Journal: Another Quilt Done, One More to Go

Windchill!  We’ve been having windchill lately, as opposed to the heat indexes we’ve been accustomed to for the last few months.  Last Tuesday morning, it was only 51°, with a windchill of 42°, what with the wind gusting up to 35 mph.  By afternoon, it got up to 57°, with a windchill of 51°.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when, pausing with the quilting for a moment or two to sip some coffee and look out the window – Yikes!  I discovered a big ol’ paper wasp on that very window, and not on the outside, either!  He was a stout one; it took a good many swats with the flyswatter to dispatch him.  He was downright hostile about it, too.  I reckon that’s understandable, though, when someone is trying to murder you in cold blood.

By 10:00 p.m., I’d finished quilting Joanna’s quilt, except for a little unquilted area I spotted in the photos I took, and a few lines I needed to add to the borders of the central panel.  I applied coloring with my Inktense pencils, misted the ink with water, and would heat-set it the next day.

Here are a couple of pictures showing before and after Inktense penciling.

Wednesday, I didn’t quite have time to finish the label for the quilt before time to go to church.

After the service, we stopped at Walkers’ shop to put some air into one of the tires.  It seemed we had a slow leak.

We had a light supper of Campbells’ sirloin burger and vegetable soup and buttered toast (since we ran out of crackers).  I actually like toast better than crackers anyway, with soup.

Then I went back upstairs to my quilting studio, threaded my machine with the next color of thread, and pushed ‘Start’.

By a quarter ’til midnight, the label was done.

Thursday morning, I made myself a tall mug of iced coffee (not as good as cold brew, but Larry asked for hot coffee the night before, and it needed to be used up).  The flavor is Pumpkinlicious, from Aroma Ridge.  Mmmmm, it’s good stuff.

Stitching a label in place doesn’t take long, as I put it in a corner, then only have to run a blind stitch on two sides, since the binding will cover the other two sides.

That afternoon, I heard the rumble of Big Equipment.  Looking out my north window, I saw that one of the neighbors had his combine in his cornfield and was harvesting his corn.

 Supper that evening was some little Ribeye Steaks, potatoes, carrots, and onions, all cooked in the Instant Pot.  I made sure to put enough in there for supper the next night, too.  It says 38 minutes of cooking time on the pot’s readout, but it takes at least half an hour to work up the steam when it’s stuffed clear full.  Also, I generally let it simmer down on its own rather than using the Quick-Release valve, since I don’t really like spewing Old Faithful Geyser all over the cupboards.  The Instant Pot cooks pretty fast, but it’s definitely not ‘instant’!

While I waited for the food to cook, I made myself a tall thermal mug of Arctic Vibe Celsius and grabbed a handful of nuts to tide me over until suppertime.

Victoria sent a video of a lady telling of a Mayo Clinic study that found that people who make things with their hands (knitted socks, etc.) stave off dementia, especially if their chosen craft causes ‘cross-over’ in their work.  I think she was speaking of those actions where one uses both hands and often switches hands to complete the crafting process, whatever it might be.

I watched it for a couple of minutes, then wrote to Victoria, “The first thing I did was to speed up the video to 1.5x.  I’ve just gotten to the part where she says we want our brains to be fizzy and buzzy and lit-up.  That’s me!  So far, so good!  ((...back to the video now...))”

A few minutes later, I wrote again:  “I wonder what happens if you’re a person who makes one frustrating blunder after another, whilst using your hands to >try to< make something?”

“That’s me,” responded Victoria.  😅

“Hmmm...” I mused, still watching the video.  “Now we’re supposed to ‘teach ourselves to be joyful’.  ‘Go out and make things!’ said the lady.  Trouble?” I queried.  “Making trouble makes me joyful.”  😄  Then, “Oh.  Knitting socks, she recommends.  She’s stuck on knitting socks.  I just have my daughter do that for me, whilst I quilt!”  (Victoria has made me a couple pairs of hand-knit socks; I love them.)

“Well, I like to sew and quilt and walk and hike and read and write and play the piano,” I told Victoria, “and I have to live to age 236 in order to get done with all the things I have on my To-Do List; so I’m good!”

“99% of the reason why I sent that is to encourage you that creativity fights cognitive decline, 😅 😂 ” she laughed. 

“Yes, so I surmised,” I said. “I continue to figure I’m coming down with dementia (like one ‘comes down with a cold’) every time I wander into the kitchen and look around blankly (‘What did I come in here for?’); while at the same time I congratulate myself every time I think of something clever, like the way to properly spell ‘bonhomie’, and suchlike.”

Then, “I’m working on Christmas presents,” Victoria informed me, sending pictures of some small stuffed dolls she’s making.

“Those are going to be cute,” I told her.  “If you knew how many things you do that I did, when I was your age... it’s funny.”

As it turned out, it was a good thing I ate those nuts, because Larry was late getting home from work, and I kept sewing on the binding, sure the end was just around the next corner... or maybe the corner after that... or the next one -------- Wait!!!  How many corners are there on this quilt, anyway?!

It’s a big quilt, so putting on the binding takes a while.  In fact, it took me right around five hours, which is about normal for a quilt that’s 101” x 101” like this one is.

A lady on an online quilting group once acted all astonished that the binding for Caleb and Maria’s Atlantic Beach Path quilt took me 5 ½ hours.  “It only took me two hours to bind my last quilt!” she exclaimed.  (And yes, she, too does her bindings entirely by machine, as I do.)

“How large was your quilt?” I asked.

It was 30” x 40”.  A baby quilt.  The Atlantic Beach Path quilt was 123” x 124”.

So let’s figure this out:  She bound 140 inches in 2 hours; that’s 70 inches per hour.  I bound 494 inches in 5 ½ hours; that’s 89.8 inches per hour.

So HA!  And na-na-na-NA-na, too.

I had not known it was a competition; but I’m always willing, yesirree uh-huh!

I finished the binding on the Jardin de Fleurs quilt just before 8:00 p.m., right about the time Larry got home; so for once we ate supper together.

Then I trotted back upstairs to hunt up the fabric for Aaron’s quilt.  Once I had all the pieces collected, I trimmed the Soaring Eagle panel, attached the first border, and called it good for the day.

Late Friday morning, I began gathering up everything I needed to take pictures of Joanna’s quilt outside on my new quilt frame.  (A quilt frame is an entirely different thing than a quilting frame, you know that?)

I looked at the temperature:  just 52°, and the wind was gusting up to 25 mph.  Would the quilt stand stay upright?  I added a warm fleecy headband, a jacket, and Isotone gloves to my paraphernalia. 

I filled my new sandbags with the pea gravel Larry got me a while back.  Each heavy-duty nylon bag has two sets of double zippers, and there are heavy Ziploc bags (advertised as rubber, but...) that slide into each side after they are filled.  

I put about four pounds of pea gravel on each side, so each sandbag weighs about 8 pounds.  Maybe that doesn’t seem like much; but if all this gear is going to be portable (for me! – not for Larry), then these can’t weigh much more than that.  Besides, the biggest quilt I’ve made so far (the aforementioned Atlantic Beach Path) weighed 15 pounds; so these sandbags should help counterbalance that nicely – especially if I use those 16” tent stakes and paracord.

I did not use the stakes and cord this time, though, since I took the pictures on the back deck. 

Larry came home for lunch as I was filling the sandbags.  He finished eating just as I was heading for the back deck, so he helped me carry the frame and sandbags out and get the stand set up and the quilt adjusted on it.  He used the new clamps he got for me, but they’re a little large, and slide on the pole – which is why the top of the quilt isn’t straight.  Maybe with a combination of these new clamps plus the original clamps, it’ll work. 

Even though it was windy, the sandbags lopped over the leg braces stabilized the frame quite well.  It only started to topple once, and that was when we were attempting to move it so I could get a picture of the backing.  The quilt wanted to stand out like a flag in the breeze, so I clamped it to the legs near the bottom.

So there’s the quilt, and here’s the description: 

The Jardin de Fleurs quilt is complete.  It measures 101” x 101”.  I designed it in EQ8.  The central panel and the light blue fabrics for the blocks on the outer borders and the backing were from Joanna’s other late grandmother’s stash.

The batting is Quilters’ Dream 80/20 cotton/poly.  I used 40-wt. Omni thread front and back in light blue, natural white, pale yellow, light green, mossy green, variegated fuchsia, variegated peach, and variegated pastels; and 40-wt. Magnifico in indigo blue and medium blue.

The custom quilting, with rulerwork and free-motion, was done on my 18” Handi Quilter Avanté on a 12’ Studio frame.  The hibisci in the corners were machine-appliquéd.

Quilt back

Larry helped me bring all that paraphernalia back indoors when I was done taking pictures.  I removed the soft knit headband with the fleece lining that I’d been wearing, and discovered, as expected, that it had done ruint my freshly-coiffed hairdo.  When I comb my hair after I’ve curled and sprayed it, it goes straight.  So I only lightly combed the sides and the bangs where it got smooshed, feathered it back, then sprayed it again.  I looked... not quite... normal, the rest of the day.  😅

And Larry cannot understand why I won’t slap a helmet on my head and go riding with him any ol’ time of any ol’ day.  Those times I would, he’s not going!

As for the name of this quilt, I thought the panel looked like a French flower garden – hence the French name.

Nobody even remarks on it, anywhere I post pictures. They all just act all nonchalant about it.  “Yeah, we speak French, too.”  Like that.  Plumb deflatin’.  I thought everyone would see that label and realize how brilliant I am!

“Maybe the ladybug doing a handstand on the label takes away the Grand Elegance of it,” I suggested to Hannah.

“Maybe,” said she.  “But Joanna will like it.”

I have lots of other quite elegant floral embroideries, but when I spotted those ladybugs along about page 10 in the first big notebook I was looking in, I looked no farther.  I wanted THAT one. 😅

Larry took the Mercedes to Bill’s Tire Shop that afternoon.  The tire with the slow leak had a screw in it.  Larry of course decided I got the screw in the tire by ‘gallivanting all over the place’.  I demanded to know when and where he thinks I went ‘gallivanting’. 

“Last Thursday,” said he after some thought, “when you picked up the car at the Mercedes dealership in Omaha and then stopped by Fremont Lakes State Park.”

I informed him that it was more likely he lost a screw or two in the driveway, and then drove over it when he pulled into the drive last Sunday.  That’s actually probably exactly what did happen, though the original location of the screw is up for debate.

I attached the second and third borders to Aaron’s Soaring Eagle quilt that day.  It now measures 50 ½” x 35 ¾”.  The finished size will be 100” x 105 ¼”.

After starting a load of Larry’s work clothes in the washer, I retired to my recliner to write the Saturday Skim for my Quilt Talk group, and to post pictures of Joanna’s and Aaron’s quilts.

In the caption for Joanna’s quilt, I wrote, “The Jardin de Fleurs quilt is complete.  It measures 101” x 101”.  I designed it in EQ8.”

First comment:  “Did you design this, or is it a pattern?”

I described my process with free-motion quilting and then using Inktense pencils on the flowers.

The comment under this read:  “You did thread-painting on the flowers, right?”

On a close-up of my quilting, I wrote, “The quilting is comprised of rulerwork and free-motion quilting.”

A comment under this:  “What’s the name of this pantograph?”

If people know how to write, surely they know how to read as well?  Surely?!  Shirley?

I awoke at 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning after a little more than two hours of sleep, and couldn’t get back to sleep.  Tossing and turning whilst getting steadily more miserable gets my goat; so I got up, showered, washed my hair, and was soon blow-drying it and putting a few curls in while sipping Pumpkinlicious cold brew with a dollop (or two) of toffee Coffee Mate creamer.  I don’t usually add creamer, but I needed a reward for getting up so early.  (Didn’t I?)

As I curled my hair, I listened to Nebraska Rural Radio.  The number of announcers with laryngitis or something similar has now increased to four.  They don’t even work in the same office (so far as I know).  Miserable, wouldn’t it be, to have a sore throat or lose your voice, when your voice is your job?!

I have now learned, after listening to the young man who has qualified for the second time for rodeo champ, that ‘like I said,’ is the new ‘you know?’.  😅  I have entertained myself for years by forcefully answering (in my head) idgets (most often, athletic idgets) who say ‘you know?’ every few seconds, “No, I don’t know!”  After this guy’s second ‘like I said,’ I retorted (again, in my head; don’t want the local squirrels, raccoons, and songbirds to think I’m nuts), ‘No, you didn’t say!’, sometimes adding, for good measure, ‘This, in fact, is the first time you’ve mentioned it.’  I varied this periodically with, ‘You don’t say!’

A couple of weeks ago, the sports editor interviewed one of the stars of the game. After nearly every sentence he uttered, and sometimes right in the middle of the sentence he was uttering, he said, “You know what I mean?”  To him, I imagine giving an inscrutable stare and saying, ‘No, I do not.’

I learned this sort of thing from my mother.

Really, I did!  Yes, my sweet, quiet mother.

When I was in the last couple of years of grade school and in Jr. High, it became popular slang to say ‘he went’ or ‘she went’ in place of ‘he said’ or ‘she said’, and ‘he goes’ instead of ‘he says’.  I heard it so much, I accidentally said it at home a time or two.

But not without repercussions, I didn’t.  (‘Reperconcussions’, according to my sister.)

Mama would invariably butt rudely right into my conversation, saying in an excited tone, “Where did he go?!!!”  Or if I said ‘he goes’, she’d cry, “Right now?!!!  Where?!” – and run to the window and look out.

This was plumb irritating, mind you.  Just lemme talk!

But I quit using slang, I sho’ ’nuff did.

I finished the laundry I’d started the night before, cleaned the kitchen, and then got back to the Soaring Eagle quilt.

Annnd...  Florida Man strikes again!  He and his son tried going over 12,800-foot Engineer Pass (southeast of Ouray in the San Juan Mountains) and got caught in a snowstorm.  A snowstorm in the San Juans in late October!  Who’d a-thunk?!

Two feet of snow fell on that pass.

Later that morning, Hannah sent a picture of her Australian shepherds, Chimera and Willow, squirrel-watching at Pawnee Park.

Levi was tuning a piano-teacher’s piano.

A little later, Victoria sent a picture of a black squirrel.

“I saw some of those black squirrels west of Bennington, south of Bennington Lake,” I told her.

 “That’s exactly where I was!” said Victoria.  “I’ve never seen them before.”

The black squirrel was documented in Nebraska as early as 1843 by John James Audubon, who saw them near the Missouri River.  They are a melanistic (darkly-colored) variation of the eastern gray or fox squirrel, not a separate species.  While they are often considered rare, their presence is likely due to a natural genetic mutation called melanism, and the population has grown over time. 

It was foggy all day Saturday.  In the morning, I couldn’t even see the lane to the south, but by late afternoon, visibility had increased to about a mile.

By a quarter after seven, one French Braid for the Soaring Eagle quilt was done – or almost done.  I need to add another strip to make it fit the center panel better.  I thought it was going to be a tad too long, so I took slightly deeper seams, and now it’s too short.  🙄  But that’s okay; there was another fabric I was sorry to leave out – and now I won’t have to.

That evening, Larry went off to town and got us some Mexican food for supper.  He got chicken and beef steak street tacos, beans, rice, (we put Daniel’s Salsa Verde on all of that), chicken salad with cranberries and sweet, crunchy nuts, with poppyseed dressing, and a variety of big, soft cookies.

Since the street tacos came with wide slices of lime, and I hadn’t squeezed nearly all of it onto the tacos, I made myself a cup of Barry’s Irish tea, and then put the lime slices into it.  Quite good!

After we got home from church yesterday, Larry made his scrumptious waffles for our lunch.  And then we discovered that the syrup was nearly gone.  😩  So we put lots of butter on the waffles... some peanut butter... peach or blueberry or strawberry jelly... a little bit of honey... and then we shared the last of the syrup with all our might and main.

One of us was deeply offended when the other guy wound up with extra syrup left on his plate after the waffle was gone. 

That afternoon, Victoria told me, “We were listening to Bringing in the Sheaves.  Willie said, ‘Why are they standing in the cheese?!’”  🤣

When my late sister-in-law Annette was a little girl, she thought Bringing in the Sheaves was Bringing in the Sheets.  Later, her little brother Joe thought it was Bringing in the Cheese.  ‘Standing’ in the cheese is a new one, though!

When my mother was wee little, she wondered why they called a dinner roll a ‘pyonder’.  (When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder)

Our friends’ little boy Freddie once went around singing, “Hold the fort, for Bryan’s coming!” – and he was.  Bryan, his cousin, was coming over to play.

Some years back, I thought a choir was singing, ‘After the lifeguards were splashing’, rather than ‘After the life-paths we’re treading’. 

Here’s a small child’s rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance:  “I led the pigeons to the flag…”

My late nephew David, when he was just a little guy, asked my sister, “What does ‘two-faced’ mean?” 

She turned and looked at him.  “Why, David!  Where did you hear that?” 

He was a bit surprised at her reaction.  “Oh, you know that old song! – ‘Face, two-face, with Christ my Savior…’” 

She explained both meanings to him. 

It was a gray, overcast day, 58°, with wind gusting up to 23 mph.  It didn’t really feel that windy when we walked out to the car to go to the evening church service.  The windchill was 52°.  I took along a soft, thick sweater jacket in case I needed it after church.

It’s still lying in the back seat of the car.  🙄

This is one of our neighbors’ friendly – and very vocal – cats.  We’ve named him ‘Kitty Chaplin’ on account of the mustache.  I extracted the picture from a video Larry took.

This afternoon I recorded a song on my piano for one of my blind friends, the voice teacher at our school.  She will use my recording to write her music in Braille, then teach it to the schoolchildren.

When I’m done with this letter, I need to hunt down our marriage license for the Social Security Administration.

Boy oh boy, do they make things troublesome.  The instructions they give for applying for Social Security, whether in the mail or online, often make no sense whatsoever.  The man who is helping us with the process rolls his eyes and agrees, they make no sense a good deal of the time.

They tell me in a letter to retrieve my marriage certificate from my ‘custodian’.  Huh??  If I had a custodian, he’d be vacuuming the floor right now!

Even in small matters, they are a jumbled mess.  They tell me to make sure, when I return papers to them in the enclosed envelope, that the barcode is showing through the cellophane window.  HOWEVER!!! – first, there is no barcode.  Perhaps they are talking about a CR code on another paper?  AND!!! – there is no window, cellophane or otherwise, in the envelope at all.

A lady just posted this on a Facebook group:  “A State Patrol car with lights on sped past us, and my two-year-old grandson in the back seat said, ‘That policeman need to go to time out!’ He apparently didn’t approve of how fast the patrolman was driving.”  😅

Larry is sleeping in his recliner, and it squeaks.  Every time he breathes, it squeaks. 

It started doing this a month or two ago.  The first time I heard it, I couldn’t figure out what it was.  I walked closer... the floor squawked... and Larry’s breathing slowed waaaay down, because, in his sleep, he heard the floor, and was listening.  Maybe he was dreaming of ax murderers creeping up on him.

I crept closer to his chair, gripped the footrest, and carefully moved it up and down a wee bit.  And there was the squeak.

Now, I told him about this, but he doesn’t remember such details, usually because he didn’t listen (or didn’t hear) in the first place.  Or because I thought he was awake when he was in fact asleep.

Tonight he was sleeping in it, the usual squeaks issuing forth at each breath he took.

Suddenly, at no particularly loud squeak at all, he popped up, reaching frantically for his phone over on the end table, saying urgently, “Did you hear that?!  Did you hear that?!!!”

“Hear what?” I asked.

He couldn’t describe it, but after listening for a few minutes to nothingness, he did a fair imitation of said squeaks.

“That’s your chair,” I informed him .

He did not believe me.  He bounced and scrambled about in his chair – but there were no squeaks.  Of course not; one has to be at the right angle, and breathe in the proper rhythm to make the thing squeak.

Eventually he gave up trying to hear it or make it happen, laid back, nearly fell asleep – and the chair squeaked.  He woke up – and realized I’d spoken the truth; it was the chair squeaking.

He waited until I got busy on my laptop again, then wiggled around until he got in exactly the right position, and made the chair squeak and squawk like never before.

(At the moment, though, he’s drowning out the squeaks with snoring.)

Bedtime!  Tomorrow I’ll work on more French Braids.

By the way, the Soaring Eagle panel is from the Robert Kaufman Patriots line.  He calls it ‘Americana Eagle’.  This panel is much better quality than other panels I’ve bought.  The fabric feels like top-of-the-line quilt-shop fabric, and it’s not the least bit stretched or warped or printed off-grain.  The person who cut it for me (don’t remember where I got it; somewhere online) cut it nice and straight.

 

 

P.S.:  The Crow Facts 

Researchers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found over 200 dead crows near greater Boston recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu.

A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone’s relief, confirmed the problem was definitely not Avian Flu.  The cause of death appeared to be vehicular impacts.

During the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colors of paints appeared on the bird’s beaks and claws.  By analyzing these paint residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.

MTA then hired an Ornithological Behaviorist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.

He very quickly concluded the cause:  When crows eat road kill, they always have a lookout crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.

They discovered that while all the lookout crows could shout “Cah”, not a single one could shout “Truck”.

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