Last Tuesday, February 28th, was our oldest
daughter Hannah’s 42nd birthday.
We gave her a set of Danbury Mint ornaments that used to be Janice’s
(like we gave Victoria a few days earlier), a set of white towels with
embroidery on them, and a colorful wooden spatula.
I had only three boxes of
the ornaments; I wonder if I can find something sorta similar for the other
girls? Just before tying a netting bow
around the box, I lifted the lid and looked in – and discovered that this was
the set that was missing three ornaments. Last year, I looked for some in order to fill
the box – and discovered I couldn’t afford to! People aren’t selling those vintage ornaments
cheap. 😲
Speaking of ornaments,
our Calico Kitty used to lick and lick and lick our little hand-carved olive
wood ornaments from Israel. I had
camels, a manger scene, and maybe a shepherd with a lamb, if I remember
right. Kitty got so vigorous with her
licking, the ornaments would finally fall off the Christmas tree, and then she’d
commence to rolling and rolling on them. Did they smell like old fish, after she licked
them to death, I wonder ?
Big snowflakes started coming down early that afternoon. It was 39°, and my weather app said it was
raining. But those were not raindrops
out there. They were melting when
they hit the ground, but they were snowflakes.
For supper that night, I used leftovers
from the previous night’s venison roast, baked potatoes, carrots, and onions to
make stew. There wasn’t enough, so I toddled
to the pantry to see what else I could find.
Hmmm... organic petite diced tomatoes. That would do; I would just add more spices. Oh, and there was a can of Hormel Chili with
beans. I’m not at all fond of canned
chili. So, rather than save it to eat by
itself one of these days, I threw it into the stew. (Well, I did open the can, scrape out
the chili, and throw the can away. You
thought I threw can and all into the pot, didn’t you?)
I like that French oven, because after
baking in it one night, I can cook stew in it the next night, right atop the
stove. Handy.
The stew was good,
despite the canned chili, and lasted another day and a half.
After quilting most
of the day, I rolled the quilt forward that night, and started the last row before the borders. When it’s that
close to being done, I hardly want to quit for the night!
A quilting friend
hurt her foot recently, and is in a walking boot. “I’m glad it’s my left foot, so I can still
sew!” she said.
I commiserated
with her. It really is hard to
sew, with a bum foot.
I sprained my
right ankle shortly before Hester’s weddings back in 2008 – there were things I
needed to sew! I am neither ambidextrous
nor pedidextrous (which should be a word). I was, uh, ... inept at using the foot pedal
with my left foot, to say the least.
I sewed entire
skirts before I even got them cut out.
I didn’t quilt as long Wednesday before our church service as
I’d hoped to, so the
last row and a half above the bottom borders was not quite three-quarters done.
But it was close, soooo close! Then
all that would be left would be the bottom borders, and I’d be taking this
quilt off the frame.
Thursday, I found pictures
on the Prairie Meadows nursing home Facebook page
where the residents were making Valentines.
Here’s Loren with part of his:
Several quilting friends have asked me if I used
different colors of threads on this quilt top.
I’ve used 8 different thread colors on the top. Sometimes when I start a plume in one block,
it runs over into another block, and so the thread color contrasts rather than
matches. I just, uh... let it do
that.
People have no idea what the word ‘humble’ means
these days.
Here’s a recent ‘speech’ by a person who was actually
fired from her job. You’d’ve thought to
listen to her that she got promoted, instead:
“I am
grateful and humbled to have had the opportunity to serve the children and
families of this great state, and I continue to strongly support you and your
vision for furtherance in our great state. I am particularly proud of the fact that we
advanced your agenda for improvement over the past two successful General
Assembly sessions.”
Now, there’s a whole lot of
blah-blah for you. She’s humble
and proud, both!
Deep down in the depths of their
barely-flickering consciences, people still have a slight inkling that ‘pride’
is wrong. They ‘fix’ this issue by saying
that they are ‘humbled’, instead.
Really, what they are, is ‘proud as a peacock’.
That last row took lotsa RNS! (Rulers ’N Stuff)
Anytime I post a picture that
shows that little green ruler, someone wants to know what it is, and where I
got it. This time was no exception. (My LED lights under the handles
of my longarm make this ruler glow in the dark. Isn’t that the niftiest thing?)
I
got the little ruler from a quilting friend, who got it at one of her local
quilt shops, Huckleberry Quiltworks.
I’ve seen pictures of the same little green ruler, only with the name
Lakeside Quilt Company on it – and I just discovered that Lakeside is the new
name for Huckleberry Quiltworks, though I’m not sure Lakeside is still in
business, either. The website, Love To Quilt
.com, is not a working URL.
Well, I basted the
bottom of the quilt as closely as I could to the Red Snappers grippers, then
removed said Snappers – and sighed with relief to see that there was enough
backing – there was ⅛” to spare. 😬😲 I trimmed off the
batting a bit so I could see what I was doing, and then I pinned the backing to
the lower leader, re-basted the edge, and then removed the first row of
basting, which had wound up smack-dab in the middle of the last border.
I think what
happened is that the intense quilting ate up more backing than expected. I had plenty of fabric, and could have cut it
longer in order to give myself a little more leeway; but I thought I had it
long enough, and I do like to scrimp and save.
Nothing
like playing chicken with your backing and not even knowing it!
By 8:00 p.m., the blue
borders were done, and I took a break to eat supper. I was half-starved half to death! (à la Bill Collins of The Sugar Creek Gang)
I sent a note to the lady whose quilts
have been waiting patiently (or otherwise) on the other side of my quilting
studio: “I’m almost ready to start on
your quilts. However, Dorothy, one of my
great-nieces-by-marriage (also our son-in-law Jeremy’s younger sister) gave me
a little boy’s quilt (with a Curious George theme) a couple of weeks ago to
quilt for her. I’m thinking I’ll do an edge-to-edge pantograph on it, so
it would take less than a day to do it.
“Since you want custom quilting on both
of your quilts, which will take longer, I’m wondering if you would mind if I
did this little Curious George quilt first?”
She soon wrote back to say she didn’t
mind at all.
Another
quilter asked me, “Do you take pictures of the top borders so you can repeat on
the bottom?”
I
replied, “Yes, I do try for detailed pictures of top borders, so I can
replicate it at the bottom. But you know
what happened when I pulled up those pictures?? I discovered that somewhere along the side
borders, I had stopped doing the little crosshatch at the top inside of each
arch! Furthermore,
I’d dropped one feather on each side of the plumes inside those arches. I’m putting all that back in, in the
bottom arches. See my ‘I meant to do
that!’ face?”
Top border 
Bottom border, as seen on the back
As I worked on finishing the quilting of
The Birds of Colorwash Patch, I kept
reminding myself (by accident) why I hate pins and love my Red Snappers!
Please pass the band-aids.
Late Friday afternoon, the quilting was
complete. Here it is, lopped over the
frame after being removed from it and trimmed. I’ll take some full shots
of it after I get the binding and the label on it. But first, I must do
those customer quilts.
I’m quite pleased with how the back
looks. I couldn’t quit taking pictures of this quilt! 😁
A friend wrote, “If I tried to ‘wing it’
like you do I’d have my crosshatching going right through my feathers. It would not be pretty. Lol Love,
love, love your work!”
I wrote back, thanking her and telling
her, “I had to learn to slow down from my usual speed of Mach V. Why, when I first started quilting, I’d take a
big swoop, and wind up clear on the other side of my window, out in the garage
quilting the hood of my Jeep!”
Here’s a picture of Victoria’s
kitties, Yuki and Luna, all cuddled up together. Isn’t that cute?
Before I exited the quilting studio for the night, I
got the Curious George quilt loaded onto the quilting frame. I couldn’t find a pantograph that I
liked, so I revamped one, turning a baby long-tailed spider monkey into Curious
George, who is more likely either a baby chimpanzee or a baby barbary macaque, neither
of which have tails. I still have to add
in a loop with a leaf under the monkey to fill in the place where a tail used
to be.
When Caleb, now 29, was about 2 years old, he had a hard
time wrapping his tongue around the word ‘curious’. After a few
attempts that got his two giggly older sisters giggling at him, he called his
stuffed toy ‘George Monkey’. (They went
on giggling, but Caleb apparently felt it better to be giggled at for the name
he’d come up with than for the pronunciation difficulties. 😄)
Larry went with me Saturday
to see Loren. We had a nice visit with him.
We found him in one of
the big pretty rooms at the far side of the home, all alone (as he sometimes
likes to be) watching the TV, which was showing some big, beautiful castles of
Europe. We like visiting in that room,
which is like a very large, lovely living room in a stately old home. Nobody interrupts us, and the chairs are big
and comfortable.
Loren was seated on a
loveseat, his back to the door, and he really laughed when Larry went marching
in and flung himself down beside him, ker-WHUMP.
We talked about Larry’s
truck, Larry’s pickups, my quilts, and socks (because Loren looked at the TV
just as an ad for brightly-striped woolen hiking socks came on, picturing the
beautiful mountains of Switzerland in the background).
After our visit, we ate supper at La Mesa Mexican
Restaurant. Our meals had not quite
arrived when five young women walked in and sat down at the table next to
us. The girl closest to me had a lot to
say. And she said it, too – at the top
of her voice.
Somewhere in the
middle of her multiple spiels, she asked her friends, “WOULD YOU BELIEVE I
USED TO BE PAINLESSLY SHY???” ((snicker)) (At least it didn’t hurt.)
In the middle of her
many stories, she regularly ordered her friends, “LISTEN!!!!” – though, truly,
they had no other option. (Actually, I
think her ‘LISTEN’ remark mostly meant, ‘Oh, I just thought of something else!’
or maybe ‘Get a load of this!’)
I think she was
pretty, but my Mama taught me not to stare – and I have to obey her now,
because I can’t turn my head that far to the side in any case. haha
The girl said, among
other things, “All five of my ex-boyfriends played the guitar!”
A woman farther down
the table intoned dramatically, “That means something.”
But nobody told me
what it means, and I needed to know!!!
(Maybe it just means she likes boys who
play guitars?)
They ordered some kind of colorful drinks
which were brought to them in large, stemmed, V-shaped martini glasses (I had
to hunt that up to find out what they were called); and not long after that,
they were all painlessly unshy.
Later, the girl got up and went to the
restroom, and the other four young women immediately took the opportunity to
discuss her in detail. They were
actually quite lenient in their assessments, analyses, and critiques, with one
after the other ending her evaluation by saying, “I’m sure I was just like her
when I was her age.”
They got this all ironed out just in
time to greet the younger woman with cheerful indulgenced when she returned to
their table.
I had Enchiladas Rancheros, and it was
scrumptious, as is everything at La Mesa – or at least everything we have
ever tried. Larry got some kind of a
seafood dinner.
I had Flan for dessert. Mmmm, yummy.
But, I ask you, does this look like the right size
of a plate of food for me?!
No, no.
One-third of it would’ve sufficed.
They bring us salsa and warm chips to
eat while we wait for the food to arrive.
I got Mango Lemonade, and it was sooo good. I’d never had it before.
Take
a close look at the lady in this Chevrolet El Camino, seen on our way to Omaha. Is she warbling an operetta, do you think, or
is she telling her husband a thang or two??
Sunday after
church, we had a delicious dinner with Kurt and Victoria. She’d baked a roast that she had marinated overnight
in some kind of sauce, along with carrots and onions. The potatoes, she did in her slow cooker, and
then she mashed them and added lots of butter and a salt with rosemary and
thyme.
Seeing
some of Carolyn’s and Violet’s coloring pages reminded me of the time when I,
at about age 4, gave my brother-in-law the High Honor of coloring in my
coloring book, on the opposite side of the page from the picture I was
coloring.
John H.
thought he would entertain me by coloring the faces all different colors.
I didn’t say a word,
because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings if he didn’t know better... but I
sure was appalled! Appalled, and troubled
that he was ruining my coloring book. I
was extremely protective of my coloring books.
This picture of Caleb just scrolled through on my screen saver.
See those little Dalmatian boots?
Here is the story about them, from an old journal of mine:
We were in Dillon,
Colorado, during the winter of 1996, and a snowstorm was coming. As we got ourselves situated in our motel
room, I told Caleb, who was 3, that if it snowed overnight, we’d go shopping
the next day and buy him some new boots, since we didn’t have any that fit him.
(Well, there were some, but they were
pink or purple, with hearts and butterflies and unicorns on them.)
Bright and early the next
morning, before the rest of us hardly had our eyes open, he jumped out of bed,
rushed over to the window, pulled back the curtain, peered out... and then he
yelled in great elation, “I’M GETTING NEW BOOTS!!! I’M GETTING NEW BOOTS!!!”
I hastily hushed him up
(other people in the motel were doubtless still trying to sleep) and went to the
window. Sure enough, there was about a
foot of snow on the ground.
We went to a nearby
Wal-Mart and got him some adorable little red, white, and black boots with
Dalmatian puppies embossed on the tongues, and Dalmatian fur printed on the
rest of the boot.
He loved those boots. As soon as we put them on him, along with his
coat, scarf, and mittens, and went outside, he dashed into the snow, found a
drift almost as tall as he was, and jumped and jumped and jumped in it. He promptly fell flat, and was laughing so
hard, Hester had to help him up. He
loved Dalmatians from that day on.
Above right are Caleb,
Hester, and Lydia next to Dillon Reservoir a little later that day. We had not yet gotten the new coat, hat, and
mittens Caleb is wearing in the first shot, which was taken in front of our
house.
I sent those pictures and
the story to Caleb and Maria this afternoon.
Maria soon responded, “Eva said after seeing the first picture, ‘Isn’t
he cute?’ and then, ‘I want another picture of Daddy.’”
So I sent this one,
writing, “Tell Eva this is just for her. Her Daddy is going fishing!” (Eva is 2 ½.)
Maria
wrote back, “She asked if he got a fishy?”
“Ummm... hmmm...” I
answered, “Let’s just say, ‘Probably.’ 😏😁”
I sent one more, saying,
“Sometimes he quit with the fishing, and went to excavating!”
And now the laundry is
done, and I’m ready to retire to my recliner for a bit before heading to the
feathers.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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