in Fremont
(with difficulty! – that thing is BIG!) (the machine, not the tech) ...
and finally that same tech who with his wife owns Country Traditions there in
Fremont (a big nice quilting store where they sell quilting machines and sewing
machines, too) came to my house and put an entire new bobbin race into the
machine, and presto bingo, it was working fine again. I was so thankful! I made up my mind then and there that if I
ever bought a new machine, it
will definitely be from them. They are nice people, and they have
nice employees, too.
Our littlest
granddaughters, Carolyn, Malinda, and Elsie, are always dressed sooo
cute. The nice thing about today’s cute clothes is
that they are also comfortable for babies, so soft and nice. Much softer
than even when Victoria herself was a baby – and certainly nicer than
when our oldest children were babies.
Late Wednesday
afternoon, I was quilting away... stopped to get dressed for church and to
throw a load of clothes into the washing machine... wondered when (or if) Larry would get home from work — and
suddenly it occurred to me, Oh, my goodness, I forgot to pick up Larry’s
suits from the cleaners, and I took his three best ones there Monday!
I specifically asked the nice man at the cleaners to get them done by today,
too. 😑😧😟😦
I called the
cleaners... too late. They’d already left for the day.
I called Larry to
report the matter.
“It’s okay,” he
said consolingly, “I’ll just wear the camouflage coveralls Teddy and Amy gave
me for my birthday. Nobody’ll see me then, anyway.”
haha
Fortunately, Larry
managed to rummage up another suit. He
pulled it from the closet, brushed it off, and wore it. He has quite a
number of suits – and he’s glad he kept some that were slightly too small,
because since he lost about 15 pounds a couple of years ago, he can wear them
again. 😊
Christmas songs are
playing on my computer as I type. I
should turn them off. They are delaying
me, because I don’t concentrate on what I’m writing when someone is singing, particularly
if it’s a song I like. Gotta sing along!
One time when I was
little, I was singing along with a record we had going – Children’s Songs by Al Smith and Helen Barth. Suddenly I realized, I’m singing alto!
I didn’t get over the delight of that for days.
Then there was the
time when our own kiddos were young, and everyone was gathered around the
piano, warbling away. Hester, age 4 or 5,
was sitting on the bench beside me. She
was singing soprano in her piping, clear voice – but she had a rather low
voice, and the melody got too high. Effortlessly, she switched from the
notes she was singing to the alto I was singing.
She paused.
Her eyes got big. Then she launched back in with renewed fervor, trying
hard not to grin.
The song
ended. She looked up at me and exclaimed, “I sang.... another
part!!!!!!” 😃
I have an old
cassette recording of Hester at age 3 singing Jesus Is the Shepherd.
It’s so cute. I wonder where that cassette is?? High time to get it
cloned onto a piece of higher technology.
There were sundogs
in the sky Friday. When Hannah was wee
little, I pointed out a sundog. She
stared and stared... and finally announced, “I only see a cat.”
Guess what, guess what??!!! (Did
you guess?)
Larry came home
from work that day and informed me that, after leaving a job near Fremont, he
had stopped at Country Traditions – the lovely big quilt shop where they also
sell HandiQuilters (and DSMs). He inquired into the 18” Avanté (used)
that I’d told him about last week... and then checked with our bank... and then
agreed to purchase the machine, complete with 12’ studio frame, for my
Christmas present!
The people at the
store will deliver and set up the quilting machine for me.
After supper, Larry
headed upstairs to work on some of the trim in Victoria’s old room – the room
that I cleaned out last February, and which has been languishing all this time,
waiting for me to move my machines into it.
The Avanté has the
new track system, a better stitch regulator, a wider area of quilting space,
and a far better frame than I have. This is going to be such an
improvement!
My sewing room will
be on the second floor now, two stories up from the walkout basement. I’ll
still be running up and down the stairs! 😉 But that’s okay; scientific health studies show that people who
have stairways to climb every day live longer. (Providing they don’t
tumble down said staircases and break their respective necks, I presume.)
Plus, the stairs that go up are a lot easier to navigate than the
curving ones with the two or three narrow, wedge-shaped ones to the
basement. There are nice big windows in the room, too. I’ll have
one of my tables and at least one of my Berninas in there.
I can put the older
machine, if necessary, or even the serger, into the little room just down the
hall that used to be my office, before I took over the basement. My
rolltop desk is in there right now. I’d thought to move it into my sewing
room... but maybe not. I don’t want to cramp the sewing/quilting studio,
and the desk is all right where it is, other than the fact that the little
office doesn’t have a window. It has a door that opens into our huge,
new, beautiful – but unfinished – bedroom.
Larry has sold a
scissor lift (not the one we recently got in Missouri) and a ... ? A loader, maybe. A piece of loud, noisy, smelly, motorized
equipment. Now I need to sell my
HQ16. I have a lot of extras that came with it, that I either don’t use
or won’t need; I’ll list those, too.
Saturday I gave up
and wrote to my customer: “Can you tell
that I’m running out of time? I’m
working on your quilt as hard as I can... and the last few rows have
gone a little faster (the first ones always take the longest, as I figure out
and decide what to do)... but it’s already the 16th, and I have a
few obligations that I must do in the next 3 or 4 days... and I don’t do
customer work on the Lord’s Day... and I’m running out of time! I
truly don’t believe I can get it done before Christmas. I don’t want to rush through the last part of
the quilt, and not have it as nice as the first part, either. I’m sorry; I know you wanted the quilt now...
but this kind of quilting isn’t fast! I never really know ahead of time
exactly how long it’s going to take. I’m learning to keep track, watch
the clock... and gradually I’m getting better at estimating.”
The lady responded with a gracious note: “Ahh, Sarah Lynn, I had it figured out
several days ago that there wasn’t enough time left, lol! And there’s no one to blame but myself,
because I was a full two weeks (longer?) later getting it to you than I’d
originally intended. And I don’t particularly blame myself either, because I
was dealing with issues in the directions, and that was discouraging, and I had
lots going on otherwise. So, do what you need to do for your own stuff, quilt as much – or as
little – as you have time for, and when it’s done, it’s done. 😊”
That day I got all
my Christmas cards addressed and signed. I have 130 ready to have
pictures tucked into them. 17 will get a Christmas letter (the rest know
as much as they want to know about me, heh). I still had some
cards left over, so I addressed the last 32 for my brother, and put his
signature inside. I have the signature on
my computer, so I can add it as a text box or jpg. Inside the cards that
didn’t have a Bible verse, I added one in a bright blue cursive font (with my
printer).
Loren really misses
his late wife Janice at Christmas time, and frets and stews because he can’t
get every member of the family something nice. Janice used to make
something for just about everybody. We
keep telling him... and telling him... nobody expects it, nobody needs it, we
just love you, enjoy having you around, and that’s all we want!
There’s a slight possibility we might get snow for Christmas, but not
much.
I once begged for snowshoes... and my mother
got me some at a souvenir shop somewhere out in the mountains. I joyfully
put them on and rushed out into the snow – and sank to my kneecaps.
??!
I’d seen pictures of people
walking on snow with those things! I decided it was all a hoax, and what
they were putting out as deep, deep snow was only a skiff of snow.
Bah, humbug.
How could a seven-year-old guess that there
were toys, and then there were real,
honest-to-goodness snowshoes?
I gave Loren his cards
Sunday morning after church, and he was pleased. Of course he immediately asked how much he
owed me. I assured him he owed nothing, and started to tell him how cheap
they were – practically free, almost. I must go through that spiel fairly
often, because he chimed in and recited it with me. ha
Loren, having heard
the news about the impending arrival of the 18” Avanté longarm, kept calling
Larry ‘Santa Claus’. 😆
It was grandson
Jonathan’s 4th birthday. We went to Wal-Mart after church last
night, and Larry picked out an older model Ford pickup for him, about 8” long
or so. We gave him a puzzle, too.
The beautiful wood floors
that Jeremy laid have been finished now in the new part of their house, and
carpet has been laid on the front living room.
Right inside the front foyer, he put together light and dark wood pieces
to make a star inside interwoven squares.
“You made a quilt!”
I exclaimed. And wouldn’t you know, I didn’t
have my camera.
The wonderful
curving wooden staircase is done, though the railings aren’t up yet. They wanted to show me the upstairs... but my foot was hurting. I went up about three steps, decided I didn’t
like that, and came back down. I was not
born to be a highwire walker.
Oh... did you know
one of those idiots who made a name for himself climbing tall buildings without
safety harnesses, somersaulting on the very edges of them, and leaping around
on high crane frames ------ fell to his death from the 62nd story of
a building in China? He was doing
pullups from the side of the building.
He managed two... and then couldn’t pull himself back up after letting
himself down the third time.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...
splat.
Well, I shouldn’t
make a joke out of it; somebody surely loved him, and he had a soul, after
all. But... it’s just plain wrong to tempt God like that! We were ‘made after God’s own image.’ We shouldn’t knowingly do unreasonable things
that will very likely result in our own destruction.
Bobby made some
deer jerky in their Traeger grill Saturday, and gave Larry a bag of it, and he shared
it with me. Yummy! Bobby’s jerky is always scrumptious.
Last night I ordered a couple more Christmas gifts. Today I packed up a sleeper with soccer and basketballs printed on it, and two little
stuffed horses, then took it to the post office and mailed it off to little
Trevor. Why is the customer service area of the post office always roasting
hot???! It’s 130° in there (I nevah,
evah exaggerate), rain or shine, summer or winter, snow or hail. And why is the person with the LOUD grievance always in front of me in the line??
For supper tonight,
we had baked orange roughy, pierogies with country gravy, corn, and
applesauce. I should’ve chosen
vegetables and fruit of contrasting colors to brighten up our plates a bit, but
that’s what sounded good, and it was
good, its all-of-a-color qualities notwithstanding.
After we ate, Larry
finished filling in the floor upstairs where the closet wall used to be in my
new quilting studio. It still needs to
be stained to match the rest of the floor, but it looks much better. Can you see his
tools on the floor over there?
And now, instead of
flying into the feathers as I sometimes do, I believe I’ll hit the hay instead.
😄 Larry already lifted the frame
I have at the foot of the bed that keeps the blankets from resting on my
arthritic toes, and proudly told me, “I raised your piggy barn for you!”
HAHAHA
Sometimes I keep
only the heavy quilt over the frame, and let the soft fleece blanket stay on my
feet, if I’m cold. But the quilt is big enough that it lops over and
hangs down, so there’s no cold air flow.
I like mine,
because the arms fold down and can’t be seen when I make the bed. Not all of the frames do that. I take
mine along when we travel.
I first saw such a
thing as a blanket lift in a catalogue my mother used to get years ago that had
all sorts of gadgets and products for those with rheumatoid arthritis and other
physically limiting troubles.
Bedtime!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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