Journal: Floods & 'Naders, Fabric & Quiltin'

 

This is the Wisconsin River northwest of Boscobel, Wisconsin.  It was running high when we were in the vicinity.  Now, after several days of storms, there’s a flood warning there in Richland County.  Boscobel, population 3,286, is slightly to the east of the red dot designating the warning.

When this picture of Hannah (below) scrolled through on my screensaver, I grabbed a screenshot and sent it to her, writing, “Look at those nifty red shoes!”

“A Goodwill find, right?” she responded.  “I liked that outfit.”

Last Tuesday, there were several tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in Wisconsin, right where we’d been traveling a few days earlier.

One of the reasons I am glad to be home is that I can play the piano whenever I get a mind to.  I’d just worked my way through several pages in the old hymnbook Hester gave me, when a friend who has been learning to play the piano since retiring a couple of years ago wrote, “The more I learn about playing the piano, the more I realize I should probably buy bongo drums.”  😆

In the news that day, there was an article telling about someone driving in Omaha who choked on food, passed out, hit a fence, and then a tree.  Apparently his seatbelt performed a Heimlich Maneuver on him and unstuck the food.  His female passenger could not have done it, as she, not being seat-belted in, acquired an arm deformity after being ejected from the car.

In the comment section:  “McAccident.”

That evening, Victoria sent several pretty sunset pictures with multiple unique rays and sunbeams.

That’s Westside Church in Omaha.

Below is a shot I got last Sunday evening shortly before we got home.  Not nearly as dramatic as Victoria’s picture, but pretty, nonetheless.  See the sunbeams?

Late Wednesday morning, it was sunny and 59° here, but severe thunderstorms were traveling around us, several on all sides.

How much sewing could I get done before time for our evening church service, I wondered?  The first order of business would be to clean off the quilting frame and put away all the fabric I’d been using – but first I would cut the strips for the binding and the correct lengths for piecing together the backing.

In the news, there were numerous pictures of damage from Tuesday’s tornadoes.  This destroyed farm place was just south of a route we traveled in Wisconsin.  The tornado shot below was in Iowa, also right south of the route we were on.

It wasn’t long that afternoon before I discovered that nine yards of 45”-wide fabric was not enough for the backing for this quilt.  I should’ve ordered ten yards.

I checked with three nearby quilt shops; they didn’t have it.  Yes, they carry Hoffman Fabrics; no, they don’t have the piece called ‘Bloom’. 

I ordered more from Marshall Dry Goods, plus enough of another fabric to get free shipping.  The binding was ready and waiting, cut, pieced together, and pressed.  I pulled out my machine embroidery notebooks and chose a motif to add to the quilt label.

The fabric on the right is the backing for the Constellation quilt.  The fabric on the left is for a future quilt.

Our midweek church service is always a welcome break in the week, and it was nice to visit with our children and grandchildren afterwards.

Hester gave me three bags of fabric she had found at the Goodwill.  They didn’t look all that big, but each bag was heavy, and I knew there was more fabric in those bags than one might think.

People who think fancy quilting is what adds weight to a quilt...  Haven’t they ever held a big pile of fabric, enough for a king-sized quilt, in one arm, and a couple of large cones of thread in the other hand, and compared weights, huh huh huh huh huh?!

“I’m impressed with how much was crammed into the bags,” laughed Hester.

“They vacuum-packed them!” I told her.

We picked up a grocery order at Walmart after church.  One quick, efficient, and friendly boy was teaching (or trying to teach) another boy the ropes.  The new boy either doesn’t like the job, or isn’t bright enough to know how to handle groceries.  Do kids these days ever help their mothers carry groceries in from the car and put them away in the kitchen??  That kid was tossing and dropping bags into the back of the Mercedes, ker-THUDDITY-thud-thud. 

Home again, we collected our groceries to bring into the house – and discovered the eggs had been tossed in upside down and heavy stuff put atop them, with the expected results.

I complained (online) and got an immediate refund.  I do hope the first boy doesn’t get the blame for the blunderbuss.

Thursday morning at 10:30 a.m., it was 67° on the way up to 86°, pretty and sunshiny – with a chance of rain and snow Friday night.

I stitched out the quilt label that day, despite the fact that I don’t know the exact date the quilt will be done, and I don’t know the total hours I will spend, and I do like to add that to the label.  But I need to have it ready to attach to the quilt, or I’m not going to get it done in time for Joseph’s birthday on Friday, the 24^th.  I would definitely be using a pantograph rather than custom quilting, and it would certainly be one that isn’t too awfully intense.

Siggghhhh... Marshall Dry Goods ships fairly quickly, but...  I hardly thought this quilt would be done in time.

It’s Larry’s fault, for dragging me off to Wisconsin last week!  (Isn’t it?)  😅

That afternoon, I downloaded the Merlin Bird ID app, created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, onto my tablet.  This app helps identify birds through sound recordings and photos, or by answering questions about size, color, and behavior.

I paid the bills, then typed up my ‘Birthdays 2026’ list, complete with pictures.  I waited so long to do it, I could hardly remember some of the gifts I’ve given kids and grandkids since January.  I got it done by looking at orders on Walmart and Amazon, my photos, and my journals.

I kept putting it off... putting it off... and finally just thought, Well, I don’t really need to do that, after all – and then it was Keira’s birthday, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember if I’d already given her a cute little cap with attachable ‘bling’ or not.

Yes, I decided, I do need to keep a list.

Catching a glimpse of movement from the kitchen window, I peeked out and spotted a cottontail bunny in one of the flowerbeds nibbling away at the Creeping Jenny groundcover.  I didn’t know they liked that.  I guess they like most anything green, come to think of it.

It ought to be female donkeys – jennies – that like the stuff, don’t you think? 😄 (Maybe they do; how do I know?)

Did you know that when a jenny is bred to a stallion, the offspring is called a ‘hinny’?

Did you know that a female ferret is called a ‘jill’?  The male is a ‘hob’ – and a group of ferrets is a ‘business’.  😅

A male swan is called a cob.  The female is known as a pen.  Their babies are cygnets, and a group of swans is called a bevy or a wedge. 

A female lobster is a hen.  The male is a cock.   Huh.  Now that, I did not know.  And a group of lobsters?  Why, it’s a ‘risk’, of course!

This photo of a swan with cygnets was taken by Robert E. Fuller, the British wildlife artist and filmmaker.  Here’s one of his incredible videos:  Swan Nest  And here is a live camera streaming from the nest:  Live-Streamed Swans

Larry sometimes gets to thinking his $$$$$$ hearing aids don’t make much difference (though he was then tempted to get some $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ hearing aids that someone called and offered him).  He doesn’t wear his hearing aids when he’s busy making lots of racket.  I informed him that those hearing aids do make a big difference.  When we go somewhere and he forgets to put them on, I get hoarse within half an hour or less, trying to talk loudly enough for him to hear me.  Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve told him this, he still thinks that it’s because the hearing aids don’t do much that his wife’s volume seems to be the same whether those hearing aids are in or out of his ears.  Then he sees the ‘look’ I’m giving him, covers the ear closest to me, and says, “Don’t box my ears; I’ll be deafer than I already am!”  😆

I opened the bags of fabric Hester gave me, and was surprised to find seven quilt blocks amongst the fabrics.  They’re very pretty.  Whoever sewed them did a neat and precise job.  The fabrics feel like Moda or Robert Kaufman – high quality.

It was Keira’s birthday that day.  Here she is (far end of table) with her little friends and cousins.  Granddaughter Elsie is at the right end of the table, and other granddaughters and great-great-nieces are there, too.  Since the birthday party went on for a while after school, and everyone was then all worn to a frizzle-frazzle, I promised to take Keira her gift the following day.

I was surprised when I got the ETA for the fabric I’d ordered:  Estimated delivery,  Saturday, April 18 between 2:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M.  Maybe I could get this quilt done!

By 1:15 a.m., my fabric had made it 95 miles, from Batesville, Arkansas, to Little Rock, Arkansas.  That’s the wrong direction!

By 9:45 a.m. Friday morning, it had gone from Little Rock to Springdale.  See what it says by Springdale?  “Botanical Garden of the Ozarks.” 

 

I think that delivery driver is just enjoying a lovely spring drive through the Ozarks, with a nice stop at the Botanical Garden.

It was chilly that midmorning, 45° and feeling like 33°.  It would only get up to 52°.  There was quite a flock of birds at the feeders.  Several migratory birds are still hanging around. There’s one out in the trees that I can’t see, but it has a song that I’ve not heard before.  Gotta give that Merlin Bird ID app a try!

I decided to work on photo-editing while awaiting the package from Marshall Dry Goods.

As I edited pictures, I listened to (and periodically watched) a live stream of the weather.  At 3:00 p.m., there were 15 tornado warnings out, thankfully not here.  The line of storms stretched from Canada in an eastward curve all the way down to Oklahoma.

When Keira got out of school, I took her a present.  Keira is now 8 years old.  Note her little pink tongue caught between her teeth in concentration as she removes the paper from her gift.  (Yes, the paper is made of calendar pages.)

We gave her a magnet and a postcard that we got in the gift shop at the Sioux City Falls Park, and the aforementioned pink cap with all sorts of ‘bling’ for her to attach to it.  

As I went up the sidewalk at Hester’s house, I lifted my camera to take a picture of her lavender-blossoming tree – and discovered my camera had no SD card in it.  But Hester obligingly took some photos for me.

It was almost worth forgetting the camera card at home to see the expression on Oliver’s face when I told him that when I tried taking a picture, my camera said, “There’s no card in your camera, you dumb-dumb!”  hee hee

Keira liked the birthday card, which was a vintage one that had a list of words to unscramble inside the front cover.  It was in a plastic bin of cards that were my late sister-in-law Janice’s.  I found it waaaay back in a cubbyhole under the front staircase at Loren’s house when I cleaned it out.  From cards that were my mother’s and Janice’s, I’ve wound up with 230,931 (or thereabouts) get-well cards.

If people would be more inclined to tell me when they have hangnails and papercuts and suchlike, I could maybe use up some of those cards!

One has to be careful not to send someone who’s terribly ill and probably won’t get well a card with a kitten hanging by its front paws from a clothesline, with the caption, “Hang in there!  You’ll be purrfectly well again before you know it.  Take some catnip and I’ll talk to you in the morning!”

Also, when you’re hunting for a heartfelt get-well card, you must be cautious not to wind up with a sympathy card by accident.

Amongst the sympathy cards I inherited, some say stuff like this:  “Your loved one never really leaves you!  You’ll think of them every time you see a cardinal.”  No wonder neither Mama nor Janice ever used those.

Ugh.  Let’s leave the superstition out and turn to the Lord, shall we?! 

Give me a blank card with a pretty picture on the front, and I can write verses such as these from Psalm 121 inside it:

¹ I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

² My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

³ He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

⁴ Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

How do you think that compares with, “May you always see butterflies!”  🙄

My fabric arrived at the post office in Lenexa, Kansas, that afternoon, 290 miles to our southeast.  I went on working on photos, and the weather went on deteriorating in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma. 

The tornado-warning tally hit 150 just before midnight.  But things were winding down.  It did not equal 2011.  From Wikipedia:

“The 2011 Super Outbreak was the largest tornado outbreak spawned by a single weather system in recorded history; it produced 367 tornadoes from April 25–28, with 223 of those in a single 24-hour period on April 27 from midnight to midnight CDT, fifteen of which were violent EF4–EF5 tornadoes.  348 deaths occurred in that outbreak, of which 324 were positively tornado-related.  The outbreak largely contributed to the record for most tornadoes in April with 780 tornadoes, almost triple the prior record (267 in April 1974).  The overall record for a single month was 542 in May 2003, which was also broken.

“The 1974 Super Outbreak of April 3–4, which spawned 148 confirmed tornadoes across eastern North America, held the record for the most prolific tornado outbreak in terms of overall tornadoes for many years, and as of October 2025, it still holds the record for most violent, long-track tornadoes (7 F5 and 23 F4 tornadoes).  More significant tornadoes occurred within 24 hours than any other day on record.  Due to advancements in technology allowing for more accuracy in tornado reporting, the 2011 and 1974 tornado counts are not directly comparable.”

Last week, I grumbled to Larry, “We should’ve waited a week to go on this Wisconsin trip, and the weather would’ve been a whole lot better.”  Boy oh boy, was I ever wrong!

Instead of feeling grumbly, I should’ve been thankful for that cold front that was warding off the bad weather as we traveled.  And for a Heavenly Father who kept us safe.  (Well, I was thankful for the latter, and told Him so.)

Here’s something else I’ve been watching – a live stream from bald eagles Jackie and Shadow’s nest beside Big Bear Lake in California.  They have two little chicks now.  I happened to be watching when a hawk flew over their nest.  The adult eagles had left the eaglets alone for a few minutes, and I worried that the hawk might take advantage of that; but the adults were probably closer than I knew, and the hawk had more smarts in his birdie brain than to risk such an endeavor as an eaglet kidnapping snack.

I backed the live stream up and grabbed some screenshots.

The chicks are huddled on the right side of the nest bowl, heads in the shade.  They’ve nearly doubled their size in the last week.

Larry was only a few miles from Big Bear Lake when he was in California picking up that container three or four weeks ago.

Saturday morning, it was a breezy 45°, on the way up to 54°.  Shortly after 11:00 a.m., my fabric arrived!  Tracking info had said it wouldn’t be here until 2:00 p.m. at the earliest.

Soon I was measuring, cutting, and adding the newly-arrived fabric to the backing.  And then I was ready to load the Constellation quilt on my frame.

Ooooo, nifty!  Having heard on the radio (on my tablet) that there would be a meteorite show, I wanted the exact dates, so I typed ‘meteorite show’ into Google search ----- and my entire screen then darkened, and several meteorites went flying across it, before it lightened back up with the information I was seeking.  Here’s the info:  “The Lyrid meteor shower is peaking now, with the best viewing on the night of April 21–22, 2026.  Expect around 15–20 meteors per hour in a dark sky.  Viewing is favorable this year due to low moonlight interference.”

OoooooohHH!!!!  I just typed ‘do a barrel roll’ into google search, and my entire screen did a 360° roll!

I thought I needed to hurry and get to quilting??

Oh, look at this!  On elgoog.im, the screen is backwards, mirrored:

And this is backwards Bing, gnib.org: 

Typing ‘askew’ into search tilts the screen slightly.

I thought I needed to git bizzy quilting!

Yes, yes, I do.

And so I did.

That evening, Larry brought home Mexican food from La Mezcal.  Their food is delicious.  And now I need to lose a pound and a half.

What, you think a pound and a half doesn’t matter?!!  Imagine if I gained a pound and a half every day for a year!  I would weigh 654 pounds by April 18, 2027.  😶

Yep, it matters.

Speaking of gaining weight... Precut fabric from Moda comes from a section that they call “The Moda Bakery Shop”.  Those narrow pinked-edge strips in the fabrics from Hester come from a roll that they call ‘Honey Bun’, and a 42-piece stack of 10 ½” squares is called a ‘Layer Cake’.  The half-square triangle sets are ‘Turnovers’, and wider strips in a roll are ‘Jelly Rolls’.  The 5” squares are ‘Charms’, and the 2 ½” squares are ‘Mini Charms’.

A lady on a Facebook quilting group said, “I like these precuts!  They never make me fat!”

“Speak for yourself!” another woman retorted.  “Just the names of them make me hungry, and I wind up going to the bakery!”  😅

Moda calls their patterns ‘cake mixes’, and their designers, ‘Moda chefs’.

These are such pretty fabrics, I believe I’ll hunt for more.  If I can’t find the exact fabrics, I’ll look for some that coordinate.

I got four rows of quilting done that day.  The pantograph is called ‘Monstera’, which is a plant with very large leaves that don’t at all resemble the leaves in this panto.

There were both an opossum and a raccoon on the back deck scarfing down sunflower seeds when Larry went out later that night.  It startled them when he jerked the patio door open suddenly, and they both took off in a hurry – in opposite directions. 

They ran smack into each other.  😅

The raccoon regrouped first, and went down the fire escape, as Larry calls it (the tubular structure that rises from ground level to hold the bird feeders, one story up).  The opossum, after a good deal of consideration, finally deemed it safe to hurriedly waddle his way past us and go on down the steps.

Sunday morning at a quarter ’til eight, it was 36°, feeling like 29°, but the high would be 64°.  It was sunny, not a cloud in the sky.

Wouldn’t you know, the little bird whose song I cannot recognize, and whom I cannot spot amongst the trees, was singing profusely when I went out to hang the bird feeders – and I had no time to pull up my newly-loaded Merlin Bird ID app and find out what kind of bird it is!  

I was getting ready for church, blow-drying and curling my hair, sipping cold-brew coffee (eggnog flavored – out of season, but I always love eggnog flavors [cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg]), and listening to the news on my tablet.

A piece of that news:  a man is now in custody for buying sets of Lego from stores in multiple states, then returning them for a refund – after having replaced the Lego with sealed bags of pasta in the boxes.  Well, it sounded the same.

After 70 such thefts, he is now residing in the Orange County jail.

We picked up an order for a few groceries and a birthday present last night after church, then headed home for a late supper.  I had more – not all – of the Mexican food Larry brought home Saturday night.  Larry had frozen noodles with chicken and gravy, along with cauliflower and broccoli.  (No, Larry didn’t eat the noodles in a frozen state.  They’re the ones I cooked a couple of weeks ago, then portioned and froze in freezer bags.  How do you describe those yummy noodles that you buy frozen, that taste like homemade noodles?)

I had just enough of what my father used to call ‘spizzerinctum’ to wash the dishes before bedtime.

It was a pretty morning today, 57° at 10:00 a.m., on the way up to... ah!  83°!  I thought it was only going to be in the mid 50s.  Excuse me for a moment while I go exchange this sweater for a short-sleeved top.
...
...

Okay, I’m back!  (Did you miss me?)  Had to change now, before I get my hair all fixed up purty, as dragging a crewneck sweater over it would unpurty it right quicklike. 😆

Larry had the rest of my Mexican food for his lunch today.  It was Lobster and Shrimp Quesadillas.  Have you ever noticed that the more often you warm up fishy things in the microwave, the more fishy they smell?

That was a mighty good quesadilla...  Saturday evening.

That was a pretty good quesadilla...  Sunday evening.

That was quite the fishy quesadilla... today.  😜

I’m fine, though; I had already eaten breakfast:  a piece of the French toast Larry made for yesterday’s lunch.

 Oh!  Lookie, there are butterflies out front!  Cabbage whites.  Not as splashy as some that will show up later, but butterflies, nevertheless!  (And no, they are not angels, nor are they loved ones gone on before.  They are butterflies.)

Mourning doves are building a nest in one of the Blue spruces in the front yard. 

(Photo by Helen Webster Drake)

I’ve made a fresh gallon of cold-brew coffee (right on National Cold Brew Day, at that), this time a combination of Eggnog (vanilla, nutmeg, and cinnamon) and Lazy Bear (honey and blackberries).  I’ll leave it to steep overnight.  It smells scrumptious!

And now I shall get back to the Constellation quilt.

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