Journal: ♫ ♪ Now Thank We All Our God ♫ ♪

Here's Teensy, begging for some of my 'loaded potato soup'.  Yesirree, I saved him the last spoonful, much as I love that stuff!

Last Tuesday, Hester sent pictures of Keira in one of the little dresses we gave her right after she was born.  It finally fits! 

I wrote back to Hester, “Her little face is quite expressive, isn’t it?  😍 “

“That’s her ‘I heard there was going to be food’ face 😄,” returned Hester. 

Baby Keira has a good appetite, and is getting close to 14 pounds now.  We were debating whether or not she’d stay a little fixin’, and Hester said, “If babies are like puppies and you can go by foot size, she might be little 😅.  Her feet are itty bitty.”

“Well...  nuttin’ wrong with being itty-bitty!  😃” I remarked.

By nighttime, I had two partial blocks put together for the New York Beauty Variation quilt.  I wanted to wait ’til the Venice lace arrived to finish putting the blocks together, in case I decided to sew the lace into the seam.  I did some calculations to see how many of each patch I needed to cut from each piece of fabric, so I could do all the cutting at once.  I have 28 one-yard pieces of cream-on-cream, 25 one-yard pieces of white-on-white, and four other one-yard pieces that don’t quite fit with the rest, which I might use in the borders.

Here are the partial blocks.  There’s a little more contrast between the cream and the white than it appears here, and there will be more when I quilt it, as I will use a dark cream thread in the cream areas, and a bright white in the white areas.  I will use two layers of batting, Hobbs 80/20 against the batting, and Quilters’ Dream Wool on top, so the quilting will show up well.

We had Schwan’s Canadian bacon pizza for supper Wednesday night.

Victoria sent pictures of Carolyn in the pajamas I made for her.  All three pairs of pajamas fit the little girl for whom I made them!  Carolyn was carrying a dolly that looked about half as big as she is.  That dolly used to be Victoria’s, and it doesn't seem so very long ago, either.  😊

Larry’s been working on his shop every chance he gets, trying to get at least one side of the roof done before bad weather sets in, in earnest.  He worked on it every evening last week after he got home from work, and Thursday morning before our Thanksgiving dinner at church.

There were over 400 people there.  We had a service at 11:00 a.m., with our orchestra and band playing Thanksgiving songs, the congregation singing, and my nephew Robert, our pastor, reading some verses.  Dinner was at noon.

On the menu was turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green beans, sweet potatoes, homemade rolls with butter and jelly, pickles and olives, milk (white or chocolate), coffee or tea, chef salad, orange jello fluff, frozen cranberry salad, pecan, cherry, or peach pie, or pumpkin cheesecake, with whipped cream, and ice cream.

If I take vewy, vewy small portions of everything, I can sometimes manage to have a bite or two of most things.  But I’m almost always too full to have any dessert, and then by evening I’m dying for a piece of pie!  Such a revoltin’ development.  When that happens, I usually wind up baking a pie. 

This time, though, I foiled my flagging appetite:  I asked for a piece of pecan pie even though I knew I was too full to eat it, and I took it home with me!  By late afternoon, as always, I was hungry – and pleased as punch with myself for absconding with a slice of pie.

I was discussing real potatoes versus potato flakes with a couple of friends.  I agreed with them, that yes, real mashed potatoes are best.  I like mine with a few lumps left in them, and the peelings, too, if they are red potatoes.  We like Hungry Jack potato flakes quite well, though. 

One time when Larry and I were married no more than a year, I fixed a big supper for his parents, brother, grandmother, a couple of aunts, and an uncle.

Not one to do things halfway, and not knowing exactly what all their likes and dislikes were, I fixed a banquet that would have made the Windsor Palace kitchen proud.  I mean to say, there were a good dozen courses, plus several desserts.  We had to employ the coffee table and the hope chest into service as buffet tables, to help contain the spread.

On the menu was mashed potatoes – made from Hungry Jack potato flakes.  As usual, I left a few small lumps in them ----- and added enough milk and butter to make them a creamy yellow color.  Mmmm, mmm; they were good enough to eat all by themselves, no gravy needed.  Mmmmmm!

The meal had just begun, when Lyle, Larry’s father, nodded in a satisfied mien and said, “Daughter-in-law,” (he generally called me ‘daughter-in-law’ rather than my real name, and I considered it a warm term of endearment, coming from him), “I really have to commend you!  I’m glad to see that you make real potatoes, instead of that stuff made from cement and chalk.”

I grinned at him.  Then I got up, went to the pantry, pulled out the Hungry Jack potato-flake box, ker-plunked it down in front of him, and announced, “Yesirree!  ‘Real potatoes’!”  And I pointed at the little square on the front of the box that proclaimed, “Made with Real Potatoes!!!”

He looked at it, nonplused.  And then the whole family burst out laughing.  And Uncle Earl proclaimed that he liked a girl who would tell the truth, even if it meant admitting to potato flakes.  haha 

That evening, Larry went on working on his shop roof, and I went on working on the New York Beauty variation quilt.  By bedtime, the cutting for the center part (not including the borders) was done, and I’d put together three tapered-block arches before quitting for the night.

Every time I stepped outside to take pictures of Larry with his scissor lifts and those big pieces of metal roofing, Tiger came patiently plodding along after me to see what I was doing.

Friday, Victoria invited us for supper, along with Jeremy and Lydia and family and Caleb and Maria.  She told me what she was fixing:  roast beef, chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, a cold pasta salad, a tray of fresh vegetables, and fresh pineapple.

“Did you think we all needed two Thanksgiving dinners???!” I asked.

“No,” she laughed, “I didn’t get turkey!”

I contributed a big pot of honey-buttered corn.  I made several bowls full of various kinds of jello, planning to cut it into squares after it set up and mix it together into a big bowl, but two of the bowls didn’t set up.

I’d poured frozen fruit into each of those bowls.  Which of that fruit had caused the problem?  I knew kiwi would keep jello from setting... but there was no kiwi in the mix.

I looked it up online and found a list of fresh fruits that will keep jello’s protein molecules from gelling:  pineapple, kiwi, mango, ginger root, papaya, figs, and guava. 

Now, I’ve used pineapple in jello lots of times, with no trouble.  But it was canned, never frozen pineapple.  Frozen evidently works just like fresh pineapple in putting enzymes into the liquid.  And, as if that wasn’t enough, there was mango in that fruit mixture, too.

I mixed up more jello with just enough boiling water to dissolve it in, leaving it very concentrated, and poured that into the bowl.  It didn’t help one little iota.

Soooo... I put the stuff into the freezer.  We now have numerous bowls of tasty fruit slushies.  In fact, I’m nibbling away at some as I type.  But mercy me, we’re each going to have to eat a large bowl for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for a month before that stuff is gone.  At least it’s sugar-free!  😉

Victoria sent us home with some of her scrumptious, fluffy pumpkin crunch cake, and whipped topping to put on it.  Mmmmm... she’s a good cook.  😋

I worked a little longer on the quilt that night, getting the tapered-square arches done for all 36 blocks.  Saturday I added the quarter rounds to them all, and started putting the rays together.  There are 363 rays in all, so I won’t be done for a couple more days, probably.

The heat moldable batting for the nesting bowls is on back-order until the first part of December, so the fabric nesting bowl project is having a sabbatical.  But today I discovered that it’s back in stock at Red Rock Threads, so I ordered some.  The first order wouldn’t have been enough anyway.  It’s already been shipped, and should be here in two days.

Nathanael and Levi have had colds, and weren’t getting better.  Hannah took them to the doctor on Friday.  She couldn’t see the regular doctor, so saw a new one instead.  He gave them a cursory and not-too-thorough look-over, and prescribed a couple of medications.  When Hannah went to pick it up, there was only one prescription rather than two, and not the same one the doctor had said he’d order.

The medicine didn’t help, and Saturday Nathanael was worse, and Levi was no better.  Hannah took them to Urgent Care.

Sure enough, Nathanael has pneumonia, just as we’d feared, and he was dehydrated, too.  They gave him medicine to stop the nausea, and a strong antibiotic.

Levi, meanwhile, has croup.

You know, it’s understandable when doctors have difficulty diagnosing rare diseases; but to miss pneumonia or croup is really without excuse!  No wonder we live in a sue-happy world.

That night, Larry got all the roofing except the slanted pieces for the ends fastened onto his shop roof.

I edited about half of the pictures taken at our niece’s wedding.  One of these days, I'll get caught up!  Uh, that is, if I don't keep taking pictures faster than I can edit them.

It started snowing late that night, and kept it up until early morning.  We didn’t get as much as the weatherman predicted.  I suppose it was an inch and a half, or thereabouts, with some drifting on account of the high winds.

Last night our men’s choir sang Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus.  It was a beautiful arrangement of that lovely old hymn, written in 1922.  If you’d like to hear it, you can find it here, in the P.M. service, at the 16:00 mark:  

http://www.bbccolumbus.com/one.htm.  

Our grandson Aaron is in the middle row, second from the left; Teddy is in the middle row, first one on the right.  Bobby is in the front row, fourth from the left, and Kurt is fifth from the left, beside Bobby.

The little birds are glad for all the feeders I keep filled.  I saw a new one today – a Harris’ sparrow, one of our largest sparrows.  He joins the English sparrows, house finches (left), American goldfinches, red-breasted nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, blue jays, Northern cardinals, Eurasian collared doves, mourning doves (though most of them have moved farther south), and dark-eyed juncos.

Our furnace fan has bitten the dust.  We have the wood-burning stove going... but it’s in the basement, connected to the heat ducts, and we used the furnace fan to distribute the warm area.  So we have a couple of large radiant heaters going.  The house is comfortable, though it’s only 24° outside.

Larry brought home a pet gate to put in the doorway to the basement, so we can leave the door open and thus allow more heat to come upstairs from the wood-burning stove.  This, because we don’t exactly trust Tiger by himself in the basement.  But Teensy is a well-mannered gentleman, so it doesn’t matter that he can easily clear the gate and trot downstairs.  Tiger could never get his pudgy bulk over that gate if his life depended on it.

Teensy, as expected, soon sailed over the gate and headed to the nether regions.  Later, I went down there to add more wood to the stove, and found him snoozing happily on the thick carpet just outside my gift-wrapping room.  Teensy looks like he’s back to his normal weight again, and acts hale and hearty again, thankfully.  We like that kitty!

The Venice lace for the New York Beauty Variation quilt just arrived!  I got about $400 worth of lace for just $70 at cheeptrims.com.  I wondered if the quality would be up to snuff.  It is!  It’s beautiful lace.  

The man from the heating company never returned the call Larry made earlier today.  But... we are comfortable, with our wood-burning stove and radiant heaters.

There’s 12-grain bread baking in the oven... pulled pork cooking on the stove... and I’m warming the last of the honey-buttered corn in the microwave.  We’ll have fruit slushies for dessert.  A fine supper!

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

Photos: Tiger's New Bed

My sister gave us a new pet bed.  Tiger loves it.

'Ahhhhh... sooo comfortable.'

(After he slipped off the back of it once or twice, he learned to position himself more exactly in the center.)

Photos: New Purse, Souvenir from Colorado

Journal: New Projects, & a Nyjer Seed Sock

Does it ever bug you when you see a beautiful (or ugly, for that matter) quilt, say, at a big quilt show, and the information about it says that it took the quilter ‘four years’?  What’s four years?  24 hours a day, for four years?  12 hours a day, for four years?  15 minutes a week, for four years?  5 minutes a month, for four years?  Maybe she cut it out one day four years ago, and put it together one day last month?  I wanna know how many hours it took!

Yeah, they should’ve named me after Ramona Beasley’s cat:  Sarah Picky-Picky Lynn.

Some time back, I’d just about gotten it set into my mind what sort of a quilt I was going to make for Jeremy and Lydia – a whole lot of cream-on-cream and white-on-white – when Jeremy remarked, as he swept up chocolate cake crumbs heaped around little Ian’s high chair after a birthday party, “If you ever make us a quilt, you’ll want to do it in shades of chocolate and mud, so that all the Hersheys and boot tracks will blend in.”  hee hee

Tuesday afternoon, I opened a new bag of coffee called Berry Patch, from San Marco Coffee.  Mmmm, it’s good!

That day, I cut the petals, leaves, centers, and backs for two sets of the Sunflower Nesting Bowls.  Here’s the picture on the pattern:

I got all the petals and leaves of one set sewn together.  I might’ve gotten a little more done, but Larry and I went back to Norfolk to pick up his truck, which was supposedly fixed... but isn’t, he discovered Saturday.  If you knew how many times this happens... never mind what needs to be fixed, or on which truck, or at which truck repair shop.

Wednesday, the temperature got up to 50°.  Thursday, the high was about 56°.

Did you ever notice that it’s hard to complete a project when you have the wrong supplies for that particular project?  Instead of the heat moldable batting I needed for those nesting bowls, I had heat moldable stabilizer.  That stuff is like a sheet of plastic.  Not realizing it was the wrong product, I tried it out on one of the smaller nesting bowls.  I really didn’t see how it could possibly work.  My machine sewed through it all right... but how do you turn something right side out, when one layer is like a piece of plywood?

But... I steamed it until it was pliable, got it turned... and squished down the edges with my fingers.  The points of the sunflower were extremely difficult to push out, even with my Stuff-It tool; and once that stuff had been heated, there was no top-stitching around the edges like I was supposed to do.

I thought, Okay, something isn’t right here.  I’ve seen pictures of these cute little bowls... and I know people are making them without this much trouble.  So I looked for some tutorials, found some skimpy, half-baked descriptions on youtube ------ enough to see that the shaping stuff the lady was using was not stiffer’n a board, as mine was.  The bag of batting she showed, Bosal’s Moldable Batting, looked like mine.....  Did mine get too hot somewhere before it got to me, and activate whatever it is in the stuff that makes it get stiff?

I rummaged up the bag mine came in, stared at it long and hard ------ and finally spotted the difference:  where hers says ‘batting’, mine says ‘fusible’.  The fusible is for making boxes and hard-sided bags and whatnot.  🙄

I ordered this stuff four years ago, and the website where I got it is no more, so I can’t go back and see what it said.  I’m not saying the webpage had something listed wrong... and the packages are very similar... so it’s quite likely I clicked on the wrong product.  But since we don’t know, we could blame someone else.  Couldn’t we??

Problem #2:  Bosal’s Heat Moldable Batting is sold out, almost everywhere.  I finally found some websites where I could get it, chose the cheapest, and ordered. 

Maybe I chose the wrong one.  The status on my order has not changed from ‘Pending’ since the moment I placed the order.  😒  Perhaps they use Turtleback Express Shipping?

I bought three packages of the batting on SewingPartsOnline.com.  The price was comparable to three or four other places I found it – but they had free shipping for orders over $49.  Most places where I looked were out of stock.  I wonder, did Bosal stop making it?  And if so, why?  Maybe it’s made out of asbestos?  Maybe it explodes into flames when it’s put into the microwave?  Maybe it gloms onto irons and blobbity-creeps out the door with them when one isn’t looking?  Maybe it insidiously skulks into closets and affixes itself to one’s clothing?

In the meanwhile, while I wait on an order I hope will come sometime soon, I’ll get the rest of the nesting bowls ready for the batting.

Despite the fact that this first little sunflower bowl isn’t ... right, it’s nevertheless kinda cute, and I think that these are going to turn out fine if I have the right batting for them.  I intended to make eleven sets of three, small, medium, and large.  33 sunflowers, with 12 petals each, and 3 leaves on the largest one.  Some will have rounded blades, as opposed to pointed, in order to make a different kind of flower.  There’ll be plumeria and anemone, in addition to sunflowers.  😊

Wednesday was granddaughter Elsie’s 2^nd birthday.  We took her a gift after our church service – a painted-tin tea set, with cups, saucers, a tray, and a teapot that winds up and plays ‘I’m a little teapot.’  Boy, oh boy, that was a hit!  I spotted it in a truck stop Tuesday, when I went to Norfolk with Larry.  I thought, Elsie would love that, and she did.  😃

By late Thursday night, all the pieces for the fabric nesting bowls were cut, and a few of the flowers were sewn together.

I did some cleanup before exiting the sewing room, putting away all the fabric I’d pulled from which to cut petals.  I used up a lot of fabric for these 33 fabric bowls.  Why then are my five 28-quart bins still every bit as full as before I started??  See, this is why I rarely buy new fabric:  The stuff multiplies, every time I pull some out!

I don’t usually prewash my fabrics, but I had a little stack of reds that I know has a tendency to run, so I washed those with a color-catching cloth.  That got me started, and I wound up washing all the clothes, too.

Friday afternoon, the Schwan man came.  My freezer is now chockful of all sorts of yummy stuff.  We’ll eat well for the next two or three weeks!

I trotted back upstairs to the fabric bowls.  You know, I just plain like piecing things together.  And Dresden blades and petals are always fun.  I bought some marbled yellows and oranges from Marshall Dry Goods for these bowls – and didn’t even touch them, as I decided to look through my scraps first... and found fabrics in my bins that I liked better.

So... I wondered, what shall I do with these bright yellows and oranges?  Maybe I should just put them with my stash, and use them gingerly during the next 50 years or so?  Bright yellow goes a long way in a quilt.  That is, it’s generally a good idea to use it somewhat sparingly.  Orange, even more so.

I took a picture and sent it to some quilting groups, asking for ideas.  Of course, there’s Tiger, who always has to come see if he might be allowed to walk on, lay on, and cuddle up on whatever I happen to lay down to take a picture of.  See the expression on his face?  He’s clearly saying, “Kindly spread this out better; it’s not big enough for me.” 

The weather that day was pretty as could be, for mid-November:  55°, bright and sunny.  The birds were twittering about the feeders, and I was glad to see that the American goldfinches had finally decided the Nyjer seed sock is not an alien trap from which they’ll never escape.  It’s so funny to see them working their way up the seed sock.  They reach the top – and then spin around and head back down the way they came, – but head first.  😃

They are in their winter plumage now, and their bright yellow feathers have been replaced by dull yellows and browns.  Still pretty little birds!

A friend wrote to say that she needed an interactive smoke alarm, one that could hear her telling it, “Stop screaming at me!  It’s just bacon.  And I am not burning it!”

That reminded me of the time Larry set off the alarms in an entire motel.  We were out in the mountains somewhere, and the older kids were little.  I told him bacon and motel rooms didn’t mix!  😆   But he was pretty sure all would be well.

All was well with the bacon.  But all was not well with the smoke detector.

Fortunately, it was a small one-story motel, and it was late enough in the morning that the few other patrons were already outside in the swimming pool.  Larry hastily pulled the skillet off the little cookstove, disconnected the smoke detector, and all the other detectors stopped blaring.  I stepped out to tell our fellow guests that everything was fine, everything was fine, everything was fine.

I reentered the room to find Larry happily continuing to cook bacon.  (Yes, we made sure to reconnect the detector before we departed.)

By bedtime, all the petals and rays were sewn into Dresden plates for the 33 fabric nesting bowls.  That’s 396 petals.  The centers aren’t sewn on yet; that will be done after the bowls are turned right side out. 

Saturday, I started on the next quilt.  This one will be king-sized, and is a New York Beauty variation.  I sent another question to a few quilting groups:  “Where is the best (i.e., ‘cheapest’) place to get Venice lace?  I need a lot of it, at least 22 yards, for a variation of a New York Beauty quilt.”

A woman on a Facebook quilting group answered shortly (not just timewise, but also attitude-wise), “Google.”

Obviously, what she meant was, “Look it up, dumbo!”

Funny thing was, Facebook helpfully stuck in a map with a pin dropped right on Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California.

I wanted to write back, “😲 How ’bout that!  I didn’t know Google sold Venice lace at their Headquarters.  Live and learn.”

I almost always look things up before I request assistance.  But I had not found the site I’d seen earlier, and couldn’t remember the name.

It wasn’t long before someone gave it to me:  www.cheeptrims.com.  (The website spells ‘Venice’ wrong, too:  ‘Venise’.)

The price of any other Venice lace the size I need – approximately 1 ½ - 1 ¾” wide, and in a shape that will go nicely around a gentle curve – is about $5.50 a yard.  That’s $121 for the bare minimum yardage!

But Cheeptrims.com has this design in 30-yard spools – for $26.40 a spool!  😲  I clicked “Place Order” so fast I left my keyboard a-smokin’ –only to be greeted with a flashing pop-up informing me that they have minimum orders of $65.  Aaauuuggghhh.

So... I ordered two identical spools (maybe I’ll make matching shams), and another of a narrower design, just to get the price to $65.  I can always find a use for Venice lace.  I plan to sew tiny pearls, maybe oblong ones, on all those little petals, and a larger pearl in the middle.

I printed the foundation papers for the quilt.  The blocks are large, filling more than a regular 8.5” x 11” typing sheet, so each block printed on four sheets of paper.  That brought on a fairly lengthy job of trimming and taping them together.

I don’t think I’ve made quilts with the same size block more than a small handful of times.  This quilt, for instance, has blocks that are 15.63”.  😆😏🙄😁  Didn’t mean to do that, really; I just threw everything together in EQ8... put on a few borders... made everything pleasing to the eye... and enlarged it until it was the size I wanted.  Since it’s paper-foundation-pieced, it doesn’t really matter that it’s an oddball size.  😄

For this reason, I don’t imagine an AccuQuilt GO! cutter would be very price-effective for me, much as I think I’d like one.  I’d think I needed every last die the company makes!

Supper that night was a small turkey cooked in the Traeger grill, baby bakers, baby carrots, corn on the cob, applesauce, and Midnight Cherry Fudge ice cream.

Meanwhile, people had been offering suggestions as to what to do with the orange and yellow fabric.  One quilting friend sent links to a variety of quilts, and therein I found two that I particularly like.

This one is Sunflower Power:  

And this is Sunflower Illusions:  

I even have a few odd greens, blues, and a whole lot of browns that I could pitch in with the yellows and oranges.

Last night after church we had a yummy supper of leftovers from Saturday night:  turkey, potatoes, and carrots.  I’d originally baked the potatoes, carrots, and corn on the cob in a heavy ceramic Mexican stew pot my sister gave me for Christmas last year.  Last night, I heated the rest of the carrots, potatoes, and turkey in the same pot on top of the stove.

The nifty thing about this pot is that it can go in the oven, in the microwave, or on any type of stove, including gas, electric, induction, and ceramic.  Its design makes it work like a slow cooker.  Food is extra yummy, cooked in the Mexican stew pot!

Last night I posted a picture of this tiny snow globe with a crystal Christmas tree inside it.  I wrote, “I got my Christmas tree put up! All doz oirlyboirds ain’t got nuttin’ on me.”

The globe is about 1” in diameter.  With the base, it’s about 2” tall.

A lady who’s been a friend since before I can remember wrote, “Hmm.  That looks way too easy! 😄”

“Well, hummphphph!!!” I retorted.  “I had to dust it quite thoroughly, I did, I did!!!

There are always a few who take my tomfoolery seriously.  One nice lady wrote, “My goodness, you are a busy bee.  It’s quite pretty.”

It was a joke.  Really, it was!

Now... back to the white and cream quilt.  I have the first block about a third done.

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

Photos: Goldfinches

The goldfinches have finally decided that the Nyjer seed sock is not a scary bird trap. They are in their winter plumage now, and their bright yellow feathers have been replaced by dull yellows and browns.