Last Monday night, we had yet another
night of thunderstorms, lightning, and rain, and it lasted through Tuesday morning. Things have gone from brown and dry to green,
very green. My August Lily hostas with
the big white flowers are blooming like everything, scenting the entire yard
with their aroma, a lovely combination something on the order of
lily-of-the-valley, lilacs, and honeysuckle.
The white-lined sphinx moths like them.
They also like the tall lavender phlox.
By late morning, the sun was shining, and it was 74°. It seemed we had gotten nearly 3” of rain
last night. Maybe. There was some controversy about it
online. Some said 1.5”. Others, 2.2, 2.5, 2, 2.8, and on and on. And some areas that were seemingly right in
the midst of the storm only got a tenth of an inch. The most was reportedly 4.30” southwest of Wolbach, 55 miles to our west.
A
quilting friend mentioned that she had gotten two rows of rulerwork quilting
completed in a day.
That’s commendable progress, when doing
rulerwork. When someone posts a picture
of a big quilt with elaborate rulerwork and free-motion, and then writes,
“Whew! It took me a full day to get this
beast done!” – I think, Lady, you need to put new batteries in your
sundial; it done stopped on ya.
That afternoon, I put together the
backing for Arnold’s quilt. I found
three pieces of red-and-white striped fabric that used to be Janice’s. There would be just barely enough if I pieced
it together. Problem: one piece felt like quilter’s cotton; the
other two, a thinner broadcloth. I
pieced them together anyway. The stripes
don’t match up perfectly. But we won’t tell
anybody, right?
Next, I pulled out several long strips
of leftover batting. I abutted the edges
and zigzagged them together. With
smaller quilts, I like to use up as many scraps as possible. It’s somewhat dicey, doing that with big
quilts, as they’re then liable not to drape nicely. I do it anyway sometimes, and – usually – no
one is ever the wiser.
When batting and backing were the right size,
I loaded everything onto my quilting frame, put the pantograph in place on the
quilting table, and started quilting.
By a
quarter after eight that evening, the first row of Puppy Pause was quilted. Look at all the seams in the batting! Good thing batting is stretchy and smooshable,
and good thing there are lots of seams in the quilt top, to camouflage the
seams in the batting. The pantograph is
called ‘Dog Treats’.
After
quilting two wide rows, I quit for the night and headed for my recliner.
It was
bright and sunny a little before 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning when I hung out
the bird feeders, but by 11:30 a.m., it was quite dark, and a severe
thunderstorm was bearing down upon us. It
was 74°; the high would be 79°.
Fifteen minutes later, a meteorologist
on the rural radio announced that an 82-mph wind gust had been recorded at
Wolbach, the little town that got near 4 ½” of rain the previous day. The 236 residents of that little village had
better drive their tent stakes a little deeper into the ground!
By 11:55 a.m., it was thundering like
anything and had gone very dark, almost as dark as it got two weeks ago
Saturday. So strange.
I had a
few hours of quilting left on the Puppy Pause quilt, which I hoped to get done
before our evening church service. If
the maid would clean the kitchen, I’d have a better chance! But... I cleaned the kitchen, and then got on
with the quilting.
That afternoon, Hannah sent me pictures of the
Blue Jay she’d finished crocheting. With
this little creature, she had made either an animal or a bird for each of the
children in the classroom where she’d been a teacher’s aide. Look, the yarn glows in the dark!
The baby doves Hannah had sent pictures of
last week, along with some in a nest in a nearby tree, had gotten blown out of
their nests by Tuesday’s storms. She put
the two from the nest in the bush back; they were the only ones that had
survived.
Unfortunately, after Wednesday’s storms, only
one was left in the nest. She saw the mother
dove earlier; hopefully that last baby will survive.
“The baby looks healthy,” she said,
“albeit wet.”
“Poor little things,” I wrote back. “Baby birds sure have risky beginnings!”
Then I told her, “By the way, the
F.R.O.G. jam you gave us is scrumptious.”
That’s jam made with Figs, Raspberries,
Oranges, and Ginger, and sweetened with honey.
“—although your father thinks there
are only about three servings in a jar that size,” I finished. “He is NOT the sort of person who would do
well if he got marooned somewhere with a scant supply of food.”
“Neither would Levi,” Hannah laughed.
Larry’s “I’m hungry NOW” attitude,
combined with his illogical optimism “Someone is on the way to rescue me even
as I take this last bite” would not serve him well.
Actually, he’s more likely thinking, “As
soon as I’m nice and full, I’ll be better able to contrive the proper manner of
rescuing myself.” And then, if I
happened to be along, “Oh, you mean you wanted some, too?!!” [surprised face]
“That’s funny,” said Hannah. “Levi is exactly like that.”
Here are a
couple of shots taken by different storm chasers two miles west of Burwell,
Nebraska, last Monday.
At a quarter after 5, I finished quilting
Puppy Pause. I donned some glad rags for the evening church service, and
then had enough time to cut the binding and sew it to one side of the quilt before
time to go.
When we got home from church, we had a light
supper of Campbell’s Sirloin Burger soup.
Well, at least mine was light.
I’m not sure we could say the same about Larry’s, after seeing all the
crackers he dumped into his bowl. 😄
I went to
bed at what should have been a decent hour, as I had to get up early the next
morning to take my quilts to the State Fair in Grand Island. But, as usual on Important Sleep Nights, I didn’t
get much sleep – only about 2 ½ hours. Sigghhhh...
I was
ready to go fairly early Thursday morning, but we were in the middle of a dense
fog, and it wasn’t in any big hurry to burn off, what with the temperature
being in the low 60s; so I lollygagged around for a while before leaving home.
It would be
warming up to a high of 84° that afternoon, so the fog would begin diminishing soon,
I hoped. Grand Island, too, was covered
with fog that morning.
Driving
conditions were finally good around 11:00 a.m.
It’s 66 miles from our house to Fonner Park, and takes an hour and 13
minutes, providing one doesn’t stop anywhere.
And
providing there is no road construction going on.
There was
road construction going on.
My GPS tried to get
me to turn off of Highway 30, which slants from northeast to southwest, and
make a square corner to the north on county roads. This would add four minutes to my drive. Neither the map nor the bossy GPS lady
informed me of the reason for this detour – until I could see it for myself.
I thought, Sure,
you’re always trying to give me extra miles to drive – shortly before I
came upon roadwork that stalled me out for quite a lot longer than four minutes. 🙄
Just look
at all the vehicles waiting to continue northeast, after the southwest-going
vehicles got past.
I got to
the Expo Building at a quarter ’til one, two hours before they would lock the
doors.
One of the
ladies at the fair, checking in quilts (not being snippy at all; she was
admiring Joanna’s quilt, and exclaiming over its size), asked, “Do you ever
make small quilts?”
“Sometimes
I try!” I said, and the ladies all laughed. “They grow, while I’m making them.”
Several
ladies nodded; they knew that phenomenon.
“The
toddlers have to team up, in order to drag their quilts around,” I added.
That really
made them laugh. (Small quilts for
toddlers are often called ‘drag-arounds.’)
This has
been a problem ever since I can remember: I start making soup... then have to transfer everything to a bigger
pot, because the stuff expanded when I wasn’t looking. (Not because I put too many ingredients in, I
tell you; it expanded.) Sometimes
when I made dresses for my little girls, we wound up hanging them in the closet
for next year, and I then made more, in a smaller size. Sigghhhh...
This must
be the “I Made Too Much Again”/“I Made It Too Big Again” personality flaw.
After
leaving the fairgrounds, I took my serger to the Quality Sew & Vac (and
Bernina) store, as it’s locked up tight (as in, ‘it won’t go’), probably from
lack of use, poor thing.
I drooled
over a few big, fancy machines, then headed toward Eagle Scout Lake to see if
there were any birds willing to pose for pictures there.
There was
a small pond near the Bernina Store that was positively jampacked with
waterfowl – but there was no place to stop and take pictures. At Eagle Scout Lake, however, which is
renowned for abundance of waterfowl, there was one white goose. O.n.e...g.o.o.s.e. A white-morph Ross’s Goose
(Anser rossii), to be exact.
He was cautious, but
not overly frightened; he seemed to be somewhat used to people. Or at least li’l ol’ ladies with big cameras.
I wonder how Grand Island – which is neither
‘grand’, nor is it an island – got its name?
I knew this, once upon a time.
Let’s look it up again.
Annnnd... here’s the answer, straight from
the Explore Nebraska History website:
Grand Island gets its name from a large,
40-mile-long island in the nearby Platte River that 18th-century
French fur traders named La Grande Île, which means ‘the big or great island’.
The fur traders and trappers discovered the
large, wooded river island in the late 1700s.
The island served as a well-known campsite and landmark for Native
Americans, explorers, and travelers heading west on the Oregon and California
trails.
When settlers and the Union Pacific Railroad
established the nearby town in the 1850s and 1860s, they named the new
community after this prominent local geographic feature.
I got back home sometime after 3:30 p.m. It was sunny then,
but by 5:30 p.m., it was totally overcast.
I pulled up a live weather stream on YouTube just in time to see the
stormchaser who calls himself IRL step out of his car and immediately go to
swatting at the air and announcing that there was a ‘swarm of gnats’.
People in the live chat, seemingly prepared
for the moment, immediately started answering:
“Who let the gnats out?” “Pestulance!”
(meaning ‘Pestilence’.) “Nebraska
overperforming as usual.” Etc., and etc.
There was
an ominous-looking supercell, accompanied by 80-mph winds, out by Broken Bow –
and no warning on it.
These
pictures were taken by stormchasers near Anselmo, 49 miles southwest of
Burwell. Brandon Hammons no soon posted
the shot below than some man informed the Internet at large that it was
fake. “Totally AI!” said he. “Car is on the wrong side of the road, too.”
All he had
to do was watch the live stream, and he would’ve known it was indeed very real. Furthermore, the car is pulling into the left
lane, the better to safely go around the stormchaser who is stopped on the
shoulder.
Upon being
informed that it was a true, unmanipulated photo, the naysayer belligerently
demanded, “Why then did we never see such photos up until recently?! Just tell me that!”
The
answer(s): 1) Stormchasers, 2)
Far superior cameras and smartphones, and 3) Internet spreading such
photos far and wide.
One man
had a fourth answer: “The government
created that weather phenomenon!”
Right. Out in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Uh-huh.
He needs a
higher-quality aluminum foil for his hat.
Meteorologist Ryan Hall (of the ‘Ryan Hall, Y’all’ YouTube channel) by
chance clicked on a camera focused on Seven Falls, west of Colorado Springs.
“What is this?!!” he exclaimed.
Then, “There’s a severe thunderstorm bearing down on them, and there are
people just a-goin’ up and down these blamed steps!!!” He watched in silence for a moment, then uttered
his signature remark: “That’s plumb
wild.”
He checked out a traffic cam near North Pole, Colorado, at the base of
the Pikes Peak Highway, where the storm was passing through right that instant. Hail and rain were flowing together down the
highway with cars and trucks plowing through it with abandon, creating snowy-white
wakes that would’ve done big-lake speedboaters proud.
Someone wrote in the live chat, “Slow down, you savages.” hee hee
Them thar savages ain’t a-readin’ chats on live weather streams, nope.
Ryan then found a camera focused on Pikes Peak. The camera was positioned at an elevation of 14,000
feet, a mere 115 feet below the peak itself.
There was snow on the ground, a couple of inches, I suppose.
“Is that snow?!!” asked Ryan in amazement. Upon being assured it most certainly was snow,
he proclaimed, “Colorado is insane!!” ((...pause...)) Then, “I gotta go there!” A minute later, having found a camera aimed
at a beautiful lakeside in Minnesota, complete with white
sandy beaches and people having picnics and playing volleyball, he queried in
total disbelief, “Minnesota?! That’s Minnesota?!!”
People in the live chat confirmed it as a fact.
Silence. Then, “I gotta get out
more!” exclaimed Ryan. 😆
While I
listened to (and sometimes watched) the weather, I looked at quilt design after
quilt design, hunting for ideas and possibilities for Keira’s quilt. I paused just long enough to pop some chicken
egg rolls into the oven, then returned to the search.
Friday, after
checking the forecast, I thought to quickly finish the binding on the Puppy
Pause quilt and then take pictures of it outside. I could machine-embroider the label later. If I tried to do the embroidery first, it
would be evening and too dark outside for good photos before I finished the
binding.
I refilled
and rehung the bird feeders, tidied the bedroom, showered and washed my hair,
shined the bathroom back up, played the piano, made myself a tall mug of Maui
Joe’s cold-brew coffee, and went to blow-dry and curl my hair.
A
resounding roll of thunder made my eyebrows fly up and my ears flap.
When I had
gone out to hang the bird feeders around 9:00 a.m., the temperature had been
78°, though it felt like 91°. The high,
so my weather app said, would be 86°, with a heat index of nearly 100°. It would be hot, taking pictures out there,
but nice and sunny, so they said!
I looked
out the window. Sho’ ’nuff, storm clouds
were rolling in. It was about to rain!
Meanwhile,
out in the Panhandle near Scottsbluff, a stormchaser took this supercell photo.
Change of
plans: I would make the label first, as
I’d wanted to do in the first place, in order to put it in the corner of the
quilt and sew the binding over the top of it, saving hand-stitching on two
sides.
I tossed a
load of clothes into the washing machine, ate something, and headed upstairs to
my sewing room.
It was a quarter after seven before I finished
machine embroidering the quilt label and began sewing it to the quilt.
This, because the machine got all
discombobulated when it tried doing the signature (below the paw on the right)
and the thread shredded and broke, and I had to restart the machine. The entire embroidery design, which,
thankfully, I had saved – but edited slightly after the save – wound up shifted
and resized. I rebooted one more time,
but it was still off-kilter. And all
that black outlining on the dog still needed to be done. I moved and resized the design with my best
guess, going by needle position. It didn’t
turn out too bad, for all that.
I paused to put a Detroit Pizza into
the oven. While it baked, I finished blind-stitching
the label to the quilt. It took way
longer than it should’ve, because the thread kept snarling and knotting. Why didn’t I just pitch out that strand and
pull another one from a new and better spool of thread??
But finally I was pinning the binding
in place for the last line of stitching.
In case
you’re wondering about the name of the quilt, it’s from the pun, “Puppy paws
never pause.” Since they’ve all paused
on the quilt... (I know, it’s a bit
obscure.)
It was
half-past midnight before Arnold’s quilt was finished. It measures 58” x
70”.
I shut
everything down in my quilting studio and went to put the last load of laundry
away before hitting the hay.
Saturday
was a pretty day, 76° at 11:00 a.m., on the way up to 86°; but the humidity was
76% and the dew point was 68°, making it feel like 90°. The heat index was expected to get to at
least 100°. I decided that the indoor
pictures I’d taken of the Puppy Pause quilt were quite good enough.
I spent a
good part of the day working on the design of Keira’s quilt.
Victoria
sent a video clip of Arnold singing Why Worry, When You Can Pray, that cute
little voice perfectly on tune. He had
more vibrato than usual, however, because he was bobbing and hopping up and
down vigorously as he sang.
“I think
you need to go outside and play,” said Victoria at the end of the song.
“No, I was
just jumping,” explained Arnold in great sincerity. hee hee
“That’s
how he acts when he needs a nap,” remarked Victoria. “Like an energizer bunny in overdrive.”
She then sent an audio clip of him
singing The Birds Upon the Treetops. Here’s
part of the lyrics:
The birds upon
the treetops sing their song;
The angels chant
the chorus all day long;
The flowers in
the garden blend their hue;
So, why shouldn’t
I, why shouldn’t you, praise Him, too!
I once explained to some of the
children that “the flowers blend their hue” means ‘all their pretty colors
match and go together’. The very next
time we got everyone all dressed up for church, the littlest one (I don’t
remember who it was) said, “Look! We’re
blending our hues!”
It rained part of the day Sunday, but was
polite enough to stop during those times we needed to walk to and from the
car. The hostas that drape over the
front walk, however, gathered up bucketloads of rain on their wide leaves, and dumped
them all over our legs and feet as we scurried through them to the driveway.
So we walked into church with our feet
saying, “Squeege squeege squeege squeege...”
I held my chin up and strode purposefully
toward my pew. Let everyone think it
was Larry’s feet doing the conversing.
After the evening service last night,
we chatted for a while with a few of the kids. Before coming home, we put gas in the
Mercedes. It’s a picky thing, and
requires high-octane premium fuel – the most expensive fuel at the pumps. It took almost one entire Founding Father,
namely, Benjamin Franklin, to fill that nearly-empty tank.
Did you
know that Benjamin Franklin did not have a middle name? However, he did sometimes use the pseudonym ‘Silence
Dogood’ et al. as pen names for his writing.
We had a bit
of rain this morning, but by 11:30 a.m. it was bright and sunny and 73°, on the
way up to 83°. I did some housecleaning,
then made a fresh jug of cold-brew coffee.
The flavor of the coffee beans this time is ‘American Dream’ – fresh
cherries and cream.
For
breakfast I had a piece of the yummy French toast Larry made yesterday, with an
egg, over-easy, on top.
Before I start
on Keira’s quilt tomorrow, I plan to make a couple of little pillows to go with
Arnold’s quilt. That’s a matter of necessity,
not just because I like to use up the last little scraps of leftover fabric, but
also because there are two little pillows that go with his big brother Willie’s
quilt.
I just
looked out the window to see the birds at the feeders on the back deck – and
there were seven of those big Eurasian Collared Doves back there! I imagine some are young ones, recently
fledged, but they all looked about the same size. A couple are on the deck, four
are on the railing, and one is perched atop the rebar from which the feeders
hang. The doves – Eurasian Collared and
Mourning alike – have excellent eyesight and notice me almost the instant I
peek out the window, unlike the finches and sparrows.
My
afternoon snack: Popping Boba Passion
Fruit-Mango Green Tea with a few splashes of pineapple orange juice and
Thompson Irish tea, along with a handful of mixed nuts.
A friend was telling me that
one of her favorite songs is Blessed Assurance.
I love that song, too.
When someone asked the dear blind
hymnwriter Fanny Crosby what her favorite of all her songs was, Fanny, at about
age 90 (she lived to age 94), began singing Blessed Assurance. Fanny wrote somewhere in the vicinity of 9,000
hymns, can you imagine?!
I would enjoy looking through the extensive
archives, scrapbooks, early hymnals, and biographies about Fanny Crosby that
are kept at the Bridgeport History Center in the Bridgeport Public Library in
Connecticut.
Speaking of archives and museums, I once
asked Hester if she liked going to museums. She was about 11, I
suppose. We were on our way to a children’s museum in Fremont.
She shrugged, hem-hawed around a bit, and
then said, “Oh, not really.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Well, they’re just so... ...” she
paused. “Museum-ish!” she finished.
Hee hee ... I was in complete agreement
with her. Give us a trail to hike,
anytime!
The other evening at church, Willie, age 4,
pointed at my smallish church clutch and asked, “What’s in there?”, hoping for
a tic-tac or a little calendar cutout or some such thing.
I told him, “Piano benches, monkey wrenches,
and the kitchen sink!”
He giggled and trotted off to hide behind big
sister Violet (who’s not all that much bigger than he is).
I popped around Violet and whispered in his
ear, “And fishes and sharks and whales!”
That made
Violet giggle, too.
The design and method of construction I’ve chosen for Keira’s quilt is a bit different than any I’ve done before (which, I suppose, can be said for many of the quilts I make). The way I go at new things that seem a bit daunting at first look is to just launch right in with Step #1, and, if possible, make that step something I have done before.
And then sometimes it’s best to go at these
things like my cousin Robin did, when he was a little boy, maybe about ten
years old. He was afraid of heights, and
he decided it was high time he conquered his fear.
My Aunt Evelyn walked into his second-story
bedroom just in time to find him climbing out the window onto a ladder he had
carefully positioned against the side of their big farmhouse. She halted, heart nearly stopping, not wanting
to frighten him into falling – and she heard him muttering to himself as he
went out, placing one foot after another on the upper ladder rungs, “Just don’t
look down, Robby, just don’t look down.”
Gotta git bizzy. So much to do, so little time! 🙂 The consolation is that busy people are almost
invariably happier than idle souls. (I
once said that to my sister, who always had way too much to do [much of it
self-imposed], and she scowled at me and said, “I should be ecstatic, then.” haha)
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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