Journal: Summertime Quilting

 

This morning, an online quilting friend from New Zealand remarked on one of my pictures that was taken inside the cattle barn at the Platte County Fair, “It’s good to see the fans.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “it was quite nice in the barns. The animals weren’t nearly as heat-stressed as the humans out on the Midway!”

The exchange reminded me of a big, fluffy chicken I saw standing at the corner of its cage nearest a little fan, making a slow, crowing noise – and the fan was distorting the sound.  The chicken would cock its head and consider this phenomenon, then make another long, drawn-out crow, quite a lot like my own little kiddos used to do in front of fans.  😅

It was a lot cooler Tuesday than it had been for several days – just 79° at 10:45 a.m., on the way up to 85° that afternoon. 

That day, I finally got Larry’s phone set up on Straight Talk.  I had to tackle him and sit on him whilst I did it; he seemed to fear the silly thing would blow up or something, just as soon as I plugged in the SIM card and detonated – er, activated it.  It didn’t help any that my hotspot refused to work for a while (and especially that I griped about it out loud). 

This went on for a bit despite chats and texts with Straight Talk representatives, and following instructions online time and again.  One nice man who tried for half an hour to help finally told me to wait 24-48 hours, and ‘hopefully’ it would ‘activate itself’. 

Yeah, yeah; he just hoped that the next time I called back, it wouldn’t be him who answered my call!  ha!

But, as reported in last week’s letter, after a variety of attempts, I now have unlimited, high-speed, mobile hotspot data. 

Tuesday, I removed my tablets from Verizon’s network, and set up Larry’s phone when he came in for lunch.  His hotspot was still connected to Verizon, however, and nothing I did – including contacting Straight Talk Support – had changed that.  Verizon has supposedly closed our account.  So why hasn’t Larry’s hotspot changed?  My phone has a new hotspot and a new password to go with it. 

Other than all the PST (Phone Stuff ’n Things), I planned to quilt, quilt, quilt that day.

Look at this old sewing-machine-turned-tractor I saw at the Wolfe Country Quilt Show.  I almost missed it!  Then I stepped to the side as several people came out of that barn – and when I looked down to make sure I wasn’t about to bump one of the flowerpots, there was that tractor, right at my feet. 

This small barn is fixed up like a rustic family room, and is where they have the ice water and homemade cookies.

Victoria was feeling better, after being sick at the hospital, evidently having some sort of gastrointestinal bug.  Fine time to be sick, right when Baby decides it’s time to greet the world, eh? 😑😥😕😟

She sent me the birth announcement card she put together, saying, “He’s already 8 lbs. 12.5 oz. today!”

Then she told me the following story: 

Willie asked her to guard his supper plate so no one would take anything while he went to get something.

Violet assured him, “We won’t take anything.”

“Oh, thank you, Violet!” exclaimed Willie.  “I’m going to wink at you when I come back.”

That little boy is so funny.

That afternoon I kept hearing tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings on my laptop.  At 3:00 p.m., there were ten tornado warnings active at the same time.

By 6:45 p.m., there had been 78 tornado warnings and 212 severe thunderstorm warnings, and the bad weather showed no signs of slowing down at all – in fact, just the opposite.

There were ongoing water rescues in West Virgina.  Two firefighters and a child were swept out of a tree.  People were trapped in their homes – on the second story.

Two people died in the flooding.

For supper that night, I  made Zuppa Toscana soup, putting ground venison in it.  I put caraway seeds, paprika, Italian seasoning, ground pink Himalayan salt, garlic powder, parsley, and crushed red pepper in the ground venison to give it an Italian sausage flavor, before adding it to the soup.

I baked some Snickers-flavored cookies for dessert.  They’re ready-mixed and shaped from Walmart, but they really do taste like they’re made from scratch.  The lazy cook’s cookies.

Three crop dusters flew over multiple times that day.  I enjoy watching them.  People often rant and rave about how bad it is that they’re spraying stuff on the crops.  Some of those people think they’re killing all the bees and butterflies, whereas right now they’re only spraying fungicide.  Fungicide does have some impact on insects, but not like insecticide does.  There’s a balance, I realize; but we do need healthy crops.  Those same people wouldn’t be very happy if there wasn’t any grain for their breads, bagels, cereal, batter, dough, muffins, cakes, and so on.  All-organic crop yields typically run 10% to 25% lower.

The science of fungicides and insecticides improves all the time.  They’re getting better at targeting specific harmful weeds and insects, while not harming beneficial ones.  Also, modern fungicides and insecticides generally do not enter the water supply as heavily as they did decades ago due to stricter regulations and the phase-out of older, more highly persistent chemicals, though low-level runoff still occurs.

One of the crop dusters was doing his turns directly over our house.  I admire the pilots’ skill, but I’m never real delighted that they do that immediately over my head!

The Blue Jays were plumb mad about it, screeching their crested heads off.  A large flock of birds – European Starlings, I think – took flight from the wooded hill to our north, and I could hear the plane coming.  That makes me nervous.  If he had a major bird collision, he’d wind up catapulting straight into the north window of my quilting room!  I doubt if it would help to duck.

By 8:00 p.m., there had been about 90 tornado warnings and around 250 severe thunderstorm warnings.

BC news said that West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey sent 100 National Guard members to the hardest-hit areas in the northern part of the state, and declared a state of emergency for all 55 counties Tuesday night.  An additional 200 National Guard members were expected to arrive by late Wednesday morning.  Meteorologists said up to 7 inches of rain fell in some places.

That evening, Victoria sent pictures of Baby Russell, writing, “He survived his first bath.  Barely.  😆 ”

“Awwww,” I responded.  “His sweet little face.  ‘What have you done to me??’”

Isn’t it amazing how a brand-new baby knows to look right into your eyes?

Keith, my first baby, liked baths from the first time he ever had one.  So I was astonished when, upon putting his little sister Hannah gently into her baby bath a year later, she opened her mouth as wide as her head and squalled.

You’d’ve thought I dropped her into icewater from ten feet up.

The next time I tried that, I first wrapped her in a thin receiving blanket, then put baby, blanket, and all into the little tub.  I’d unwrap one arm, one leg, etc., at a time, wash it, and rewrap it before proceeding on to the next limb.  Then I’d leave the wet blanket behind when the bath was done.

There was then just that momentary startle when I lifted baby from the tub, but quicker’n a wink I had her wrapped in a fluffy towel.

It wasn’t long before Victoria sent a couple more pictures of Baby Russell, once in Carolyn’s arms, and once in Violet’s.  The baby was sound asleep, and apparently not suffering from long-lasting trauma, as he was smiling in his sleep, in the shot with Violet.

I picked up a grocery order at Walmart that evening.  I ordered several kinds of fresh fruit, including dark cherries, nectarines, bananas, and strawberries.  Yummy, they were all so good.  The nectarines weren’t quite ripe, so I left them on the counter for a couple of days.  By then, they were perfect.  Fresh fruit is my kind of dessert.

Wednesday morning at 11:30 a.m., it was only 65°, on the way up to 68°, and we were having a gentle rain.  Welcome weather!  I cleaned the kitchen, and then headed up to my quilting studio to see how much quilting I could get done before our midweek church service this evening.

But... Aarrgghh!  A spider had draped her web here and there around my quilting studio overnight!  Fiber cloth to the rescue.

Larry went to Neola, Iowa, that day, 120 miles to the east, to get an old truck he bought to sell for metal scraps.  But his main winch quit working, leaving him with only his big manual come-along and his small winch to get it on the trailer; so it took a while to get it loaded.  He would not make it home until after 10:00 p.m.

After a late supper, I tried to change the hotspot on Larry’s phone from Verizon to Straight Talk, with no success.

I gave up and went to bed.  I was sound asleep when Larry sent me a text:  “What did you do!  I have no internet at all.  🤨”

I did not find that text until the next day. 

When he came inside that afternoon, I reset his phone, and abracadabra, the Internet was working again.  The hotspot, however, is still Verizon’s.  It works, but it’s Verizon’s.  🙄

Thursday was cool and cloudy again, with a high of 72°, with a few sprinkles now and then.  Quite nice, after the high heat we’d had.

I drained the last of the Blueberry Banana Flambé cold-brew coffee out of the jug; I needed to make more.  What flavor would it be this time?  Hmmm...  It would be Georgia Peach.  When I pulled the bag from the freezer, I saw that it was time to order more coffee beans.

I’m working my way through the many flavors offered by Aroma Ridge.

Soon I was upstairs quilting away.  This is a ‘rope’ design, created with one of my special quilting rulers.

And this kind of quilting is called ‘graffiti’.  I was almost to the halfway point when I quit for the night.

Friday was similar to Thursday – 69° in the late morning, cloudy and damp.  It would be our last cool day for a while.  We were issued a Heat Advisory that would start at noon Saturday and go on until 10:00 p.m. Monday, and the days after that will be just under heat-advisory status.

After I rummaged up some breakfast, I started mixing up a tall mug of Celsius to take with me upstairs.  I reached for the faucet to add water – and promptly got the cold shivers, after finding a large centipede lurking maliciously in the kitchen sink.  😬

Having dispatched the centipede and finished adding water and ice to the powdered Celsius, I headed upstairs to my quilting studio.  Why are the days shorter than they were ten years ago?  😏 

It wasn’t long before I was wondering why I didn’t have any lilac-colored quilting thread, which I needed for the next four ‘I Wish You Well’ blocks.  But look! –  I found a small, ancient spool of lilac J&P Dual Duty Plus in my later sister-in-law Janice’s sewing things, which I try to use whenever possible.  My late brother Loren was always pleased when I told him I’d used any of the fabric or notions Janice gave me shortly before she passed away.  (Those smaller spools in the background are the only long-stapled threads available at our LQS.)

“Reckon the Cavalry will come galloping in, brandishing sabers and carbines, if I stick this old thread on my quilting machine and give it a try?” I asked some quilting friends.

I threaded the machine, dropped the needle into position, grasped the handles, and launched in.  Annnd... the J&P Coats thread worked perfectly.  My Avanté was completely hoodwinked. 😅

I wonder how old that stuff is?  J&P Coats merged with Clark Threads way back in 1952.  The thread is still strong and good; I gave it the ‘pull test’.  It had never been used; the thread was still in the notch and buried under the glued-on paper.

Here’s a little excerpt I found in an old journal that afternoon: 

When Hester was about 5, she was crocheting away, her little square getting bigger and bigger… and she was getting tireder and tireder (should be a word) of crocheting… and then Hannah, who would have been about 13, took pity on her and said, “Here, let me finish that for you.”  

She folded it in half and enclosed it with crocheting along two sides, tucked a pair of Hester’s little plastic sunglasses into it, and handed it back.  

Hester brightened up, grinned, and said, “How ’bout that!  I made a glasses case, and I didn’t even know I was going to!”

One more excerpt, this one from a journal from December of 2005 (I wonder if I ever found what I was hunting for in my journals?  Once I found these stories, I had to copy and send them off to the people I’d written about, and now I have no idea what I was searching for in the first place):

I stopped by Bobby and Hannah’s this afternoon.  They have their Christmas lights on the house and their tree up, and Hannah has boxes of presents out, ready to wrap, along with stacks of wrapping paper, rolls of tape, scissors, and name tags.

“It’s a present sort of a thing,” Joanna, not quite 3, explained to me, waving a hand vaguely at the various conglomerations.  She then came rushing to show me her new sticker book that she’d just finished – but I had a wee bit of difficultly looking at it, she was jouncing and bouncing so vigorously.

“Joanna, don’t hop; Grandma can’t see what she’s looking at!” admonished Hannah.

“I’m skipping,” advised Joanna, continuing the activity with vigor.

“Joanna!” said Hannah.

“Oh!” said Joanna, big blue eyes growing wider.  She abruptly stopped jumping.  She looked at my face intently, then said very quietly and with a bit of a question, “She’s glasses are on?” – as if there was no reason that she could see to explain why I hadn’t been able to see that wildly bounding sticker book.

That night whilst a-tryin’ somewhat unsuccessfully to sleep, two phrases of a song were stuck in my head – not the words, just the tune.  I could remember neither words nor the rest of the tune.  But it was stuck in my head so firmly, I thoroughly believed I would wake up (if I ever fell asleep in the first place) and be able to march to the piano, play those ditties, and magically be able to continue the rest of the song, and thereby remember what it was.

By morning, the ditties themselves had completely eluded me, and evade me to this day.  Aarrgghh!  And they were pretty ditties, and no doubt belonged in a quite pretty song that I like!

I lamented about this to my friend Penny, who told the following true story about a famous writer.  In the middle of the night, or in some wild dream, this author would get ideas that might be stories; but then in the morning, he couldn’t remember them.  So he put a pen and paper on the nightstand so that when he thought of something important, he could write it down. 

One night he had a particularly vivid dream.  Half asleep, he picked up his pen, scribbled something, and went back to sleep, satisfied that he wouldn’t lose this good idea.  In the morning, he picked up the piece of paper, happily anticipating the seed for his next literary work.

Upon that paper was written:  WRITE IT DOWN!

Penny then assured me, “The thing is, the way you play right through a hymnbook, you’ll eventually play the pretty-ditty, whether you remember it when you do or not.”

“Funny,” I retorted. 

I do tend to pick a hymnbook, especially one I haven’t gone through in some time, and, starting with page 1, work my way right through to page 618.  Or 68, depending on how fat said book is.  Can’t help it; it’s what I do.  After all, I read the old 1955 encyclopedia set I found in our basement all the way through, from Aardvark to Zyzzyva, when I was about ages 6 and 7.  (It took a while.)  Some people we knew gave us that set when they, being poor as Job’s turkey, nevertheless bought themselves a brand-spankin’-new encyclopedia set in 1965.  Mama’s hair would’ve stood up on end, had she known what all I was learning downstairs, all curled up in the old armchair down there.  I did glue a couple of pages together when I came to Pablo Picasso, who was not only horrid, but weirdly horrid. 

When I was 10 or thereabouts, I read all the way through our Unabridged Webster’s Dictionary, one page after another, tickety-tickety-tick. 

Daddy once walked through the living room, saw me curled up in the big chair by the picture window with that giant book on my lap, stopped, and asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m reading the dictionary,” I answered, not seeing anything unusual about it.   It was like a mystery, with an evasive plotline that wove its way along, sometimes intersecting, sometimes paralleling, and sometimes veering far awry and askew.

Daddy clapped a hand to his forehead.  “Oh, no,” he said to Mama in mock horror.  “As if she doesn’t correct my grammar enough already.”  hee hee

Speaking of Pablo Picasso...  Why do people practically worship him, for cryin’ out loud?  Architectural Digest says, “He was not just one in a generation, but one in a species – an artist who broke boundaries so dramatically, that other artists could only pick up whatever pieces he left on the ground to learn and understand his brilliance.” 

And everyone acts like that’s a fact, rather than an opinion.

It’s an opinion.  And not mine.

For starters, he wore black-and-white striped knit shirts with maroon, yellow, and black plaid double-knit pants, argyle socks, and bone-colored loafers.  That’s bad enough (and ought to tell people something, right there); but the majority of his paintings are awful!  I mean, look at this.  Do you like it?  If you do, you need psychotherapy.  Truly.

Further, I had to hunt a while before I found one that wasn’t obscene.  Some are obscene, but you don’t realize it until you look at it for a moment – and then your brain turns wrong side out, and you have to go rinse your eyeballs out with Lysol.

Now, I have seen a painting or two of Picasso’s that were not all that bad, such as this one. 

However, his model was apparently grim and severe, and I’ll betcha she was downright hostile that he depicted her as having Dactylitis, aka ‘Sausage Digit’, when she most likely did not have the ailment, but rather, he just couldn’t paint fingers well.

Actually, he couldn’t paint entire hands well.  Look at that.  Her hand is several inches longer than her head.

So, having been well reamed out by this austere person, he resorted to painting women more like this: 

Let ol’ Stern Stella try conniptioning about this.  Why, she didn’t even know it was herself.  But look! – they have the same color of hair!

See, Picasso’s weird and bizarre and indecent paintings were all retaliation portraits, and weird and bizarre people clamored and bought them, and Picasso laughed all the way to bank.

Now that you know what I think about that, let’s try a New and Different Topic.

The heat returned on Saturday, and the Heat Advisory turned into an Excessive Heat Warning.  The high was 98°, and heat index values got up to 110°.  In York, Nebraska, 45 miles to our south, the heat index reached 122° at 4:35 p.m.!  Their actual temperature was slightly lower than ours, at 96.8°.  The dewpoint was 82.4°, a major contributor to the heat index and general misery of a day like that. 

Hmmm...  I guess ‘Weather’ wasn’t New and Different after all.  Let’s try again.

Did you know that cornfields (by which we are surrounded in all directions) contribute to how hot and muggy it feels?  This occurs through a process called evapotranspiration, also called corn sweat.  Corn pulls water from the soil through its roots and releases it as water vapor from its leaves.  During peak growth in mid-summer, a single acre of corn can release 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of water into the air every single day.  I find that quite astonishing.  Just like human sweat cools our bodies when it evaporates, releasing water helps the corn plant keep from overheating in the blazing sun.

I washed several throw rugs that morning, then spent the majority of the day quilting.

We had fresh corn on the cob for supper that night.  I used to overcook corn on the cob.  I have since learned how to cook it properly:  fill a pan with enough water to cover the ears, but don’t put them in until the water comes to a rolling boil.  Use a big enough pan that you don’t have to stack the ears.  Now put in the ears of corn, and set your timer for three minutes (maybe four, if the pan is quite full and the ears are large).  When the timer goes off, get the corn out quickly, so the cooking process stops.  Butter lavishly and enjoy!

One more advantage to not cooking corn on the cob so long:  the cob itself doesn’t have time to get so hot that it retains so much heat; so you’re able to eat the corn promptly with less chance of burning lips and fingers.  Mostly, though, it just tastes sooo much better.  All sweet and crunchy, as opposed to rubbery.  😋

Corn can grow four inches a day.  Did you know that, once it gets three or four feet tall, you can hear it growing?  On a very still day (hard to come by, in our neck o’ ze woods, what with the constant wind), if you stand in or beside a cornfield, you’ll hear a ‘snap, crackle, and pop’.  It’s doing its Rice Krispie impersonation.  😂

A friend asked, “Is corn a vegetable or a grain?”

Corn can be either a vegetable or a grain, depending on when it is harvested, how it is processed (as kernels or ears, as opposed to cornmeal or popcorn), and how it is consumed.  But it can also be considered a fruit – botanically, that is; because the kernels develop from the ovary of the ‘flower’.  Every single kernel is a seed-bearing structure – a type of fruit called a caryopsis.

Eeek, another centipede – not as big as the one in the sink – but in my quilting studio!  Of all ze noive.  I sent him to dwell with his friend in Never-Never Land.

That evening, Larry came home from somewhere in Iowa – in a 32-foot, 1996 motorhome, of all things.  He’d traded his skid loader for it.  It is now residing in the front east drive.

Larry mentioned a couple of times that the motorhome needs a good cleaning, inside and out.  I didn’t hear him, though.  (Did I?)  I’m a quilter.  Quilters are notorious for having selective hearing.  Right?  Right.  Besides! — Excessive Heat Warning.  And... quilter. 

Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m., it was 73°, on the way to a high of 99°.  The Excessive Heat Warning continued.  I refilled and rehung the bird feeders, and soon there were handfuls of birds out there.  I couldn’t tell what kind they were, because the windows weren’t just steamed, it looked like a steady flow of water was running down them.  I was mighty thankful for air conditioning, and for the Georgia Peach cold-brew coffee I was sipping as I blow-dried and curled my hair, getting ready for church.

Later that afternoon, as I prepared for our evening service, I sent a friend a picture of Baby Russell.  Then, by way of explaining why I was about to go AWOL, I wrote, “Getting ready for church.”

Seeing that the statement wound up right under the picture of the baby, I added, “I am, that is.”

And then, “Actually, baby Russell is probably getting ready for church, too; but he doesn’t know it.”  😅

Our babies probably wonder why, a few times a week, everyone races around like chickens with their heads cut off, donning glad rags and slicking their hair; then off they go pell-mell in a vehicle, winding up in a building with really high ceilings.

My new babies always used to stare in wonder at ceilings that looked a sight different from the ceilings in our house.  Since they had a penchant for getting fussy in places such as church and the grocery store, I used to say that high ceilings gave them colic.  😂

By the time they were 5 or 6 months old, they had realized that at least one of those places with high ceilings contained lots of friends, including grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and they’d get all happy and excited when we headed inside.

We spent a while after church visiting with some of the kids, then had a late supper when we got home:  clam chowder with Hawaiian crackers, fresh strawberries, and lemon poppyseed muffins, fresh out of the oven.

Larry then went out to the motorhome and collected bedding and curtains to wash.  I bestirred myself to pay a bit of attention, in case he tried cramming the whole works into the washer all at once.  I even offered my advice as to how much detergent to put in, and what settings to use.  😇

Our Excessive Heat Warning continues today.  It was 86° by a quarter after ten, and the high was 96°, with a Heat Index of 117°.  But it’s nice and cool in the house, and the Georgia Peach cold-brew coffee is mmmm, good.  I played the piano for a bit, and, despite dreaming last night that I broke one string after another (while playing in front of an audience, of course), I broke nary a string.

I shined up the bathroom, blow-dried my hair, and ate half a bagel, toasted, with peanut butter and jelly on it.  Yum, that’s one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast.

The kitchen is clean; the letter is done; and now, the Crinoline Ladies quilt is calling!

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