Journal: One Quilt Down, Twenty More to Go

 

Ever since Thanksgiving, I’ve had my Christmas songbook out, and have been playing Christmas songs each day.  I dearly love the wonderful old Christmas songs. 

Tuesday, I printed all the envelopes – 160 of them – for our Christmas photo-cards.  18 needed to be mailed; the others will go to friends and family at church or at our family gathering.

I text-chatted with Hester for a bit.

“I still have to take some pictures and do cards of some kind 🫣🤔😬,” said Hester.

“Here you go,” I answered, sending her this picture.  “Done.”

She responded, “😅😅🤣 I may end up using that.”

When the cards were done, I ordered Christmas presents for all the grandchildren – 18 of them – who won’t be getting quilts just yet.

Wednesday, I mailed those 18 Christmas cards that needed to be mailed, dropped off stuff at the Goodwill, and then got back to quilting the Playful Kitties quilt.  

On Wednesday evenings, I get dressed for our 7:30 p.m. midweek service an hour and a half or so ahead of time, so that when Larry comes skidding in from work at the very last minute, I’m not in his way.  That would be scary, to get in his way when he’s traveling at such a high velocity.  😦

The previous Saturday when I was visiting Loren, I noticed that his watch had stopped.

“Would you like me to have a new battery put in it?” I asked.

He would.  He slid the watch off his wrist and handed it to me.

He was wearing two watches the day we took him to Prairie Meadows, and sometimes when we visited him, he had them both on.  Loren has always loved watches.  It was only in the year before he went to the home in Omaha that he started putting one on each wrist.  I wonder if he still has the other watch?  I need to check; it probably needs a new battery, too.

Anyway, after the church service, we went to Wal-Mart to get a few groceries, and to have a battery put in Loren’s watch.  Larry had tried to open it, but couldn’t.

Unfortunately, we learned that our Wal-Mart no longer installs watch batteries.  I’ll have to take it to a jeweler.

But in the meanwhile, in case I didn’t get to the jeweler in the next two days, we looked for a new watch for Loren, and found one very similar to the one he’s been wearing, which is an Armitron with a metal stretch band, and with the day and date showing on the gold face.

I decided I would put it into a Christmas bag, and that would be our Christmas gift to him. 

After leaving Wal-Mart, we stopped at Subway to pick up some sandwiches for supper.

I went from totally starved to totally stuffed in less than 15 minutes, I do believe!

Thursday, I spent the majority of the day quilting.  Can you see what’s in the above picture?  In case you can’t, I’ll describe it:  it’s a kitten staring into a mirror, seeing himself, but thinking it’s a big, bold lion there in the glass.  Sorta like me peering into the mirror and imagining I still look 29 years old.

I’m looking at this picture and pondering... what do dogs think of themselves, when they look in a mirror, I wonder?  Did you know studies have been done on whether or not animals are capable of recognizing that it’s themselves in a mirror, and on just how this realization comes about?

I couldn’t remember, so I looked it up again.  Here are the eight animal species that regularly recognize themselves in mirrors (though individuals from other species do this at times, these eight species do so regularly):  

1) Chimpanzees, 2) Bonobos, 3) Gorillas, 4) Orangutans, 5) Bottlenose Dolphins, 6) Asian Elephants, 7) Blue Cleaner wrasse (a fish!), and 8 ) the Eurasian magpie.

Disclaimer:  I must say, I do find some of the testing methods and subsequent deductions inadequate at best, and faulty and flawed at worst.  You’d think one of the prerequisites for those conducting the studies would be that they had a good understanding of animals, or at least liked them, wouldn’t you??  Well, some of the researchers seemed to be seriously lacking in those fundamental qualities.

In fact, there were one or two of them who probably should’ve been research participants, as opposed to the researching scientists.  ((snerk))

Around midnight, I rolled the quilt forward and was surprised to see that I’d just finished the second-to-the-last row of the Playful Kitties, and was starting to quilt the final row before the bottom border.

Friday, I filled the bird feeders, cleaned a bathroom, tidied the bedroom, and cleaned the kitchen.  Then I trotted upstairs to quilt, quilt, quilt.  Arriving at the last row – especially when it’s a surprise – always gives me a surge of incentive, and I don’t want to quit until it’s done.  But there were several hours of quilting yet to do.

By a quarter ’til midnight, the quilting was finished.  I trimmed it from the frame and hung it over the bars.  It was ready for the binding to be put on.

Saturday, I got ready to go visit Loren.  Before leaving home, I collected a small Christmas gift bag from my gift-wrapping room to put Loren’s new watch in.  Deciding to set the time and date, I took it off the curved display holder inside the box – and discovered that the band is not stretchy; instead, it has a deployment clasp.  Furthermore, it needs several links removed, as it is clearly much too big for Loren.

Accordingly, I stopped at Crown Jewelry on my way out of town, intending to have a battery put in Loren’s old watch and the band made smaller on the new one – and found that they close early on Saturdays.  They’d locked their doors just a few minutes before I got there.

I checked my phone for jewelry stores in Omaha, but there were none near the nursing home.  Ah, well.  Loren would never think of it while I was there.  I would keep him entertained with two National Geographics, a Nebraska Rural magazine, and a Messenger newspaper.  Still, I felt bad that I hadn’t gotten the watches taken care of sooner.  Loren had probably looked at his wrist several times during the week, and wondered what had become of his watch.  ☹  Sigghhh...

The wind was gusting up to 45 mph that day, and the temperature did not get above the high 30s.  But the Mercedes is well-built and aerodynamic, and the wind did not bother it at all.

I got home a little before 7.  After a supper of turkey pot pie, I set about putting the binding on Elsie’s Playful Kitties quilt.  I attach bindings entirely by machine, sewing them to the front, flipping them to the back, pinning carefully (with lots of pins!), overlapping the binding edge just barely over the original stitching line, and then sewing from the front, stitching in the ditch.  On the back, the stitching along the edge of the binding falls at less than 1/16”.

It wasn’t too long before it was all done, except for the label.  I plan to do that tomorrow. 

Yesterday, Larry helped me take pictures of the quilt outside in natural light. 

The quilt measures 80” x 74” (the width is greater than the length, because I’m planning to make shams or pillowcases using the last of the printed strips).  I used Superior’s variegated Omni 40-wt. ‘Fairy Frost’ thread on top, and Bottom Line 60-wt. pink thread in the bobbin.  The batting is Hobbs Heirloom cotton.

The quilting is a combination of free-motion, pantograph, and rulerwork.  My machine, an 18” Handi Quilter Avanté, is hand-guided, not computer-driven.

Here is the back of the quilt:

Earlier this year, my niece Susan and her husband Charles, Larry’s boss, spent seven months in Scottsdale, Arizona, getting a specialized treatment for her cancer (breast cancer metastasized to spinal and liver cancer).  They returned home a couple of months ago, hopeful that the treatments had been successful.  However, recent tests showed the cancer was growing again.  They have returned to Scottsdale, but hope to be home for Christmas.

Look what just scrolled through on my screensaver:  me, Hannah, and Larry, at Hannah’s graduation in 1999.

This afternoon, the Lifestyle Director from Prairie Meadows sent me this picture of Loren.  Looks like he got to visit Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus!  Or they visited him, as this is in one of Prairie Meadows’ sitting/reading lounges.

I don’t know who ‘Mrs. Claus’ is, but ‘Santa’ is Don Woods, Marketing Director, the man who was instrumental in getting Loren into the home so quickly back in January of 2021.

I sent the picture to my children.  Hester soon responded, “He looks like he’s enjoying himself!”

“Yeah,” I answered, “and by now he’s probably forgotten that he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus!  😄”

Yesterday was granddaughter Brooklyn’s second birthday.  Dorcas sent videos of Brooklyn in the pajamas we sent her for her birthday, holding the little red purse we also sent, saying ‘thank you’ for the ‘jamas’ and the purse.  She talks so cute.

Trevor & Brooklyn

Oh!  There’s a pack of coyotes nearby!  They’re yipping and yapping like everything.  Sounds like they’re right in the front yard.  It’s too dark to see them, and if I open the front door, they’ll be gone like a flash.

And now I’d better pay a bill or two and head for the feathers.  Tomorrow, the quilt label; and then I have a whole lot of presents to wrap.

I don’t understand why calendar-makers think they can keep fooling us, showing 31 days in December.  Everybody KNOWS there are only about ten.

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