With the upheaval
and uproar over Facebook the last couple of weeks, I figured the Quilt Talk
group I started on MeWe was bound to gain some users.
I was right. In one week, we gained over a hundred
members. There are now 277 members,
while the quilt group still struggling away on Yahoo groups stands at about
250, as it has for over a year.
Furthermore, the new members are quite active, and many have been
posting pictures of their quilts right and left.
I can’t keep up
with everybody! Can’t read Quilt Talk
posts all day. Sooo... I read for a few
minutes... maybe answer a few posts... and let the rest fall by the
wayside. Can’t be helped, even if I am the ‘owner’ of the group.
Last week, Teddy
got an ewe and a couple of one-week-old lambs.
One little lamb didn’t make it through the first night; perhaps the
journey home was too traumatic for it, or perhaps it was injured, who
knows. But the other lamb seems to be
hale and hearty.
Last Tuesday, I
went to Hobby Lobby for batting for my customer’s quilt, then loaded it on my
frame. And then I was stymied until my
customer found her email I’d sent her with pantographs for her to choose from.
I looked up her
name in the White Pages to see if I could find a phone number. I found 964
ladies with the same name, and half a dozen of them live in the Tampa area, and
none of those six matched her address and/or family member names.
She works full
time... and her car has been on the fritz, and she was having troubles getting
here and there, and needed to look for a new vehicle. I sent her a message on Facebook (that’s how
she contacted me in the first place). She would answer me soon, I was sure.
And it wasn’t as if I had nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs. But... I
wanted to work on her quilt!
She found the Facebook
message first. heh Some people check Facebook before they check
their email messages! I must remember
that.
After getting the
quilt loaded, since I couldn’t start quilting it yet, I put a buttonhole and a
button on a blouse... cut apart three XL men’s shirts to use in a quilt
someday... took a zipper out of some riding pants of Larry’s and started
putting a new one in (and then Larry came home from work, and it was time for
supper, and I didn’t get back to the zipper – I finished it the next day)...
and listed my older Canon Rebel XSi whose shutter quit working and a set of
Cokin filters on the Ugly Hedgehog photography forum. I offered the items
free for the price of shipping and gas money to get to town – $20.
A couple of hours
later, they were taken. I mailed them off
as soon as funds came through PayPal.
Loren had a nice little jaunt with his
brand-new camper Tuesday and Wednesday.
Tuesday night, he went to Minden, stayed overnight last night in the
campground at Pioneer Village for $30, which gave him free access to the museum. Wednesday he walked through the museum
grounds, until he knew he needed to head for home, if he was going to get back
in time for the church service. Pioneer
Village is really a two-day museum.
Maybe three.
Loren is very happy
with his new camper.
It got up to 67° that
day. It was in the 70s Thursday and Friday – but a blizzard was heading
our way.
After finishing the
last seam on the zipper in Larry’s riding pants, I pieced together the backing
for the Americana Eagle quilt. Since the
fabric was only 42” wide, and the quilt is 65” wide, and since I only had 3 ¾
yards and needed 4 ¾ yards if I wanted two full lengths to put together, I had
a lot of piecing to do. I cut the first
42”-wide length at 85”, as the quilt is 75” long and I like 5” to spare, both
top and bottom. That left only 50”. However, I didn’t need the full 42” width; 30”
would make the backing 72” wide, which gives me 3 ½” extra on each side. That’ll do.
Sooo... the 30” x 50” piece was 35” short. I used the 12” wide piece I’d trimmed to
lengthen it, though the last little bit wound up in several smallish
pieces. Furthermore, the backing is a directional
print, so I had to be careful which way I sewed it together.
Did you get all
that? There will be a quiz later.
I now have a
backing that is 72” x 85” – with an approximate 3” x 3” corner missing. Hopefully, I won’t need it. But if I do, I’ll just trim the backing
elsewhere, and sew it into that corner.
Next, I cut long,
skinny, rectangular pieces of a rubber rug pad and then, using Liquid Nails,
glued the pieces to the legs of the little wooden chairs in the little
library. Now they won’t scratch the oak
flooring if little kids scoot them. I
left the chairs tilted over backwards, the stuffed toys that had been on them
strewn about, so the Liquid Nails wouldn’t run through the holes in the rubber
rug pads and get on the floor (though some did, when I set a chair upright too
soon). 😯
One after the
other, the cats walked into the room and then stopped dead in their tracks and
stared at the strange disarray. 😆
That afternoon, I
heard an unusual warbling and trilling. I
crept over to the open front door, peeked out – and discovered a little song sparrow in the lilac bush, singing its heart
out! (Check out ‘Sounds’ in that link.)
Picture is from
NestWatch.com.
I once played an
audio clip of a Great Horned owl, and big ol’ self-assured Teensy, who was
strolling regally through the living room, hit the deck. He looked like a
cat rug. Haha I tried consoling him for his error, which he figured
out pretty quick-like, but his dignity had been seriously affronted, and he
proceeded to sit down quite deliberately with his back to me. (Probably
because I couldn’t quit laughing.)
Unlike Socks, his
pique never lasts long. Socks could
nurse a grudge all day long.
It would’ve been a nice day to work outside in
the flower gardens, but I was all doodied up for the church service that night. (Well, my hair was fixed, anyway.) Anyway,
since there were going to be a couple of hard freezes in the coming days, I
suppose it’s just as well if I leave the old growth atop the new plants; that
always helps protect them from freezing.
Then my customer,
having found the email with all the panto choices, wrote to tell me what she
had chosen. I printed the panto, taped
it together, got it positioned on my quilting table and ready for quilting. And then it was time to go to church.
I thought I’d come
home from our midweek church service and launch right into the quilting, but
instead we made a deposit, then went to the grocery store and got a cartload of
groceries – all sorts of things I can’t order online: milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, rice pudding,
sour cream, orange juice, sliced ham (for split pea soup), apples, bananas,
tomatoes, lettuce, all colors of sweet peppers, grapes, a watermelon, and
Campbells ham chowder soup. Why doesn’t
Wal-Mart.com have ham chowder soup online??
Oh, and we splurged and got Starbucks white chocolate mocha and dark
chocolate latte (which I discovered I didn’t like nearly enough to make up for what we spent on the silly things). And Scoops and Queso con Carne Cheese dip.
Not my idea; I gain
weight on those things.
Maybe not that night, I won’t; I only had four
scoops with a wee bit of dip. And not a
whole lot of other stuff. Some cheese
curds and little sausages and crackers on the way home... then, once we got
home, half a banana, ham chowder, some grapes, and yogurt with granola on top.
After putting all
the groceries away and then eating our late-night supper/midnight snack, I was too
tired to quilt. So... I sat in my
recliner and did a bit of computer work – paying bills, editing photos,
answering emails, etc. (It’s the ‘etc.’
that takes the longest: all those kitten
videos to watch, you know, interspersed with a few Russian car-crash videos to
balance things out.)
Thursday, after a trip to the post office and the
Goodwill, I made a fresh pot of coffee, trotted upstairs to my
quilting studio, and got busy.
On one of my trips
downstairs to refill my coffee mug, I spotted a Redpoll at the bird feeder! The Redpoll is a rare bird for this area. It will soon be heading back to the far
northern areas of the Northwest Territories, northern Alaska, and the southern
shores of Greenland, where its breeding grounds are.
And now, I’d like
to send out a thank-you on behalf of those of all of us who do quilting for
others – a thank-you to those who send us quilts with lots of blacks and
navies, as by the time we are finished with the quilting and have sent the
quilt back to the customer, our houses are lint-free, since all dust and lint
that had once been in our homes is now on the quilt, and on the way back to the
customer! 😆
Well, actually, I keep
my lint roller handy, and use it every time I advance the quilt. 😜
I kept at it until
a quarter ’til three. In the morning,
that is. By then, I was about three-quarters
done – and four-quarters out of steam.
Had to stop. More photos here.
A friend wrote and asked, “When quilting for
yourself, how do you decide what quilting designs to use?”
I close my eyes and jab a finger at one of my
pantographs! heh
Maybe that’s closer to the truth than I first
thought. I have several favorite
pantographs... and I always like to try new ones, too. If I’m doing custom work, then I look at my
Quilting board on Pinterest, admire all the pictures I’ve saved, and then try
to incorporate designs I really like into the quilt’s design.
And sometimes I go by quilter Irena Bluhm’s advice: “When
you don’t know what to do, just do... something!!”
Friday, I hung out
a new bird feeder. For an hour, there
were no birds to be seen anywhere. For
another half an hour, little birds sat up on top of the rebar feeder stand,
cheeping and peering down at the new feeder with tilted heads.
“What in the world is
that?! Does it bite?”
Finally, they gave
it a try.
The new feeder has
a small perch on each of its four sides.
This is not nearly so nice as the old, dilapidated feeder with its
bottom tray that allowed many birds to perch at once. You ought to hear the commotion, when too
many birds are trying to perch on too small a perch. All those cute little twittering noises...
are actually arguments!
I used #60 Bottom
Line silver thread both top and bottom, just because that was the thread that
matched, and that I had on hand. The HQ16 wasn’t particularly fond of #60
on top, and I had to fuss with the tension to get it to look fairly
decent. But this machine, my ‘new’ Avanté, is making it look soooo
pretty! I’m really happy with my machine and the Studio Frame, too.
Just look at these perfect stitches.
By Friday
afternoon, the blizzard had already made it across the western half of
Nebraska, and it was coming down hard out there. The wind in our neck of
the woods was gusting at 30-35 mph.
Amy sent pictures
of Warren and Elsie with ice cream cones.
In one shot, Elsie had the waffle cone nearly upside down, and was
biting off the end. I wonder why the
bottom tips of those cones are always so irresistible – especially when the
cone is still full of ice cream?
Amy told me, “I put
that magic shell stuff in the bottom just for this reason! It’s liquid, and when it gets cold, it
hardens. 😁 ”
Shortly thereafter,
Victoria sent pictures of Carolyn in a furry giraffe bunting, with a matching
stuffed giraffe beside her. In one shot,
Carolyn is on her tummy beside the giraffe, head turned, staring inquisitively
into the giraffe’s face.
Victoria wrote a
caption: “Who are you, and why do you
look like me?”
That evening, about
the time I figured Larry would be getting off work, I wrote him a note: “Do you think a big bag of black oil
sunflower seed would be a good price from Bomgaars? And if so, could you bring me one?”
Ever the smarty
pants, he replied, “I can check. Should I
get one for the birds, too?”
Saturday, Hannah told me that they’d taken
their dog Misty to a new vet, and learned that she has heart disease and
allergies. She’s extremely congested. The vet gave her three medications, two of
which she will be on for the rest of her life.
If she’d been
treated for allergies a long time ago when she was licking her paws
excessively, she might not have the heart disease, as these two things go hand
in hand (paw in paw?), with dogs. Hannah
thinks if the disease is well-managed, Misty will be able to live practically
symptom-free.
I hope
so. That’s a special little doggy!
By early afternoon,
we were having a full-fledged blizzard, just as the weathermen had promised.
It was snowing and blowing so hard, I could scarcely see fifteen feet across
the yard. It was 27°, and with the wind blowing at 45 mph, it felt like
11°. It had drizzled and misted before
the snow began, so there was a layer of ice beneath the snow.
I like snow...
but... I like spring, too!
Some areas farther
west lost electricity. When the kids
were little, they thought it was great excitement when the electricity went out.
We’d pull out all our kerosene lanterns... the cookstove... pop some corn in
the fireplace... and read together or play board games.
One time we had all
the kerosene lanterns on, along with a bunch of candles, and the living room
was as bright as if all the lights were on. I was sitting in the
recliner, holding baby Caleb. Behind my chair, I heard Lydia’s piping
voice (she was 2): “It’s darrrrrk!!! Can’t see!”
I turned around to
look at her – and she had on my big, very dark, sunglasses. haha
It was the perfect
day to make split pea soup for supper.
Mmmm, mmm. I love that stuff.
Speaking
of soup... once upon a time, many years ago, my late sister-in-law brought us a
big pot of 16-bean soup. I ladled it out for our then-only-seven children.
Hester, age 3, picked up her spoon and pawed through her bowl like a cat with
something nasty in its dish. Then, in a plaintive little voice, she said, said
she, “Mine has more than 16 in it!!!”
When I stopped
quilting at 9:30 p.m., I was getting close to the end of my customer’s red, white, and blue fireworks
quilt.
We’ve been issued
another winter weather advisory for tomorrow night. We could get 1-5” of
snow (with a layer of ice underneath), and some areas not far to our north
could get 5-8”.
Everyone is acting
like this is extremely unusual.
They act that way every
year. heh
Okay, okay, maybe
it is just a bit unusual. But that’s nothing unusual, for Nebraska
(or lots of other places, for that matter).
Unusual Weather Events in the Midlands
While we were
having a rip-snortin’ blizzard on Saturday, with temperatures that dropped to 24°
and wind chills of 7°, areas not more than 90 miles to our southeast were first
at 86°, then about the time a thunderstorm hit, it fell to 55°, and they had
golf-ball-sized hail. I80 was closed from Kearney, Nebraska, out into
Wyoming, a distance of about 270 miles. There was a 30-vehicle pile-up on
the Interstate out west.
The weather got the
traveling weathermen all excited, that’s for sure!
My customer’s quilt
is on its way to Tampa, Florida. I’ve been to the bank, then dropped off
stuff at the Goodwill.
This afternoon I
was chatting with a friend about where she used to live – on Washington Island, Wisconsin.
When we went to
Grand Rapids in 2012, and then on up through the Upper Peninsula before coming down
through Wisconsin and on home, I wanted so badly to have a little more time
(and money!) so we could explore lighthouses, the beautiful Painted Rocks on
Lake Superior’s southern coast, some of the islands in Lake Michigan...
I never, ever get
to explore enough to suit me!
“Maybe this summer
you can do it,” my friend suggested.
But I told her
Larry would say, “They don’t have mountains!!!” (and I have to say, I
love the mountains every bit as much as he does, though I like to explore new
and different places better than he does.)
“Tell him they’re
underwater,” said my friend. “He needs a
snorkel to dive to see them!”
Haha! He’s an excellent underwater swimmer. He once scared me to death, diving into a
sandpit that had been turned into a big swimming hole. He didn’t come up for just the longest time,
while I stood on the bank in silence, five little kids beside me, all of us staring
with wide eyes at the water.
By the time he
popped up on the far side of the pond, in my mind I’d already thrust everyone
into the Suburban willy-nilly, raced to the nearest farmhouse to call Fire and
Rescue, planned a funeral, and hunted down a job to support myself and the
kids. (I’ve always liked to plan ahead –
disasters just throw this penchant into Overdrive.)
Since he hadn’t
drowned himself, I offered to do the honors.
Here’s the speed
bump I have to step around whilst I’m trying to quilt in my quilting studio.
Our son-in-law
Andrew called a little while ago from a hospital in Omaha. Hester was taken there earlier and had an
emergency C-section about 6:30 p.m. They
have a baby girl. It’s only at the
29-week mark, two months early, and the baby weighs only two pounds.
All this happened
because this morning Hester had a doctor’s appointment, and they discovered
that her blood pressure was over 200.
They immediately gave her medication to prevent seizures and/or stroke,
and got her to Omaha posthaste.
She’s not out of
the woods, and they are monitoring her carefully. The baby was given steroids to help her lungs
develop; they’ll give her more tomorrow.
It’ll be touch and go for a while, but they seem to be hopeful. Andrew said the baby was active, waving a
little arm before they whisked her off to the neonatal ICU.
Larry and I must
get flu shots and wait seven days before we can see the baby. Perhaps we’ll be able to see Hester in a day
or two.
Would you please
pray for our daughter Hester and this tiny little baby? We all prayed long and hard for this little
one, and it would be so terrible if they lost her. Andrew and Hester will have their 10th
wedding anniversary this year.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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