On the way to Loren’s house last Tuesday afternoon, I finally remembered to call Country Traditions in Fremont and ask if they had a tension screw for the bobbin in my Avanté. It had disappeared the previous Saturday night.
The tech, whose workroom is in the
basement, wasn’t there, and the ladies who work on the main floor had no idea
if there was such a thing as a bobbin tension screw on the premises; but I was
glad and relieved to hear they do still have a Handi Quilter tech,
though the store has new owners. The
lady promised to have him call me the next morning.
Loren’s meal that day consisted of a Southwestern
burrito with a bit of Miracle Whip on top (picanté sauce is too hot for him), broccoli,
cauliflower, and carrots, peaches, strawberry yogurt, cranberry sauce,
lemon-limeade, and a blueberry streusel muffin.
He showed me pictures in a book he’s
been reading, The Redemption of Nathan
Bedford Forrest (1821-1877). Forrest was a Confederate general during the
Civil War (1861-65). For a while after
the war, he was a KKK leader; but he turned to God and changed his whole
life. Quite a story.
Very few ever tell the
last part of Nathan Forrest’s story these days.
When I got home, I washed
the dishes, paid some bills – and remembered to call Handi Quilter (based in North
Salt Lake, Utah). I had earlier written
an email about the bobbin screw, and they had replied with a parts number an
800 number I could call to order said screw.
I requested five. The lady
promised to send them by priority mail; they would arrive Friday or Saturday.
I figured if I was
able to get some screws in Fremont the next day, I would do so, and it would be
good to have more coming from HQ, too.
I went upstairs and
looked at the quilt on frame, wondering how long I had quilted without that
screw in the bobbin. I peered at the
back of the quilt, using a mirror and a flashlight.
The tension looked
fine.
I looked at the quilt
some more. I looked for the screw some
more. Maybe
it’s in the last customer quilt? 😦🤭😬
Then I pressed the
little tension bar on the bobbin snugly against the side of the bobbin case,
replaced it in the bobbin race, and quilted, checking the tension often.
By a quarter ’til 8, the Anne of Green
Gables quilt was done. The backing (above) is made from a coordinating jelly roll (fabric strips).
Wednesday, October 6, was my birthday. I am now 61.
One after another of the children and grandchildren wished me a happy
birthday.
On That Day (October 6th) in History:
105 BC Battle of Arausio: The Cimbri inflict the
heaviest defeat on the Roman army of Gnaeus Mallius Maximus
68 BC Battle of Artaxata: Lucullus averts the bad omen
of this day by defeating Tigranes the Great of Armenia
1917 Battle of Passchendaele: Canadian troops capture
the village of Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000
casualties on both sides
1948 The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 100,000 in the
Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic
1951 Joseph
Stalin proclaims the Soviet Union has the atomic bomb
1536 William Tyndale, English Protestant Bible translator
and scholar, is strangled and burned at the stake at 41 or 42 (born c. 1494)
1866 1st train robbery in US (Reno Brothers
take $13,000)
1917 Battle of Passchendaele: Canadian troops capture the
village of Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000 casualties
on both sides
1939 Last Polish army is defeated in World War II
1941 German army occupies Briansk, USSR
1943 Battle at Vella Lavella, Solomon Island
1944 Royal Dutch Navy submarine Zwaardvis (Swordfish)
sinks German submarine U168 in the Java Sea
1973 Yom Kippur War begins as Syria & Egypt attack
Israel
2002 The French oil tanker Limburg is bombed off Yemen
Wow. No wonder
I’ve always had a penchant for yelling and throwing things. 😂
(Yeah, yeah; I know that has nothing to do with
anything.) (I have to pitch in disclaimers
for those literal souls who take everything as solemn fact.)
That morning, someone texted from an unknown
number, “Happy Birthday Grandma!!🎉”
I, thinking it was probably one of
Hannah’s children, wrote back in Wright-kid-friendly lingo: “Thank you!
But which grandurchin is this? I’m
reading on my laptop app, and it’s not giving up any names.”
My answer came in a few minutes: “Emma 😉” Emma is Teddy’s daughter.
I probably would’ve thought up
something other than ‘grandurchin’, had I known it was her! I have now put her number into my phone, so
as to tell the difference between Emma, and oh, say, Levi. 😅
Larry called. He was in Fremont and could pick up the
tension screw, if Country Traditions had one. It was 11:20 a.m., and they
had not yet called. I gave them a call. The tech was not in. The ladies did not
know when he would be in, and still had no idea what parts he might have available.
And evidently the string between their cans had come disconnected, and they couldn’t
ask him. Bah, humbug. They
promised to have him call the next day.
I
spent the majority of the day scanning old photos, including Victoria’s
new-baby pictures, and her first-smile-on-film pictures. Babies’ first smiles are often sort of
whoppyjaw. 😃
Victoria
sent an audio clip of Carolyn singing happy birthday to me. They had just arrived home from their vacation
to Tennessee.
Later that afternoon, Jocelyn wished me
a happy birthday and sent video clips of Justin and Juliana saying, “Happy
Birthday, Grandma! I love you!”
This is me with my mother,
Hester Swiney. It was January of 1962,
so I was 1 year and 3 months; she was 44. That’s my brother G.W.’s ’61 Dodge on the
left.
Here I am at age 2 ½
with my nephew Richard Swiney, 5 ½. Yes,
my nephew, Loren’s oldest son, is 3 years older than me. We were flowergirl and ringbearer at a friend’s
wedding. And I knew his ears were
ticklish.
I took Loren some supper before
church: Alaskan wild-caught salmon with
peppers and onions sprinkled on it during the last five minutes of cooking,
black cherry yogurt, a couple of slices of Schwan’s American cheese,
lemon-limeade, fire-roasted potatoes and vegetables, cranberry sauce, and
strawberry jello with peaches in it.
After the church service, we visited
with friends, children, and grandchildren. Andrew, Hester, and Keira gave me a little red
bag made of boiled wool with leather trim, a hazelnut-coffee-scented two-wick candle
in a jar with a metal lid and bale, a fat quarter that Keira had chosen at Sew
What, a card from Keira (handmade by Hester), with some writing added by
Keira. I pointed at it and said, “Oh! You drew a butterfly!”
Keira looked at it, too. She tipped her head, looked a little
embarrassed, and said, “Well, but, ... I just scribbled.”
“Well, you scribbled a butterfly!” I
told her, and she grinned at me happily.
(Can you see the ‘butterfly’ there, above her name?)
I looked at the fat quarter, pointing
out a fox, an owl, a kitty... Keira stepped from one foot to the other,
nodding, barely able to wait ’til I’d finished before exclaiming excitedly, “And
I picked it out for you by myself!!!”
There was also a gift certificate from Sew
What. Another friend gave me some
$$$$; I’ll add it to my gift certificates for the quilt shop and get something
nice.
Larry and I then went to Wal-Mart. In addition to food for ourselves, we got a couple
of things for Loren: an outlet strip (because
his are very old and don’t hold plug ends tightly, and the big clock I got him with
the date and day display won’t stay on), and a large box of yogurt to put in
his refrigerator. We came home and had a
late supper. I went from starved to
stuffed in 10 minutes flat.
Thursday, two quilts arrived from a
lady who lives in Glen Allen, Virginia, a northern suburb of Richmond.
A gift was also delivered from Teddy
and Amy and family: a pretty quilt
calendar, a quilting book by Tilda, whose website I’ve enjoyed for several
years, and a big bag of organic coffee beans.
Quilting and coffee. The perfect
combination. 😊
After taking Loren some food, I came
home and headed up to my quilting studio to start loading one of the quilts. Nobody from Country Traditions had called.
At 4:40 p.m., I called them. The lady who
answered was surprised I was calling again. “Somebody already contacted
you!” I didn’t say anything, wondering if I should look for recent
unanswered calls. (I did look later; there were none.) The lady added, “Or so I thought.” Then
she told me, “The tech doesn’t have any bobbin tension screws, but he can order
some for you.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I’ve ordered some
from Handi Quilter, but they won’t be here until Saturday.”
When I basted the top edges of the
quilt down, I took a look at the tension... adjusted the top tension to match
the bobbin thread, and then ... I quilted, stopping often to check the tension.
The quilt is called Fairy Forest and is
for the lady’s almost-six-year-old granddaughter. The little girl picked
out the pantograph, which is called ‘Adore’.
The screws did not arrive Friday.
A friend asked, “Does Larry have a magnet on a wand,
stick, or handle? Something so small
could have bounced a long way.”
“He does, somewhere,” I told her, “but first I need a
block and tackle pulley system to drag him home to find it.”
Thinking about that... there’s a very real chance any
magnet of Larry’s would be all greasy. I
should get one for myself. But... if the
magnet is too strong... and the screw is in the last customer quilt... might it
suddenly snap that quilt right off the baby around whom it’s wrapped, and bring
it flying through the breeze straight back to my house?!! 😲
Here are the fairies on the bottom
border of the Fairy Forest quilt, and below is the back of the quilt.
Teddy called a little before 6 to ask
if he could come check his blood pressure, as he’s had a headache for a couple
of weeks, and doesn’t feel so great. He
was soon coming in the door. His blood
pressure was indeed a bit high.
Then, “There’s Uncle Loren,” said
Teddy, as a red Jeep Wrangler parked out in front.
“Uh, oh,” said I, glancing at the
clock, and seeing that it was about 6:30 p.m.
We’re always in for some confusion, when Loren comes driving up at that
hour.
“I’ll go intercept him,” said Teddy,
heading out the door.
After a bit, Loren headed toward his
home, and Teddy came back inside to report.
By this time I was upstairs quilting again.
As suspected, Loren was looking for ‘Norma
June’. Teddy told him she’d passed away,
but this news didn’t make much of a dent.
Teddy then tried to distract him and redirect the conversation, telling
him he’d just taken his blood pressure, since he’d been having a headache –
whereupon Loren immediately ‘remembered’ that he’d had a slight headache
for two weeks, too.
“Aaaccckkk, Teddy,” said I, “did you
have to tell that to a known hypochondriac?!”
😅
I told him some of the incidents with
Loren over the last two weeks, adding, “Dementia takes a person’s bad traits
and multiplies them by ten or twenty!”
Then, “I sure hope I never get it, ...”
One look at Teddy’s face, and I knew
before he even opened his mouth what was going to come out of it, and was
laughing before he got halfway through the sentence.
“Don’t worry,” he comforted me, “we won’t
even notice a difference.”
That Teddy.
After extracting assurances from him
that he would do something about his blood pressure, I bid him adieu.
A little before 10:00 p.m., I finished
the Fairy Forest quilt.
The 18 flash drives I ordered to put Norma’s
old family photos on have arrived. The Amazon seller surely must’ve gone
broke, sending them to me; he sent them one at a time, each in a big
padded envelope, with the exception of two envelopes that contained two flash
drives, and one that actually contained three.
What in the world?? As soon as I
have a chance, I’ll load the pictures – 1,262 photos – on them. They will be for our children, Larry’s
brother and his children, and Larry’s sister.
A friend who lives in Nova Scotia, after seeing my pictures
of Double Knockout roses still blooming in my garden, and an unknown bug on a
weed, asked, “Will it be ‘stink bug’ season soon?”
The
promised screws from Handi Quilter in Utah did not arrive Saturday – and that
meant that there wasn’t a chance of seeing them before Tuesday at the earliest,
because today is Columbus Day.
I
took pictures of the Fairy Forest quilt on the back deck; quilts always look
prettier under the sky. 😊 The quilt measures 57” x 81”.
I
began loading the Mighty Jungle baby quilt.
I
took a little time out to make Loren some supper. On the menu:
Alaskan wild-caught cod with lots of butter on it, red-skin potato
salad, sweet peas, peaches, Oui lemon-on-the-bottom yogurt, and lemon-limeade.
Home again, the baby quilt was soon loaded,
and I was straightening and taping down the pantograph, which is called ‘Bohemian
Leaves’.
The backing for the quilt was dark
forest green. The front was mainly an animal print on off-white
background, with a border of an animal print on a gray-tan swirly background,
and another border of dark forest green.
Thinking about the possibility of a slight tension variation, I decided
I’d better use the same color of thread top and bottom. Not off-white; that would be too glaring on
the back. I hunted through my thread drawer – and found a big cone of
40-weight Gütermann Tuskegee grey that perfectly matched the background of the pieced
border, and looked fine on the main print.
In the drawer full of 60-weight Bottom Line thread, I rummaged up a
color called ‘Statue’ that was almost exactly the same color as the Gütermann
thread.
Just right. The machine was soon threaded
and ready to go.
By 12:30 a.m., the Mighty Jungle quilt was
finished. It
measures 47” x 47”.
I still have a Fairy Forest matching pillow
top to quilt; I’ll do it tomorrow.
We had a high
of 72° Sunday, and it was bright and sunny. However, various locations
across the Rockies are expecting 30+ inches of snow, and the Nebraska Panhandle
might even see a few flakes, too.
Here's our front walk between the hostas and the Autumn Joy sedum:
When we took
Loren his lunch after the morning church service, we plugged in his new outlet
strips and switched all the cords from the old strips to the new ones. One of the old plugs was warped and
discolored, having gotten too hot at some point. Fortunately, it had stopped working instead
of catching on fire. Yikes.
Larry then
rolled Loren’s big garbage can down the driveway to a spot near the road,
positioning it near a big lilac bush where it would be noticed by the trash
collectors (U & I Sanitation), and yet not look out of place.
“It can just
stay there,” Larry told Loren, “and then I can take your bag of trash out on
Sunday afternoons, and you won’t have to on Monday mornings.”
Loren often
forgets to take his trash out on Monday, even though he’s written himself a
multitude of notes to remind him about it.
He doesn’t roll the trashcan out; he only carries a bag out and puts it
beside the road. The last few weeks, he
has somehow gotten it into his head that he must wait until he hears the truck
approaching (they come anywhere from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.) and then scurry out to
meet them, sometimes pitching the bag into the truck himself. Last week he called Larry at 12:30 p.m. to
ask when the garbage truck would be coming.
Larry, having
seen it on the game cam, told him it had already been there at 9:30 a.m.
Loren did not
seem too troubled about the fact that he had missed the truck, although in the
past one would’ve thought it was a major calamity, to hear him exclaiming over the
mishap.
At 2:30 p.m.,
he carried his bag of trash out to the road.
Fifteen minutes
later, he went back out and got it.
There must’ve
been A Wrinkle in Time, hmmmm?
He forgot to go to the evening church
service last night (this happens now and then), but we could see from the game
cam that he was fine. About the time he
should have already been dressed for church, he carried a small garbage can out
to the big trashcan near the road and dumped it. He tried removing a weed from his driveway
with his foot. The effort was fruitless,
and he soon gave up, though he did tug a weed out of the ground nearby, then
trot back to the big trashcan and toss it in.
“Shall I call
and remind him about church?” asked Larry, phone in hand.
“No,” I said,
“it’s too late, and he’ll get into a panic trying to get dressed in time. He’s safe and sound at home; it doesn’t hurt
a thing if he stays there. He’ll
probably soon go to bed. Plus, he won’t
have to drive home after dark.”
I looked at the
game cam pictures again, then told Larry, “That trashcan out there at the end
of his drive is intriguing him. Reminds
me of the time one of the kids kicked a ball into the pasture on the other side
of our fence, and one of the Black Angus calves spotted it. He came creeping around his mother, sneaking
up on that thing... He reached out and
touched it with his nose – and it rolled! That calf made a backwards leap of a good six
feet, spry as a kitten.”
We laughed all
over again, remembering the show those little calves could put on.
After church, Jeremy,
Lydia, and family gave me a set of coffee mugs, an oven mitt with apples
printed on it, a notepad-and-pen set with a slice of pumpkin pie printed on
each note page, lavender body scrub, and a gift card to Bass Pro Shops.
Violet had her
3rd birthday while they were on vacation. We gave her a birthday present last
night: a doll that talks and laughs and
cries. A bottle and a pacifier came with
it. We also had two pretty little New
Testaments, one each for Carolyn and Violet.
You should’ve
heard Violet when she got a little piece of wrapping paper ripped off of the
box the doll was in: “It’s a dolly, it’s
a dolly!!!” But there was nothing
but words showing on the side of the box where she’d pulled away the
paper. How did she know?
I had a nice
visit with my sister Lura Kay last night.
We don’t get to do that often enough.
This morning I saw from the game cam
that the garbage collectors had found the trashcan without any trouble. I wondered if they’d see it, since they’d be
expecting a black bag (or nothing at all), and the can was tucked against the
lilac bush.
A little later, Loren mowed his
lawn. Early this afternoon, he trotted
down the driveway, gathered up the trashcan, and rolled it to the opposite side
of his driveway, tucking it against the burning bush that’s just starting to
turn red.
I was glad I saw that he’d done that,
because the can is allllmost in the way when one turns into his drive – and it
can’t be seen until one is nearly on it.
“See,” I said to Larry later, showing
him the picture, “I told you that thing is like a new plaything, since
you put it out there yesterday! It’s as
good as a Fisher Price toy. ‘Can on the
west! Can on the east! You can, I can, let’s all move the U & I
can!” 🤣😂😆
I took Loren some food at 4:00 p.m. (managing
to avoid the trashcan): chicken breast
fillet, broccoli, potato salad, peaches, rice pudding, strawberry yogurt (which
he ate first), prunes, and grape juice. He
was his usual {somewhat confused} self, cheery and appreciative. I was glad for that; he hadn’t seemed well on
Saturday, and I’d worried about him. He
said he wasn’t sick, but just ‘didn’t feel right’. I asked a number of questions, decided he had
perhaps been sleeping, and most likely needed to eat. After making sure he had our phone numbers
handy (he no longer has any idea how to redial or speed dial or look for a
number on his phone; he enters each digit individually), I departed, leaving
him eating and saying he would be all right.
He said he was fine when Larry called him the next morning before
church, although he was surprised to learn it was Sunday.
Larry was going to go
bow hunting the other day – and discovered that someone had stolen his crossbow
out of his pickup. He now has a brand
new crossbow.
He went hunting this evening (with a
gun) – and brought home a deer. We shall
soon have a freezer full of venison steaks, loins, and burger.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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