When I write my weekly letter, I copy and
paste into it things I’ve written throughout the week. So don’t be surprised if you see things I’ve
written to you show up in my weekly journal.
There was once a lady with whom I used to
correspond who got all bent up like a pretzel over that, as if things I wrote
to her were then her very own property, and I would be infringing upon
copyright laws (hers, evidently) if I evah, evah repeated those
things anywhere else, to any other person. (“...with whom I used to
correspond...” is a key element of the previous sentence.)
A quilting friend
recently asked, “Do you sleep at night or are all your dreams about quilting
patterns for your quilts?”
I sleep just fine, I
told her, except for those nights when I really need to sleep, in
order to get up early and do Very Important Things or go to Very Important
Places the next day. On those nights, I allllmost get comfortable, and
then my ankle itches. I obligingly scratch it. Then my neck
hurts. I stuff my pillow under it just right. It will not stay long
in this position.
Next, my shoulder is
cold. I pull up the covers and tuck them in tight. I discover my
nightgown (or pajamas, whichever I happen to be wearing) is twisted. I
untwist it. After that, a toe cramps. I use my other foot to pull
(or push) the wayward toe into whatever position is most conducive for
uncramping.
By this time, I’m too
hot. I fling the covers off. That’s not good enough, so I get out
of bed and go adjust the thermostat. Not too much, or I won’t be able to
sleep on account of being cold. Back in bed and almost
comfortable again, whichever side of me that is most inconvenient to reach
itches. I wonder why I gave Bobby that back scratcher for Christmas
(taping it atop one of his gifts in place of a bow) instead of keeping it
myself to actually use. Next, I
need to blow my nose, and can’t reach the Kleenex box. I scrabble about,
manage to snatch a Kleenex from the box in the headboard, blow my nose, heave it in the
direction of the trashcan, hear it miss, and remind myself to pick it up next
time I get out of bed.
A lilting new melody
enters my head. I hum it through
(silently) a time or two, then work my way through it again, adding in alto,
tenor, a few trills, and some bass piano runs.
Through the years, I have written down very, very few of these tunes that
regularly pop into my head at the drop of a hat. Someday when I’m bedridden or
wheelchair-bound, I’ll do that.
I fiiiiinalllly start
to drift off – and Larry’s evil phone flicks itself on – with the screen set to
‘Flashlight mode’, a misnomer if there ever was one. It should be called ‘Faro della Vittoria Lighthouse
mode’. If all my scrambling about hasn’t awoken him yet, you can be sure
a little thing like a brilliant light with a gazillion units of candlepower
emission flashing on right before his closed eyes isn’t going to faze
him.
I poke him and snarl,
“Turn your stupid phone off!” He rouses enough to accommodate me, and
goes immediately back to sleep. I contemplate smacking him with a
pillow.
My kneecap
itches. I turn on the light and check for bedbugs. No bedbugs, so I
turn off the light and get back in bed. It’s cold. I get back up,
find another blanket, and throw it over my side of the bed. I try lying
on my side. Wrong side; that makes my hip hurt. I roll to my back. The moon shines through the blinds and hits
me square in the eyes. (I see this, regardless of my eyes being shut.)
I turn over... begin feeling drowsy... and Larry commences to snoring.
As for dreaming, I
don’t dream about nice things like quilts and kittens. I dream up nightmares, such as
skiing (never mind the fact that I’ve never skied in my life) full bore down
the side of Denali, with an avalanche roaring down immediately behind me, and a
bottomless crevice yawning before me. Or driving our camper off the
beaten track and winding up in the Pacific, somehow. Or flying an airplane somewhere – and finding
myself high in the sky, sans airplane. I dream of not being able to locate
my locker in the halls of Jr. High. Then the scene does one of those
transmogrifications (think ‘Calvin & Hobbes’), and I’m in Wal-Mart – only
it has become a red-bricked maze with nothing but dead ends every direction I
turn, and of course there’s an evil, hatchet-bearing fiend creeping silently
along being me.
Really, my life is
interesting enough without dreaming of stuff like that, for
pity’s sake!
Larry must’ve been feeling better by Tuesday
morning, because when I woke up, he’d already gone to work. He hardly ever stays home sick.
That day – and every day thereafter – I went
on quilting hexagons on the Atlantic Beach Path quilt. See more pictures here.
So far, I haven’t repeated any quilting
designs on the quilt; but I reckon I’ll have to, sooner or later... unless I
can think up 439 different designs. π I won’t make them all different just for the
sake of being different, as I’ll only do designs that I like. (’Course, sometimes I think I will
like a design, and then... it just doesn’t go quite right. I don’t remove
it unless it’s baaaad, though.)
Larry worked all day Tuesday, and felt fine.
He doesn’t get sick very often, but when he does, he’s really
sick. He’s never down for long, though.
I quilted part of the day Wednesday... got
ready for church at 5:30 p.m.... was back at the quilting machine by 5:50 p.m....
and quilted until we left, shortly after 7:00 p.m. I wonder how often I go to Wednesday evening
services with threads on me purty li’l church duds?
Have you heard about the mysterious drones
that have been seen flying over eastern Colorado, western Wyoming, and western
Nebraska? By last week, the drones had
made their way to middle and then eastern Nebraska. Upon reading in the news last Monday evening that
one had been spotted near Grand Island, 65 miles to our southwest, I strolled
to the patio door and stared out into the night skies —— and saw one! Or at least I thought I did. I didn’t mention it, just in case I was
mistaken, and it was a plane or a low-flying planet or something; but the very
next morning, I learned that drones had indeed been seen near Genoa and Monroe,
20 miles and 6 miles to our west, respectively.
That evening on our way to church, we both
were pretty sure we saw one, halfway between our house and town. It seemed too low for a plane, and it hovered
for a bit before moving quickly to another location. Its lights matched the description in the
news.
Thursday,
I headed to the post office to ship my quilt to Paducah,
Kentucky ((hair standing up on end at the thought of pitching this quilt
into the Deep, Dark Waters of The Traveling Boxes and Parcels), for the AQS
Show in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Here are highlights from the New York Beauty
quilt, if you’d like to see it again:
On the 17th, I will receive notice
of whether the quilt has been accepted at Lancaster; and I will learn on
February 21st whether it has been accepted for the Paducah show.
That evening, we went to Jeremy and Lydia’s
house to exchange gifts. One or the
other of their family has been sick ever since Christmas, and we’ve been unable
to get together ’til now. The same has
happened with Teddy and Amy and family, and with Caleb and Maria. Soon, soon, we’ll be able to, I hope!
We gave each of the grandchildren a sweater or jacket and a toy. For Jacob, 10, there was a salt-powered robot to put together. For Jonathan, 5, a set of wooden blocks, with which he promptly began constructing towers and other structures. Ian, 3, loved the Melissa and Doug wooden wrecker truck and car puzzle we gave him. There's a magnet connected
to the wrecker, with which one can pluck the wrecked cars from their shaped lodgings. And Malinda, 2, liked the miniature frame with her very own picture inside, the small plastic cat (she calls little things like that her 'pretties'), and the Melissa and Doug wooden dress-up bears puzzle.
Lydia made some scrumptious blueberry cheesecake. Mmmm, yummy.
When we got home, I
checked USPS Tracking: the quilt had shipped
out of Omaha at 12:09 a.m. that night, and was listed as ‘In Transit’. π¬ π±π€ͺ
There
was a story in the news relating that reporters in Omaha had gotten video of
one of the mystery drones, complete with motor and propeller noise.
Just
to make things even more interesting, a mountain lion has been seen prowling
about near the city. That’s not too
unusual, as the big cats follow the rivers through our state. They particularly like the rugged bluffs and
canyons along the Missouri; but some have been spotted along the Loup, just a
couple of miles from our house.
It
was 6° that night, with a windchill of -13° on account
of a 22-mph wind from the north.
Early
Saturday morning, the New York Beauty quilt made it to Lexington,
Kentucky. π¬
I finished another row on the Atlantic Beach
Path quilt. More pictures here.
In one picture, the back of the quilt can be seen on the take-up bar,
and it’s centered on the quilting of the tucked border.
I discovered one problem as I rolled the
quilt forward, on the backing showing up on the take-up bar: the upper
tension on the royal blue top thread wasn’t quite tight enough, and dots of
royal blue are showing on the back side. I hope that when I remove
the quilt from the frame, the release of tension will hide that. It
always helps; but whether or not it will totally solve the
problem... π
The various threads I’m using on top require
me to change the tension almost every time I change thread colors.
Saturday
evening, the New York Beauty arrived at Louisville, Kentucky. It took 20 hours to get there from Lexington,
a westward journey of only 75 ½ miles.
Later that night, it departed
from the Louisville Distribution Center. It had 217 miles to go to reach Paducah. And... I would see nothing further on the
tracking site until Monday.
I got a few more hexagons quilted that day,
along with a bit more of the borders on each side.
Sunday morning dawned with a beautiful
sunrise. In the photo below, the sun has just topped the horizon. See it shining through the bird feeders? That can only mean one thing: they’re empty! I refilled them.
A visiting pastor, Brother James McDowell
(pronounced Mc-DOO-Ιl), took each of the three services. He and his wife live in Oklahoma now, but they
immigrated from Ireland to Toronto in 1968, and to the States in 1970. Brother McDowell has not lost his Irish
brogue. He is a pleasure to listen to,
not only because of this accent, which almost has a familiar ring to it, what
with my Irish ancestors, but also because of his message of sovereign grace and
predestination, which we absolutely agree with.
One of the best parts of his visit was when
our congregation surprised him by singing one of his favorite songs, There’s
A Place in My Homeland.
When James and Jane McDowell were married in
May of 1968, the man who conducted the marriage ceremony was Pastor Tom
Shaw. It was Tom and his wife Mabel Shaw
who wrote the words to this song, set to an old Irish melody. Some months back, Pastor Shaw sent the song
to Brother McDowell. Brother McDowell
loved the song, and sang it for his congregation. He’d even thought to sing it for us while
he was here visiting.
Here is our congregation singing the song;
scroll to minute:second 6:50 on the first video on this page: http://www.bbccolumbus.com/Forty.htm.
Notice that Brother McDowell realizes
almost instantly that the organ has begun playing his song during the
offering. He turns to Brother
Robert... Robert gives him a bland
look... but he knows. Then Robert
hands him a copy of the song.
He’s never seen the words set to music before; Bobby
did that on his computer. It was quite
emotional for Brother McDowell, hearing the piano and organ play the song,
seeing it in print, and then singing it with our congregation. I imagine that first line, ‘There’s a place
in my homeland that’s dearest to me,’ brings back many precious memories of Ireland,
his homeland.
I have inserted the song at the end of this letter.
It snowed part of the day; we got about an
inch of snow. In midafternoon, it was
23° with a windchill of 14°. Meanwhile, Teton Village, Wyoming, was
expecting 14” of snow.
Biggar, Saskatchewan, Canada, was issued an
Arctic Outflow Warning; windchill values would reach the -40° mark that
evening. The actual temperature will not
climb above -20 for at least this coming week.
16” of snow was expected in Pinnacle, Montana,
the West Glacier Region, where the weather bureau sent out a Winter Storm
Warning. Winds would be around 35 mph,
making the windchill -40°.
Whoaaa... up to 3 feet of snow is expected
around West Yellowstone, Montana, with higher amounts in the mountains. Those sorts of weather announcements always
make me wish I was right there, despite the fact that if I get too cold,
it makes my very bones ache.
At 1:25 a.m. last night (maybe you call
that ‘morning’, but it was dark outside, and I hadn’t gone to bed yet; therefore
I say it was ‘last night’), I decided to see if there were any updates
on the location of the New York Beauty quilt.
There was! But...
Aaaccckkk! – “January 12, 2020 – In Transit, Arriving Late. Your package will arrive later than expected,
but is still on its way. It is currently
in transit to the next facility.”
Aarrgghh.
That makes me nervous.
I hung up the sewing machine clock Jeremy,
Lydia, and family gave me for Christmas.
It’s
been lying on the maple wood table in my studio for a few days, and time and
again I reached for that scissor pendulum instead of my snips. π
There was frost on all the trees today. Isn’t it pretty?
I checked tracking on the New York Beauty,
and see that it got to Evansville, Kentucky, at 5:10 p.m. CST. That’s 107 miles from Paducah. It’s a day late, but at least it isn’t lost!
Tonight after Larry got home from a fruitless
hunting excursion, we took Joanna her birthday gift – a sugar cookie cookbook
with lots of pictures and instructions on how to decorate shaped cookies, a set
of sugar cookie decoration tools, and several cookie cutters. Joanna is 17 now.
Why don’t I have a good picture of her?? Ah, well; I might as well show you a picture
of her hair. Either she or Hannah posts
a different style on Instagram every day, demonstrating for Lilla Rose hair
accessories. Check out https://www.instagram.com/dailyhairbyhannah/
if you’d like to see more of their pretty hairdos and hair accessories.
And now I must quil--------Wait. One more check of the New York Beauty.
...
...
...
Bah, humbug.
It’s still in Evansville, Kentucky.
Now I shall quilt.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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