Last Monday Hester sent this picture of their
kitty in Keira’s dollhouse, writing, “Spooky has decided to go into quarantine.”
In view of the Pandemic, I looked up
statistics from other plagues and diseases that the world has known.
Black
Death, aka the Bubonic Plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersina pestis. In the mid-1300s, it killed over 50 million
people – 60% of the world’s population at the time. London did not recover for centuries after
the Black Death. The plague resurfaced
roughly every 20 years from 1348 to 1665 — 40 outbreaks in 300 years. And with each new plague epidemic, 20 percent
of the men, women and children living in the British capital were killed. Awful.
Monday evening, I began sewing down the binding to
the back of the Atlantic Beach Path quilt, finishing it Tuesday. I usually sew bindings by machine, stitching
in the ditch from the front and catching 1/32” of the folded binding edge on
the back.
I posted this picture of the back of the
binding on a Facebook quilting group, and the very first comment someone wrote
was, “I think it looks a lot nicer if you handstitch it down.”
Another one on a different group wrote, “After all that beautiful piecing and quilting why would
you not hand stitch binding on the back. I always stuff my binding.”
I
wanted to add the correct punctuation in red.
heh
What do you think, after looking at
the picture? Don’t spare my feelings; just be honest, please. 😉
I know there are some quilt-show judges who turn
up their noses at machine-stitched bindings; but I have had judges comment
favorably on mine. In any case, I won’t
be able to enter this quilt in some big quilt shows (AQS, for instance),
because they have a size limit of 112” wide. If I can’t find a show that
will accept it, that’s okay; Caleb and Maria will just get their quilt quicker
than expected! 😃
As I sewed on the binding, the quilt seemed
to acquire a drag to it. I peered over the heap of folds and rumples –
and sure enough, there was Teensy, all snuggled in and looking smug as a bug in
a rug.
I took his picture (because one just has to,
you know), removed him from the table, and got back to work.
He decided the loop of quilt hanging off the
folding table would do. I was alerted to this by his very quiet
purring. 😂
We had a cat who should’ve been named ‘King
Tut’, instead of the innocuous ‘Socks’. 😼
One time I was working on a quilt, when part
of the quilt seemed to get stuck and drag back, making my stitches take an odd
tangent. I stopped, put the needle down, and lifted the quilt, thinking
it had gotten caught on the edge of the table or something – and Socks went
rolling out! He’d been all cuddled up sleeping in there, and that’s why
it was so hard to move.
He rose slowly to his feet, stared at me for
a moment indignantly, and then went stalking off in High Dudgeon to the other
end of the table, where he seated himself with his back to me in imperious haughtiness.
He didn’t deign to even glance at me for another hour.
Once the binding was on, I began attaching
the pearls onto the twisted tucks. I will need to steam and press the
tucks again so that each twist winds up right at the pearl.
Wednesday, I went on sewing on the pearls, and
started with the square glass beads, too, while the purring furries sacked out under my
table. More photos here.
When I quit for the night, pearls were done
on one side of the quilt.
I
posted some pictures on Facebook, and a lady wrote, “Goodness! Are you keeping a record of how much time you
are spending on this quilt? I’m guessing
you must be up to at least 80 hours.”
Reckon
she’d be surprised to know that at that point, I had a total of 464.5 hours in
the quilt, with 242 in the quilting alone?
And
by Saturday night, the total number of hours had increased to 477.
Larry’s brother Kenny called at 6:30 Thursday
morning. When the phone rang, Larry was
sound asleep. He fumbled about for it, and
finally got the right button pushed.
“Hello?”
Kenny, in his usual loud jovialness, asked, “Are
you up?”
Larry, drawing the word out as he scrambled
out of bed, responded, “Y-u-u-u-u-u-p!” – so that by the last syllable, he was
telling the truth.
Kenny told him that Norma had called him,
hoping he could take her and Loren to Omaha for her dental and doctor
appointment; but, as Kenny hadn’t asked for the day off, he wondered if Larry
could do it. Larry could, and did.
That morning as I was standing in the
bathroom curling my hair, with the nearby window wide open, the better to see
and hear the birds, there was a sudden flurry of wings, a scrabbling of claws,
and a grackle landed on the window sill!
He craned his neck, peering in, and looked to be seriously considering
coming right on in.
I waved a hand at the bird and said, “Hey!”
This startled him so badly, he nearly fell
in the window as he tried to take flight and head off the other direction. 😂
At the dentist’s office, Norma had the gauze packing
removed, along with the top denture the doctor had screwed into the roof of her
mouth at the end of the surgery a couple of weeks ago. Just look at the size of this screw. Doesn’t that make your hair stand straight up
on end??!
Larry, upon seeing this picture, told Norma
to tell people the screw is lying atop a five-gallon bucket, in order to make
them feel more sorry for her. She
laughed at that.
Larry drove part of the time; Loren drove the
rest of the time.
The dentist told Norma what the doctor had
not, upon learning that the doctor had not told her, saying that that doctor
was known for downplaying things.
This dentist is one who specifically works
with cancer and accident patients, making dentures for those who have had
surgery or trauma to the mouth or face. He’s in a huge building where
there are other doctors who make prosthetic limbs and suchlike.
It really irks me when doctors won’t tell
patients all the facts. Do they think they’re ‘protecting’ or ‘sparing’
them, somehow? We just want honesty.
The doctor was unable to get all the
cancer. Radiation is recommended now.
But Norma must wait two months before she gets her dentures, as her
mouth needs to heal. So she can’t eat regular meals, and even swallowing
liquids is very difficult. Radiation
would doubtless make her sick. Not a
very good option.
And with COVID-19 spreading, even the
necessary trips to the doctor and dentist in Omaha are a worry.
Norma had all her teeth pulled at age 16 by a
dentist who didn’t even ask or inform her mother what he was going to do (and
today it would never have been done – even back then, I’m pretty sure
her teeth could have been saved) ... and then he sent her home, walking,
on her own.
Her mother came home from work some hours
later and found Norma on the couch with her face so swollen, Grandma didn’t
recognize her daughter. Her face was nearly swollen entirely over her
nose, she could hardly breathe, and blood was draining down her throat. I
think she nearly died.
Nowadays, that dentist would’ve never set
foot in a dentist office again, except maybe to have another dentist jerk all his
teeth out sans Novocain, as payment for casting such a black eye on the
profession. Plus, Norma would’ve (and should’ve) been awarded several
gazillion dollars, don’t you think?
Thursday, I worked on this light blue flange,
ruching it and adding the square Czech glass beads. I’m really fond of these beads, and I’m
pleased that the slight gathering behind each square bead gave this flange the
scalloped effect for which I was hoping.
A quilting friend posted this: “My husband purchased a world map, gave me a
dart, and said, ‘Throw this, and wherever it lands, I’m taking you for a
holiday when this pandemic is over.’ Turns
out we’re spending two weeks behind the fridge.”
Shortly thereafter, Hester sent this:
Choose your next travel destination:
-
Las Kitchenas
-
Los Lounges
-
Santa Bedroomes
-
Porto Gardenas
-
Los Bed
-
Costa Del Balconia
-
St. Bathroom
-
La Rotonda de Sofa
I responded with this picture and the
following caption:
“We know you’re desperate to get out these days,
but don’t take the ‘go where there are no people’ admonition too seriously.”
Hester wrote back, “I feel like we’ve been
there before. 😂”
“Well, don’t blame me!” I retorted.
Most evenings when Larry gets off work, he
heads to Genoa to either work on his friend’s Jeeps (there are two of them) or
the pickup we got in Texas. He didn’t
get home until almost 1:00 a.m. Friday night.
Saturday,
a lady on one of the online quilting groups asked, “Why are you putting all the
beads in the quilt? I assume it must not
be intended to be used.”
“Ummmm...”
I answered, “because I like beads? And
yes indeedy, it will be used. 
”
”
The
quilt is just as washable as any other quilt, if the washing machine is big
enough. When I give this large of a
quilt away, I generally offer to wash it for the recipients, since I’ve always
had washing machines big enough to handle the job.
When I quit with the
bead-sewing Saturday night, I was exactly halfway done with the pearls and
square glass beads. It takes me 5 ½
hours to sew the beads along one side of the quilt, and 4 hours to put the
little gathers in the flange and sew on the square glass beads. So... 19 more hours, and I’ll be ready to put
on the crystal hexagons.
I only have 40 crystals, so it shouldn’t take
long to sew them in place. I hope 40 is
enough! – those wee things are pricey. The
crystals will go in the middle of some of the hexagons.
It was rainy Friday and Saturday, but Sunday was
bright and sunny, and it got up to 54°. After
listening to our church service online, we walked around the yard, looking at
all the things that need to be done. The
crocuses and daffodils are blooming, though many of the poor daffodil stems are
broken and falling down from high winds that came through along with the rain.
There are buds on the rhododendron Caleb and
Maria gave me for Mother's Day a couple of years ago, and on the crabapple
several of the children gave me the year before that.
There’s a lot of garden work that needs to be
done, but I’ll wait another month to get started. The old growth will
protect the emerging plants from the frosts we sometimes get in early April.
I was talking with
Victoria on the phone that evening as she and Kurt, with Carolyn, 2, and
Violet, 1, were driving home from an excursion to Grand Island, where they had
gone for a walk.
Victoria put her
phone on speakerphone, and I talked to the little girls. It’s so funny
the way Violet parrots everything Carolyn says.
It went something like this:
“Hi, Grandma!”
“Hi, Grandma!”
“We goin’ for a ride!”
“We goin’ for a ride!”
“What you doin’?”
“What you doin’?”
I answered each
question with a different answer, which made them giggle.
They’d thought to
maybe stop by our house, but after we discussed it a bit, we all decided it
would probably be best if we wait a couple more weeks before we visit, since
Larry was in Omaha Thursday with Loren and Norma, at the dentist’s office, the
doctor’s office, convenience stores, and Dairy Queen. He’s been in other
counties working this last week, too.
Kurt has asthma, and
he has a tendency to get bronchitis and pneumonia. Perhaps you’ll recall that he had such a
severe case of pneumonia a few months before they were married, he nearly
died. (A young doctor said he didn’t have pneumonia and sent him home
without treating him. It was nearly the death of him. He wound up
being taken to an Omaha hospital in an ambulance, with paramedics working on
him all the way. His lungs were almost completely full of fluid.
That young doctor did apologize later. Let’s hope he learned a valuable
lesson.)
Anyway, they’d
mentioned to Carolyn that they might stop at our house – and then, while we
talked on the phone, they suddenly arrived at their own house, to Carolyn’s
surprise and dismay. She started to cry,
saying, “I wanted to see Grandma and Grandpa!”
I assured her that we
would come and see them, or they could come and see us, very soon, ‘when
everyone is well.’
So she answered in
her sweet voice, “Okay,” but it sounded quite damp.
Poor little
sweetheart.
And now, may I
present, The Proper Attire for Social Distancing:
Also, a bit of
advice: if you have been hoarding toilet
paper, do make sure you have it secured from any canines, whether puppy or old
hound, who like to chew tissue.
Today I’m washing bedding, including the wool/velvet/corduroy/velour
Jewel Box Log Cabin quilt. I hung it
over the deck railing to dry. The
Harvest Sun quilt has now replaced it on our bed.
I’m very thankful for my new
washer; it handled this huge, heavy quilt quite well, although I did have to
reposition it when it started spinning.
Since this was clearly a big workout for the machine, I turned off the
Repeat Rinse that I had originally selected, so it wouldn’t have to spin the
quilt again.
I’m going to cut the Jewel Box Log Cabin quilt
apart and remake it into a couple of smaller quilts. It was a disappointment, because despite
prewashing all the fabric in hot water with color catchers twice, a
couple of the reds ran in subsequent washes,
soaking into one particular white wool and turning those patches pink. This spoiled the Jewel Box effect.
Also, I didn’t use batting, figuring the
quilt was thick and heavy enough.
But I discovered I don’t like quilts with no batting. Plus, one of the pieces I used for backing shrank
more every time I washed it, and the thing doesn’t lie flat. One more thing: I don’t like how some of the fabrics feel
whilst I’m a-tryin’ to sleep under it.
Also, it’s too heavy. So
obviously the thing to do is to cut it down and create throws out of it. (Larry is protesting. He likes that quilt.) (“You’ll like it even better, when I’m
through with it,” I assured him.)
I could put the matching pillows on the
loveseats, but Larry uses the leather one and would be unimpressed with having
to remove a pack of decorative pillows every time he wanted to lie down. The cats use the other one, and they’d get
hair all over the pillows. 🙄
So, obviously again, they go on the leather
loveseat. 🤣😆😅😄😂
A little before 4:30 p.m., it
started to sprinkle, and I hurried to the back deck to get the quilt in. There had been just enough time – and a nice
enough breeze – for it to get dry. Mmmm...
it smells sooo good – Tide Clean Breeze, Downy April Fresh, and country
sunshine, all mixed into one.
I no sooner put the throw pillows on the loveseat than
Teensy came to see what I was doing, to inspect the job, and to pat and fluff
the pillows into shape. Satisfied, he
then lay down and commenced to conducting his afternoon ablutions.
The goldfinches are starting to acquire their
summer plumage. Even the female
cardinals are brighter than usual, with a rosiness to their soft, buff-colored
feathers, and their crimson crest, wings, and tail standing out splendidly.
For supper tonight, I fixed ancient-grain-encrusted
Alaskan cod fillets, mixed vegetables (corn, peas, green beans, carrots), dark sweet
cherries, yogurt, and Tropicana orange juice.
Oh, and lemonade made from ReaLemon juice. Yummy, it tastes like it was made with fresh-squeezed
lemons.
Before I close, here’s a little tutorial, in
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,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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