Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: May 2018

Last week, Amy sent me this picture of Elsie – and she’s wearing a little dress I made her big sister Emma, about 12 years ago.

Last Monday, two of our grandsons had birthdays: Lyle turned 11, and Levi turned 8. We got each of them a big tin of Double 15 Dominoes.

Tuesday afternoon, Victoria and I were having a discussion. A good many of our conversations wind up on the subject of ‘babies’, these days. For instance, this time we talked about all the things babies put in their mouths.

Fortunately, babies usually choke on something and spit it out before they actually swallow it. But scary things can happen.

I once let a baby play with a necklace of mine that had great big plastic beads, thinking (stupidly, in retrospect) it was quite safe, as the cord was thick and strong ----- but the baby suddenly pulled on it, broke the cording, and kerplunk, a big ol’ bead fell right into the baby’s mouth! She was lying on the floor at the time.

I flipped that baby over onto her tummy and swooped her up so fast, I scrambled her brains. But the bead popped out.

Scared the livin’ daylights out of me.

Victoria told about a trip to the grocery store. “Carolyn ate half of my list while I was loading groceries onto the conveyor belt. I extracted the mush from her mouth.” hee hee

When Teddy was about that age and just learning to crawl, he would at least inform me on all the things he put in his mouth. Insert item. Work it around, announce, “Bleah, Mama, bleah.” 😆

The other babies weren’t so helpful.

That evening, Hester wrote to tell us, “Keira finished her first full bottle this morning.”

The baby was over 3 ½ pounds.

We had thought we might go visit them that evening, but shortly after 6:00 p.m. – almost the time when we would need to go – Larry was still setting beams at a big hog barn and wouldn’t be home until a quarter ’til ten.

I got a little more done on the rag-shag rug that day, bringing its measurement up to 37” x 39”.

I also posted pictures I took last Thursday when I went with Victoria and Baby Carolyn to Omaha: Lauritzen Gardens

Just look at these gorgeous azaleas that filled the woods everywhere we looked.

It was a warm day Wednesday – 87° – and would be even warmer in the next few days. I worked on the rag-shag rug until time for our evening church service.

Hannah had a checkup that afternoon. It was a bit traumatic, as the doctor uses a scope to look at the sinuses, and suction to clear them. She has to be on antibiotics and have another round of prednisone again, as he suspected a bacterial infection. She can’t afford that.

The doctor said it was one of the most severe cases of sinus disease they’d ever seen.

She can breathe better again, but those procedures make her quite miserable. Fortunately, they caught the problem before it got too bad. She’s been so used to not being able to breathe well, she hadn’t even noticed she was getting stuffy again.

That night we had our graduation ceremony for the high school seniors.

We love to hear the children sing. Ten students – five girls and five boys – graduated this year, including two of our great-nephews, one of our great-nieces, and one of our nieces, along with Jeremy’s youngest sister and Andrew’s youngest brother.

You can see the entire service here: http://www.bbccolumbus.com/Fortyfour.htm. At the end are many pictures. Don’t stop in the middle!

A quilting friend dyed some fabric the other day – and forgot to don gloves before she plunged her hands into the vat.

She’ll be sporting blue hands for the next few days. I consoled her with my own story:

I did something similar whilst making salsa once......... Here, I’ll just put in an excerpt from my journal of July 16, 2012. It sort of jumps into the middle of dialogue, but I think you’ll figure it out:

Friday (07-13-12), I made salsa. I threw peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, etc., into the pot, and added cayenne and jalapeños and crushed red pepper to the mix.

Soon there was a humongous pot of way-too-hot salsa bubbling away on the stove. When I realized how hot it was, I started looking up remedies on the Internet. I discovered, of all things, that you can add peaches to it to tame it down. So add them I did, for, after all, our peach tree is bowed right down to the earth with its overabundance of peaches.

I let it simmer (the salsa, not the peach tree)… tasted it (the salsa, not the peach tree)… Mmmm, mmm. Just right. Just right for me, that is. Still much too hot for the rest of the family. Hmmmm… there were five jumbo zucchinis on my counter…

I typed ‘zucchini salsa’ into Google – and came up with all sorts of recipes for zucchini salsa, how ’bout that. In went a gargantuan zucchini. Another hour of simmering.

It had an excellent flavor, though still rather hot. It was time for supper, so I popped some Italian meatballs into the oven, and we had them on thick pieces of homemade wheat bread, toasted and buttered, with the salsa poured over the top. I thought that should make it bearable for the wimps who can’t cope with a wee bit o’ spice without turning into fire-breathing dragons, but poor Larry was sweating before he had taken three bites.

He spread a big spoonful of cottage cheese over the whole works – and then finished his meal, happy as a chukar in a garden of chili peppers.

While the Hot Stuff sizzled (the salsa, not the husband), I peeled and sliced peaches, putting a quart at a time into Ziploc freezer bags. The tree is still full of peaches. I think it puts out new ones to take the place of the ones I pick, the moment I step back inside the house.

Several more quarts of peaches… and then I quit for the evening. If those peaches want me to slice more of them, they’ll just have to quit ripening all at once like that, the recalcitrant things!

Caleb came home, ate a few bites of the hot salsa on meatballs on toast, proclaimed it scrumptious, and rushed back out the door to play volleyball with his friends at Pawnee Park. Brought to mind times when Teddy was a wee tot in his highchair, and I’d put something in front of him that he didn’t think he liked, and he’d say, ever so politely, “This is really good.” ((pause)) “And I’m full now.” – sometimes without taking so much as a solitary bite.

I ate mine, and it was good all right, but hot enough that I had to blow my nose multiple times as I worked my way through it.

Saturday morning (07-14-12), I thought I would attempt to tame that salsa a bit more. It was still too, too hot for just about anybody but me. Think ‘flamin’, ragin’, HOT. In bold red letters, HOT. I added a quart of water, another enormous zucchini, two cups of sugar, and a couple teaspoons of salt. It was soon better, temperature-wise, even before the zucchini was completely cooked. I let it simmer for a couple of hours. Next time I make this stuff, I shall remove some of the seeds from the jalapeños!

I sew like I cook. I keep going ... and going ... and going ... adding on, adding on, adding on, more stitches, more stitches, more stitches, until I step back, give it a critical eye, and think, Good grief, I should have stopped yesterday.

Soooo. . . if you ask me for sewing or cooking advice, whatever I say to do ----------- do less. Especially when I’m using cayenne or crushed red pepper.

An online friend asked, “What is your recipe?”

‘Recipe’, did she say?? Recipe???!!! Eh?

“Well, you at least START with a recipe, then ‘tweak’ it, don’t you?” asked my friend.

Uh, no? I just cut up all the peppers (sweet bell, jalapeños and chili peppers of all colors, and cherry peppers, too) and tomatoes (including a few green ones) I have, throw them into a gigantic pot with water, a can of tomato sauce, a bit of white vinegar, some salt, sugar, and lemon juice, and turn on the burner. Then I begin adding stuff that would ‘theoretically’ tame it all down.

A friend who has a greenhouse gave all this produce to us. The peppers ripened a few days before I had a chance to use them. Several had turned yellow, and some had turned red. Hotter by the day! Good thing they were ‘only’ jalapeños and chilies.

I’ve used the even hotter serranos and habaneros in salsa before, and discovered that even one of each ----- is too much. Furthermore, I wasn’t smart enough to wear gloves, and my hands burnt terribly, and it was sheer misery to do such things as wash my hair every day for a week. Once, hours after I had gotten the peppers on my hands, and after washing thoroughly several times, I forgot and touched my eyes.

WooooooeeeEEEEeeeee, did that ever burn.

Usually when I make salsa, if I don’t know how hot a pepper is, I taste a teensy weensy bit of it in order to better decide how much to put into the mix. Well, I once had a habanera pepper – and didn’t know it. I cut a tiny sliver… put it in my mouth… didn’t taste it right away (either the taste buds it touched were not those that detect heat, or they were momentarily stunned by Heat Trauma)… so I cut a smallish chunk, popped it into my mouth – and crunched.

Ooooooweeeee oOOOOOOOooooooweeeeEEEEEEEEEEeeee.

I proceeded to run madly ‘to and fro upon the earth’, grabbing bread, milk, water, juice, ice cubes, light bulbs, anything! – and cramming it into my mouth.

At the time, I was bewailing my woes to my sister-in-law, and she asked, “Why didn’t you just throw it all into your blender for a moment or two?”

Uh, ? Why, indeed.

“Because you didn’t tell me to!!!” I exclaimed.

++++++++++++++++++++++

If I ever make salsa again, somebody please remind me to wear gloves.

Thursday, the rug-making continued. More pictures here. The rug kept growing...

A friend who lives in Oklahoma, upon seeing these pictures, wrote, “I will stop it when it gets to the Oklahoma border!”

haha Things I’m making do seem to have a penchant for growing/escalating/complexicating (Caleb’s word, back when he was a young teenager), don’t they?

My motto: Why just walk, when you can make a marathon out of it?!

Larry got home about 6:30 p.m. that day, scurried to take a bath and make himself presentable, and then we headed for Omaha to see Andrew, Hester, and Keira.

Caleb stopped by on his motorcycle just before we left. He’d gotten overheated that day at work, had quit sweating, and didn’t feel so great. By the time he rode out to our house, he was feeling better. Suddenly hot days in the spring sometimes catch the menfolk off-guard, and they don’t realize they’re not drinking enough water to stay hydrated.

Hester entertained us as we drove by sending a picture of Baby Keira in a tiny sleeper, with the caption, “I’m wearing clothes!” She was asleep, but there was a little smile on her face.

So I wrote back, “Looks like she’s downright happy about it, too!”

Keira was wide awake when we got there. Andrew was changing her. She weighed 3 lbs., 14 oz. that day. I gave them the bag of clothes I’d bought last week at Big Wheels 2 Butterflies.

The Big Wheels 2 Butterflies resale stores (five of them) are in Omaha and Papillion (suburb of Omaha) and are operated by two women who are twins, along with their mother. It’s mostly a used clothing store, though there are some new things.

The nurse opened the isolette for me, so I could get a picture without a reflection in the glass. Keira is staying awake a little longer at a time. She cried momentarily when we were there, such a tiny little cry – but a whole lot stronger-sounding than the first time I heard her. That time, it was a wee little mewling.

I can’t quit looking at her sweet little face! We love her so much.

Upon leaving the hospital, we went to eat at Applebee’s, as our neighbors had given us a gift certificate for caring for their goats and chickens while they were gone.

When we got home, I worked on the rag-shag rug for a while. By the time I quit and headed for the feathers, I figured I had about five yards in that rug, and would probably have about seven in it when it was done. But I can’t be sure; I didn’t measure all the yardage I cut. Some of it was in scraps and odd shapes anyway; hard to measure them accurately. This rug is heavy! I’m going to paint some rubbery stuff on the back, so it’ll be quite stable to walk on.

Here’s what I got:

Fiber-Lok Rug Backing.

But there’s this, too:

InPlais Non-Slip Backing

I got Fiber-Lok because it was the only kind I found at the time I bought it. If I would’ve had both to choose from, I think I’d have picked InPlais – seems like it’s not so toxic, maybe. And strong smells bother me a lot. I’ll probably apply the backing outside on the deck table.

I had my windows open that night as I sewed, enjoying the cooling night breeze.

I heard a ‘meow’. I looked at the window – and there stood Teensy on the steeply sloped roof edge just below that dormer window.

He’d gone up Larry’s ladder! Larry has been putting new shingles up there where a recent windstorm blew a bunch off.

Victoria used to remove her screen and let that cat in. I can’t get the screens out, though, and, besides, I don’t like to encourage the cat’s penchant for climbing on the roof!

So I ran down the stairs, opened the front door, and called him.

It was pitch black out, so I couldn’t really see what happened next; but that cat was on the porch, meowing, and coming in the door so quickly, he couldn’t possibly have come down that ladder one rung after another, the way he went up. He must’ve jumped a good deal of the way. He was still walking on all four legs, so I guessed he hadn’t broken anything. Crazy cat.

Friday afternoon, I finished the rag-shag rug (all but the Fiber-Lok). It feels nice underfoot. The cats must agree; they were immediately underfoot, too, sprawled on the rug, from the moment I laid it down. It measures 45” x 66”.

I trot around barefooted most of the time. A friend remarked that she didn’t think walking on double knits – wadded double knits – would be comfortable at all. But I like how it feels. It’s thick and soft, and will be more restful for feet than the bare oak floor, whilst standing at my frame quilting away.

Note the striped tail on the right.

Baby Carolyn has recently taken a real shine to books. And she loves to be outside. Victoria sent a picture of the baby sitting on a blanket on the front lawn, holding a book about kittens. (Never mind the fact that the book was upside down.)

It was hot that day – it got up to 99°. That’s a good 20° hotter than average for that date.

A friend wrote of how some of her in-laws sometimes show up without warning, and are never polite enough to go away when they can clearly see they are intruding at an inconvenient time. Plus, they are not hesitant at criticizing her for how she keeps house.

“They are bloody perfectionists!” she said. “Nothing I do ever pleases them anyway. Maybe I’ll just sew.”

My recommendation:

Keep vacuum, broom, dusting cloth, and dishcloth waiting, and the moment those critical visitors show up, say (all twinkly), “Oooooo, so glad you are here! Here you go.”

Plop a dusting cloth/broom/whatever into their hands. Add, “And thank you!”

A woman we used to know once arrived at my house unexpectedly. There were toys all over the living room (it was the only room where the children could play, other than their bedrooms – we had no family room), and a pile of clothes I was folding was on the couch. When I saw her face, I scooped up a big Tonka truck that was directly in her path and handed it to her (people automatically take what you hand them, whether they want to or not, ever notice that?), then piled a stack of folded diapers atop the truck.

“Those go in the baby’s room,” I told her, pointing.

She trotted right off like a good girl to put them away, looking a mite shell-shocked.

The kids were all standing there giggling behind their hands.

In moments, with her help, the living room was spic and span, and we sat down to have a cup of coffee. Her face was hilarious, and she had no idea what to talk about. ((snerk, chortle))

Make disapproving face at me, will ya!!! ((evil sniggle))

It was her snippy, snotty, judgmental face, when I knew her house was often in just such an upheaval as mine, that brought out the worst in me. 🤨 Or the best. Maybe that’s the best. heh

Lydia wrote that evening to tell me they are going on a little camping trip.

I wrote back, “Sounds like fun. Can I come?”

Lydia responded, “Jacob says there’s not room. 🤣 In all seriousness.”

“Haha!” I replied. “Tell him Grandma didn’t mean it, because he probably snores and would keep her awake.”

He laughed.

They went to Nebraska National Forest, near Halsey.

I began piecing together batting for my Americana Eagle quilt.

Bobby and Hannah and the children, Aaron, Joanna, Nathanael, and Levi, came visiting that night, bringing a blueberry lemon cake to share with us. Since it had been Levi’s birthday the previous Monday, Hannah brought along candles for the cake so they could light them and Levi could blow them out again. 😊

After we ate, some of us went upstairs so I could show off my new rug. While we talked, I began loading the backing for the eagle quilt onto my frame. I was no sooner done than I realized, Oops, it’s wrong side up.

Thankfully, I use Red Snappers rather than pins, so it’s a quick job to remove things from the frame and start over again. Takes a few minutes to get it rolled on nice and straight ... but not as long as taking a quilt apart because the backing is wrong side out! 😲

Later that night, I got the layer of Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 (80% cotton, 20% polyester) batting loaded and stitched down.

Saturday wasn’t quite as hot as the day before – 94°. Still, that’s hot for May.

I rummaged up enough medium-high-loft Hobbs Poly-Down batting to add another layer before loading the eagle quilt top. This will make it puffier on top, and the quilting will really show up. I haven’t ever done it before (except for years ago, when I tied quilts instead of quilting with a machine – and then I did two layers of extreme high-loft batting, because I thought, the puffier, the better. I hope I can keep the batting nice and smooth.

Professional quilters do it, so why shouldn’t I? (Why, indeed, heh.)

After I sewed the first layer of batting down at the top, I looked at the back with my mirror and flashlight. It looks perfect. No giant needle holes like there were on my last customer’s quilt. And I’m using the same size needle, and the same kind of thread. It must be the fabric; that’s the only difference.

I pulled up Outlook to write the lady a note – and discovered an email from her. She’d bound her quilt that morning, put it into the washer and dryer... and she says this:

“Out of the dryer...we have achieved crinkly, quilty goodness! The back still looks pretty rough, but again, to the normal eye, I don’t think it is terrible. All of the stitching holes righted themselves, as I hoped they would. The black binding just frames it all in and really looks nice! Sending PayPal today.”

I’m not sure why it ‘looks pretty rough’ if the ‘stitching holes righted themselves’, and I don’t know how the holes could really go away, when for all the world it looked like fabric fibers had actually broken. When things like this happen, I wonder what on earth I think I’m doing, quilting other people’s pretty quilts. 😟

I wrote to thank the lady, and also to tell her that a handful of people had told me that they had purchased fabric from that company – not the exact piece, but similar, with multiple dye layers – and the very same thing had happened.

One woman said I should’ve used a size 12 needle – my needles were way too big. Well, but they don’t even make size 12 needles for my machine! She was a member of a longarm group... but size 12 is what I use in my domestic machine, not my longarm. I used the smallest I could, without getting skipped stitches and shredded thread.

Another said I should’ve used ballpoint needles – but Superior Thread Company and plenty of other quilting advice forums say exactly the opposite: ballpoints are for knits and loosely woven fabrics. Sharps are what is needed for tight weaves and high-density fabrics. That’s true whether one is using a DSM or a quilting machine. A technician and dealer for the HandiQuilter company even wrote to say the same.

I always wonder how people can be so adamant about something, when they’re dead wrong.

I’ll betcha washing that fabric first would’ve helped; that seems to be the common consensus. The fabric wasn’t cheap – $15 a yard!

I have a new and different problem now: squirrels have moved into the ceiling of my quilting studio!!!

Somebody bring me a smoke bomb.

One small squirrel’s nest on a hot day can make the room over which it has been built smell awful, did you know that??! I had fans and air conditioner on, and earlier I had both windows open – but it was 95° out, and that’s too, too hot to have the windows open in this upstairs room. Larry was supposedly going to come home and do something about it, but he was cutting hay Teddy’s house a quarter of a mile away.

Aarrgghh.

After getting the batting all pieced together and stitched onto the backing, I loaded the top and began threading the machine. When I saw that I was running low on the colors I will need, I stopped and ordered thread. Good grief, it used up all but $10 of what I made on the last customer’s quilt, just ordering three large cones of thread! At least it will last a good while, since each cone has 6,000 yards on it.

For comparison, a regular spool of Coats & Clark thread from Wal-Mart only has 300 yards on it. That spool costs $2.27. Hmmm... So I would need 20 of those spools to equal 6,000 yards — and that would be $45.40. So I guess the cost of quilting thread isn’t as bad as I was thinking, is it?

I hope my new thread arrives before I run out of the colors I need. It’ll probably be here by the end of the week; the place where I order it always ships quickly, unless there’s a backorder.

By bedtime, the top border of the Americana Eagle quilt was done. S’poze I can get it done for Father's Day? I want to make a matching pillow, too, mainly because I have exactly the right number of Prairie Points to frame a central square on a pillowtop. I like using up every last scrap from a project, if I can.

After our Sunday morning church service, we put flowers on family graves, then ate dinner with Kurt and Victoria and Baby Carolyn (though Carrie slept through the majority of it).

It was 97°, still about 20° hotter than usual for this time of year. It’s making up for the blizzard and extra-cold spring we were having just a month ago, I guess!

Hester wrote last night to tell us that Keira was 4 pounds, 3 ounces! She got moved to a crib on Friday. She’s six weeks old today.

“She always looks curious about everything when she’s awake and calm. 😍” wrote Hester. “It would be fun to know what babies are thinking!”

Lydia then sent pictures from their campground, including one with the boys in their beds in the camper.

“Looks like more fun than a barrel of monkeys!” I replied.

Larry is cutting hay at Teddy’s house again this afternoon. When he came home for lunch, he burnt a pile of branches and old growth that I’d cleared from the flowerbeds. Originally, the wind was blowing the smoke away from the house, but it shifted and began blowing from the north/ northeast, and soon I was smelling smoke. If the house wasn’t in danger, my NOSE was.

Reckon if I moved to Antarctica, I wouldn’t have to smell anything objectionable??

Fortunately, the wind shifted again, and the smoke went wafting off toward the east. The bonfire, having once died down, went back to bonfiring (should be a word). Then it rained, and the smoke, she ain’t no mo’, no mo’. 😃

Larry brought home Revenge Rodent Smoke Bombs – without reading that they are NOT to be used in buildings of any sort. They are only for putting down burrows. They’ll kill pets and they might kill people, and could very well start a house on fire. There are instructions on the box telling how to render CPR.

Nice.

So off he goes to town to get a Car Bomb.

"Do you know what a Car Bomb is?" he asked me.

"Yes, they use them in Syria," I replied, which made him laugh.

Yeah, I know what we use Car Bombs for, here in the good ol' U.S. of A. They're used in cars in which people have smoked, to rid them of the smell (the cars, not the people).

I went on reading more squirrel articles – and then sent Larry a text: “You might get bug bombs and ammonia and rags to put the ammonia on, too. Many say this works, and gets rid of bugs the squirrels bring in, into the bargain. Hot Shot Fogger is the one you want.”

He came back home and ate supper – chicken breast filets, seasoned baby bakers, carrots (all baked slowly in the pretty little Dutch oven Caleb and Maria gave me), strawberry jello, and apple pie. Then he headed upstairs to set off the bug bombs in the cubbyholes and behind the in-dormer-wall drawers in my quilting studio. We don’t have an attic, as we have high, slanted ceilings up there (as you can see from the pictures of my quilting studio).

I think we found where the squirrels are getting in – an open area under the eaves at the back of the house. Hopefully, we’ll now be able to seal it off and stop this problem. The last couple of hot days, I walked into my lovely quilting studio and smelled... Essence of Squirrel Nest. Ugh, ugh, ugh!!!! Can’t stand that! Plus, they chew wires, etc., and cause all sorts of hazards. Gotta get them out.

The squirrels should exit the place quickly... and tomorrow, Larry will put a long piece of trim in that area under the back eaves.

Sad thing is, those Bug Bomb chemicals evidently got to a starling’s nest that was in the eaves, at completely the opposite corner of the house from my quilting studio. When I slid open the patio door, I didn’t hear tiny baby birds chirping, as I have been for a week or so ----- and the mother starling kept chirping and scolding and chirping some more. In fact, here it is 11:25 p.m., and I can hear her out in the Austrian pines in the back yard, calling and calling.

That makes me want to cry with her! I don’t really want bird nests in my house eaves... but I don’t want to kill the birds! This ol’ world can be a cruel, cruel place, can’t it? But we didn’t mean to make it so! Siggghhhhhhhh... {If stupid squirrels would just stay in the maples and oaks and cottonwoods where they belong...}

Somebody wanted to know what happened to the June bug that snuck into the house last week.

He perished. However, he went down nobly and with a grand fight, and had me diving and dodging and leaping wildly out of his erratic flightpath for a while. His family, in ringside seats on the front window, will be able to tell their grandchildren, “Grandpa died a death of great dignity, not giving in until his last flutter.”

((shudder))

I have a gazillion email ‘rules’ with various sounds and audio clips for anyone who writes to me more than twice -------- and these sounds regularly interrupt our conversations, and you really would think that my computer was listening to us talk and making fitting comments at the perfect moment.

Just now as I wrote about Granddad June Bug, I received an email from an elderly friend named ‘Bee’. My computer appropriately made a loud buzzing noise, not sounding too much different than a June bug sounds. hee hee

Well, I’m sad about the starling’s nest, but at least it wasn’t an oriole’s, or a mockingbird’s, or a wren’s. 😥

Here’s a picture of what I had for supper at Applebee’s Thursday night. It’s called ‘Neighborhood Nachos’. I knew why they’d name it thus when they brought me this herculean tray piled high with nachos (I got it with chicken, rather than ground beef): it’s enough to feed an entire neighborhood, for cryin’ out loud! That one platter of food has 1,850 calories in it, would you believe. I made my way through a third of it and was plumb full. They brought me a lidded carton for the remainder, and we brought it home, saved it until Friday evening, and shared the rest of it for supper. Other than the chips being a little less crunchy, it was still quite good. We had cottage cheese and chunky cherry applesauce with it, and then we were full.

How on earth would any one person get around the outside of a helping like that?! Ah, well. We certainly got our money’s worth out of it!

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