It snowed last Tuesday,
and by midafternoon, we had a couple of inches of new-fallen snow, and it was
still coming down. It was 7°F, with a wind chill of -3°F.
Along about 6:00
p.m., I texted Larry, “How do El Matador Burritos sound to you?”
Larry, being Larry,
texted back, “I don’t know what they sound like, but you made my stomach growl.
😉”
An hour
later he wrote, “Can you taste them now?”
“No, I
can only taste apple juice,” I answered, getting another sip as I wrote.
“Well, I
can smell them,” he taunted me.
“If you
get home emptyhanded, you’ll be heading straight back to town,” I threatened.
“At least
my stomach won’t be empty,” he responded.
And then
he walked in the door, bags and cartons of food in hand. Not only had he gotten burritos, he had
gotten apple/cream turnovers! Mmmm...
yummy. El Matador burritos outdo any
other burritos in town by far. I gained a pound on that meal, and had to
leave off all bread products the next day to lose it.
The yo-yo maker (for
fabric flowers) I’d ordered was marked as ‘Out for Delivery’ that morning – but
didn’t arrive, on account of the 2 ½” of snow we got. Is the FedEx truck
driver from Florida? Everyone else was getting around crackerjack!
– even the mail lady was unfazed. Boo hoo, I wanted my yo-yo maker!
Oh, well. The burritos and apple/cream turnovers were a
pretty good consolation prize, I guess.
Larry worked on my quilting
machine again that night. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better, and I
thought maybe it would do. At least the hook was no longer hitting the
needle. Three customer quilts were coming,
and two were large ones. The other was a
baby quilt that the lady wanted custom quilting on. I need my
machine to be working right!
I’ll be telling
that woman at the store what we discovered when we took the needle plate off –
the loose set screw, the hook ramming into the needle... She probably thinks by now, since she hasn’t
heard from me, that everything is fine, and whatever the problem was, it was my
own stupid fault. 😠
Meanwhile, since I
was stymied yo-yo-wise, I started putting together HSTs (half-square triangles). There were 1,390 of them, so I would have 695
little squares when I finished. These, I
would make into 173 pinwheels, with three little squares left over.
No, I didn’t count
the HSTs. I counted the pinwheels when I was all done putting
them together. These little
triangles are scraps cut off the ends of mitered strips from the Thimbleberries
Village quilt I made for Teddy and Amy, so the triangles aren’t perfect.
Let’s hope I can get them together in some semblance of precision.
That was my second quilt
on my HQ16. I was a-havin’ lotsa fun! 😊
The yo-yo maker
arrived Wednesday, so I read the instructions, cut some fabric, and made a
couple of yo-yos.
They were too
small; I didn’t like how they looked. So
I went back to the HSTs. I would look
for bigger yo-yo makers at Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby.
And then it was time
to get ready for church. I felt like King David did, when he wrote, “I
was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.” (Psalm
122:1) It would be a welcome break.
After
the service, we put a big box of pictures – more than 350 of them – into
Loren’s Jeep. These were the pictures we’d
found on his late wife Janice’s digital Olympus camera.
At
Wal-Mart, we chose a set of Walkie-Talkies for grandson Grant, who would be
five years old the next day. There were
no yo-yo makers to be found.
Thursday, I washed
clothes. Larry likes clothes washed in
the wintertime better than clothes washed in the summertime – because I put his
jeans in the dryer, rather than
hanging them outside. When I hang jeans outside, they get stiffer’n a board.
Larry then puts them on and goes
lurching around the house stiff-legged, as if he can’t bend his knees. That always used to make the children laugh. Nowadays, the cats and I have to do
double-duty laughing at him, so he feels properly appreciated for his
theatrics.
Teensy cat had acquired a cold, with sneezing
and wheezing. Wednesday night he got
worse rather quickly, and worried me all night long. Larry stopped at the veterinary clinic
Thursday morning and got some medicine.
We didn’t have to take the cat to the clinic, thankfully. He’s a sweet kitty, but going to the vet is always
a bit of a trial. He cries mournfully (the
cat, not the vet) all the way to town and home again, and the noise of the dogs
barking at the clinic frightens him.
Plus, I’ve had an arthritic flare-up the last
several days that had particularly affected one shoulder and a few fingers, so
I did not relish
carrying that big cat hither and yon, even though he doesn’t ever cause a big
problem, really. I immediately gave him
his first dose, mixing it with his favorite soft food, and he downed it without
a quibble. By midafternoon, he was already
breathing easier and sneezing less.
I sure don’t like
to see him sick, poor thing. He kept coming and getting in my lap,
looking sadly up into my face... That pleading expression in our pets’
eyes, begging us for help... it gets to me!
I’m such a milquetoast, when it comes to my pets, even if I do
make them behave. (Well, as much as one can
make cats behave, heh.)
At noon, Loren drove out here with one of his
flatbed trailers, and Larry loaded it with a bunch of split wood that would
keep his fireplace going for several days. Loren was feeling better, but we didn’t want
him overdoing again.
I headed up to my new and pretty studio. Sometimes when I walk in there, I just stand
for a minute and admire it.
When
I talked to Loren on the phone that afternoon, he was all happy and kept
thanking me – first for Larry giving him a big trailer-load of split wood, and
next for the box of pictures. He’s so pleased
to have them, and is looking through them slowly, a few at a time, prolonging
the enjoyment. He’s sentimental, and he misses
Janice.
Of
course he thought he needed to pay us. I
said, “If you insist you have to pay me
for those pictures, then I’ll insist
that we have to pay you for the camera!”
He
laughed. We’ve already given it to
granddaughter Emma. She’d been using Teddy’s
expensive camera, and she loves to take pictures of birds, especially eggs and
babies in their nests — and she was climbing trees
with that camera around her neck, in order to get the pictures!
That
day, February 8th, was Emma’s 12th birthday, and it was
also her little brother Grant’s 5th birthday. We gave Emma the purple and lavender quilt I
made for her last year, and Grant the aforementioned Walkie-Talkies.
I got all the HSTs sewn into little squares,
and then sewed a pile of little squares together. Here they are, piling up behind my sewing
machine. à
Friday, two customer quilts arrived from
Washington State, and shortly thereafter, another arrived from Florida.
Next, the Schwan man arrived. I must’ve been hungry when I placed the order
the night before! – there was baaaarely enough room in the freezer for all the
food.
“Looks like we’ll have enough food for supper
tonight,” I remarked, looking at the four very large bags stuffed with big
boxes and bags of frozen foods.
The man glanced at the bags, looked quickly at
me, and said, “For a good two weeks!”
What is it, don’t li’l ol’ ladies ever kid
around anymore these days?? Makes me
want to act like I meant it: “Oh, no, we’ll eat it all tonight,” in a reassuring tone.
But he’s a nice young man, and one shouldn’t
traumatize him.
I wedged everything
into the freezer, then took the quilts upstairs to measure them.
Soon Larry got
home, and we headed off to Norfolk to pay off a couple of notes at the bank,
and to get batting and yo-yo makers at Hobby Lobby.
A few miles north
of our house, bald eagles flew over the road in front of us. Canada geese
were lighting in the harvested cornfields by the hundreds. Snow was coming down in earnest, visibility falling,
and soon the road was covered with blowing skiffs of snow. The
temperature was 10°F, with a wind chill of -7°. Brrrr...
As
usual, we got to the bank in plenty of time – four minutes before closing. In fact, that was twice the amount of time we needed, because it only took Larry two
minutes to trot in, write out a couple of checks, get his receipt, and come
trotting jubilantly back out, two minutes before closing time.
Yeah,
that’s Larry’s idea of ‘getting there
in time’, not mine.
I
didn’t find a yo-yo maker at Hobby Lobby. An employee told us right where they were...
but when we got to that aisle, we stood and looked blankly at circular yarn
looms in all sizes, shapes, and colors.
We
got the batting I needed and some pretty pearly buttons in case I want to put
them into the centers of the yo-yos.
There weren’t enough; I’ll have to get more from the Hobby Lobby in our
town. We headed for the checkout.
The
cashier (who was also a manager) inquired, “Did you find everything?” so I asked,
“Do you have yo-yo makers?” – not thinking to clarify, ‘for fabric.’
She
frowned thoughtfully and started gesturing toward the toy department, supposing
I was talking about a tool or gadget one would use to make wooden yo-yos that travel
up and down strings tied around one’s finger.
“Oh,
sorry,” I laughed, “I mean, those little flower yo-yos made of fabric!”
About
then, the first lady came along, heard me asking again – and proceeded to
inform us quite knowledgeably that yo-yo makers have been discontinued, and Hobby
Lobby no longer carries them.
Do
people like Employee #1 ever get surprised when someone exclaims, “Hey, you
just told me the very aisle in which to find those things!” – right in front of
their managers?
Naaa...
I didn’t do that. I just grinned at her
(in a twinkly, ah knowed whatcher doin’!
sideways sort of way) and said, “Thank you.” After all, she had obviously thought the thing
concerned yarn, and now she evidently
realized it was about fabric. Gotta give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Usually. 😉
We ate
supper at The Granary in Norfolk. The
prices are fairly low, and the food is okay, but not superb. I got a small cup of ham and bean soup and was
disappointed at the first bite to realize it was canned, rather than made from scratch. I don’t
like mushy beans. The bread served
under my roast beef and gravy was white, and soggy. I don’t
like soggy bread, especially soggy white bread. It didn’t even occur to me that it
wouldn’t be whole wheat, and toasted.
They were
out of orange juice, but I got tomato juice instead, and it was good. Room temperature, just the way I like it; but
the waitress brought me a glass of ice, in case I wanted it cold. Larry’s catfish and fries were rather greasy. It was easy to tell they came out of a
freezer bag. Not fresh, not made there
in the kitchen. There’s a difference, and my tastebuds know.
Ah, well.
We got full, we didn’t get food
poisoning (always a plus), and there were no dishes to wash.
Cracker
Barrel is a lot better, but there is no Cracker Barrel restaurant in Norfolk.
I should
say, the blueberry pie with cinnamon ice cream that I had for dessert was
yummy. Larry had coconut cream pie, and
pronounced it very good indeed. Oh, and
the coffee was superb, and the waitress kept our cups full, so that was nice.
One early morning
years ago, we were in a restaurant in southern Texas, and I asked what kind of
hot cereal they had. The waitress ran down the list.
I wondered, Why
on earth would people eat grease for breakfast?!!!
Turned out, she was
saying ‘grits.’ 😆
While
we waited for the food we’d ordered at The Granary, I purchased a size 2 ⅜”
yo-yo maker from Wal-Mart online, and a 1 ¾” one from eBay. $7.50 for the first, $5.50 for the second,
free shipping for each. The 2 ⅜” one got
here today. That’s fast! Too bad I can’t play with it yet.
When we
left the restaurant, it was dark, and snow was coming down harder than ever,
with a 35-mph wind blowing it into drifts.
The temperature had dropped to 4°, and the wind chill was -15°. I was glad we weren’t in a covered wagon,
trundling along behind a team o’ hosses!
Out on
the highway, the wind was making waves of drifts on the road. We saw a pickup with a horse or stock trailer
that had slid into the ditch while trying to turn onto a country road. A car that had slid into the median and was
high-centered and couldn’t get out.
At
a quarter ’til nine, we pulled into our lane.
Home, safe and sound.
I started
a load of clothes drying, then headed upstairs to my quilting studio. I had only enough steam to sew little squares
together for a while; I would start on the customer’s quilt the next day.
Saturday, the
temperature got all the way up to 8°F – with a wind chill of 0°. I went out and filled the bird feeders, and by
the time I got back inside and walked around to the window nearest the feeders,
there were English sparrows, a downy woodpecker, and a blue jay out there
enjoying the smorgasbord. Hand me my
coffee mug, quick! I need to warm up my
hands!
I watered the house
plants; the cyclamen, African violets, and Kalanchoe are in bloom and the
Phalaenopsis orchid is sending up a spire with little buds on it.
I put another load
of clothes into the dryer and went to load a quilt on the frame.
A friend was
telling me about some troubles she’d been having with her printer, and how she
eventually got it working again. Reminded
me of the time I got a new computer – and my printer wasn’t compatible with
it. But I liked my printer! It wasn’t very old, and it was a
good one. The discs that came with it didn’t help matters. I needed
to download new drivers that had been updated especially for the new Windows
system I was now using.
Here was the
problem: We had dial-up Internet that faltered and fumbled and failed constantly.
And the techs who created the download programs back then rarely put in that ‘Resume
where paused’ feature that’s now in most download programs, thankfully (not in
the Electric Quilt download, though. Boooo). I tried for a couple
of weeks to download a 55MB program. Over...
and over... and over, I tried.
And then one
Saturday night I started the download... went to bed... and when I got up the
next morning, the computer was still connected to the Internet, and the
printer drivers had downloaded entirely!!! I was in such a state of
shock, I could hardly get ready for church. ha
Anyway, I had to
plug parts of the download into my printer program here and there, change
something in the registry (in the beginning, computers weren’t for sissies) ...
and then I held my breath, and gave my printer a try.
It worked.
I felt inordinately
smug and superior for days.
In discussing some
computer problems with a few friends, I remarked, “I reckon no electronic
device, platform, or program is ever glitch-free. At least, I haven’t
found one, in the 41 years I’ve been working with computerized things.”
Hard to believe, I
first clunkity-clunked a magnetic card out of a tallllll, tall hard drive, way
back in 1977... marched over to a humongous printer, poked the card in, hit a
few buttons, and watched, entranced, as the printer, with a blirkety-twink-swoosh-swoosh-BLORG!!!
came to life and printed exactly what I had programmed it to, from my big
computerized word processor over on the other side of the room.
Yeah, boy, I
thought that was some nifty-workin’ stuff. Always have loved
computers. I was 16 years old, allowed to work a year ‘too young’ at
Nebraska Public Power District solely because my Business Administrations teacher
told the Big Hotshot Powers That Be that I could do it. I still send that
teacher thank-you notes, every once in a while, just because I know it makes
him pleased.
I loaded the quilt
backing, started basting the batting to the backing – and immediately began
having trouble with skipped stitches, shredding, and breaking thread. With difficulty, I got the top basted to
batting and backing. I changed needles,
marked the first border, picked up a ruler, tried to stitch in the ditch.
In the space of a
yard, the thread broke three times.
I called Larry to
report on my troubles, and learned he was having troubles of his own. He’d taken his four-wheel-drive tractor with
the newly-attached loader to Teddy’s house to move snow – and several of the
big bolts holding the loader onto the tractor had sheared right off. He was at the shop, drilling them out and
replacing them.
I turned off the
quilting machine, turned on my sewing machine, and got on with the pinwheels. The finished size will be 2” square.
A quilting friend, upon seeing this shot of the back of
one of the pinwheel blocks, wrote, “My arthritis makes spinning the center seam
exceedingly painful and difficult. Am I seeing that you are ironing seams
open as you go?”
Yep, I am. I’ve
done it the other way, too – seams to one side, swirl the center where they all
meet up. But the quilting machine prefers quilting atop pressed-open
seams. My fingers don’t always
appreciate that ‘spin-the-seam’ fun either.
Don’t listen to
those who tell you, “You can’t match the seams, if you press them open!”
Somewhere around
7:00 p.m., I heard the distinct sound of spinning tires in snow. I looked out the windows to the north and
east... nothing. I trotted downstairs,
looked out the patio door to the south – and spotted Larry’s pickup and trailer,
loaded with the tractor, way down beyond the south edge of our property. He was rocking it back and forth, but he
certainly wasn’t making very good headway in the deep snow in the field.
Eventually, he
unhitched, moved the pickup onto the back drive, drove the tractor off the
trailer, and then used the tractor to pull the empty trailer back where he
wanted it.
After a late
supper, Larry came upstairs to work on the Avanté. He timed it... I tried it... he retimed it...
I tried it... It took a while, but
eventually the machine made a nice stitch – so long as I use that big ol’
honkin’ size 20 needle, which I particularly dislike. But maybe I’ll be
able to finish my customers’ quilts before I take the machine to the
tech. Maybe.
I’d like to sit the
tech’s wife (co-owner of the store) in a conspicuous corner on a tall stool
with a dunce cap on her head, and make her hold up a big sign reading, “I am
unhelpful to customers!” At periodic intervals she should turn it around,
so everyone can read the other side: “I’m
not as smart as I pretend to be!” 🤪
Meanwhile, in
between helping Larry as he worked on the Avanté (my job is to turn the
handwheel at the back of the machine, and I’m really good at it, though Larry
and I have different opinions as to what constitutes ‘reverse’ and ‘forward’,
when it comes to handwheels), I finished putting pinwheels together. All 173 of them. Now to create a design for them! But first, to go to bed.
My nephew Kelvin
made it to church yesterday morning! I
hadn’t seen him for quite a while. The
surgery he had last month revealed that the radiation had done great harm to
many of his organs. The surgeon did the
best he could, removing any cancer he could see, and repairing as much as he
could. No wonder Kelvin had been in so much pain. He’s still in pain, especially since he has
cut back on his pain medication; but he’s slowly recuperating.
I finally
remembered to take Janice’s old Canon film camera into a dark room and get the
film out, so after the morning service we took it to Walgreens. The pictures won’t be back until the 19th. Huh?
Well, I did say ‘the cheapest way’; but I didn’t
expect them to ship it Turtleback Express!
When we got home, Larry
made his scrumptious pancakes, with eggs, sunny-side-up.
That afternoon, I
pulled up EQ8, and started playing with designs with which to use all those
pinwheels. I pretty much had the design
nailed down, and then tried to delete an extraneous block in the Sketchbook,
whereupon EQ8 crashed, and rendered my project file ‘corrupted.’ The only thing it saved was the pinwheel
block, in both color schemes. I could see the first two quilt layouts,
but they wouldn’t open.
“Abandon all hope
and reverse the world on its axis!!!” the program shrieked at me every time I
tried to open the project, whether from the program itself, either in startup
or from the File menu, or from the project folder.
Sooo... I deleted
the project and started over (which wasn’t as bad as it sounds, because it was
fresh in my head, and thus didn’t take too awfully long to
replicate). Still, aarrgghh.
Here is the
design I put together in EQ8:
There were
87 navy pinwheels and 86 maroon ones – 173 in all – and I managed to
incorporate 170 of them into the design.
I’ll save the other three to jazz up the label.
The quilt will be
called Americana Eagle. I’ll use that central line drawing (from an
online coloring book) to make an appliquéd bald eagle. Here is another version where I plugged
a real photo of a bald eagle into the design, to give a better idea of what it
will actually look like:
The quilt will
be 63” x 73”.
Someone suggested
embroidering the eagle, but that would take an awfully long time, as that
center piece is 30” x 40”, and I would want to fill it in, not just do an outline
stitch.
I have multitudes
of books with hand-embroidery designs, including one with birds, and another
with butterflies. I have a hand-embroidered Bucilla butterfly quilt
started. I take it with me on trips with the idea that one of these days
I’ll have time to sit in a chair beside a singing mountain stream, bluebirds
warbling overhead, and embroider... and embroider... and embroider.
But the
reality?? First, we rarely stop anywhere long enough for me to even get
out the chair. Second, if we do stop, I’m rushing madly (and
gladly) about, camera in hand. I’m not the Mad Hatter; I’m the Mad
Snapper!
If we’re in a motel
room or in our camper, I’ll probably have a journal to write or photos to edit
or Very Important Emails to answer. My desire to zip open that nifty
briefcase with all the pockets and the pretty butterfly quilt inside with all
the colorful embroidery threads ... is practically zilch.
Furthermore, I have
the Bucilla embroidered bird quilt, too!—still in its package.
Obviously, instead
of using these things for an ‘in case I need something to do’ project, I’ll
just have to put them straight into my ‘To Do!’ roster. Then, they’ll
get done.
And now, I must quilt! Sure hope my machine will stitch okay.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.