Journal: State Fair... and Sunbonnet Sue

On the radio this morning, the weatherman announced that our rainy weather for the last few days is being caused by a cold front moving through, and it has stalled out over us, putting daytime temperatures in the high 70s.  The front will move out in a couple of days, he said, and then the temperatures will fall back into the lower 70s.

Eh?  Does anybody else see an incongruity here?

Last Monday night’s supper was roast beef, spicy baby baked potatoes, and corn on the cob, all in the same casserole dish.  Why didn’t I used to do that?  Corn on the cob baked with roast beef and potatoes is scrumptious!

Speaking of corn, do you remember this story?  I just saw it in an old journal:

One time my sister-in-law, Janice, brought us a dozen ears of Daniels’ sweet corn, purchased from one of their roadside trucks.

“Would you husk the corn?” I asked the littles at suppertime.  (We called the four youngest ‘the littles’, separated as they were from the older five by a span of four years.)

“Oka–” Hester started to answer, but was interrupted by her smallest sister.

“YES!!!” cried Victoria gladly, heading off on a dead run.

By the time her elder siblings reached the kitchen, she had an entire ear completely husked, clean as a whistle.  “There!” she announced, looking at that ear in pleased satisfaction.  And then, before anyone could say a word, CHOMP!!  She took a big bite out of it.

She chewed.  Her eyes got big.  She leaned over the trash can and spit it out.  “It’s not good!” she exclaimed in total dismay.  “Do we have to throw it away?!”

Hester, Lydia, and Caleb went into peals of laughter.   

“No,” I explained, taking the ear from Victoria’s outstretched hand.  “We just have to cook it first.”

Victoria sat back, a wee bit subdued, eyes still large.  “Oh,” said she. 

And then she reached for another ear to husk.

Late that night, I was doing a few things in the kitchen when I heard the scampering of feet overhead.  Aarrgghh!  Squirrels were running amok in the living room ceiling again!  Time for another bug bomb.  And time to hunt down their newest place of entry.  Again.  To think that I was sad, when we first moved out here fifteen years ago, because there were no cute squirrels to be seen within a quarter-mile radius.  They’re cute, all right; but they sure can be destructive!

It only got up to 64° Tuesday.  Unusual, for these parts.  The bank of clouds off to the west looked exactly like mountains.

I’m really wishing I was in the mountains about now...  I dearly love the mountains, and when I’m not there, well, I want to be!  Any time of the year, I love being in the mountains.  When I was a little girl, I tried to convince my father that we needed to move – with all our church friends, of course – to the mountains.  He tried to explain how that wouldn’t work... and I somehow got the notion that the problem was the transporting of the church building itself.  So I earnestly explained that the military had large enough helicopters and strong enough cables that surely with two of them working it, they could carry that church building all the way out to the mountains!

Give my parents credit, they remained remarkedly sober throughout this exchange.

I got a little more than a row done on the 1936 Sunbonnet Sue quilt that day.  I might have gotten more accomplished, had not three bobbins – count them: one, two, three – gotten stretched when I filled them with thread (Bottom Line #60).  And I didn’t even fill them ¾ full!  Aarrgghh.

Once again, the machine spit the bobbin case – this time with bobbin and all – right out onto the floor.  Again the needle hit something it shouldn’t have hit, and this time Larry had to readjust the gap between the hook and the, uh, ... thingamarolphgidget.  Thingamarolphgidgets are touchy things that want their gaps exactly right.

I had to change the needle... find yet another bobbin... readjust the tension, top and bottom... and finally, finally, I was back in business again.  But I only got 8 hours of quilting done, instead of the 10 I could have done otherwise.  Bah, humbug.

Remember the rumples and rimples in these blocks when they were not yet quilted?  The quilting is taming them pretty well.  There are a few wrinkles in a handful of larger feathers – but they don’t show in normal lighting as much as they do in my pictures, where I turn off overhead lights, leave a light on in a far corner, and shoot from a low angle in order to emphasize the quilting.  When I’m done quilting it and take it from the frame, I’ll give any trouble spots another spritz of sizing, press them again, and call it good.  I’m happy it’s going as well as it is.

Wouldn’t it have been neat to have made this quilt when Mama was still alive, and have given it to her as a surprise?  But!! – I rarely had time for quilting back then, didn’t have the machine, and didn’t have the skills.  And I’m better at quilting now (and have a better machine) than when my sister gave me the blocks four years ago, so I’m glad I waited.  (Actually, I didn’t ‘wait’; I just had to plow my way through my To-Do List to get to it.)

As I walked around the end of my quilting frame, I suddenly noticed that the setting sun was make a pretty tableau of our front and side yards, so I grabbed my camera and took a couple of shots. The white flowers are hostas; the lavender ones are tall phlox.  From the side window, I look out on the Black Locust tree, apple tree, mulberry tree, and some ponderosas on the other side of the fence.  The pods on the Black Locust are turning yellow.  Through a gap in the trees, I can see our son Teddy’s place, a quarter of a mile away. 

The front yard is actually quite a lot like a jungle, but I held the camera just right, and so it looks pretty much A-OK.  I’m going to make a big sign and put it out front:

NATURE

RECLAMATION

PROJECT

A couple of quilting friends have written to say that they, too, have had troubles with out-of-round or stretched bobbins – especially if they use Bottom Line polyester thread, which is what I’m using.  It’s strong and a bit stretchy, and if wound with too tight of tension, it forces the aluminum flanges outward, so that it then doesn’t rest completely inside the bobbin case.  Why don’t they make these things out of magnesium alloy, instead of aluminum?!

When I had the problem with a bobbin stretching, back when I had the HQ16, I had no idea what had happened, and I found no information at all online, and didn’t realize for hours and hours what the problem was.  Everyone acted like I was nuts:  “Whoever heard of a metal bobbin stretching?!  How absurd.”

Well, it does.  They do.  I have my bobbin winder tension very low – and still, I must not fill my bobbins more than ¾ full.  I ruined those three bobbins, one right after another.  (No, they don’t revert back to their original size once the thread is off of them.  They are stretched forever.) 

A woman at a quilt shop once told me to ‘put a heavy book on the bobbins’.  A book?!  🙄  A sledge hammer would work better.  And if it didn’t put the bobbin back in shape, you could at least tap yourself on the head with it and put yourself out of your miseries.  ha!

Several people have asked me what I use to mark my quilts.  My favorites are the purple vanishing ink pen, the Dritz pink or purple disappearing ink pens, the blue or white Mark-B-Gone fine-line or regular water-soluble ink pens, and the Fons & Porter fine-line chalk pencil.  I also sometimes use a wider Bohin chalk pencil with multiple colors of chalk and a Clover Chaco chalk pencil with tube inserts of powdered chalk and a little metal toothed wheel.  Always be careful of colored chalk.  Some colors are a little hard to remove from some fabrics.  I’ve never had a problem with the vanishing or water-soluble pens.  I’ve used Crayola washable markers, too; they’re fine, if you like to wash your quilts after you’re done with them.  I don’t, most of the time.

I’ve used FriXion pens (marks are removable with heat), but only in areas that will never see the light of day.  These were not actually made for fabric, and they can leave a pale shadow line behind.  The marks can show up later, too.  One woman sent an exquisite quilt to a big quilt show – and while that quilt was en route, going through some very cold temperatures, all the FriXion pen marks came back to life.  The judges didn’t even enter her quilt in the show. Wouldn’t that be a hard smack.

Above is one of the Sues who didn’t have the embroidery on her bonnet finished. I added the flowers and did an outline stitch on one side of them.  I don’t embroider enough for it to be a terribly excellent job.  Give me a day or two of embroidery, though, and I improve immensely!  heh  When I embroider, by the time I get back around to where I’ve started, I’ve gotten enough better at it that I feel like I really need to rip out the first few stitches and redo them.  But then I would keep improving... and it would turn into a never-ending task, eh?

These Sunbonnet Sue blocks were embroidered by women who had all kinds of skills levels, from beginner to very good.  Some are back-stitched... some are chain-stitched... some are outline-stitched... some are done with a simple running stitch.

A late friend was adamant in the belief that ‘scribbling’ (quilting) all over a quilt with thread, once you were done piecing it and sandwiching it, totally and absolutely ruined your quilt.  Why would you want to do that?!  You must tie the quilt at the block corners with yarn!  She had me all indoctrinated with that belief when I was young... until I started buying quilting books, back before the age of electronics.  I found some fabulous pictures of beautiful quilting – most of it by hand, back then – and soon I was wanting to do it myself.  Years (and years) later, I got a quilting machine.  That was three years before my friend passed away.  In those three years, she changed her mind about quilting, and decided she actually liked machine quilting. 

Most of the time.  😉

Wednesday, Hester sent pictures of Keira.  Such an endearing little smile on her sweet face.  She gets prettier every day.  Her new thing is cooing and making little bubbly sounds, then grinning in delight over her feat.  She’s 4 ½ months, and 10 ½ pounds now.

That evening after church, we went to Wal-Mart for ink for my printer.  That stuff is so expensive!  But I needed to print a couple of photos.  It’s okay to print pantographs, addresses, and so forth, when one’s printer is low on a couple of colors, and everything is coming out green; but I sure didn’t want to print a picture of one of the cute little grandchildren, and have them looking green around the gills!

Late that night, I passed the halfway point in the quilting of the 1936 Sunbonnet Sue quilt.  A quilting friend inquired about the early-morning hour in which I posted pictures of the Sue blocks.  As is often the case, the house was so peaceful and quiet... my upstairs quilting studio windows were open... I could hear a Great Horned owl hooting in a nearby ponderosa or maple tree... So I couldn’t stop!  I have always been the most productive at night, after everyone else goes to sleep.

Another fifteen minutes of quilting, and the quilt would have been exactly two-thirds done.  But my feet and back informed me it was time to quit for the night, and I acquiesced.

One of the blocks I worked on that day was made by my Great-Great-Aunt Pearl.   She could really embroider, couldn’t she?  à  She was one of the better embroiderers of the ladies who made these blocks.  She was my Great-Grandmother Joicie Bacon’s half-sister, so she was my great-great-aunt.

And now, here’s Thursday’s Tip O’ Ze Day:

This is a tip that probably everyone but me already knows, and should’ve been obvious:

When you’re using a clear, acrylic ruler to mark your quilt, or as a guide for your quilting machine’s hopping foot, and you’re trying to place a line in the ruler atop a previous sewing line or seam – but the line in the ruler is making a shadow, and you can’t tell which is the line and which is the shadow, ... ... ... turn the silly ruler over, so that its line is against the fabric instead of above it the space of however thick the ruler is!  That will eliminate the shadow.

See, I told you, everyone but me must surely know that.

My motto: The Obvious Escapes Me.

Spotting some of my rulers in the photos I posted, several people have asked about one in particular.  This is the little green ruler (except where this one says ‘Lakeside Quilt Company’, mine says ‘Huckleberry Quilts’.  All those curves are very helpful when outlining appliqués.  I spin it around a lot, in order to use the side I most need. 

The notches fit around the hopping foot, and I use it not so much as a guide, as a ‘stop’ or a ‘hold’... to sort of push back against the machine, and keep it from going too fast or where I don’t want it to go.  Sorry, that’s not a very clear description... (scratching head, trying to figure out a better way to say it...) 

I remarked on a quilting group – about 8 years ago, maybe? – that I was going to buy the HandiQuilter Versa Tool, and a lady – the same one who gave me the Singer Treadle – said she had this little green ruler, and would send it to me.  I thanked her many times for this tool!

Addressing questions about how I outline appliqués:

I have a variety of rulers, and I try to pick one that has the same curve as the appliqué I’m going around.  That little green ruler is very helpful for outlining intricate shapes.  I must say, the feat is a whole lot easier with this smooth-moving Avanté than it was on my HQ16.  Still, every once in a while I think, Okay, I can just move this machine freely alongside this appliqué... and a few seconds later... AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!! Where’s my ruler??? 

I use straight rulers for curves sometimes, if none of the curved rulers is right.  If the curve is wrong, it can make a bigger mess than a straight ruler, because you’ll depend on the curve, and it will take you askew.  But you learn to turn that straight ruler just right:  twist it slowly for a gentle curve... spin it quickly for a tight curve.  Hold your rulers gently, and don’t press the machine’s hopping foot against them too hard.  Go fast on the straightaways... sloooowly on the small, tight curves.  Glance ahead often to where you plan to stitch, instead of peering into the hopping foot where the needle is.  The more you do it, the better you’ll get.  

One more important thing:  make sure your tracks are clean and smooth.  Check for lint and thread stuck in your wheels; that can really throw off a smooth curve.

At a quarter ’til seven that Friday evening, I rolled the Sunbonnet Sue quilt forward... and the three bonnets in the Sues on the last row showed up!  After that last row, there’s the bottom border... and then the binding.  I was making good progress... but it was time to get ready to go to Baby Carolyn’s birthday party.  Carrie would be one year old Sunday, September 2!  How is this possible???

Kurt’s family was there, too; they’ve been good friends since – well, since forever.  We’ve known them since they were born, after all (or at least I have; Larry’s family moved here when Kurt’s parents were small children), and their parents are our good friends.  And their grandparents.  And their great-grandparents were, too, being best friends with my own parents. 

Little Carolyn loves her Grandpa Larry.  He was holding her... and she was whacking her helium balloon with all her might and main, laughing and having all sorts of fun.  When we got ready to leave and were telling her goodbye, she stared at us for a moment, then looked all around the room until she spotted her balloon, pointed at it quickly, looked back at Larry, and leeeeaned toward him.  The game wasn’t over!!  😊

Home again, I finished the row on the 1936 Sunbonnet Sue quilt that I’d been working on. 

In the comments under a set of Sunbonnet Sue photos I posted on one of the Facebook quilting groups, some woman wrote, “I am totally sick of this design!”  😮

I looked at her personal Facebook page, and... sho’ ’nuff, she is of the opposite political persuasion as me.

Okay, okay, that probably doesn’t have anything to do with it.  ((snerk))

Maybe she’s just sick of me posting so many pictures?  😏  But most of us join quilting groups to share and share alike!  I really enjoy seeing other people’s work.  People are so creative... make so many beautiful things... and give me all sorts of inspiration.  Most of my ideas start as seeds from other people’s creativity. 

I ignored the woman with aplomb and chutzpah.  🤪🤓😸

The wrist/thumb is slowly, slowly improving.  I’m forever hurting it...  but it doesn’t hurt quite as badly as it used to.

Saturday, I took a little break from quilting to glue a piece of pretty wood trim back in place on one of my treadle desks.  Or at least that was the plan.

But I couldn’t get the side drawers open; they were both locked – and the loose piece of trim was in one of those drawers.  I looked in the front drawer for a skeleton key; didn’t see one.  The front drawer is wide from side to side, shallow from front to back, to accommodate the lower part of the machine itself.

Larry came upstairs to help, handy-dandy Leatherman multi-tool in hand.  And he discovered the aforementioned front drawer.  “Hey, look!” he exclaimed, “another drawer!”

I thought he knew it was there!  Furthermore, the key to the side drawers was in that drawer, in a little plastic bag that held bolts and nuts and suchlike.  I’d totally missed it.

He glued the wood trim back on the front and clamped it.

I went back to quilting, and finished the last row of Sunbonnet Sues.  There’s only the bottom border to go!  I already have 63 hours of quilting in this quilt.  I didn’t keep track of the piecing; it didn’t occur to me to do so until I was done.

I climbed on a chair to get some pictures of the quilt, and along came Teensy.  Here he is, asking me what on earth I’m doing standing on a chair.  😸

A couple of seconds after I took his picture, he hopped up on the chair, too, and proceeded to wrap himself around my ankles.

I think I should get the quilt appraised when I’m finished.  We might be surprised at what it’s worth!  It will be considered an ‘heirloom quilt’, in spite of the fact that I only recently put it together, using new fabric.

Speaking of heirloom quilts...

Remember this story?

Mama got a quilt top, only the top, as a wedding gift.  That sort of thing was often done, back then (1936).  She was finally able to send it to some quilters in Kansas so they could finish and bind it in the early 1960s.  I have that quilt now.

We once used it in a popup pickup camper.  I made the curtains and the cushions around the table.

Larry sold the camper, and when later I couldn’t find that quilt, I feared he had left it in there.

This is from my journal in 2014:

In about 2001, a couple of years before she died, my mother gave me a quilt.  The top – a ‘flimsy’ only – had been given her when she was married in 1936.  It lay in a cedar box for many years before she had a hand-quilting bee in Kansas finish it for her.  The quilt was made in the Raised 3D Dahlia pattern, with petals gathered onto center circles between star rays.  I was surprised when she gave it to me and I saw that pattern – it was the very first ‘real’ quilting pattern I had ever used, years before, and I am particularly fond of that design.  The edge was scalloped.  I will say that I wasn’t particularly fond of the colors someone had used in that quilt top (all those orange cornerstones!), but… it was special, because of its age and the fact that it was a wedding gift to my parents (though I was somewhat amazed that anyone would give newlyweds an unfinished quilt as a gift).

Well, I used the quilt now and then, handling it with care. 

About five years ago, Larry fixed up a nice pop-up pickup camper.  I made thick new cushions for the table seating (which folded down into a bed), and curtains.  I didn’t notice until I was done that the curtain fabric was a directional print.  Those sailboats sailed forevermore straight off the edge of the earth. 

There were enough colors in the curtains that it occurred to me that my mother’s quilt would look very pretty on the upper bunk in that camper, since it had many of the same colors.

We used the camper that summer up in the mountains, and the quilt was warm and cozy on frosty mornings way up near treeline in the Rockies.

Home again, we unloaded the camper (at least, I thought we did), and Larry sold it shortly thereafter.

I have not seen the quilt since.  Larry insists it was not in there, during his final walk-through.  Did I store it ‘somewhere safe’ and forget where??  There is still a slight possibility that it will show up again in some remote, forgotten cubbyhole in this big house. 

But several years later, I was sorting through things in totes in the basement ----- and found one full of sheets, blankets, and Mama’s quilt!!!  I was so glad and relieved.

This is from a journal two years later, in 2016:

I finished sorting things in one bin, and wondered what was in the one just beneath it.  I lifted the lid – and, lo and behold, there was Mama’s quilt.

The lost quilt has been found!!!

My mother gave me this quilt about 15 years ago.  It’s one that was made for her as a wedding gift in March of 1936.  It was given as only a ‘flimsy’ (they did that, years ago) ... and my mother had it hand-quilted by some ladies in a bee in Kansas in the early 60s.

I used it in a cute little camper Larry and I fixed up a few years ago, and after he sold the camper, I lost track of the quilt, and was so afraid it had been forgotten in the camper.

But here it is – and it was neatly folded with other bedding items, so I obviously did it myself, unless someone hired me a maid once upon a time without telling me. 

The quilt is made with the Three-Dimensional Dahlia pattern.  I was so surprised to see that, when my mother gave it to me, because it was the very pattern I used for the first pieced quilt I ever made, though the petals on mine are more gathered than they are on this one.  I liked the pattern so well, I used it at least four more times.

Trouble is, now I have to apologize to Larry for saying he sold it with the camper! 

Fortunately, I wasn’t real adamant about it, just in case.

After all, there was that one other time in my life that I forgot something... 

Upon learning about The Return of The Quilt, he wanted to know if I was going to be extra nice to him, since I’d thought he lost it.  So I gave him the last two banana nut muffins.  Reckon that was good enough? 

I had quite the trying morning trying to get ready for church yesterday.  It seemed I was constantly hurting my thumb and wrist whilst washing my hair, curling my hair, getting dressed, etc., ... but that certainly wasn’t the only thing that went wrong.

I chose a wide-shawl-collared gold/silver metallic suit jacket and a pleated gold lamé skirt, then picked out a blouse I thought would work well with it, as it had lace overlay on the collar and cuffs, a big gold button at the neck, and filigree gold buttons at the wrist.

With difficulty, I donned these glad rags.  My thumb protests at buttons and zippers and elastic, and there were buttons and zippers and elastic aplenty.

The mirror looked at me solemnly, and just as solemnly shook its head.  “No.”

This, because the blouse was too big under the quite-fitted jacket.  It rumpled and wrinkled at the shoulders – and, further, I discovered upon getting the jacket on that it had three-quarter-length sleeves......... and the blouse had long sleeves.  Once in a blue moon one can get by with that disparity in sleeve lengths. 

This moon was not that color.

Keep in mind that I’ve moved all my church clothes upstairs to Caleb’s old closet, so any time I change my mind about a piece of clothing, I must dash all the way back up the stairs to that closet.

I headed upstairs at a fast clip.  Ze time, she wuz a-wastin’!

I chose another blouse, this one with short sleeves.

I ran back downstairs and reassembled myself.

This blouse, being slightly smaller than the previous blouse, looked slightly better.

But only slightly.

The collar didn’t go with the jacket collar.  There were still rumples at the shoulder – it just didn’t fit nicely under the jacket at all.

I made another dash up the stairs, chose a pale yellow blouse with a beaded and cutwork collar, and pulled out a cream-colored jacket with metallic gold weaving throughout.

I scrambled into it, and the mirror nodded approval.

The clock ticked on.  I crammed my feet into my gold sandals, grabbed my little gold purse and my Bible, and rushed out to the kitchen to fill the coffee thermos and collect my tablet, which I like to keep in the vehicle. 

I cleaned my glasses with haste, picked up a stack of crochet-pattern booklets and watercolor pencils that I found in the basement and wanted to return to Hannah and Victoria, respectively — and discovered that the one and only button on the front of my jacket had popped off.

It was nowhere to be found.  (And I still haven’t found it.)

Back up the stairs I galloped, clippity-clop in those gold heels.  In the little office, I snatched up the largest button box, rifled through it, and chose a big gold button that was approximately the right size.  Into the quilting studio on the other side of the hall I trotted, where I grabbed a needle, some heavy-duty thread, and a thimble.

After a few false starts, I got the needle threaded – a major feat in and of itself, since these types of occurrences always make my hands shake.  I sewed the button on, clipped the thread, and hippity-hopped back down the stairs.

(Hippity-hopping is considerably more jubilant than clippity-clopping.)

I grabbed my paraphernalia, instructed Larry to “HURRY UP!!!” in my polite, helpful way – and out the door we slid, with one of us looking a wee bit shell-shocked (no, it wasn’t him; he’s used to me).

The question is, what in the world did I used to wear with that shawl-collared jacket?  It’s been so long since I wore it, I’ve plumb forgotten.  I seem to vaguely remember a gold lamé top with a soft turtleneck, and gathers at the neckline.  If that’s right, then where is that thing???

Last night after church, a friend who knew where we were planning to go today sent me an email:  “Have a good time at the fair; I’m sure the place will be flooded with visitors because of the holiday.  But you’ll be in, uh, good hands, I trust, with Larry along to buy you funnel cakes and eat the best bite of your cinnamon roll!”

Haha, now that made me laugh, remembering The Cinnamon Roll Story. 

What, you don’t know The Cinnamon Roll Story??!

Well... okay.  You twisted my arm.  I’ll tell it.

We were in high school, Larry in eleventh grade and me in twelfth grade.  (He’s a month younger than me, and just missed the deadline to start kindergarten in 1965, while I passed under the wire with days to spare.)  Anyway, there was a cook named Lucille Hollmann, and she made the most delightful cinnamon rolls I ever did taste in my life except for Norma’s, I do believe.  (Nobody ever has made better cinnamon rolls than Norma.)  They were always warm and soft.

Well, one day it was Cinnamon-Roll Day.  We went through the line, filled our trays, walked to our table, and ate lunch hurriedly (didn’t want the cinnamon rolls to get cold!), and picked up our cinnamon rolls.  Larry ate his fasssst.  I unwound mine, eating it carefully, savoring every bite.  I liked to save the best – the gooey middle – for last.

So there we sat around the table with our friends... chatting... eating... and I had that last bite in my hand, polishing up my chops, anticipating...

...

...

...

And Larry leaned over and ate that thing right out of my hand.

I married him just to give me more opportunities to get even.

Flash forward to last night:  I looked up food vendors at the fair, and showed Larry that yes indeedy, you can get healthy food there:  all kinds of lettuce salads, even chicken salad and tuna salad and suchlike stuffed into a cucumber... or smoked turkey legs... or fresh Pineapple Strawberry Whips (like smoothies, sort of)... but I chose the wrong time to show him, because he’d just eaten lasagna, applesauce, grape juice, and black cherry ice cream.  He was past full, and generally assumes, when he’s in such a condition, that he will remain thus for the rest of his earthly life.

I told him, “Now, for once, you are not going to order the same thing I do every time I order something, just because you think it sounds good.  We are going to share entrées, the better to try the novelties!”

I wanted a smoked turkey leg, and a salad of some sort.  Larry didn’t want it in a cucumber, but I did, because I’ve never had such a thing.  He could get a stuffed potato, and we could share these things, and I could eat the majority of the cucumber.  I wanted a Pineapple Strawberry Whip, too.  And funnel cake topped with fruit for dessert.

I gained ten pounds just typing all that.

Eating the lion’s share of the cucumber wouldn’t help me in my quest of ‘Getting Even for the Cinnamon Roll Middle’, though.  After all, Larry wouldn’t be drooling over it, happily looking forward to the next bite, now would he?

No, when I remember The Cinnamon Roll, I get even by eating the last bite of one of his favorite things – right in front of his eyes.

It’s a wonder I don’t weigh half a ton by now.

Late Monday morning, we got ready to go to the State Fair at Grand Island.  We needed to pick up the things I’d entered at the end of the day.  I ate only a small bowl of banana cream oatmeal for breakfast, so as to have room for all that food I was looking forward to.

“Shall I take my camera?” I asked a friend who knows I hardly ever go anywhere without my camera.

That question used to make my family go into hysterical laughter.

“Mama wants to know if she should bring her right arm with her,” Teddy once added helpfully, way back when.

Paddlefish -- and that funny proboscis is called a 'rostrum'.

Our first stop was the Nebraska Building, where Nebraska Game and Parks has things set up such as a 6,000-gallon aquarium filled with fish found in Nebraska waters, indoor archery and pellet-gun ranges, kids’ Nerf gun range, and a huge diorama of the Niobrara River Valley.  Outside, there is a meandering stream with large flat stones by which one can walk across it, a covered picnic area, natural playground, sky fort, mock campsite, and landscaped grounds where fair visitors can sit and relax.

Nebraska Game & Parks exhibit

Last year, Larry tried out the pellet guns.  This year, he headed to the archery room.  Someone found him the appropriate size of compound bow, he picked up the first arrow, and took aim. 

One after another, he hit those decoys on the far side of the room smack-dab in the center of the ‘kill zone’.  There were white-tailed deer, buffalo, a turkey, a skunk, a ram, an antelope, and the infamous Jackalope (cross between a jack rabbit and an antelope).

Don’t you agree, he looks inordinately pleased with himself here?

We stopped at about 3:30 p.m. to share a funnel cake (we learned last year that a whole funnel cake is at least twice as much as each of us wants).  Yes, I realize I’d planned to have that for dessert, but I was hungry now, and I didn’t want to have supper quite yet.  

“This is the rest of my breakfast,” I informed Larry.

Would you believe, they were all out of fruit toppings?!  Waa waa waa

Oh, well.  It had less calories this way.  I got full before I ever reached the halfway point, and Larry got the rest.

And another chance for the continued ‘Getting Even’ pursuit bites the dust.

While we ate, I pulled up Instagram on my tablet, and discovered my great-niece Jamie had posted a picture of a new baby – but there were no vital statistics!  No name, no mention of parents, and it didn’t even say if it was a boy or a girl.  I scrolled down through the comments, and saw that a friend had remarked, “She sure has a lot of hair!” – so then I at least knew it was a girl, whoever she was!  We assumed it was Michael and Andrea Walker’s new baby, but we couldn’t be sure.  They weren’t the only friends and family of ours expecting a baby, after all!

Michael is my late nephew David’s oldest boy; he’s 25, about a year older than Caleb. 

At about 6:45, I finally got a note from Victoria telling me, “Andrea had her baby – Jill Kristine, 8 lbs., 4 oz., 21 ¼”, born around 12:30 p.m.”

So I have a new little great-great-niece.

And I discovered just a minute or two ago, when I pulled up my birthday book to add the baby’s birthdate and other information, that it would have been David’s 50^th birthday.  I knew that, but had momentarily forgotten.

My most-comfortable-sandals-in-the-world that I was wearing had gotten totally soaked in one of the campground showers out in the Sandhills last month.  I let them dry, and thought they would be okay ---- but I’d only walked in them for a little while today before the suede insoles shredded.  Walk on shredded suede insoles for a little while, and you’ll soon think you’re walking on shale shards.

And then, after another four hours of walking, knee and hips were hurting, so we seated ourselves and enjoyed a huge, smoked turkey leg.  Yes, one turkey leg.  We shared, and it was plenty.  Mmmm, mmmm.  Larry now wants to smoke some turkey legs in our Traeger.  Or chicken, since it’s cheaper.

Now, you’ll recall I was wanting a Pineapple Strawberry Whip?  But... the Hawaiian Chill vendor was way over there (pointing at the opposite end of the midway), and while we chowed down on the turkey leg, there was an older couple sitting at a picnic bench not too far from us eating waffle cones.

Guess who was drooling over waffle cones?  Furthermore, we were right outside of the Milking Barn, and in the front corner of that big building was the UNL Dairy Store, with a window open to the front walk.

We got waffle cones.  I got strawberry cheesecake, and Larry got butter pecan.

After that, I was full, and didn’t want anything else – I try to make it a rule not to eat if I am full.  I try not to eat until I’m hungry, and I try not to eat until I’m stuffed. 

Midnight just rolled around, though, and now I’m hungry enough to regret not getting the salad-stuffed cucumber I’d wanted.  Ah, well.  Either I make my own... or wait until next year rolls around.

After we went back to the big Expo building to get my quilts, I sat on a bench and waited for them to open the doors while Larry went all the way back to the Jeep for the box and bags to carry all my stuff.  He also brought my neon fuchsia tennis shoes and the socks I’d left in the Jeep.  Plus, he pulled the car into a nearer parking lot, as people were starting to clear out.

I changed shoes, and that helped.  At least I could limp along like I was 50, instead of like I was 80.

We decided to go first to the Textile Arts building, several blocks away, to get my things there, as the line at the Expo building was long and moving slowly.  We had a lot to carry, and that rag-shag rug is heavy; but it would be even worse to get the three heavy quilts first, and then have to carry them all the way back again.  By now, we were wanting to steal one of the golf carts we kept seeing zooming around all over the place, carrying fair workers hither and yon!  Sometimes the workers would leave the carts sit, idling, while they went about a few errands.  Surely they wouldn’t mind if we old fogeys went squealing off in one of them?

(The carts don’t go fast enough to squeal out.  That would be us, doing the squealing.  Especially when the Bicycling State Patrol took after us.)

It’s too bad they don’t have enough room in that big building for the quilts to hang side by side, instead of overlapping each other.  Sometimes the effect of an exquisite quilt is lost, when one can’t see the entire thing.  At least the lighting is such that the quilting usually shows up well.  And at least my entire eagle shows!

I’ll get the pictures I took at the fair edited and posted on my blog next week.  Or the week after that.  Gotta finish Sunbonnet Sue first!

Here’s a funny about that border (there are 9 borders, actually).  I posted pictures on several Facebook quilting groups of the central section, with the eagle appliqué, when I had only the very first border – that maroon strip – sewn on.  I’d designed it all in EQ8, and had the other borders partially put together.  The entire quilt had been created for the express purpose of using up all those little pinwheels I’d made, sort of ‘by accident’. 

A lady on one of those groups immediately ordered me in the most adamant of tones that I must not, must not add anything else, for that would make it ‘too heavy’, and spoil the whole quilt!

As you can see, I paid her ‘no nevermind’ (which is a double negative and makes no sense, but sometimes ya jus’ gots ta say it anyways).

People can be soooooo opinionated.

,,,>^..^<,,,         Sarah Lynn, who is NEVER opinionated.          ,,,>^..^<,,,

                                And never exaggerates, neither.

                                       Nevah-evah.

Here’s a miniature village along the model train tracks: