Journal: A Decade and Half a Century

I like Google maps’ Street View, which can take you all sorts of places you will never otherwise go.  Sometimes their photo-stitching program malfunctions, though:

A friend and I were reminiscing about the funny things children say.  We recalled the time my late nephew David at about age 4 was pretending to be a preacher, and, standing at a little makeshift pulpit, exclaimed to the parishioners (his siblings), “I’s fru!  I’s fru wiff dis wickedness!”

He’s also the one who said to his mother, my sister Lura Kay, “I’m willy learning to be-bounce my woids yots bettah, aren’t I, Mama?”

When my brother G.W., who is 17 years older than me, was about ten years old, he announced that he wanted to be a preacher when he grew up. 

“But isn’t preaching hard work?” asked Daddy, who had been a preacher for around five years by then, and spent countless hours studying, counseling, and speaking with other ministers.

“Nah,” said G.W. with a careless shrug.  “It’s just talking and stuff.”  hee hee 

Tuesday, I woke up ten years and half a century old.  Yep, it was my 60^th birthday.  

I got so many messages – email, texts, audio and video clips – from my children and grandchildren (some of whom sang ‘Happy Birthday’), I didn’t get to my quilting studio until after noon.  🥰

I prepared to load my customer’s ‘In Love With Africa’ quilt.  It was a special one, hand-appliquéd both with blanket stitch and blindstitch on the front.  The back was also pieced and appliquéd, and those appliqués were put on by machine with a satin stitch.

One of the first things I do when I receive quilts is to measure everything.  I discovered that the top was 74” wide, and the backing was only 77” wide.  That meant I would need to add several inches of fabric to each side of the back in order to quilt it.  I charge $15 for this service, so I always first ask my customer if that’s okay with her.

It was, so I cut strips of muslin, sewed it on, and loaded the quilt.

I wound up adding a little at the top of the backing, too – by hand, since the top was already loaded on the front bar before I realized it needed to be done, and it had been a bit tricky loading it straight, and I figured it would be less trouble to sew a strip on by hand than to unload it, sew on the strip by machine, and then reload that top.  This was necessary because I belatedly realized that the words ‘In Love With Africa’ were appliquéd on the top border right near the edge of the quilt. 

It’s always somewhat risky for a longarmer to quilt a double-sided quilt, since it’s difficult to keep the top centered on the backing.  I can never guarantee that it will be perfect, but I try my best.

Larry, who had forgotten it was my birthday and whom I hadn’t seen all day (he leaves for work at about 6:15 a.m., when I am usually still sleeping), sent me a text at 9:40 p.m.:  “I am in Genoa” (meaning, he was working on one of his friend Joe’s vehicles, or perhaps his own Dodge pickup.

I replied, “I am in my quilting studio.” 

One should always respond to one’s spouse’s locational disclosures with locational disclosures of one’s own, right?

I hunted through my quilting thread and found a light gray-blue, more gray than blue, in So Fine 50-wt. that would blend well with all the colors on the quilt top.  I pulled out a fine silver thread, Bottom Line 60-wt., that would not compete with all the pictures and prints on the back.  The thread colors were close enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about ‘pokies’ – that is, bottom thread showing on top, and vice versa.  I can sometimes get by with contrasting threads from top to bottom, but it’s always best, if I’m going to do that, that I have thick batting, or, better yet, two layers of batting.  I had neither.

Hannah, along with Aaron, Joanna, Nathanael, and Levi, arrived, birthday gifts in hand.  There was a set of towels and washcloths that have birds beautifully machine-embroidered on them, and a matching ceramic pump jar for lotion or hand soap.  

Chosen especially by Levi, 10, was a ‘Nebraska Pocket Rock’ for ‘those who might blow away during those windy Nebraska days.’  

One time we were coming out of Denver, heading home with a large load of wrecked vehicles from the auction, and there were wind gusts nearing 80 mph.  There was a lone highrise building some miles east of Denver on I76.  Dust was swirling around its base something fierce, making it look so strange, because we could not at all see the bottom third of the building, but the top two-thirds was perfectly clear.

We stopped at a truck stop somewhere around Brush or Ft. Morgan, and it was so windy we could hardly make our way into the store, or breathe whilst we were at it.  Victoria was a year and a half.  I grabbed her up and ran with her.  She covered her face with both little hands and buried her head in my shoulder, giggling all the way, and when we got inside, she exclaimed, “Whew!!!  Is whewy winny!”  (really windy)

We learned later that there were a couple of tornadoes a mere ten miles south of the Interstate as we were coming through, and in fact at least one crossed the Interstate just a few minutes afterwards.

Larry and I were once walking on a high trail around Summit Lake, near the top of Mount Evans.  The wind was blowing so hard, I had to grab Larry’s arm to keep myself upright.  On our way back down to our vehicle, we met another couple.

“Whew!” I said to the lady, “if the wind was blowing one mile per hour harder, and if I weighed one pound less, I’d be down there –” I waved a hand at the lake “– in the –”

With that, the wind blew a tremendous gust, picked me right off my feet, and sat me down ker-plunk on a large flat boulder nearby.  The lady laughed so hard she bent well-nigh in half.

Back at the pickup, where the children were staying warm, with some of them sound asleep, the awake ones saw what happened and laughed so hard they awoke the sleeping ones.

I must’ve looked mighty funny.

After I admired the gifts Hannah and the children had given me, we played the piano a bit, looking at songs in an old book.  Hannah had brought along a ruffly little dress she’s crocheting of soft pink yarn for Baby Eva.

At a quarter after eleven, Larry wrote again:  “I just noticed that it is your birthday and you are 60 and I am 59.”  He promised to be home ‘before his coach turned into a pumpkin.’

I finished getting everything ready to quilt the ‘In Love With Africa’ quilt.  When the machine was threaded and the pantograph, ‘African Samba’, was taped onto the table, and the glide foot was attached to my machine, I quit for the night.  The glide foot helps the machine travel smoothly over all those appliqué pieces and hand-stitching.

There was some fullness in the top border, but I thought it could be tamed with starch and a hot iron, and maybe a heavy soup can or two rolling along behind the hopping foot.  

Before I sprayed starch on it, I inquired as to whether my customer had prewashed the fabric.  Every now and then, I’ve had fabric bleed when I sprayed it with starch.  (No, I didn’t touch the iron to those spots where the colors ran!  😬  I first got the, uh, runned? ran? bleeded? colors out.)  (‘Colors that had bled’.  There we go.)

She had prewashed the dark colors that are more prone to bleed, so all was well.

I was sorta sad the quilt was not going to be custom-quilted; but maybe that would’ve looked funny on the back, what with it also being pieced and appliquéd.

“Soup cans?” asked several quilting friends, so I explained:

Well, a can of peaches or green beans will do, too.  Or a water bottle.  😁  Use two, if one isn’t enough.

You see, the heavy cans press down on the quilt where there’s too much fullness, helping to ease it in, so that when the hopping foot is moving along, it doesn’t push tucks and pleats into the fabric.  I press down in these areas with my hand when I am custom quilting at the front of the frame; but when I’m using a pantograph and standing at the back, the cans serve this purpose.

As you can see from these before-and-after pictures, between the starch, iron, and cans, it worked out quite well.

That night, I sat down in my recliner and started watching some beautiful, high-quality youtube videos of Norway.  And suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, it was a whole lot closer to dawn than dusk.  I hastily shut my laptop, scrambled into bed, and slept fast.

Wednesday, I launched into quilting the ‘In Love With Africa’ quilt.  I took a little break to take Loren some food, quilted for another hour, got ready for our midweek church service, and then quilted until time to go.  

After the service, we visited with various children and grandchildren until we were the last ones there, and they started turning off all the lights.

Andrew, Hester, and Keira gave me a vinyl bag with sewing tools printed on it, and on the front it says, “Life is a patchwork quilt”.  Inside it was a little black-checked spiral notebook, a large black-checked stoneware soup mug with a lid, a set of quilt clips (to roll a quilt into when one is working on it at one’s DSM [Domestic Sewing Machine], and a pack of homespun fat quarters.  I was pleased with that fabric, as I am more and more drawn to homespuns, and hope to make a quilt with them before too long.

Kurt, Victoria, Carolyn, and Violet gave me a wooden stationery box with a little drawer, a knitted headband with soft faux fur inside, a notebook to stick onto the refrigerator that says “Taking it one stitch at a time” on top of each page, and a bag of Reese’s Pieces, which I could not include in the photo, as it went AWOL.  Or perhaps it was kidnapped.  😏

Joseph, Jocelyn, Justin, and Juliana gave me framed photos of the children.

Home again, we had a light late supper, and then I went back to quilting.  When I stopped for the night, I was about two-thirds done.  More pictures here.

Thursday, I brewed some Blueberry Crumble coffee by Christopher Bean, and sipped it while I blow-dried and curled my hair and read the funnies and the news and email (not necessarily in that order).  Mmmm... that’s good stuff (the coffee, not the news).

That afternoon, I fixed some food for Loren, wondering if he would like the Schwan’s chicken egg roll I had in the oven.  He was getting one, whether he liked it or not.  heh 

Schwan’s egg rolls are bigger than the ones from our local stores; one egg roll is considered a serving.

Well, if he didn’t like it, he would also have clam chowder, mandarin oranges, orange jello, and a cranberry-orange muffin.  I put a couple spoonfuls of Miracle Whip into a small container; maybe that would make the egg roll tastier.  When everything was ready, I packed it all into a lunchbox, separating cold from hot with packing bubbles, and headed to his house.

Loren was pleased as punch with that chicken egg roll.  He likes egg rolls way better than such things as, oh, say, broccoli or peas.  When I left, he was happily dipping the egg roll into the Miracle Whip, and in between bites of that, he was scooping up clam chowder and exclaiming over how good it was.

“You must really be hungry!” I laughed.

He allowed as how he was hungry, “but this is really good, too!” he said.

On the way home, it occurred to me that Janice used to make runzas, and fill them with ingredients very similar to what was in that chicken egg roll.  And then I recalled that when they would invite us over for Christmas, she often made oyster soup.  I’ll betcha anything the flavor of the clam chowder reminded Loren of her oyster soup, as the base is nearly the same.

A friend posted a picture of the quilting blocks she had made.  She’d laid them out on the floor to decide on placement, and she wrote, “Look quick, before the cat gets into them!”  😸

Once upon a time, years ago, I was cutting many-tiered cancans of fine netting for several of the girls.  These would go under taffeta dresses with circle skirts and wide ruffles at the hem.  I had everything spread out on my ‘cutting table’ at the time:  our king-sized bed.  I had a folding cardboard ‘cutting board’ that I laid on the bed, and then I laid fabric on top of that, and cut with scissors.  I had not yet heard of rotary cutters and cutting mats.

This was a delicate and tricky procedure, getting layers and layers of netting laid out just right, so I could cut long, multiple ruffles at once.  The stuff has a tendency to stick to itself, and it took some time and effort to get it all in order.

Suddenly, I heard the thundering sound of eight tiny feet in the hallway. 

I knew what that was:  it was Black Kitty and her offspring Tad charging madly through the house, in some maniacal game of tag.  I also knew what they would do when they came stampeding through my bedroom door:  they would leap onto the bed.

I dashed around the bed, sprang for the door ---- too late.

Up onto the bed they flew, one after the other.  Finding a wonderful, fantastic playground up there, they sunk their claws into that netting, hung on, and rolled.

They rolled until they were totally – and tightly – wrapped in many layers of netting, and could not so much as wiggle.

Then both cats, mother and son (the mother, a beautiful, long-haired black Persian, and the son, an even more beautiful long-haired black-and-tortoise-shell with tufts on his ears, and white eyeliner accenting his light blue-gray eyes) looked at me mournfully and said, “Meeeeoooowww?” and “mew?” (respectively).

I laughed ’til I cried.

The cats looked at me.

Since I knew Black Kitty would hold still until I helped her, but I feared Tad might panic and tear the netting, I unrolled Tad first.  He, understanding freedom was impending, and being an extremely loving and trusting kitty, went all limp and let me extract him.  Just as he was nearly free, he decided to grab that fun netting with his little claws one more time – “DON’T!” I yelled, and he immediately relaxed again.  (Yeah, you can raise your eyebrows all you want.  But my cats do what I say.)  (Usually.)

I sat him down on the floor, put my hand up like a traffic cop, and said, “Now STAY DOWN.”  He stayed down.

Then I unrolled Black Kitty.  Every time she found herself on her back, she informed me somewhat indignantly, “MRRROooooorRRRRFFFOOOooo!”

“Yes, well, it’s your own fault; you have no one to blame but yourself!” I informed her with every bit as much indignation.

Soon the cats were out of the bedroom, the door was shut, and I started all over again, putting that netting in order.

I have one regret:  Why did I not pick up my camera and take pictures of that fiasco?!!

Anyway, the cats obeyed an order to ‘Stay Down!’ better than ever, after that.

It was our daughter-in-law Amy’s 37^th birthday.  We gave her a couple of large Pioneer Woman rectangular baking dishes in two different sizes.  I like to think it’s a good gift, when I want to keep it myself!  😁

Amy wrote me a thank-you note:  “Thank you so much for the gift! 🎁 My kids were equally thrilled, since they, too, bought me some Pioneer Woman dishes! ❤❤❤”

That’s always fun, when you unexpectedly get things that match.  😊

That night, I had about half a row left to quilt, and the quilting would be done.  However, there was a problem:  the point where the bottom edge of the top would land on the backing would wind up about halfway into a border of appliquéd vessels or pots on that backing.

I wrote to ask my customer what she would like me to do.  She soon responded that it was fine, however it wound up; the backing could just be trimmed to fit the top.

So I scurried back upstairs and finished it.  By 12:30 a.m., the quilt was done, off the frame, and trimmed.  

I’m glad I used the silver thread in the bobbin, because it blended perfectly with the picture of Nelson Mandela, an important focal point on the back. 

This quilt will be a treasure for the lady’s family!  I was delighted to have the opportunity to quilt it.

Friday, I took pictures of the quilt on the back deck in natural lighting, then folded it tightly into a box (the smaller the box, the cheaper the shipping), and took it to the post office.

Soon it was on its way back home.  More pictures here.

This quilt measures 74” x 86”.  The pantograph is ‘African Samba’.  Following is what my customer, Linda, wrote about this quilt:

 

My husband and I lived in Argentina for 14 years for his job in mining.

A gal came from South Africa with 250 kilos of fabric.  She was a quilter also.  When she left, I bought something like 50 pounds of fabric from her.  So, for the most part, this quilt is made up of mostly African fabric.

The name of this pattern is called ‘Village’, by Kim McLean. I saw this quilt at our local quilt show last year. It had all these houses in the middle, but when I saw it those houses didn’t look like they belonged. Not with these wild animals. I came home and started drawing animals that weren’t in the pattern. 

I ordered the original and completely changed it.

They had to have a source of water, so that’s where the river came in. Then I knew the river had to have crocodiles, frogs, and fish. 

I looked on the Internet to see what the fish look like in Africa, and then, as close as I could, drew some.

I looked for African huts, people doing different things, chickens running around, etc. It was so much fun to do. 

Like I said before, for the most part the fabric is from South Africa.

I was especially happy to have the piece of fabric with Nelson Mandela (on the back).

 

Below is the back of the quilt.  That bottom edge is where I cut the vases and pots almost in half.  I think that when the binding is on, no one will ever think it wasn’t supposed to be that way all along.  😊

After leaving the post office, I went to the bank.  Next, I stopped at Subway and got a roast beef and mozzarella sandwich for Loren.  I’d brought along some tapioca pudding, cranberry juice, and a banana.  I was a little earlier than usual when I got to his house.  He hadn’t answered his phone when I called, but I finally got him at a quarter ’til four, and told him his food was in the refrigerator.  He said he’d been doing some business around town.

“Monkey business?” I asked, and he laughed.

Later he told me that he’d been hunting for a place that would repair his vacuum; the belt had broken.  The place they got it (many years ago) is out of business, and Sears doesn’t work on vacuums they haven’t sold.

So he asked me if ‘one of my husbands’ could help him fix it.

He meant, of course, one of my sons.  I promised to tell Larry or Teddy.  It didn’t occur to me to remind him that all the menfolk are still at work.  He is sometimes quite surprised to learn that Larry is at work, never mind what time of day it might be.

When I got home from town, I gathered up my paraphernalia (laptop, keyboard, mouse, coffee, and cellphone), and headed upstairs to my little office to get back to scanning photos in old albums.

That evening, Jeremy, Lydia, Jacob, Jonathan, and Malinda came visiting. 

Lydia texted me before they arrived, “Malinda is asking if you’re going to share your present with us. 😂 ”

“Haha!” I wrote back, “Is it edible?”

“Yep,” answered Lydia.

They brought me a soft, soft fleece blanket, a big box of assorted Ferrero Rochers, and a large loaf of chocolate chip quick bread, still hot from the oven.

It was the quick bread that Lydia intended us to share.  I cut generous slices for everyone, and we all ate warm, moist, chocolate chip bread while we visited.

That night I finished scanning one large album and started on another.  The album is from the summer of 1995, when we traveled through the Colorado mountains on our way to visit Larry’s Aunt Lynn in Raton, New Mexico.  This photo was taken August 4.  Here are Dorcas, 13; Lydia, 4; Hannah, 14; Caleb, almost 2; and Hester, 6.  We were at the top of Independence Pass, elevation 12,095 feet, on the east side of Aspen, Colorado.

I’d curled the girls’ hair the night before, and that morning they’d all dressed in the clothes we’d brought along specifically for taking pictures to include with our Christmas cards that year.

Take a look at that photo.  Can you see the problem?  The wind was whipping over the mountains at almost 50 mph!  And it was cold up there.  We changed our minds about the photo session.

“Oh, well,” remarked Hester, “At least everybody thought we were cute!”

“But I didn’t want people to think I was cute!” protested Keith, making the little girls giggle.

I spent Saturday scanning photos, and plowed my way through more than half of that big album.

As often happens on Saturday nights, my attempts at sleep didn’t pan out too well.  I may have gotten three hours.  That’s not enough.

“I hope the ushers with the goads don’t get me!” I grumbled to Larry.

I once said that to one of our elderly aunts, and she thought I meant it.

On Sundays when the pianist and organist start playing the song the congregation will sing, I get the hymn book out of the rack, look up the number, and turn to the page.  I then hand my book to Larry, and he shows it to Loren, who sits beside him.

Now, we always have two of our three different hymnbooks in the rack, and trade off at intervals.  We use Favorite Hymns, Inspiring Hymns, and Praise and Worship.  Sometimes I inadvertently choose a different hymnal than the one the instruments are using.  When my nephew Robert announces the number, I see that I have the wrong hymnbook – but most of the time this doesn’t matter, as the words are usually the same; so we generally just go ahead and use the book I already have open. 

This does not always work out well.

It’s plumb disconcerting and embarrassing to be singing gustily away, and suddenly find one’s self bawling out entirely different lyrics from those all around.

Another problem is, we are fleabrains.  By the time the congregation finishes singing the song and Robert prays and we all sit back down, we have forgotten that we are using the wrong book and need to switch.  He announces the next number, we turn to it, the piano plays the introduction – and it doesn’t match our page.  So then, light belatedly dawning, we scramble to grab the other book and get the pages turned to the correct song.

Once upon a time, we were singing ‘Rock of Ages’.  A fellow parishioner behind us – let’s call him Luciano – caterwauling loud as ever you can imagine, started to sing the words from one hymnal, which read, “When I rise to heights unknown” only we were singing from the hymnbook that read, “When I soar to worlds unknown” ---- so, at the top of his voice Luciano bellowed, “When I ROAR to worlds unknown!” 

Like to convulsed us beyond recovery, it did.

Last night after church, we were holding Baby Eva, and Caleb took a few pictures.  Her little face is getting plumper and prettier every time we see her.  💗

We stopped at Casey’s for roast beef/pepper jack wraps and Aloe Vera Juice with Pulp (yeah, we really liked that stuff when we got it last week).  We ate the wraps while we drove to Schuyler (a reader on a youtube audio book pronounces that town’s name as ‘shooler’) to get E85 for the Jeep. 

It was windy and raining, and the most amazing bolts of lightning were flying around all over the sky.  One bolt came shooting out from a cloud, aimed for another cloud off to the north, then suddenly the bolt changed its mind and went ’round and ’round and ’round in a big, messy, multi-vortex spiral before shooting back into the cloud from whence it came.  I never saw such a thing before in my life.

The trees around here are unusually pretty this year; the weather must’ve been exactly right to achieve the most vibrant color.  We don’t have the variety of trees there are in some of the northeastern states, so we don’t usually get as many orange and red leaves as they do.  However, people keep planting more and more of the colorful trees, so our state is quite a lot more brilliant in the autumn than it was when I was a child.

One time when Victoria was about seven, she got four or five cute little aprons out of the drawer and proceeded to tie them all on, all the way around herself.  Then she pulled out a cookbook, ingredients, bowls, bakeware, and utensils, and started stirring up something for dessert.  I walked into the kitchen just in time to see her stick her well-floured hands under the aprons and wipe them on her skirt.

“Aacckk, what did you just do?!” I exclaimed.

She looked a bit sheepish. “Well,” she explained, “I didn’t want to get the pretty aprons all dirty!”

Loren was lonesome today, I think.  When I went there to take him some food (including a roast beef wrap we saved him from last night), he showed me old photos of our family, when Loren, Lura Kay, and G.W. were little.  As I gathered up some of my dishes and headed out, he said with a smile, “You never stay long!”

Tomorrow I shall take him one of the albums I’ve scanned; he’ll enjoy looking through it.

The ‘In Love With Africa’ quilt will reach its destination in Washington State tomorrow.  I always watch an in-transit quilt with some degree of nervousness, and breathe a sigh of relief when it gets where it’s going safely.

Then I wait a little anxiously to see if my customer thinks the job I did was all right.

I received a birthday card from Country Traditions, the big quilt shop in Fremont, for 20% off all merchandise this entire month.  Perhaps I should take the opportunity to purchase the fabric for my next big quilt.  Country Traditions is the store where Larry got my Handi Quilter Avanté.  The man who owns the store along with his wife is so helpful and supportive.

On the other hand, there is that lovely little quilt shop, Sew What, in our town, only seven miles away, and it’s owned by my good friend Jo from high school, and I do like to give her business.  She’s such a lovely person, and she just keeps getting nicer through the years.  A friend gave me $10 for my birthday and requested that I use it – ‘for yourself at Sew What.’  (Making a quilt for one of my offspring’ns is just as good as ‘for myself’, right?  It’s for ‘myself’ to have fun with, cutting, sewing, quilting; right?)  But... saving 20% on enough fabric at Country Traditions to make a king-sized quilt is nothing to sneeze at. 

Jo now has a little room at the rear of her store where she has fabric on sale; that’s a somewhat new development.  Very helpful to those of us whose dollar bills don’t grow on money trees in the back yard.  Jo doesn’t have nearly the selection Country Traditions has – but it’s never been a problem, because of this happy fact:  her favorite fabrics are also my favorite fabrics.

Then there’s that beautiful quilt shop in the nearby small town of Fullerton, Nebraska, right on the edge of the Sandhills.  It’s in the old restored hardware store (built in the late 1800s) on the main street of town, and ------ oh, look, look!  I just discovered that the owner, Anne Wemhoff, used a handful of my very own photos on her webpage!

https://www.calicoanniesquiltshop.com/index2.html

She tells about their building here:  https://www.calicoanniesquiltshop.com/about.html

To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, “Looking here, looking there, fabric stores are everywhere!” – and they’re all full of my friends, and I can’t decide where to spend money next.  😅

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