Look! – I’m in the funnies!
Except I was doing something better
than merely stretching; I was pulling up a tree. A very small tree, yes; but a tree,
nonetheless.
I tell my sons and sons-in-law, “Whatever
you do, if you hurt yourselves, be sure you do it nobly.” (...pause...)
“That is, working, rather than playing.” 😄
Truthfully, I pray often for their
safety. There are so many ways they can get hurt, in their various jobs.
’Course, pulling weeds can be extremely
hazardous, too. 🙄
A week and a half ago, Andrew and Hester
put an offer on another house, and last week they listed their house. It sold in two days.
When they told Keira they were going to
move, she was unimpressed. “But I like this
house!!!” she said.
“We’ll take all of our things with us,”
Hester assured her. “We’ll take the
kitties, our clothes, your bed, the piano, all the furniture —”
“How??!!!” exclaimed
Keira in amazement.
Their new and bigger house is only a couple
of blocks from the old one, but on a much quieter street. In addition to the two main floors, the
basement and the third-floor attic are completely finished. It’s quite a lovely home. Their current home was built in 1910; the new
one was built in 1927.
“You’ll want to tell Keira not to jump
off the balcony,” I told Hester after looking at pictures of the house. Grandmas should always say helpful things
like that.
“The balcony door locks, so no worries,”
Hester assured me.
Andrew and Hester have done many
upgrades and updates to their house.
Whoever bought it is going to be delighted with it.
“We both knew we wanted something
bigger and on a quieter street,” Hester said, “but we have really loved this
house! Apparently we prefer older houses.”
I like older houses, too. They so often have such interesting nooks and
crannies.
“What did you ever do with that wee
little room at the top of the stairs?” I asked.
“And what was it originally for, do you think?”
“I don’t know what it would’ve been!”
replied Hester. “It has no vents or
outlets. We turned it into our walk-in
closet. Several years ago we had it
shelved and closet rods added.”
“I thought it looked like a room where
an old poet would’ve sat in the sun from the window and scribbled his poetry,”
I told her.
As I looked through the pictures of the
house they are buying, I noted the descriptions. One caption read, “Rugs not included with
house.”
I thought of the time we were watering
plants in our neighbors’ log home when they were on vacation. We made our way up to the second-story
balcony, where there were several varieties of houseplants sitting in the
filtered sunlight from the lace-covered tall front windows.
So there was Hester absentmindedly
wandering along, watering can in hand, looking at all the pretties on the side
tables and the coffee table in front of the antique mohair couch.
She had no idea that she was going to
walk right across a horsehide rug, complete with mane and tail.
I waited until she was in the middle of
it before crying, “Hester! You’re stepping
on a horse!”
Her head whipped around, she looked
down at her feet, and then she commenced to running in midair.
Gravity soon got the better of her,
though. Once she alit, she
skippety-hopped lickety-split off of that rug, shuddering from head to
foot. Hester loved horses. She did not love horsehide rugs.
Of course her disrespectful siblings
thought it all hilarious. Perhaps they
felt she deserved the startle, for some obscure reason?
Larry was sorry
Wednesday evening when he was rushing about getting ready for church, though,
when he realized what happens to good dress shirts when you leave them in the
dryer. 😏 It was too late to do anything about it, so he put on a tie,
slung his suit jacket over the top of the shirt, and off we went.
Fortunately, I
had swept, mopped, and vacuumed the floors right before I hurt my back. They’re in need of it again... but I won’t
worry about it just yet. As that saying goes, “‘A little doit nevah hoit
noboidy!’ said Moity to Goity as they ate doit.”
Oh, well... I’m
just glad I’m getting better, glad I can drive... quilt... play the piano...
cook... feed the cats... pet the cats... and scan photos. Next week. Next week I shall sweep and mop and vacuum
and weed the gardens. Maybe. Possibly.
Perhaps.
“And it created a
monster!” she laughed.
Anyway, thinking
about this... You know, if I keep
scanning photos, scanning photos, scanning photos, nothing but scanning
photos... even though I really, really like to keep at a project ’til I’m done...
I won’t have anything for next year’s fairs! What to do, what to do.
I’m thinking I should
at least make one special thing for next year. Shouldn’t I? Should I? I want these pictures scanned. But... I also want to take something to the
fair next year!
In
any case, I have determined that there is no way under the sun I will get done
scanning the rest of my albums before Christmas as I had hoped, even if I did
nothing else at all.
Tuesday afternoon, my phone rang. It was a lady from the County Fair, telling
me that I’d gotten a Grand Champion award on the Freeform table runner (she was
mistaken; it was on the Hexagon Farmer’s Market table topper), and 1st-Place
Best of County on the Atlantic Beach Path quilt! The Freeform
table runner had only a paltry little blue 1st-place
ribbon, as did the Vintage Sewing Machine wall hanging, A Stitch in Time,
rather than one of those big ruffly rosette ribbons.
It’s fortunate there are no size
restrictions at either the County or the State Fair, because the Atlantic Beach
Path quilt measures 123” x 124”. AQS only accepts them up to 112”; other
venues are the same or similar. Probably
something to do with their method of hanging and display. Poles slide into sleeves on the backs of
quilts, and those poles are held up by big frames.
At the County Fair, quilts are folded
because they have no good way of hanging them.
People only see a small section of the quilts. It’s too bad, really.
At our State Fair, they hang quilts on
what looks like giant skirt hangers. That method works all right – except
for the fact that there are always way too many quilts for the space they
have. They solve this problem by
overlapping the quilts. Except for the Grand
Champion, which hangs alone in a place of honor, and the quilts at the end of every
row, people can see only half or less of each quilt. There are white-gloved ladies walking
around throughout that big room, though, and they will lift quilts to allow
people to see hidden sections or backs of quilts.
But! – I have discovered (that is, I think
I have discovered) that the International Quilt Festival in Houston does not
have the size restrictions other quilt shows do. I’ve never gone to that
show, and would like to. If I should
happen to have a quilt accepted for competition and showing there, that would
create an excellent excuse to go, wouldn’t it, now?? 😃
If I learn there are size
restrictions, maybe I should just run a gathering stitch along the top of the
quilt, and pulllll? Kidding,
kidding. Or not.
See more pictures of the quilt
here: Atlantic
Beach Patch Quilt
Shortly after noon on Wednesday, Larry
told me that Loren had called him, because he couldn’t find any of his
electric shavers, and he thought I had put them somewhere.
I called Loren to see if we could sort
this out. It turned out, he had all of
his shavers (a pile of them, which somehow often wind up on the kitchen
table en masse); it was the cords that had gone AWOL.
Loren had recently ordered a new cord,
but it didn’t fit any of his shavers.
I told him I had no idea where his
cords were. “I don’t use electric
shavers very often,” I said, which made him laugh. I suggested places to look, but he couldn’t
find a solitary cord.
He eventually found one, but he has no
idea where, and he didn’t really want to tell us that he’d found it; who knows
why. Because he didn’t want to admit it
was right where he’d put it? Or because
he’s afraid I’ll hide it again?
I went to church that night for the
first time since I hurt my back two-and-a-half weeks earlier.
I asked Victoria if she and Carolyn and
Violet would like to come with me to the fair late Friday afternoon, as reporters
would be there taking pictures for the newspaper, and I was supposed to be
there. I told her their jobs were to
make me smile for the camera. The last time this happened, I looked grim
and highly displeased that I’d won all those pretty ribbons. 😂 Oh, to be naturally photogenic like my
husband and offspring are. 😅
This is me, and I am smiling!!
Later that night, a woman on Facebook
sent me a private message and instructed me to post a list, complete with
pictures, of all the quilts I have so she can decide which one to buy.
>>...guffaw, cackle...<<
Further, would I please hurry, because
time is of essence, and she plans to spend at least $150.
<<...loud roars of maniacal laughter...>>
$150 wouldn’t even purchase a third of the
materials for a large quilt.
The few quilts in my house are ours,
thank you very much. All the other quilts I’ve made have been given away to
those for whom they were specifically made.
I gave the lady a short list of the
appraisal value of my recent quilts.
She hasn’t made the slightest peep
since. I hope she didn’t fall flat in an
apoplectic fit.
I reported on this matter to one of the
online quilting groups. (If you want empathy,
you must tell your tale to likeminded souls.)
“Wow,” responded one quilting friend, “where
do ideas like that come from?!” Then, “People!”
she added for good measure.
Once upon a time when Hester was about five
years old, we were in a store somewhere, and somebody was being obnoxious.
As we quietly exited stage left, she said with a shake of her head, “Wow.
People can be sooo... peoplish!”
We’ve used that terminology ever since:
“That person is really peoplish!” and “Oh, don’t be so peoplish!” 😄
I finished Norma’s bin of photos (I’d
begun thinking that that thing was bottomless!) right before time to go to
church, and afterwards I edited the final eight pictures. And with that, I had scanned 20,221 photos, 1,189 of them Norma’s.
I was ready to get back to my own
albums. Or start a quilt.
As I look through my photos, I sometimes
wish we had videos of the kids when they were little.
Oh, well... I took enough pictures, if
you flip through them fast enough, it’s almost like a movie. Just missing the vocals, is all. 😄
My laptop is getting old, and will soon
need to be replaced. The screen is
discolored at the bottom, a hinge cover is gone, and the fan sounds like it’s
on its last leg. Last blade. Last gasp.
Last something.
I wondered, Is this thing four years
old, or only three? That’s the
general lifespan of most of my computers.
I looked it up, and got a surprise:
I purchased this laptop, an HP Envy with a 1 terabyte hard drive, 16 GB
of RAM, a 17.3” HD LED touchscreen, lighted keyboard, etc., on November 26,
2016. It’s over 4 ½ years old! And it’s been a good one.
The
laptop I had before this one had a Windows 8 operating system. The day
Windows 10 came out, I downloaded it. It had a few bugs, but I like
fiddling with computers, so that didn’t faze me much. I had that OS for a
while before I realized it had Cortana. I could be quilting away on the
other side of the room, call up Cortana, and ask her questions.
So one day I said, “Cortana, bring ’round
the car; it’s time to go!”
And she said, said she, “When you drive
a car off the top story of a car garage, there is a 65% chance that it will
land on its wheels.” hee hee
So then I said, “Home, James, and don’t
spare the horses!” – to which she replied in a snooty tone, “This is much
before my time. But try feeding them oats.”
I woke up the cats with my laughing.
Victoria called Thursday
morning to tell me she’d gotten Grand Champion for a photo she entered at the
fair. It’s a picture of Carolyn on her 3rd
birthday last September. She entitled it
“Carolyn & Friend”.
She entered five
pictures, got 1st place on four of them (including the Grand
Champion shot) and 2nd place on one.
Friday, I put away the bin of photos I
had scanned... closed my rolltop desk... started a backup of all my pictures
and documents onto two external drives... and then carried a stack of brand-new
fabric, purchased last October, into my quilting studio. My quilt design was
pulled up on EQ8... I was ready to begin!
Here are a couple of
the old photos in Norma’s bin. They are
of Larry’s maternal grandparents, James and Ruby [Bean] Jenkinson, on their honeymoon
in July of 1926.
Somebody – one of
those cheerful, thumbs-up, sorts of persons – informed me that once I quit
scanning photos to do quilting for several weeks or months, I would never
remember where I left off.
Do I look
disorgandized to you?!
I have marked every
finished album as ‘Scanned’, both inside the cover and on the spine. Each time I finish all the albums in a big
plastic tote, I mark the tote ‘Scanned’ with a permanent marker on the lid and
on the front of the bin. The folders of
photos now on my computer are numbered in correlation with the album numbers,
and the photos in the folders are numbered and labeled by name, location, and
date.
I have the next album
that I plan to scan sitting out, ready and waiting; so I should be able to pick
up where I left off without any trouble at all. Theoretically.
And to that Debbie Downer, I say, ‘Bah, humbug, to
you too!”
I wonder why the table topper got the Grand Champion award,
and not the Stitch in Time wall hanging?
I was much more impressed with the wall hanging.
😆
We took a quick look around the Exhibit Hall, and then it
was time to have our ‘pitchoos tooken’ (à la Nathanael, age 3). Victoria was first. She left Violet sitting beside me, and
Carolyn on the other side of Violet.
As Victoria
walked away, Violet watched silently and seriously, that full bottom lip pooched
out a wee bit, like she does when she’s thinking hard about something she isn’t
sure is to her liking.
I watched her,
in case she needed my reassurance.
But no, she was
just putting her strategy in place.
She was poised
and ready, the very instant Victoria got up on that platform and turned
our way. The child immediately sat up as tall as she possibly could and
waved like a small windmill in a hurricane gale. 🤣
“She waved so long
and so vigorously,” I told Victoria, “I think you might have to put her arm
back in its socket.” 😂
As we walked back to Victoria’s vehicle, Carolyn, 3, and
Violet, 2, walking along in front of us hand in hand, were discussing with each
other what Victoria had earlier told them:
“We’ll come back and go on the rides when Daddy gets home
from woik!” Carolyn told her younger sister in a reassuring tone (though it’s possible Carolyn was the one who needed the
reassuring more).
“Yes!” answered Violet in her sober way. “It’ll be so much
f------”
Just then, one of the rides swung screaming riders to the
side, then brought them whooshing back the other way, spinning, arcing upwards
until they were nearly upside down before whisking back down again, fast.
“That’s scawy,” said Violet in a small voice, both
girls having come to a total standstill.
They moved closer together, and put their arms around each
other.
And
Grandma was right behind them with her camera...
We saw Hester, Andrew, and Keira at the
fair just before we left. The little
girls were so pleased to see each other at an odd, new-to-them place. Such a novelty!
Back home, standing on
their front porch, Violet watching a vulture spiraling on an updraft waaaay
high above. His huge, outstretched wings
never flexed as he soared on the air currents.
“That bird can’t fly very well,” said
Violet in a bit of a sad tone.
This, because the bird wasn’t flapping
its wings. hee hee
When I got home... ((drum roll))... I began making a quilt. I have twenty different fabrics. I spent some time lining them up according to
value, taking pictures and changing them to black and white, then numbering
both fabrics and patches on the pattern photo I’d printed. Finally, I pulled out rotary cutter, cutting
mat, and slotted ruler. By 3:00 a.m., I
had cut the necessary patches from three of the fabrics.
Saturday afternoon, Bobby and Hannah stopped by to show me
the almost-new 2020 Hyundai Palisade they’d just purchased from Joe Swantek,
the man for whom Larry fixes vehicles in Genoa.
It’s a very nice crossover, and I’m so glad for them to have a decent,
reliable vehicle. I worried about Hannah
traveling in their old van.
As I looked at quilt pictures I’ve
saved on Pinterest, at the quilts I’ve designed in EQ8, and at a couple of my
quilting books, my focus narrowed until I was fairly certain I knew how I
wanted to make this quilt, and what I intend to add to it.
I looked at ready-made laser-cut silhouettes of wildlife, trees, and mountains; and my word, the price is totally out of my league. So I was sitting there looking at my screen, thinking, Well, I wonder if I could apply Steam-a-Seam II to fabric, and then cut these things nicely enough to ------------ and
suddenly it occurred to me, Oh, for pity’s sake. The box I am resting my feet on right this very moment holds a Sizzix eclips2 cutter that can do this, if I’m smart enough to figure it out.
I pulled up eCAL lite, the program that
came with the cutter, and started poking around in it. I tried putting in a line drawing of a moose
----- and whataya know, there it was, big as you please. So is it really
that easy? It’s going to cut that animal when I tell it to, right?
There are so many things that machine can do! I thought when I first got it that it was severely limited without the upgrade of the pricey software; but I suspect I was wrong about that.
I think I can just pop line drawings
from the Internet into the eCAL tracing library, make them the size I want, and
they’ll be ready to cut. I broke that moose drawing into layers and then
removed the eye, since I want only silhouettes.
Now I need to learn what the very best
kind of two-sided fusible web is for raw-edge appliqué. I want no
ravelings, and I want it to look as much like turned-edge appliqué as possible. There’s Heat & Bond... Lite Steam-a-Seam
II... and Misty SomethingOrOther that I’ve heard is really good. Ah, here
it is – Mistyfuse.
Some time ago, I purchased a can of
Elmer’s spray-on adhesive for my mat, because one of the first times I used it,
I put... uh... freezer paper, was it? on it, and it stuck firmly to the mat and
afterwards the mat wasn’t very sticky anymore. I’ll scrub it with soap
and water, let it dry, then spray it with adhesive (Elmer’s is the same stuff
and a whole lot cheaper than the Sizzix spray-on adhesive, so they say)... so I
shall give it a try. The adhesive is a lot cheaper than a new mat.
When I quit cutting fabric Saturday night, there were only
three more fabrics from which to cut, and I would be ready to start sewing.
One of my favorite
parts of quilting or sewing is when everything is finally all cut out, and I’m
ready to sit down and take that very first stitch on the new project. (’Course, I’m quite liable to make the first
seam with wrong side to right side, necessitating a bout with the seam ripper, after
which, since once is never enough, I repeat the identical error; but we won’t
talk about that now.)
Sunday morning I got up early and was all
ready for church by a quarter after nine.
It would be the first Sunday services I had attended since I hurt my back
three weeks ago. I made sure I still had
pretty postcards tucked into my little ‘church purse’ to dole out to the
grandchildren after the service. Larry
gives them small strawberry mints; I have to fight back somehow, don’t
I?!
It was a pretty day,
bright and sunny, and still only 65° when we started toward town.
After the
service, I asked Carolyn if they’d gone on any rides at the fair.
“Yes!” she said
happily. “It was a yot of fun.”
Violet, as she
is oft wont to do, stood by seriously, waiting for her older sister to finish
what she was saying before adding her own two-cents’ worth. Then, leaning forward and looking directly into
my face for emphasis, and with her hazel eyes wide, she proclaimed, “It was WYOLD.” (wild)
Today I went
to pick up my things at the fair. I asked Nathanael to help me with that
big, heavy Atlantic Beach Path quilt (15 pounds, and every one of them awkward).
When I got to their house, Hannah asked if I’d like to drive the new
Palisade.
I
declined. If I drive up a tree, let
it be my own vehicle, not someone else’s new one!
So
she drove, while Nathanael and I rode.
Nathanael and I went into the big
Exhibit Hall and gathered my things.
Next, I went into the building where they dole out the moolah, and
received $8. (Platte County only has a
population of 33,470, after all; they can’t afford to be terribly
generous.) I walked back out to Hannah’s
vehicle and handed the money to Nathanael, for carrying the quilt for me.
Then I decided to call Victoria and ask
her if she wanted me to pick up her stuff while we were there. She
would, please, and thank you; so I trotted back inside. “Here I am again!”
I announced – and one of the ladies came scurrying out from an inner office
with the papers I needed to take to the State Fair with my Best of County
quilt; they’d forgotten to give them to me.
I signed my name a couple more times...
gathered up Victoria’s papers and money... signed for it... and told them, “I’ll
go sit out in the car for a little while, and then come back in, just in case
there’s more stuff I need to get.” 😄
We drove back to the auditorium again
to get the photos Victoria had entered,
then we went and dropped her things off and petted and admired their new kitten.
It’s ten weeks old, fluffy gray, and they named her Luna. She’s a little
darker gray than their kitty Yuki.
When we got back to Hannah’s house,
Nathanael toted my quilt over to my BMW, and then Hannah asked him if he’d like
to go driving. He’s 15 now, and has a learner’s permit. He happily
headed for the driver’s seat.
Levi, 11, informed me the other day,
regarding his brother’s driving, “Life is a little more hazardous and
terrifying than usual these days.” 😂
A quilting friend of mine who is in her
mid-nineties was naming off things she didn’t know how to do.
“Yes, but you tiled your floor,” I
protested, “and not so very long ago, either!”
The only time I tried tiling was once
after we moved our house in (from a farm place 90 miles away), and a half-tile beside
the tub had fallen off.
I can do this, I thought.
Ha.
The tile had broken, but there was one
whole, new, matching tile under the sink. I needed a half-tile.
Well, an almost-2/3-tile, actually.
Accordingly, I scrounged around and
found a little gadget of Larry’s with which one could cut a tile in half.
I carefully measured and marked, positioned the gadget (a nipper, maybe?), and
squeezed.
It split vertically instead of
horizontally.
That shouldn’t have mattered – but the
tile was not square; it was slightly rectangular.
Well, I could make that work,
too. Just a little more off one side ------
The piece split right in half.
I finally got the nippers turned in the
right direction, and cut the piece the way I’d intended. It was in more
pieces than it should’ve been, but I had glue!
I glued the piece(s) into place.
It’s still there, crooked split and
all.
In looking at
the pictures of Andrew and Hester’s new house, I noticed radiators in the rooms. In the description, it says, “Peerless high
efficiency boiler for heat, heat pump and air conditioner for cooling.”
It’s a new
and good system, unlike the radiators we once encountered in the Old Faithful Inn
at Yellowstone National Park.
We’d always
wanted to stay in the old part of the Lodge, and finally one time we decided to
do so when Caleb and Victoria were with us.
They were ages 5 and 1 ½. We were
only in the room a few minutes when I discovered that there was nothing but one
of those old-fashioned radiators for heat, and it was so hot I was terribly
afraid one of the children would fall against it and get burnt. However, on the other side of the room, a
cold wind was whistling through the cracks around the window, and both children
had bad colds, and the bathroom was somewhere down the chilly hallway, to be
shared with other lodgers. We decided to
move from the 150-year-old part of the inn to the ‘new’ 100-year-old part.
In the ‘new’
room, there was an old clawfoot tub. I
started filling it up to give the children baths. Larry was going for the suitcases – and he
had a loooong ways to walk, and didn’t get back for quite a while – and he also
had to go pay the innkeeper more money for this newer room. We didn’t have any toys for Victoria in the
room yet, and she was toddling around periodically holding her hands out palm
side up and telling me, “Dolly all gone!” in a sad tone. So I handed the poor, deprived child the
little wicker basket that sat on a counter.
It had tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion, powder, toothpaste,
and mouthwash in it. She was totally
delighted, even though I told her not to open any bottles. She was satisfied to just line them up... put
them back in the basket... take them out... and line them up again. And then, while I got out her pajamas, she
trotted into the bathroom, decided to float the basket in the tub – and with a
yell of surprise and a loud SPLASSHHHH!!! — she fell in,
headfirst.
I dashed into
the bathroom to find her standing in the tub, holding the side, staring at me
with big eyes. I couldn’t keep from
laughing, so she laughed too as I hauled her out, all soggy and dripping. Fortunately, I’d already removed her
shoes.
A minute
later, I turned on the water in the sink – and it shot out like it was
jet-propelled. What, did they have that
thing plumbed directly into Old Faithful Geyser?? The water swirled into the sink and slooshed
right out the other side. I leapt
backwards in order to save my new leather shoes, then scurried quickly to the
opposite side of the sink and turned it off.
Behind me, Caleb
and Victoria were standing by the door, nearly bent double, they were laughing
so hard.
“Do it ’gain,
Mama!!” said Victoria, eyes a-sparkle.
Did they think all my mishaps were staged for their benefit and enjoyment??
Now to pay
some bills and then get back to cutting pieces for the next quilt!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.