Journal: More Nesting Bowls, and More Deer

Last Monday evening, Hester sent a picture of Keira in the sleeper we gave her for Christmas, writing, “Those bunny feet!”  The feet of the sleeper look like bunny feet.  Cute as cute can be.

I told Hester, “You know, she only needs to grow another inch, two at the most, before that little sleeper is going to be strrretched to the limit.  (Unless there’s more give to it than I think.)  😉”

Hester said, “She seems to have grown a lot in the last month!  Her legs are definitely longer.  The sleeper does have some stretch to it, it should fit for a while.”

It fits right now, at least.  And we’re always happy as larks when Keira grows out of anything!   (How do they know larks are actually happy?)

We gave Violet a sleeper just like Keira’s.  Those two baby girls look quite a bit different, but they have similar expressions sometimes.  They both look like, “Wow, this world sure turns fast!” now and again.  😄

Tuesday, the first day of the new year, it was cold.  By midafternoon, the temperature had only made it up to 9°, and the windchill was 0°.  Larry went off to cut wood, and later he and Bobby went hunting.  Larry saw some deer Monday, but they were either too far away, or they caught wind of him as he was loading his muzzle loader.  Rifle season started Tuesday, so he had a better chance of getting one.  He has a good scope on his rifle.  Bobby got a deer that day.

Meanwhile, I washed six loads of clothes and worked on the fabric nesting bowls.  As I carried yet another load past the back patio doors, I saw that the bird feeders were nearly empty, so I put on coat, boots, and gloves and refilled them.  In 30 seconds flat, flocks of birds were clustered around the feeders again.  Bird feeders make life a little easier for the birds, on cold, cold, blustery days! 

I warmed up Monday’s chili for supper.  After we ate, I froze what was left into smaller containers, enough to make five future suppers for us.

I hardly ever put chili or other soups into the freezer immediately after making them, because soup is almost always better on the Day 2, as the spices blend into everything.  If you freeze the stuff on Day 1, you’re freezing Day 1 flavor, and you’re probably never going to get the yummier Day 2 zest, even if you recook the stuff.

I finished the fifth set of fabric nesting bowls that night.  There were six more sets to go.  One from the next set was nearly done. 

After church Wednesday night, we went to Jeremy and Lydia’s house to exchange gifts, as they were all finally feeling better and getting over their colds.  One of my favorite things they gave us was a set of photos.  When the photographer was taking Jeremy and Lydia’s pictures, Malinda didn’t want to get too far away!

Thursday, as I sewed away on nesting bowl set #6, I had on a V-necked cardigan that just wasn’t warm enough on that cold day.  So I trotted into the little library room next to my quilting studio and pulled a soft blue merino wool scarf from one of the drawers.  Hester and Andrew brought it back from Ireland a couple of years ago, and gave it to me for Christmas.

I decided to take a picture, send it to Hester, and tell her how much I like it.  As usual, Tiger had to get in on the picture.

Hester soon responded, “I love seeing things that remind me of that vacation.”

I’d like to go to Ireland one of these days.  Reckon I could cope with that long of a plane ride?  Maybe we could stop off at Iceland on the way.  I wanna go to Iceland, too!  And Scotland.  I love to look at pictures of Scotland.  Ireland and Scotland and England – lands of my ancestors.

Maybe I’ll just look at youtube videos of Ireland and Iceland and England instead.  Cheaper.  😉

A more realistic destination is Alaska.  Larry thinks he wants to drive there, because we really like traveling along the Rocky Mountain range, and we enjoyed our vacation to British Columbia back in 1994.  But that would make for a mighty long trip.  Larry wants to take a camper, of course, so as to save money.  But if the roads in Colorado jarred the screws loose on our poor pickup camper, the Alaskan ‘highway’ would possibly tear a camper to shreds!  Besides, I want to go Juneau, and other towns along the coast.  And one can’t drive there.  A train ride into the interior would be a lot more relaxing than a drive, if the roads are bad... though I agree with Larry, I like to be able to stop and explore wherever I jolly well please.  I don’t suppose the engineer would stop the train anytime I requested?

Thursday evening, Larry sent a picture of a deer he got, writing, “Soup’s on! 🍲”

“You already threw it into a kettle,” I replied, “right out there in the woods??”

Larry also sent the picture to Hester (probably by accident), and then asked if she wanted some. 

Her answer:  “Not if it still has hooves or fur.  😟”

That reminded me of the time we were in Ouray, Colorado, staying in a cabin, and Larry cooked the rainbow trout he’d caught earlier on a campfire.  He doled it out to each of us (there were several fish), and we seated ourselves at the picnic table and prepared to dig into our meal.

“What’s this?” asked Caleb, poking his fork at a small round thing on his plate.

Larry took a look, and then, totally unmindful of me shaking my head and making faces at him, told his small son nonchalantly, “Oh, it’s just a fish eyeball.”

Caleb did not eat fish at that meal.

Caleb did not eat fish at any meal in the near and somewhat distant future.

And Larry fileted his fish thereafter.

When Teddy was a wee little guy, still sitting in his high chair, if I put a bowl of food in front of him that he didn’t think he would like, he’d say, “That’s really good!”  ((pause))  “And I’m full now.”  hee hee

Hester texted Larry, “Did you get just the one deer?”

I, being included in this group conversation, quickly chimed in, “ ♫ ♪ And two game wardens, seven hunters, and a purebred Guernsey cow.”  ♪ ♫

“Did you get it with a bow?” Hester queried further.

Butting in again quickly, I wrote, “No, he was in no mood to trifle.  ♫ ♪  He took down his trusty rifle, and went out to stalk his prey... ♪ ♫ ”

Do you know that song?  Here it is:  The Hunting Song

While I sewed, I backed up my pictures, documents, patterns, etc., on both of my external hard drives.  It’s time to get another hard drive; the one-terabyte drive is nearly full. 

Someone remarked on my ‘one million pictures’, so I had to check and see what the actually tally really is.  Turns out, it’s only a little over 157,000.

That night, Larry informed me, “D-Day is January 16.”

That is, ‘Dentures Day’ – the day he goes to the dentist. 

Eeek.  I don’t like to think about it.

By bedtime, I’d finished three sets of nesting bowls.  More pictures here.  Three more to go... and then I will get back to Jeremy and Lydia’s New York Beauty Variation quilt.

Friday, needing to use up three bananas and a small bowl full of walnuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts, I set about making banana nut bread. 

Here’s my recipe:

Banana Nut Bread

While the banana bread baked, I cleaned the kitchen... and when it was done, I rewarded myself with a piping hot slice liberally slathered with butter.  Mmmmm, yummy.

Then off I went to my sewing room, where I sewed set #9 of the fabric nesting bowls.  And there’s Tiger, asking me to pleeeease put the camera down and pet him, pôr fąvör.

Tiger would be sitting in the bowls, if he could jump high enough to get up on that sewing box or the table.  If I ever try to take pictures of anything on the floor, there he is, smack-dab in the middle of it.  😄 

He’s the sweetest thing, though.  I think he goes into overdrive rubbing around our ankles and purring, in order to catch up on all the loving he missed, before he found us.

Saturday, I finished the last two nesting bowl sets.  More pictures here.

I remembered to time the construction of one of those bowls yesterday:  Each bowl takes about three hours, from the cutting to the steaming it into shape.  That’s not a totally precise time, because I already did all the cutting and the sewing together of the Dresden blades; but I’m making an educated guess, which is probably pretty close.  😉

Which set shall I save for the fairs?  Hmmmm...

Several people have asked if it’s safe to use these under a bowl in the microwave.

So long as you only use them for 1-2 minutes, they’re fine.  The batting is subjected to high heat to shape it; it’s not the run-of-the-mill poly batting.  It’s when food is spilled on fabric microwave bowls and they are then left in the microwave for 5+ minutes or so that the troubles can occur.  But these are actually more for decorative purposes, or for setting warm bowls on, on your table. 

It was a pretty day, bright and sunny and getting up to 50°.  Quite a change from earlier in the week.

Larry got two more deer that day, and we had venison loins for supper that night.  He smoked them in the Traeger grill for several hours, then finished them on the broiler in the oven.  And finally, finally, we had deer meat as tender as it was the very first time Larry smoked it in the Traeger, several years ago.  Oddly, those two times it tasted best, he didn’t marinate it.  ?

Sunday afternoon, we had dinner at Kurt and Victoria’s house.  We took some backstrap venison that Larry had left smoking all morning while we were at church, along with a loaf of banana nut bread.  That is... we took the bread to Kurt and Victoria’s house, too.  The bread wasn’t smoking all morning.

English.  Tsk.

At the evening service, a new missionary to Thailand preached. 

Home again, we had a little lunch, and then I made myself a steaming cup of Clipper’s Wild Berry tea and sipped it while looking at various places of interest in Lincoln that I can pop around to a week from Wednesday, having all sorts of fun and games, you know, while Larry is at the Affordable Dentist office having every last tooth removed and replaced with dentures.

Aarrgghh.  I’m fairly certain I won’t have the faintest notion where I’m going, what I’m doing, what I’m looking at, or what I’m buying, what with worrying over Larry, of whom I’m particularly fond.  Makes my hair stand straight up on end, the hackles rise on the back of my neck, and my tail get all bushy, just thinking about the procedure he’ll be going through.  😬😖😟

Taken on a previous drive to Lincoln

But... once it’s all over, and he’s had a chance to recover, I really believe he’ll feel sooo very much better.  He’s had trouble with abscesses since he was about 13 years old, and has now had root canals done to every tooth.  Several have broken off, been fixed, broken again... many are crumbling away... and when he had his first appointment at the clinic last month, he had five abscesses in his mouth.  Five.  He thought he had one.

Taken on a previous drive to Lincoln

Okay.  There’s Harbor Coffeehouse... Calico House (and I do need a new seam ripper) (no, we won’t discuss why I need a new seam ripper) (just ’cuz, and just in case)... International Quilt Study Center & Museum, admission cost, $8... the Historic Haymarket District... the beautiful Nebraska State Capitol... and, along with a dozen other museums, there’s the Holocaust Memorial, which I’ve never seen.  But the latter might be a bit too troubling and worrisome, when I’m already worried about my Other Half, who refuses to worry on his own account, thereby relegating me to do double duty a-worryin’ for the both of us. 

Hmmm... there are eight public libraries to choose from, too.  Oh... boo, hoo!  I’ll miss the Cookie Mouse!

Oh me, oh my.  I just want Larry’s mouth to be okay!  Whatever shall I feed him, while his mouth heals???

Okay, break out the Thompson grapes.  Are Thompson grapes and Clipper Wild Berry tea comfort foods?

A number of my online quilting friends, upon hearing that Larry will be getting dentures, hastened to tell me that they, too, had gone through this, and they have given me quite a number of ideas about what he’ll be able to eat.  I have a good blender, and I have a good juicer.  I won’t let him starve!

One lady, after giving me several paragraphs of good recommendations, wrote, “After he is all healed up, and about two or three months down the road, he is going to LOVE eating popcorn.  When he gets hulls caught in his teeth now, all he has to do it go rinse his mouth and teeth off, put them back in and he will be good to go; while you are still picking at the pesky hull bugging you. 😊”

Bedtime!

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