Last Tuesday, needing wool batting for my
customer’s quilt, I called Claus ’en Paus, one of our two local quilt
shops. (As I mentioned in last week’s
letter, I had checked Hobby Lobby and Sew What, the other LQS, the day before.)
They didn’t have any.
I called Hobby Lobby in Norfolk, and was
informed that Hobby Lobby no longer carries wool batting. Not really believing that, I looked it up
online, and got the following response: “We
couldn’t find any results for ‘wool batting’ in Products. Sorry!
Did you mean ‘wood baking’?”
‘Wood baking’? I’ve never baked wood; have you? Okay, time out while I look that up.
Hmmm... I found a couple of wooden plaques
with sayings on them such as ‘Baking Sweet Memories’, and picturing gingerbread
cookies.
No, I didn’t mean ‘wood baking’, I meant ‘wool
batting’, just like I said in the first place.
I called Country Traditions in Fremont – and they had
it.
So off I went to Fremont.
Guess what?
Did you guess?
Their wool is Quilters’ Dream Wool!
Pricey stuff, but ... Ooooooo, is it ever
nice.
While I was there, I also bought the fabric
for Caleb and Maria’s One-Block Wonder quilt. To my surprise, Country
Traditions had very few panels. I want a
scenic panel in the middle.
When I got home, I pulled up Marshall Dry
Goods online, thinking to order one of their many pretty panels.
But... what one sees at Marshall Dry Goods in
July is not necessarily what one will see in August. In fact, it’s very likely that there will
have been a total change. They are one of the largest fabric inventory
holders in the United States, with approximately six million yards of fabric at
their warehouse in Batesville, Arkansas.
But they are liable to have sold half of that and put three million
yards of brand-spankin’-new fabric in its place, in only a couple of months!
The two dozen or so wildlife and scenic
panels that I’d admired last month had shrunk to two – neither one of
which would go with either the fabric I’d just purchased, or Caleb and Maria’s
house.
I gave eBay a try – and bought this panel,
Call of the Wild – Atlantic Beach Path, by Hoffman Fabrics:
A friend later sent me a link to Bear Creek Quilting Company, where they have a
whole raft of beautiful quilt panels. I’ll
remember that, when I start making quilts for the grandsons.
In the meanwhile, I hoped the Atlantic Beach panel
would match the fabric I got. It looked like it did; but what
colors look like on one’s monitor may or may not be what they look like in
person. If it didn’t match... why, I would just buy more fabric, until
finally it wouldn’t matter an iota if anything matched or not. heh
I got my customer’s quilt loaded on the frame
that evening, and started quilting. But
it was late, and I was tired, so I didn’t go far before stopping for the night. The lady made this quilt 26 years ago. She’s going to be happy to finally have it
quilted.
On one of the online quilting groups, ladies
were discussing their budgets (or lack thereof) for their quilting interests. The questions were as follows: How do you figure it? What items in
particular do you budget for? Do you stay within your budget, or do you
fall off the wagon?
I don’t have a budget, really; I just get
what I need when we can afford it, and seldom get anything I don’t need.
I usually buy the fabric I need wherever
I can find a discount; but I didn’t do that, that day. Nope, not that day. 😬 I just picked out what I wanted and paid
for it. It was not on
sale. Eeek. 😑😕😵😮😯😒😖 But you can’t beat the quality of the fabric
they stock at Country Traditions; there is that.
Wednesday, I
went to Pet Care Specialists to pick up some Felimazole – medicine for Teensy
Cat, who has hyperthyroidism.
That afternoon, I was
attempting to retrieve something from the cupboard without disturbing Tiger,
who was eating from his bowl of cat food right next to said cupboard.
The peanut butter jar fell
out.
Furthermore, it landed smack-dab in the bowl
of cat food from which Tiger was eating.
BLAP-SPLAT-CRUNCH
Pieces of cat food flew out of the bowl and
onto the floor, TINKA-TINKA-TINKA. Tiger’s
ears flew up, too. (If you don’t think a
cat’s ears can fly up, then you’ve never dropped a jar of peanut butter into his
bowl right while he was eating.)
He stared at the peanut butter jar. He turned and looked at me. Then, “Ow,” he protested sadly, in his
low-pitched gravelly voice. I couldn’t
quit laughing, so he ‘ow’ed once or twice more for good measure, staring at me
reproachfully.
A bit later, I gave Teensy his soft food with
his medicine in it. He decided he didn’t
want it, thank you kindly anyway, and went to eat the dry food. I quickly scooped up the dry food bowl and
put it on the counter. Teensy stared hard
at the floor where the bowl used to be, ignoring the saucer of soft food I
moved over beside him. Then he scootched
over slightly and went to eating those few pieces of dry food that were still scattered
on the floor, crunch crunch crunch.
🙄
Well, at least somebody cleaned up the mess.
We went to Stromsburg after church that night
to put E85 in the Jeep. Why don’t they
sell that stuff in Columbus?! The
Jeep runs waaaay better on it.
We indulged in some raspberry cream cheese
flips and a couple of bottles of Frappuccino to keep us from dying of
starvation before we got home. Every now
and then, one must eat dessert first!
We ate some Campbells’ chicken and dumpling soup
when we got home, and then I went back to quilting. By four in the morning, the top border and the
first row of my customer’s quilt were mostly done.
A couple of days after Victoria told me she
was worried about Violet because she wasn’t standing yet, the baby stood (with
help). Sometimes roly-poly babies take a
little longer to do things like that.
When Victoria was a baby, and beginning to
pull herself to her feet, I said to Larry one night as we tucked her into her
crib, “We’d better lower that mattress tomorrow! She’s getting taller!”
‘Tomorrow’ was one day too late.
The next morning, I heard her waking up...
went to her door... opened it ----- she saw me, grinned, held out both arms,
leaned -------
I knew what was about to happen, and ran
--- but I couldn’t get there in time. Over the rail she went,
headfirst.
My heart stopped, when she hit the
floor. Oh, my goodness, her head bent back so far... I thought my baby
had a broken neck.
But before I quite got to her, wondering how
on earth to pick her up, and if she was mortally wounded, she scrambled to a
sitting position, then to her knees, and, looking a little dazed, and with
tears in her eyes, held out her arms to me again.
Then she said, said Victoria girl, in true
Victoria girl fashion, “Oops!” And laughed.
Thursday, I filled in some feathering on the
sashing of my customer’s quilt and rolled it forward in preparation for row
#2. The machine is working perfectly, and the tension is good on the
back.
My thumb and wrist
are being troublesome again, and I was thinking, Oh, no, not that
dreadful De Quervain’s tenosynovitis again!
(When I get maladies, I get really impressive-sounding ones.) I struggled with that for several months last year. I finally got a cortisone shot for it, and it
really helped. But now there’s a
caved-in spot in my wrist where I got the shot! I bought a couple of wrist braces, one for
each wrist, from Amazon (Mueller Green is the brand), and they help a lot when I am quilting, making
it almost painless to use my Avanté. So there’s some good news.
By the time I quit for the night, the second
row was done.
Friday, I completed row #3. I can’t quilt as long as I used to.
7 hours that day, and that was enough. 😏
Saturday, I put fresh water in the birdbaths
(those things need to be power-washed! errrggh), put out some over-ripe orange
halves for the orioles (and bees and wasps, heh), and picked a giant bag of
not-quite-ripe peaches before the birds and bugs get them. There are still a lot on the tree; I hope some
of them have a chance to ripen. The ones
I picked will ripen in a few days; but they’re always better (and bigger) if
they can ripen on the tree.
The oranges looked better than expected when
I cut them, so I ate one. And I ate a
couple of peaches, too.
I noticed from my USPS email notification
that my Red-E Edge clamp replacement had arrived, so I went over to the mailbox
on Old Highway 81 and got the mail.
Turns out, the fabric panel ‘Call of the Wild
Atlantic Beach Path’ had arrived, too. And
yes!! – it does match the fabric I got at Country Traditions! The blues are just right.
That day, I finished the fourth row on my
customer’s blue and white quilt. I have
26.5 hours in it so far.
Loren’s 81st birthday was Friday,
August 9th, but he and Norma were gone, having taken a little
vacation in western Nebraska. They got
back Saturday afternoon.
So Sunday after the morning service, we gave
him his gift – a battery jump box that Larry got for him at Bomgaars.
We also gave Andrew and Hester a big clock
with a clear face, through which one can see the gears. It was their 11th anniversary Saturday.
Our neighbors have gone to Texas for a couple
of weeks, so we are caring for their animals, chickens and goats. We walked up there yesterday afternoon, and came
home with eight eggs. One of the goats
is going to have a baby (or two) soon – and she was coughing! So Larry went back and checked on her before
we went to the evening church service, and we both went up there last night. She seems fine. Maybe she just got a sprig of hay stuck up
her nose?
I looked at the peaches;
they are still not ripe. But there are dozens
all over the ground, rotting. I think if
we would have sprayed that tree for bugs, this would not be happening. I peeled and ate a couple that I’ve had lying
on the table ripening, and they were scrumptious, but small. They might ripen after they’re picked,
but they don’t keep growing!
I walked up to check on the
goats, taking them a cut-up green bell pepper that was getting a little too
soft in spots. The nanny was in the
little barn, but she finally came out, waddling along. The billy liked the pepper best, and the two
other nannies liked it all right; but the expectant nanny seemed to think it
was a bit hot, and rubbed her mouth on the grass after she ate a piece. Acckk, I didn’t want to do something bad
for her!
The billy kept standing up
on the fence, tipping his head this way and that, trying to look cute enough to
coax me into giving him another piece – and then I held out the piece that had
a soggy, limp corner starting to go bad.
Billy started to take it... stopped... backed up... sniffed at it – and
then tipped his head up and looked at me. I mean, he looked a hole through
me. It was as if to say, How dare
you try to trick me into eating that! He
was cautious about my offerings, after that.
The roosters liked the
peppers, too, especially the seeds.
Larry got home late tonight,
after finally getting his red pickup back together. And... the clutch still slips. But at least the thing goes again. Still, it’s disheartening that after all that
work, and sinking some money into it, too, it still isn’t right.
After a late supper, we went
to care for the animals, and brought back eight eggs again. Omelets tomorrow! 😄
We also picked two handfuls
of cherry tomatoes. The man told us to
pick anything that looked ripe in the garden.
There are peppers, big tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, squash,
beans... Not sure what else, as it was
dark by the time we went there, and we only had a little flashlight. I’ll see what I can find tomorrow.
We got a bit of rain
yesterday morning, and an inch and a half overnight. Everything is green as can be, and the white
hosta buds have started opening, just in time for the hummingbirds that will
soon start migrating back through!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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