Tuesday as I finished a bit of housework before heading upstairs to my
quilting studio, I glanced out the window and spotted one of the farther-away
neighbors’ enormous Black Labs wandering around across the lane. He’s a
big, friendly thing, a little bit timid... but I think he’s the one who likes
to chase cats. I was glad our kitties were inside, all snuggled into
their Thermabeds. Anyway, his presence
explained the very large pawprints we’d seen a day or two earlier. I hadn’t paid them much mind, thinking them
to belong to one of those big dogs; but Larry had looked closer, wondering if
they might be from a bobcat. The wind
had blown a skiff of snow over the tracks, making it hard to tell.
I quilted a good part of the day, being careful to step around the usual
roadblock:
A little after midnight, I was a bit more than half done with
the second row of blocks on the New York Beauty quilt. More photos here.
It was 7°, with a
wind chill of -1°, and a few snowflakes were coming down. I retired to my recliner with a cup of
chocolate raspberry coffee, and began watching an Electric Quilt tutorial on
kaleidoscope quilts. I’m planning to make a One-Block Wonder, Cubed, with
a scenic panel in the middle, for Caleb and Maria after Jeremy and Lydia’s quilt
is done. I just got a couple of One-Block Wonder books by Maxine
Rosenthal and Joy Pelzmann, and have been reading through one. It’s going
to be fun choosing fabric for that quilt!
Wednesday, I got a
few hours of quilting done before our midweek church service. When we got home, we had a light supper and
then headed to bed, because the next morning we needed to get up early to go to
Lincoln for Larry’s appointment to have his dentures realigned.
My alarm went off at a quarter ’til 6, Thursday
morning, and I’d only had an hour and a half of sleep. If Larry hadn’t been snoring, he’d been jerking
the covers off me, kicking, bouncing, grumbling... Maybe he was dreaming that the dentist was
going to remove his teeth again?
Since he had his
teeth removed, he hasn’t been snoring nearly as much.
He made up for it,
that night.
After Larry’s teeth
were adjusted, we headed to Cabela’s in Omaha to make use of a gift
certificate from Keith and his wife Korrine.
Larry is doing pretty
well with his dentures, though his mouth is still changing, and gets sore
before the realignment appointments come. He can eat most things if they’re
not too hard. He can’t bite into
anything with the front teeth yet. If he cuts things into small bites, he
can usually eat them. It’s a process, but it’s certainly better than a
mouthful of broken teeth and abscesses. His
blood pressure has gone down, and he can even hear a little better. I
noticed the improved hearing that very first night, wondered if it was a
fluke... but evidently it’s really better.
At Cabela’s, we got
birthday gifts for son-in-law Andrew and mother-in-law Norma, and a 55th
anniversary gift for my sister and brother-in-law, John and Lura Kay. The anniversary gift was a beeswax candle:
For Andrew we got a
mug with a moose printed on it, and an insulated camouflage bag with cheese and
sausage in it. We found a purple hooded
sweater for Norma.
We like walking
around the ‘mountain’ with all the animals, and wandering through the aquarium
tunnel.
The girl at
checkout needs a basic course in etiquette.
She was friendly enough; in
fact, she was too friendly, almost forward.
This was further evidenced when I opened my wallet and looked for the
Cabela’s gift card Keith had given us, saying as I did so, “I have a gift card.”
Seeing that it wasn’t
on one side of the wallet, I turned it around to get it out of the other side –
and the girl said, “There it is, right there, I saw it –” and if she didn’t
stick her paw right straight into my wallet, preparing to drag my Cabela’s
credit card right out of the slot!
I pulled back,
quickly removed the gift card, handed it to her, and said, “This is a gift
card.” They do look different than the credit
cards, after all.
The girl, possibly in
embarrassment (if she was smart enough to be embarrassed, which is debatable),
said a bit snottily, “I can see that.”
Then, while the
computer worked and the receipt chugged its way out of the register, the girl
tried cramming all our stuff into one big bag, totally wadding the sweater for
Norma into a crumpled ball.
She finally gave up
getting it all in there, pulled out another bag, and put the box with John H.
and Lura Kay’s beeswax candle into it.
As she handed it to us, she apologized profusely, “I’m sooo sorry I couldn’t get it all in one
bag.”
((eye roll))
First, it shouldn’t have been crammed into one
bag; three would’ve been better, in
order to keep that sweater from getting so wrinkled and rumpled. Second, it’s always easier to walk with two
equally-balanced bags than with one heavy one.
Third, hasn’t she ever gone
shopping anywhere? Cannot these things
be learned from experience???
Larry and I had a
bit of fun imagining how high that girl would’ve jumped had I, the moment she
tried sticking her hand in my wallet, slapped it sharply and snapped, “STAY
OUTA MY WALLET!” haha
After leaving
Cabela’s, we stopped at Crossroads Mall to go to a shoe store where we used to
go – and discovered that Crossroads has become mostly a ghost town! There are only half a dozen businesses still
open; everything else is closed up. The
entire second story was closed. There
used to be 30 or 40 businesses and boutiques and stores there, and a large
Sears, too. There were a few people
trotting purposely down the halls, though, so we trotted, too, thinking perhaps
things would look better as soon as we rounded the next corner.
Nope; those stores
were all closed, too. Then we noticed
that every time we made an about-face, we met up with the same people we’d met
at the opposite end of the mall.
Ah. We finally figured out: those people were using the mall to go
walking. So we walked, too – right out the front door, to the parking
lot, and straight to our Jeep.
I looked
it up on my tablet, and learned that the mall is going glub-glub because it is
no longer in a real up-and-coming area of the city, even if there is Nebraska
Furniture Mart just across the street, and various other nearby
businesses. Also, new malls have sprung up here and there, and they are prettier
and more accessible. Brick-and-mortar
stores are having a harder and harder time staying in business.
We gave up on shoe
stores (or at least one of us did)
and headed to the Olive Garden Italian restaurant. It was plumb full, with
a whole lot of people waiting for a table.
We went back to the Jeep, hunted up another Olive Garden on my tablet,
and found a much newer and nicer one, where we made use of the other gift card
from Keith. Mmmm, they have good food
there.
Larry got Chicken
& Gnocchi (a creamy soup made
with roasted chicken, traditional Italian dumplings and spinach) and a platter
with spaghetti, shrimp, chicken... etc.
I got Chicken Scampi and Zuppa Toscana soup (a
side that went with the Scampi). They served the soup first (it was
scrumptious, with Italian sausage, potatoes, onion, garlic, chicken broth,
kale, and whipping cream) with bread sticks. By the time they arrived
with a gigantic platter of Chicken Scampi, I was full. So I tried a few
bites, just to see what it tasted like, then brought the rest home in a
Styrofoam box. There was enough in that box for supper for both of us the
next night.
If people from, oh,
say, 1850 could see how much people today regularly eat in one sitting, they’d
go into neurogenic shock.
As we left the
Olive Garden, I sent Keith a text: “Just
wanted to tell you thanks for the pickled beets! Love, Mama”
As expected, I heard from him shortly: “I didn’t know we sent any?”
“Haha!” I
responded, “I wondered how long you’d be scratching your head over that.”
Then I
explained: “You sent a Cabela’s gift
card. We went to Cabela’s. We got
birthday gifts for Grandma and Andrew... an anniversary gift for Uncle John and
Aunt Lura Kay...
“And one thing for
ourselves: a jar of pickled beets in the General Store. They were
on sale for half price, and I get lockjaw just looking at them. So
finally... the price was right! We’ll get ourselves something else next
time we go back. 😊
Then we went to Olive Garden. Anyway,
we enjoyed the gift cards today! Thank you. 😋”
That evening, a new quilter wrote to one of the
online quilting groups to ask how to measure and properly cut a triangle with a
7/8” measurement. She didn’t know where
the 7/8” mark was on her ruler.
Although several people wrote with good and
descriptive answers, and even pictures, somebody felt compelled to respond knowledgeably,
“I heard my quilting instructor say 7/8 is one line left of the whole number.”
“Unless your ruler also has 16ths!??!” someone else pointed
out.
He answered with some indignation. The following is a direct quote,
noncapitalization, nonpunctuation, and all, from... let’s call him
‘Knowledgeable Person #1’:
“i can read a ruler so its no issue for me. I good
at math im an accountant.”
He no good at grammerin’, though, huh? I sure wouldn’t trust him to cut any of my quilts. Or to tally up my taxes, for that matter.
Once when
Victoria was very small, and, after meeting some cuckoo person at a campground
somewhere, she remarked, “He’s such a
Corn Check!”
Hester
and Lydia went into peals of laughter.
They knew their little sister had heard them call someone a Fruit Loop
some time before.
Just got
her crunchy cereals mixed up, is all!
Friday, I filled the
bird feeders, washed the dishes, and then headed for the quilting studio.
The top few inches of one of the middle rows had appeared, the last time I
rolled the quilt forward!
That afternoon, Hester
sent a video of Keira ‘calling’ their kitty, Spooky, to come play with her. Then Hester asked her, “What does the
kittycat say?” and Keira replied, “Meow, meow, meow!”
When Hester was
little, she loved playing with our calico Kitty. She’d drag a ribbon, Kitty would run after her
– and she’d shriek when Kitty would suddenly dash on past her (which was
precisely the reaction Kitty was looking for).
When I
quit with the quilting for the night, another row was almost done on the New
York Beauty quilt.
People, obviously
from more southerly states, have been posting pictures of their spring flowers
blooming already – daffodils, and even tulips.
If my flowers should get it into their pretty little heads to spring
forth, they’d find themselves under a foot of snow!
I spent a good part
of the day Saturday quilting. When I
rolled the quilt forward, the middle seam made its appearance! I’m making progress, slow though it is.
It snowed, and
dozens of birds were clustered around the feeders. And how ’bout this?! –
there were male house finches and male purple finches, both, at the feeders! Purple finches are a rarity around here, only
showing up in the winter, when they’ve migrated from the Canadian provinces,
where they breed.
Male house finch
Male purple finch
Here’s a female
house finch:
There were a couple
of birds that I didn’t recognize. I have
several probable IDs, but no positives. I tried to get some shots of them,
but of course those are the timid ones, and they flew away in a panic as soon
as a big lens poked stealthily through the blinds of the open window. And I couldn’t stand there and wait for them
to return, because it was only 14°, and the wind chill was -4°, and my fingers
were beginning to feel like icicles stuck onto ice cubes.
A quilting friend and I have been discussing
procedures using our Sizzix eclips2 cutters.
She has found a way to transfer her own designs from Paint and Paint 3D into
the machine, for cutting appliqués.
However, in certain cases, one of these programs enlarges her
design. I looked for a reason, and found
this dubious explanation from someone who is obviously quite
proud of themselves for ‘knowing’ English:
“Now I wanna each time while opening Paint 3D or using it, its canvas
can have a fixed custom size of matching my mind. How should I do? Take Paint as an example to clearly explain
further.”
And it gets worse (lots
worse) from there. haha
He should really
just write what he knows in his native language, and then at least he’d be of
some value to someone! 😆
Reminds me of the
last sentence in a Reader’s Digest article, from years ago: “So, while
the majority of the world speaks English, the rest, it seems, try to.”
tee hee
When we went to
church Sunday morning, it was -4°, with a wind chill of -24°. By
midafternoon, the temperature had made it up to 3°, and the wind chill was ‘only’
-17°. Brrrr.
But out in
Colorado, there were areas expecting at least a yard of snow, along with
high winds! There are also avalanche warnings.
Why does all this
weather news make me want to go there?! Then they name all these
mountain ranges that I well know, and make me want to be there in the middle of
all that beautiful alpine snowiness all the more, tucked snugly into a nice,
big log cabin with a pile of wood for the fireplace (and plenty of gas for the
generator):
Medicine Bow
Mountains, Never Summer Mountains, Front Range, Williams Fork Mountains,
Tenmile Range, Gore Range, Vail area mountains, Elk Mountains, Ruby Range,
Mosquito Range, Sawatch Range, and Grand Mesa.
Meanwhile, other
parts of the country were in possibly-severe tornado watches.
A friend was
telling about getting stymied in her quilting when her son requested that she
make a motorcycle seat cover for him.
Larry once made
himself a new motorcycle seat cover with my old Singer (I was using the
Bernina, and wouldn’t let him touch it in any case). That was the first machine I had. My brother, who had sold sewing machines,
gave it to me when I was 8. Larry cut his pieces, using the old cover for
a pattern, put a heavy-duty needle in the machine – sideways – and sewed.
The machine
valiantly sewed that seat cover together for him, sideways needle or no. Larry’s seat cover looked just as good as the
original.
Imagine one of
today’s fancy-schmancy machines working properly with a sideways needle (or
maybe it was frontways when it was supposed to be sideways). Huh-uh, nosiree, nope.
We gave Hannah her
birthday gift after church last night: nesting bowls, a cookbook for those with
allergies, and a pair of scissors. Then we
dropped off John H. and Lura Kay’s anniversary gift.
As we were driving home, I read the news on my
tablet, and learned that tornadoes had hit in the south, and numerous people
had been killed. This morning, more
exact details were available: an EF4 tornado
with 170-mph winds had hit towns in Alabama, and at least 23 people were
killed.
It’s cold
today – 10°, with a wind chill of -8°.
Dozens of twittering little birds around the feeders. That is, they’re not using Twitter; they’re
just a-tweetin’!
Last night, Lura
Kay gave me back the Sunbonnet Sue quilt, despite my (somewhat feeble)
protests... and I have found the perfect place for it, at last: Larry
fixed a pretty quilt stand I got at a secondhand furniture store for $5, and I’ve
positioned it on the second-floor landing next to one of my treadle sewing
machines.
Uh, that is, I got
the stand for $5; I didn’t have to pay Larry $5 to fix it. heh
Lura Kay had always said it was to be mine, and I kept trying to coax her
into having it; after all, she’s 20 years older than me, played with those
blocks when she was a little girl and had few toys, and she knew many of the
ladies who made those blocks. But she
was determined it would be mine,
because I bought the fabric and batting, put it together, and quilted it. I only got her to ‘borrow’ it for a couple of
months or so, until all her children and a number of her grandchildren had seen
it. I kept vewy, vewy quiet about it, hoping she’d keep forgetting... but no, she
made sure it was ready to give back to me when we stopped to give her and John their
55th wedding anniversary gift.
I guess it’s better to ‘fight’ over things that way, than the other
way, aye? You know, “It should be YOURS!”
“Oh, no, not at all; it must be YOURS!”
rather than “It’s MINE!” “No, it’s MINE!”
“GIMME!!!” 😄
Now I will see that
quilt every time I go upstairs, or come down.
I like walking into the little library just across the hall from my
quilting studio and seeing the Americana Eagle quilt on the bed in there.
The dim lighting from the dormer makes the quilting show up really well.
Somebody on
Facebook ordered me in no uncertain terms to “Get that quilt off that bed
and put it in the basement or a closet or someplace where there is no window,
and never let light touch it! Even light from light bulbs can fade
fabric in less than 20 minutes!”
Good grief.
Let’s all make beautiful quilts and then run like mad and stuff them in
closets, quick. Or better yet, don’t even make them, because all
that time you’re making it, you probably have a light on, right?!?
Actually, the fabric is probably ruined before you ever buy it, being in
some lighted quilt shop. And I’ll betcha they don’t manufacture it in the
dark, either. ((eye roll))
I like to enjoy my
quilts. I like my family and friends to enjoy the things I make
them. If they fade or get all worn out (the quilts, not the family; we
all know the people fade and wear out, heh), that just means I
get to make them something else! Right?
This morning I attempted to explain to an elderly
lady who lives hundreds of miles away what to do about a computer/printer
dilemma she is having. I don’t think I
did a very good job of explaining.
“See, if I lived next door,” I told her, “I could
pop right over there, and see what’s making things tick!”
Remember
the lady who called the clock repairman, telling him, “My grandfather clock
only ‘ticks’; it doesn’t ‘tock’.” ?
The
repairman, an old German man, came to her house... pulled a flashlight from his
toolbox... shined it up into the clock’s face... and growled menacingly, “Ve
haff vays uff making you tock!”
Here’s a dark-eyed
junco. They are usually ground feeders,
gathering up all the seed the other birds spill; but they’ve learned to get
sunflower seeds from the feeders, even though their feet are built for
scratching, rather than hanging onto small perches.
Today as I clickety-clacked
away on my journal, I was at my cutting table in my quilting studio rather than
at the kitchen table where I usually am. I moved a whole lot of
paraphernalia up to my quilting studio, since I can keep it warmer at less
expense than when I’m downstairs in the kitchen, beside a window that lets the
Arctic breezes whistle through. It took quite a lot of trotting up and
down the stairs, hauling laptop, keyboard, mouse, coffee, thermos, footstool, warm-air
vaporizer (helps my eyes), and the cat beds.
Those Thermabeds
for the cats are important! The
felines themselves tell me so. They march into the room.
They stare at the spot where I usually put said Thermabeds. They stare at
me. They stare at the spot. At me. At the spot. Then
they stalk over to stand directly in front of me, and inform me indignantly, “MMRRRRRRROOWWWRRRR!!!”
I obediently go for
the cat beds. 😸😹
For supper tonight,
we had loaded baked potato soup, oranges, grape juice, cottage cheese, blueberry
smoothies, and, for dessert, some of the scrumptious pancakes Larry made
yesterday for lunch. I had to eat really small portions in order to get
around the outside of all of that food! 😃
And now it’s
bedtime. Goodnight!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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