Journal: Quilts & Babies & an Eclipse

 

A friend wanted to know what creek or river this was, after I posted the picture a couple of weeks ago.

I wasn’t sure, since I don’t often drive this route between Lincoln and Wahoo, and I’d forgotten the exact location.  But after checking the timestamp on the photo, and seeing known locations of photos before and after this one, and after comparing it with the map, I see that it could be North Fork Rock Creek, Rock Creek, Hobson Branch, Ash Hollow Creek, Wahoo Creek, Sand Creek, or Cottonwood Creek.  

“There you go,” I said, after reciting these creek names.  “I really narrowed it down for you!”

Victoria sent me a video of Carolyn with Baby Arnold.  She’s such a dear little girl, and she loves her small siblings with all her heart; but the video made me laugh, because Carolyn does what most all children do, when trying to amuse the baby:  they find something that makes a noise that the baby once enjoyed, and then put it into perpetual and constant, continuous motion.  😂

I remember showing Hester, who was about 4 ½, how to rattle a toy for Baby Caleb:  “Say ‘Rattle-rattle!’ and do it a couple of times,” I advised.  “Hold it still, then do it again, and talk to the baby.  Say, ‘Do you like it?’ and point out colors, and tell him how it works.” 

She did that for a few minutes, and the baby did indeed enjoy the entertainment – but it wasn’t long before she reverted to continuous loop mode.  haha

I said, “Here, let me show you what that feels like,” and rattled a jar of vitamins in her face for about 30 seconds nonstop.  Hester didn’t know if that was very funny or not, but Teddy and Joseph sure thought it was!

Victoria laughed, upon hearing this story.  “Violet says ‘Hi, Arnold’ over and over again until I tell her to please say something else.  Then she goes blank.  Violet goes BLANK.  How does a child like Violet not know what to say!”

(Caleb was doing the entertaining, in this picture.)

Many years ago, one of my nephews and his wife had their second baby girl, whom they named – let’s call her Tillie.  Older sister – we’ll call her Netta, who was not quite two, was delighted to have a new baby sister, and promptly and with high hopes set out to entertain the baby.

It went something like this:  “Hi Tillie hi Tillie hi Tillie hi Tillie hi Tillie MAMA THE BABY’S FUSSING!”

Like that.  😂

My babies all demonstrated the fine motor skills with finger dexterity fairly early, picking up small things with thumb and fingers by ages 2 ½ to 3 months.  However, they didn’t sit up until about 6 months, or crawl until about 7 months.  I always thought that was because they were so roly-poly.  😄  They walked at about 12 or 13 months.  But as for talking?!  Oh, my.  They started at 5 months, and were saying whole sentences clearly by one year!

Hannah was 11 months, riding in a grocery cart, and we were walking down an aisle behind a dirty, smelly man, when he burped loudly.

Hannah, in her low-pitched voice and with perfect diction, said, “Well, exCUUUUSE me!”

I knew good and well that the man would never believe in a million years that the baby had said that!  I hastily exited the aisle, stage left.  😂

When Lydia was wee little, and Larry had his auto rebuilding shop, I went there one afternoon, kids in tow.  A friend named Don was there talking with Larry.

He chatted with the older children and tried to get Lydia to laugh by sticking his elbows out all akimbo and flapping them, while saying, “BAWK!  BAWK!  BAWK!”

Lydia looked at him.

Her plump little oval face was totally devoid of expression, although if you knew her, you might notice that her bottom lip was out just fractionally, in a ‘you’re an oddball’ expression.

She just stood there, looking at him. She never peeped a word.

We no sooner got home and walked through the front door than she burst into cackles of laughter, flapping her elbows and shouting, “BAWK!  BAWK!  BAWK!” and adding, “That’s what Don did! hahaha!!!” – and then doing it all over again.

I, of course, faithfully reported on the matter to Don.

One must keep the local comedians encouraged.

Larry remembers working with Don on a construction crew when Larry was about 15.  Don went to fill a bucket with water at a nearby pump – but the spigot was aimed straight up toward the sky.

So Don put the bucket over the top of the pump, hooking the bail on something so it would stay put — and then he went to pumping vigorously.

Water shot up into the upside-down bucket, then showered out onto the ground, while Don went on pumping and saying (with an accent like he had a bad speech impediment), “It won’t feeeeel up.  It won’t feeeeel up.”  🤣

Tuesday, I finished the pillows to match Ian’s quilt.  I think Ian is going to be pleased when I tell him that some of the fabric on the quilt and the backs of his pillows are from his grandpa Larry’s work shirts.  Most of Larry’s work shirts are far too stained and have too many holes (from welding burns or from snagging them) to ever use them in a quilt; but there were a couple of shirts that got ripped beyond repair only the first or second time he wore them, so there were little to no stains on the fabric.

I covered the piping I got at the Hobby Lobby in Omaha a week ago with the last of some leftover fabric from the quilt’s dark blue printed binding and the outer gray border, piecing the fabrics together in  7” strips. 

I like the hymns that play through the speakers at Hobby Lobby.  The day I was there, one of the songs I heard was ‘Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling’, and it was done by a string orchestra, and I could hear a harp, too.  I got sidetracked listening to it, hearing the words in my head.  So there I stood, looking blankly at the display of piping, lace, beads, and trim, thinking of the words:

 

Let none hear you id­ly say­ing,
“There is no­thing I can do”,
While the lost of earth are dy­ing,
And the Mas­ter calls for you;
Take the task He gives you glad­ly;
Let His work your plea­sure be;
Answer quick­ly when He calls you,
“Here am I, send me, send me.”

 

Then the song ended, and I regathered my wits.  Oh!  Yes!  Piping!

The pillows measure 13” x 13”.  After discovering that the grandchildren like to actually use their pillows to rest their heads on, rather than just perching them on their beds (the pillows, not their heads), I refrained from stuffing these pillows as full as previous pillows I made.  Poor little kids, trying to get comfortable with their heads lying on bricks!  😄  These are nice and soft.  They don’t look as crisp and neat, but at least the child won’t get a concussion just trying to lay his head down!  He won’t have a crick in his neck if he falls asleep on the pillow, and it won’t forever be squirting out from under his head.

To think I imagined these pillows as merely decorative.  How silly of me!

We had a blue-sky, sunny day that day, but the wind was blowing up a gale.

Wednesday, I made the label for Ian’s quilt, finishing the embroidery after we got home from church.  My friend Sherri sent a baby quilt home with me so I could quilt it for her. 

Thursday was another bright and sunny day.  I made coffee... blow-dried my hair... ate breakfast... and tried to pay some bills, but pages were not loading.  I’m down to slow Internet until the tenth.  Plumb aggravating.  I gave up.  I would take care of the bills as soon as Larry got home from work that evening and I could use his hotspot. 

At least my sewing and quilting machines don’t need Internet!  Therefore, I would sew and quilt.  And drink coffee.  The coffee maker doesn’t need Internet either.

I headed upstairs to sew the label onto Ian’s quilt and then load Sherri’s quilt onto my quilting frame.

Sherri’s daughter Kristin is married to my nephew Kelvin’s son Jason, one of Caleb’s best friends, and Jason and Kristin were expecting their first baby soon.  It occurred to me that this quilt was most likely for that new baby.  That made me wonder:  would I be able to tell which the baby was going to be – a boy or a girl – when I pulled the quilt top of out the bag??

The thought made me pick up speed.  😄

As you can see, I have changed the name of the quilt to “Fisherman Fred Goes Canoein’”.  This, because I learned from a fellow quilter that the little embroidered and cross-stitched boy has a name:  Fisherman Fred.  The pieced blocks are named Crossed Canoes.  So “Fisherman Fred Goes Canoein’” it is.  The colored fabrics of the pinwheel in the label were the four largest leftover pieces of fabric from the layer cake I used for the rest of the quilt.

A quilting friend posted a pretty picture of her family posed in a large field where there are many bluebird houses.  It reminded me of my own bluebird story, from when I was a child.

(If I ever start off, ‘When I was little,’ I can just hear one of my boys interrupting to ask, “Last week?” or “Yesterday?”  So instead I say, “When I was a child.”)

Anyway, here is the story, from an old journal:

Once upon a time, long, long ago when I was very young, maybe seven or eight, I was traveling with my parents through northern Minnesota, somewhere in the Superior National Forest in the Sawtooth Mountains near Eagle Mountain.  We pulled into an old-fashioned wayside rest area, had a lunch, and then Daddy and Mama decided to take a nap in our camper.  I set off to explore.

My parents would have been alarmed if they’d’ve known how far afield I trekked on those excursions of mine.  But I thoughtfully spared them the consternation by a) not telling them, and b) not staying away for long stretches at a time.

Over hill and dale I went.  Being an avid reader of such books as the Danny Orlis series, I knew all about (or thought I did) Getting Lost In The Woods and How To Prevent It.  The funny thing was, I had no more idea than the man in the moon what direction was which around Columbus, but when we were in any kind of hilly, mountainous terrain, I didn’t have a bit of trouble telling north from south, east from west.  I paid attention to such things as the position of the sun, moss on tree trunks, and wind direction.

So off I trotted, due north, making sure the moss on the white pines was on the back side of the trees I passed.  If I veered off to the east or west, I stopped long enough to make a little stack of stones or sticks to mark my route, Hänsel and Gretel style.

I came up over yet another rise – and there before me lay a perfect little clearing in a mossy hollow dappled with sunlight.  A large, sun-warmed boulder sat near the side, and I scampered to it and sat down in an inviting crevice.

I took a deep breath and gazed about me with delight.  It was my very own little haven; I dreamily imagined nobody else on earth knew about it.  It was a beautiful spring morning, and high in the azure sky drifted puffy white clouds.  Lily-of-the-valley scented the air with their redolent bouquet.  Not one to sit still for long, I was on the verge of popping to my feet when a flock of colorful birds descended upon the surrounding pines, oaks, and maples.

Photo from Rockytop

I held perfectly still, not moving a muscle, and watched.  They were small, about seven inches, and their heads, backs, wings, and tails were the most heavenly sky-blue I had ever seen. Their throats and breasts were rosy red, and their abdomens were white. 

From branch to branch they hopped and fluttered, tittering their high-pitched melodies and snatching caterpillars, beetles, and a variety of flying insects, fruit, and berries from the trees.

Suddenly realizing I had been away from the camper for an inordinate length of time, and fearing lest my parents should worry, and fearing even more that they might therefore curtail my ramblings, I silently got to my feet and practically tiptoed from the glen.  A few yards away, I broke into a headlong run, uphill and down, expecting but not finding the little wayside stop over each ensuing rise, surprised I had traveled so far.

A good fifteen minutes later, I broke from the forest and came upon the picnic area, relieved to see no anxious parents scanning the woods for me.  Dashing to the camper, I flung open the door and leaped in.  (So much for said parents’ naps.)

“Mama!” I gasped for breath, “I just saw a whole flock of baby bluejays in the trees up there!” I gestured eagerly northward.  “You ought to see them all!  Hundreds and hundreds,” I cried, “and they have pretty blue backs, pink tummies, and they sing sooo prettily!”

Mama laughed.  “You saw Eastern bluebirds,” she told me, “and the reason there are so many of them all together is because they have just migrated from the south.  Soon they will start building their nests, and each pair will have from four to six pretty little blue eggs.”

Bluebirds often have three clutches of eggs per season, and older brothers and sisters have been known to help care for the next batches of babies, a practice unknown among other species of birds.

Along Shady Lake Road near our house, somebody has a line of bluebird boxes along a fence row, and sometimes we see bluebirds perched nearby.  They’re one of my favorite little birds.

Photo from The Forest Preserve District of Will County, Illinois

I have a bluebird house that my brother and sister-in-law gave me about 12 years ago.  It’s so cute, I’ve only used it decoratively in the house; but I should put it out on a fence post.  I have never seen bluebirds right around our house; that’s part of the reason I didn’t put the house out.  Maybe the reason I’ve never seen bluebirds is because there are no bluebird houses around!  

After getting the label sewn on the quilt, I steamed and pressed it, then dusted my quilting frame load your quilt.  The quilting frame is a big magnet, and dust is magnetic, apparently!  Just the smallest piece of lint on one of the rollers can create a jiggle in a quilting design.

Next, I pulled my friend’s quilt from the bag. 

It was lovely, and the embroidery was exquisite.  But it gave me no clue as to whether the new baby would be a boy or a girl.  (Nor was I positive it was for the new baby.)

I began loading backing, batting, and quilt top on my frame.  This takes a while.  I trot from one side to the other, making sure everything is perfectly straight.  Back when we still had plump ol’ Tiger kitty, he’d run from one side to the other right along with me, purring like a locomotive, tangling himself around my ankles, stumbling over my feet... 😹 I miss that kitty.

I was about half done when Kelvin sent me a picture – of a new baby!  He had a new little grandchild. 

“I’m just loading a quilt on my frame, and it’s probably for this very baby!” I replied.

But... “They haven’t told us a name yet, and they haven’t said if it’s a boy or girl,” he told me. 

Jason had written to his father Kelvin, his mother Rachel, his four siblings, and his wife Kristin’s side of the family, including her mother Sherri, “We will give y’all 15 minutes to decide boy or girl, hahaha.”

Pandemonium ensued, with everyone guessing and stating their reasons why.

Kelvin was sending me screenshots as it occurred.

Jason’s oldest sister Jodie protested, “We’ve had 9 MONTHS!!! to decide!”

“Haha, this is so funny,” I wrote back to Kelvin.  “It looks a lot like what happens when all my children start text-chatting.”

“I got back to my desk and I had 28 missed messages,” he said.  😄

He sent another baby picture, writing, “Lynette’s baby, Christina Rachelle, 7 pounds 10 ounces, born at 2:43 a.m.”

Lynette is Kelvin’s niece, daughter of my late nephew David and Christine.

“What?!” I exclaimed.  “Two babies in one day??”  Then I requested, “Don’t leave me in suspense, when you find out what your little grandbaby is!!!”

“I’ll let you know when I hear,” he promised.

I added, “That IS cruel and unusual punishment, you know, when kids do such things to grandparents.”

It wasn’t long before he sent pictures of the baby, complete with the name and vital statistics.  It was a little girl, and her name is Lily Joy.  She weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces, and was born at 3:40 p.m.

Caleb and Maria’s Baby Maisie doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to have a friend and cousin named Lily Joy!

So now I have two more great-great-nieces.  I wonder how many great-greats I have now?  I suppose one needs to tally up the greats before one can accurately count the great-greats??

By midnight, the first two borders were done on Sherri’s Nursery Rhymes quilt.  When I start a quilt, I like to take pictures of the various rulers I am using for various parts of the quilt, so that when I get to the bottom of the quilt, I’ll know what to do.

I’m using Superior’s 40-wt., 100% cotton, Omni thread.  It’s sort of linty, but I quit worrying so much about lint when a lady who could quilt like anything and had a couple of longarms that were in use a lot of the time commented to a group she was teaching (I was not in the class; I read the class notes online later), “Use whatever threads your machine likes, and whatever looks nice on the quilt.  Lint in the machine is not necessarily a sign of bad thread; it’s just a sign of... ... ... quilting!  Brush the lint out at each bobbin change, and quilt on.”

Friday morning, granddaughter Joanna sent a picture of an area in their back yard that she is preparing for a garden.  “I decided to get some dirt in my socks earlier this morning, and the dogs helped,” she wrote.  “I should probably have been doing dishes or packing bags for our weekend trip to Oklahoma, but it’s such a lovely day outside and the garden does need doing...  We have a whole family of plants that we started growing on our kitchen table (well, they’re in containers, not just growing out of the table) and it seems about time they moved out.  Probably after we get back, though.”

Chimera and Willow

“That looks nice!” I complimented her work.  “That’s the next thing on my agenda:  working on my flower gardens.  I planted 13 big flower gardens around the yard when we moved out here.  I was 42.  I guess I thought I was going to stay 42 the rest of my life.”

Late that night, I reached the halfway point on Sherri’s Nursery Rhymes quilt.

Saturday was a sunny day, and 60°, but very, very windy, with winds blowing at a steady 30 mph and gusting up to 50-55 mph.  The weatherman on the rural radio was reminding everyone that the Red Flag Warning that had been issued earlier in the week was still in effect.

A couple of days earlier, a family about 45 miles to our southwest had a close call when an overheating Jeep caught cornstalks in a nearby field on fire.  The husband, a local firefighter, called his wife to tell her to turn on the sprinklers around the place, including in the fenced areas where they had a new little calf, goats, and other animals.

She hurried out to do it.  It took a little longer than usual, as some of the sprinklers had been put away over winter, and by the time she got back in the house, she realized she had several missed calls from her husband, who was trying to tell her to get out right then, because they’d gotten to the field that was on fire, and it was entirely out of hand and moving fast right toward their farmplace.

She got their three young children into the car, ushered their four dogs into the vehicle, figured the cats and other animals would have to fend for themselves, and headed down their long lane toward the road.  By then, it was getting so smoky it was hard to see.  She headed west, thinking she’d get out of the smoke quicker – but a mile down the road, she came to a truck sitting sideways, blocking people who might be traveling from the west!

She had to turn around and drive back through all that smoke to get to the safety of her parents’ place.  “We walked in, and I burst into tears,” she said.

Her in-laws who lived nearby had gone to her house, meanwhile, in order to open the gates and let the animals loose if needed.

But the firefighters got the fire stopped in time, less than half a mile from the house.  When she was able to return, her husband met her in the farmyard, and, in her words, “He hugged me tighter than he ever has before, and he shed a few tears, too!”

I sent pictures of the quilting to Sherri, and learned that Kristin had done all the embroidery.  Sherri then put the quilt top together.

“The embroidery is beautiful,” I said.  “I am in awe of the French knots in that little lamb.  Mine always look more like corkscrews than anything else!”

A little after noon, Levi sent pictures from the Eisenhower Library where they were, in Abilene, Kansas.  Bobby and Hannah, along with all their children, Aaron, Joanna, Nathanael, and Levi, were on their way to Oklahoma to visit a preacher friend and his wife.

Here are two quilts that were made in the 1890s by Ida Eisenhower, mother of the president.

“She sat down her six boys one day,” Levi told me, “taught them to sew, and told them that from then on they would mend their own clothes.  She made more than 50 quilts in her lifetime.”

Here’s another picture he sent, this one of a 200-year-old handwoven quilt from President Eisenhower’s great-grandfather.

Reckon any quilts I make will last that long?

I went to Omaha to visit Loren, taking the new shoes I had gotten for him – ‘Slide-In’ Skechers.

It was so windy, my shoulders hurt, from hanging onto the steering wheel!  Once a gust hit so hard, and jerked the car so violently, the cruise control automatically turned off, and the skid control snapped on.  I had no idea it did that.

When I’m driving, I like to head off in various directions not recommended by the GPS, just to make it have to switch gears.

The flowering trees are in bloom in Omaha!

Below is the Elkhorn River – and that’s not fog over the water; that’s dust kicked up by the high winds. 

I could smell smoke when I got out of the Mercedes at Prairie Meadows, and I realized it was not all dust in the air!  Later, I would learn there were some grass fires that had gotten out of hand in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the other side of the Missouri River.

While I was visiting with Loren, Kelvin sent several pictures, saying that Baby Lily was home from the hospital.  Here’s Kelvin holding his new baby granddaughter.

Loren enjoyed looking at the pictures, especially since I’d brought along my new tablet.  It’s a lot easier to look at photos on that big tablet than on my little phone.

Kelvin has always been a favorite nephew of his, so he’s really happy for him, and for Jason and Kristin.  He’ll forget about the baby immediately, of course, so if no one posts any new pictures between now and next Saturday, I can just show him the same pictures all over again, and he’ll be happy!  (Dementia has its pros and its cons.)  😏

I put the new shoes on his feet, and they went on easily.  I think they fit perfectly.  Later, when I walked with him to the dining room, he walked just fine in the shoes.  I brought the old ones home and washed them today; I’ll donate them to the Goodwill.

I hope I don’t wind up with some type of dementia someday.  I’d probably be impossible for anyone to cope with.  Yikes. 

These days, if I so much as put a new bar of soap in the wrong bathroom drawer, I think, Oh, no!  I’m getting Alzheimer’s! and then, Well, at least I still know enough to pull it back out and put it into the right drawer.

It started raining when I was on the west side of Schuyler, but the severe weather stayed to the south, thankfully.  

I got home at a quarter ’til seven, fixed supper, and ate while answering a few texts and emails.  Responding to a few more notes from Levi, I told him of the windy drive. 

He wrote back the next morning, “We had wind sufferings as well, on the way down here.”

‘Wind sufferings.’ 😄

A lady commented under this quilt block, “Love this.  I can’t figure out the path for cross-hatching.”

“Thank you,” I answered.  “And neither can I!  😄”  (I was telling the truth, too.)

Those high winds came with snow, out in the Nebraska Panhandle.  Winds anywhere from 70 to 90 mph were recorded from Scottsbluff to Cheyenne.  There are a lot of power poles down.

We went to Caleb and Maria’s after church last night.  We had a surprise for Eva – a little red bicycle!  She has one that’s a little smaller, but it’s the kind that has no pedals.  Watching her ride that thing makes it quite clear that she’s indeed ready for pedals.  Caleb calls his cute little girl ‘Eva Knievel’. 

They fed us grilled cheese and ham sandwiches, and we gave them some bananas we picked up at the store on the way there.

Today there was a solar eclipse that started a little before 1:00 p.m.  I had three pairs of eclipse glasses that I saved after the eclipse of 2017 – one for Larry, one for me, and one for Larry’s Go-Pro.  (Yes, I know eclipse glasses supposedly ‘expire’ after three years; but I kept these in a drawer; they’ve never been exposed to light.  Plus, I didn’t stand and stare through them at the sun for two hours straight.  They were fine.)

In between multiple times of stepping out onto the back deck to look at the moon making its way in front of the sun, I washed five loads of clothes and put them away.

By 1:30 p.m., the sun was about ¾ covered by the moon.  The maximum point of coverage here in Columbus occurred at 1:53 p.m., with the sun 76.5% covered.

Right at the peak of the eclipse, a large flock of starlings converged on one of the big maple trees to the east and conducted a spirited conversation.  No wonder a flock of starlings is called a ‘murmuration’! 

By a quarter after two, the moon was pulling away from the sun, exiting upper stage left.  Reckon people who spent thousands – or even tens of thousands – of dollars to travel many miles to view the spectacle feel it was money well spent?

I found this picture on the page that has the live streaming camera on the eagle nest in Big Bear Valley in California:

And now it is bedtime, and I leave you with a question:  If cats always land on their feet, and toast always lands buttered-side down, then if you strap a slice of toast buttered-side up to a cat’s back and drop him, will he just hover?

Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!

 

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