Journal: ♪ ♫ Bloom, Lilies, Bloom! ♫ ♪

 

After seeing my pictures of the raccoons on our deck, Hannah asked, “Do they mess up or break the feeders?”

“They damaged the wire that holds that heavy metal one, I think,” I told her.  “That’s why it sits on the deck.  Or maybe it was just getting old.  I found it under the deck at Loren’s house.  And the little cheap green plastic one has a broken slide-clasp.  I finally got smart and have started bringing them in each night.  The evening of the Coon Quartet, though, I left a couple of nearly-empty ones out so that the critters could clean them.  And clean them they did.   ”

I’m pretty sure the four together is a mother and three youngsters.  Those three littler ones act a lot like toddlers.  The mother just gets right to business, but the little ones get all sidetracked exploring and playing and squabbling with each other.  They trip and tumble and roll... swat at each other... chatter and chirr... So funny to watch them.

Tuesday afternoon, Dorcas sent pictures of Trevor and Brooklyn.  Brooklyn was trying a dried banana for the first time. 

“She’s not real sure what she thinks about it,” said Dorcas.  “She loves real bananas so much; but she can’t figure out why I called that dried chip a banana!  😂”

She sent a video of Trevor playing a little ditty on the piano – same little ditty numerous times, but starting in the bass clef and working its way up into the treble clef as far as he could go.  He had just figured out octaves, and that notes match.

I asked Dorcas, “Do you remember singing ‘It Is Summertime in My Heart’ in Jr. Choir?  The key would change a couple of times in the song, going half an octave higher each time – but I wouldn’t quit at the end, and would continue in what would’ve been the next key change – and several of the kids could actually sing it, way up there!  But finally everyone would be laughing, unable to sing any higher, so we’d have to quit.”

She remembered.  Jr. Choir was fun.  😊

That day, I put together the back and the batting and then loaded the turquoise Split-Blade Pinwheel quilt for Willie, 1½, onto my frame and quilted it.

It was done in no time.  I trimmed it and removed it from the frame, and sewed the binding on it.

I then made a coordinating pillow.  This set was made with the leftovers from the turquoise Pinwheel quilt that will be for Willie’s oldest sister Carolyn.  The turquoise quilt was made to go with the pink Pinwheel quilt that’s for Carolyn’s younger sister Violet.

I used light turquoise 40-wt. Omni thread on top and turquoise 60-wt. Bottom Line thread in the bobbin.  The white backing is some sort of very fine, soft fabric that I suspect is a good part polyester, and may have been a sheet in a former lifetime, though if it was, it had very little use.  I figured this was the perfect little quilt with which to use it up.  The batting is made up of a whole lot of pieces of Soft & Bright 100% cotton, all stitched together with a 9-millimeter zigzag.  Frankenbatting!  😄 The quilt measures 44” x 47”.  The pantograph is ‘Petal Pushers’.

The 12” x 12” pillow is filled with folded pieces of batting which were encased in the same fabric as the backing before being put into the pieced cover.  The big black button on top came from a jar full of my mother’s very old buttons.  That button is probably 100 years old.

Larry had brought home caramel, chocolate, nuts, and bananas, so that night we made banana splits with Kemp’s vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Wednesday morning, I got up fairly early with plans to work outside, but one of my toes was so sore it hurt to walk.  I’d noticed it the previous night, and it had gotten steadily worse.  A couple of days earlier, I’d   kicked my little wooden footstool; but if that’s what caused it, why did it take so long to get sore?  Anyway, the toe stated emphatically that it did not want to be crammed into the Nikes I wear for gardening. 

So I started washing a load of clothes, took pictures of the quilt and pillow I’d finished for Willie, and then escorted the sore toe upstairs to my quilting room, and we brought along the other nine toes for company.

A lady on an online quilting group told us that a woman at her quilt club had remarked that she’d learned one is not supposed to use polyester thread for quilting.

People used to think polyester thread would eventually ‘cut through’ cotton fabrics and destroy a quilt.  That’s been proven pretty much untrue, through the years; but some were too ingrained with that notion to ever think otherwise.  (Perhaps it was more likely to happen when polyester thread was more like fishing line, and cottons were more like gauze.)  I mostly use whatever thread matches my project best (long-staple thread in the quilting machine, of course); and I choose threads with a sheen now and then if it complements the fabrics.  Polyester threads don’t put so much lint into the machines; that’s one of their advantages.  But I do use a lot of cotton threads, too.  Since I give the bobbin race area a quick clean with a soft brush and add a drop of oil every time I refill the bobbin, lint isn’t a problem.  

I have Sulky thread, but only use it for embroidery.  I have a bunch of Coats & Clark thread I’m using up, and after that I’ll stick to the cones by Superior (Bottom Line, So Fine, Omni, Glide, King Tut, etc.), Mettler, Gutermann, Signature, etc.

On one of the more argumentative sewing/quilting groups I used to belong to, one lady announced, “Lint in your machine is a sign you are using poor quality thread!” to which another lady promptly retorted, “Lint in your machine is a sign you are sewing and quilting!”  

A barroom – uh, quilting room – brawl immediately ensued.  They’d’ve probably been beaning each other with spools of thread, had they been in-person, rather than online.  🤣

That day I put together a little fabric book printed with baby animals for little Oliver, 1½.  Each page has a layer of Soft & Bright cotton batting inside. 

In order to make a pretty border that would fit the matching quilt panel perfectly, I pulled up EQ8 – that is, I tried to pull up EQ8.  A popup box informed me that I must reactivate the program.  Obligingly, I clicked ‘Activate’.  I plugged in my email... then my password... and it was rejected.

After a couple of fruitless activation tries, I requested a new password.  A link was emailed to me for that purpose.  I clicked the link... arrived back at the website... made a new password... clicked ‘Activate’ ——

And was informed, ‘There are no activations left for this license.’

Aarrgghh!!  Why didn’t they say so in the first place?!

Wouldn’t you know, the Electric Quilt techs, who used to be available 24/7 until Covid struck (what keeps all those services from going back to their old hours, anyway?!), had all gone home for the evening.  I sent an email:  “I have recently had my computer repaired, and now I cannot open EQ8.”  I added a few of the pertinent details and clicked ‘Send’.

Meanwhile, I started cutting pieces for the border of Oliver’s quilt, doing it the old-fashioned way:  with a tape measure and arithmetic.  And then it was time for church.

I was glad Larry had gotten the leaking tire on the Mercedes fixed earlier that afternoon.  It cost the royal sum of $15.

Later that night, I was chatting online with Hannah.  She sent me a couple of pictures of Willow, her little Australian shepherd, listening to sounds in the other room.

“Haha, she could be the RCA dog,” I wrote back. 

She’s such a smart and funny little doggy.

“What size of quilt shall I make for Aaron?” I asked Hannah.

Aaron is over 6 feet tall.

“He needs at least a long full-size, I’d think,” replied Hannah.

We certainly don’t want him to feel like the man Isaiah wrote about it:  “For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.”  😅

A year or so ago, Larry loaned his road bike to Caleb, as he hadn’t ridden since before he had his teeth removed and got dentures.  That ordeal hurt his neck so much, he wasn’t able to ride, leaning over holding the handlebars while tipping his head up to look where he was going.

Caleb returned the bike a few days ago, as he bought himself and Maria new matching bikes.  Sooo... Larry went riding Wednesday night, for the first time in 4 ½ years.

He pedaled up to the dead-end on Old Highway 81 – and made his chain come off, by trying to shift lower when he was already in the lowest gear.  He put it back on, and rode to Oconee, about six miles away.  The chain needs a little adjustment now.  🫤

He returned hot and sweaty – and happy that he can ride again without a literal pain in the neck.

Bright and early Thursday morning, I got an answer from a lady at Electric Quilt:  “Hello Sarah; I’ve reset the activations on your license ID.  You have two available to use again.  If you can’t activate with your last password, you can use this alternate password (which she gave me).  Let us know if you have any other questions.”

I clicked ‘Activate’, and promptly sent a reply back:  “Yaaaayyy, it worked, it worked, it worked!  I’m back in business.  Thank you so very much.”

I soon got an answer:  “Yay, Sarah!!  So glad you got it working!  Let us know if you need further assistance.  Have fun, and happy designing!!”

And there’s another reason I really like EQ8, in addition to the fact that it’s just plain a great program:  the people who run the company never fail to be helpful and friendly.  😊

I suppose the deactivation happened because my laptop was connected to a different server for a certain amount of time while it was being repaired, and the Electric Quilt activation ‘timed out’?  After all, I have often connected overnight to hotel or campground servers without any disconnect with EQ8.  That’s my best unedjeecated guess.

It was a lovely day, in the low 70s with a slight breeze that morning as I worked in some of the flower gardens.  

The clematis and old-fashioned roses are still blooming away, and the Wild Prairie roses have begun blooming.  I found an itty bitty neon green baby katydid on one Wild Prairie rose.

The milkweed is in bloom, too.

I filled the bird feeders... put the last load of clothes in the washing machine... and went to take a shower.

Uh, that was the wrong thing to do, the wrong way around.  And I know better.  The shower fluctuated between scalding and glacial, while the washer chugged away on its ‘Heavy Duty’ setting, periodically putting hot water into the barrel, just as I had programmed it to do.

I did the only thing I could do:  I hurried as fast as possible, and got out of the way of the shower spray posthaste every time I heard the washing machine changing cycles.  I somehow managed to escape with neither blisters nor frostbite.

By 10:30 a.m. it was 78°, bright and sunny.  I ate breakfast, then headed up to my quilting studio to continue working on Oliver’s ‘Little Ones’ quilt.

By 1:00 that night, the quilt top was together.  This is what’s fun about panels:  half the quilt is already made for you!  😀  ’Course, I always wind up doing something that increases construction time, like adding 207 one-inch squares to the thing.  🙄

But now I was beginning to wonder if Willie’s quilt and pillow aren’t as cute as Oliver’s quilt and matching book.

You know, this could be a problem throughout all 27 quilts for the grandchildren! 

Siggghhhhh...  Trying to make everything fair for the grandchildren is like evening up table legs:  pretty soon, you have to sit on the floor in order to use it.

Friday, the air conditioner was hardly blowing any air, and it was hot in here.  I pushed the reset button outside on the unit, but it didn’t help.  The coils were probably all frosted and frozen.  I turned it off.

When Larry came home for lunch, he changed the filter, turned the compressor off, and the fan to ‘On’.  It had not occurred to me to turn the fan on; that always helps de-ice a frozen air conditioner.

Throughout the afternoon, the fan gradually blew with more force, telling me that the coils were defrosting. 

Problem:  the float on the sump pump was stuck, and we soon had a small pond in the basement.  😵‍💫🫤

Larry tapped on it and got it started again; but it doubtless needs to be cleaned to keep it working well.  Mineral deposits in the water cause that float to stick.

Fortunately, there’s a small window air conditioner in the upstairs landing.  I put a fan on a swiveling pedestal in the doorway of my quilting studio, and even though the central air was off except for the fan, the room was not unpleasant, really.

I pieced together the backing and the batting (I’m trying to use up my scraps), then loaded the ‘Little Ones’ quilt on the frame and began quilting it.  I used a couple of my new rulers from Julia Quiltoff for the borders.  I’m really pleased with the variety of designs these rulers give me.

We had stuffed peppers for supper that night.  It’s probably our favorite meal.

I bake the peppers in the oven, and while they are baking, I cook the hamburger – ground venison, in this case – in one pan, and the rice in another.  The various flavors of the ingredients are so much better, so much more distinct, when cooked separately, as opposed to stuffing the pepper and then baking it all at once.  I like to layer when serving it, too:  lettuce, then the baked pepper, which I slice open so it lies flat, then a big spoonful of the ground venison.  Sometimes I cook the hamburger or venison with onions and an assortment of spices, the onions added late enough in the cooking that they don’t get too soft.  This time, however, instead of onions, I tossed in the majority of a small jar of canned red pepper slices and let them cook with the meat. 

Back to the filling of the plates:

Next, a big dollop of sour cream atop the meat, then the rice, cooked with a bit of salt and lots of butter.  On top of this, I generously sprinkle shredded Mexican cheese (it will start melting on the hot rice), crumbled bacon, sliced tomatoes, and Pace picanté sauce (not salsa, picanté sauce) poured liberally over the works.

The layers of cold and hot, along with the variety of flavors, makes this dish a culinary delight.

By 10:00 p.m., I had  reached the halfway point on the ‘Little Ones’ quilt.

I retired to my recliner to write the Saturday Skim for my Quilt Talk group.

The chicory is in bloom.  Here’s one with a little green bee collecting pollen from  it.  Did you know chicory is in the same family as the dandelion?  I discovered this after taking some close-up photos of chicory and thinking, Those petals and stamens look just like the dandelion’s petals and stamens. 

I looked it up.  Yep, same family:  Asteraceae.  And both plants and flowers are edible.

So there I was, calmly sitting and doing good deeds for humanity, when a humongous cricket went strolling across the living room floor.  I put my laptop on my footstool and got up quickly to dispatch the thing, but he saw me and took a 50-foot leap under the table, disappearing from sight.  I looked for him, but couldn’t see hide nor hair – uh, claw – of him.  >>...shiver...<<

He would doubtless wait until I was eating breakfast the next morning and then leap onto my leg.

Suddenly half an hour later, there he was again, waddling along away from my chair.  How did he get from under the table to some location behind my chair?!  Yikes.  He was trying to sneak up on me!  Or maybe this was a different one, and we have an infestation.  Eeek. 

I leaped up, grabbed one of Larry’s boots from under the corner table, and went to ka-thumping the thing, while it went on hopping and trying to get away.  Wow, he could really hop.  And he was a tough one! 

I awoke Larry with all the ruckus.  But I got him.  (The cricket, that is, not Larry.)  (I got Larry quite a long while ago now.)

One of Larry’s expensive new hearing aids wasn’t working.  He called the company, and they told him to trade wires on the hearing aids, in order to narrow down the problem – and now neither one is working.  He’ll call them tomorrow.

Saturday morning, just as I figured would happen, a lady on one of the big quilting groups on Facebook spotted the partial Bible verse on the ‘Little Ones’ quilt, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” and wanted to know what it meant, totally misunderstanding it.  At least she was nice about it.

“You’re a professional!” she wrote.  Then, “Why was the quilt fearfully made?  You’ve got skills!”

Since she was nice about it, it didn’t even occur to me to respond, “Because quilting is scary!”  😉

“Thank you!” I replied.  “It’s a verse from Psalms 139, written by David.  Here are verses 13 and 14:  ‘For thou hast possessed my reins:  thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.  I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.’  ‘Fearfully’ here means ‘amazingly’.”

It kinda sorta bothers me a little that the verse on the quilt is obviously referring to the baby animals pictured there, while the Bible verse is just as obviously speaking of a human baby.

Ah, well.  All life – indeed, all of Creation – is miraculous, that’s a fact.  We have a wonderful Creator.  Oliver’s parents will see to it that their little boy doesn’t learn false doctrine from his cute quilt.  😄

I headed to Omaha to visit Loren at 2:40 p.m., arriving at the nursing home at a quarter after 4.

As I traveled, I saw several glossy, well-taken-care-of vintage tractors being hauled on flatbeds hither and yon.  They were probably going to tractor shows or county fairs somewhere.

This time in addition to a couple of Messenger newspapers I had for Loren, I also had a Bugle – Elk Country and the Hunt magazine of Larry’s to give him.  I paged through it, pointing out some of the pictures and stories.  There was an article about a family who raised and later released an orphaned baby moose, with a picture of the young daughter hugging the fuzzy little calf.  The calf was in turn leaning his cute little head against the girl.

Loren took a long look at that picture, and then proceeded to tell me a story about trying to catch a young moose calf, loping over hill and dale somewhere out in the boonies of the Rockies. 

“I ran as hard as I could run,” he told me, “but that little rascal outran me!”

“It’s a wonder you didn’t get attacked by the mother!” I remarked.

Loren looked at me, surprised by my statement.  Then, with a grin, he assured me, “Oh, she knew I wouldn’t hurt him.”

I nodded.  Uh-huh.  Yep.

Here’s a picture of Loren I found on Prairie Meadows’s Facebook page, as they conducted a Father’s Day celebration in the courtyard Friday.

As I was leaving a while later, the nurses were rounding up residents for the supper hour, and the commons was getting full of people in wheelchairs or chairs along the walls, or coming along with their walkers.

A large nurse who is usually fairly friendly was gallumping toward me in front of a visiting woman who was pushing her husband in a wheelchair.  I slowed down and moved over toward the nurses’ counter in order to be out of their way.  The nurse veered and headed straight toward me, evidently wanting to go through the half-door that leads into the nurses’ station.  I slowed the more, and moved over the other way.  Didn’t want to get run down in the high streets, now, did I?

The nurse, not slowing her not-too-fast pace, said, said she, “BEEP BEEP!”

Good grief.  Manners, lady, manners.

I don’t suppose it would’ve been in good form to trip her?

Since a few of you have expressed concern about my picture-taking while I’m driving, I thought I’d prove to you that I really don’t take my eyes off the road when I’m snapping a shot.  This is what happened when I tried to take a picture of a pretty little creek I was crossing, which I couldn’t actually look at, on account of the traffic.

Now do you believe me when I say I don’t look away from the road, except for when there are no cars and I’m not traveling at a high rate of speed?  😅  Truly, I do try to be a safe driver. 

I got back home a little after 6:30 p.m. 

Sunday was Father's Day.  Bobby and Hannah gave Larry a gift certificate from Menards.  Hester and Andrew, and Kurt and Victoria, too, gave him cheese, sausage, pretzel chips, Jalapeño Jack Cheez-Its, a variety of reenergizing drinks, etc.

Larry went into Hy-Vee, and spotted Jeremy and Lydia in one of the aisles.  Catching up with them, he asked politely, “Do you people need help finding anything?”  They laughed, for, after all, Lydia works there in the early mornings, gathering people’s orders for curbside pickup.

They got to the checkout at the same time Larry did, and they paid for Larry’s things as his Father’s Day gift.  He immediately announced that he had a whole lot more things he’d forgotten to get.  😂

When we got home, I discovered that the Asiatic lilies were all in bloom.  They’re so big and bright!

Kurt and Victoria invited us over after the evening church service.  Caleb and Maria and Eva came, too.  Kurt and Victoria have just gotten a like-new outdoor glass table, chairs, and a sliding loveseat that someone was selling at a very good price.  They also got a new firepit.  Kurt put it together and started a fire, and we roasting marshmallows and made s’mores.  Larry made mine, and it was all gooey and got all over my hands, which made Caleb laugh, because, as he put it, “Mama never gets messy!” 

Maria made Larry a coconut cream pie with real whipping cream on top.  Mmmm, yummy.  (Yeah, he shared it with me. 😉)

This morning I filled the bird feeders, and soon the little birds were all congregated around them again.  There were goldfinches, house finches, English sparrows, blue jays, mourning doves, Eurasian doves, grackles, red-winged blackbirds... and out in the trees, I could hear Baltimore orioles, brown thrashers, house wrens, American robins... and maybe field sparrows?  Catbirds?  Farther away in the surrounding cornfields and pastureland, I heard killdeers, bobwhite quails, meadowlarks, eastern kingbirds, western kingbirds (we’re right in the area where the two species overlap), and the occasional red-tailed hawk.

Today is grandson Nathanael’s 17^th birthday and granddaughter Malinda’s 6^th birthday.  I had a few little things for them, including a Kabar pocketknife and this plaque for Nathanael.

But that wasn’t enough; so when Larry came home from work, we went to Wal-Mart for a few more things.  We got a light blue knit shirt for Nathanael.  For Malinda, we got a little fluffy kitten purse and sunglasses, a peach-colored knit jumper, and a slightly darker peach knit t-shirt to go with the jumper.

We delivered the gifts and came home.  Supper was chicken noodle soup, as Larry was in a big hurry to get to Genoa and work on a vehicle.

I’d sorta thought that, in making the quilts for the grandchildren, I’d start with the oldest; but having begun with the pink Split-Blade Pinwheel quilt and progressing on to the turquoise ones and then the ‘Little Ones’ set just because it was cute, it looks like I’m starting with the little ones and working my way on up to the older ones.  That’s okay; the older ones will understand if I don’t get all of theirs done by Christmas.  I’ll dole them out for birthdays in 2024, as I get them done.

Disclaimer: All plans subject to change at my whim and whimsy.  😁

Bedtime!

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