Journal: Fabric & Fires and Tornadoes, Oh, My!

 

It’s been a week of our children’s anniversaries:  Joseph and Jocelyn’s 11^th on October 17, Todd and Dorcas’ 8^th on October 18, and Keith and Korrine’s 4^th on October 20.  The previous week, it was Teddy and Amy’s 20^th and Caleb and Maria’s 9^th on October 13.  It will be Kurt and Victoria 6^th on October 30.  Six of our nine children have anniversaries in October.

As I mentioned in last week’s letter, a week ago Sunday evening we attended the wedding of Jeremy’s younger brother.  Jeremy and Lydia and their family sat in the second pew from the front, on account of being ‘family of the groom’ and because Malinda was a flowergirl.  They usually sit near the back.

When the service was over, we all walked past the bridal party, shaking hands with them, wishing them well, and so forth.  Even the little flowergirls and ring bearers stand there and shake hands (often with the wrong hand). 

I came to Malinda... grinned at her... she grinned at me... and I asked, “Hello, haven’t I met you somewhere before?”

Mind you, Malinda was working vewy, vewy hard at being the perfect little well-behaved flowergirl.  (I knew this, of course.)

She giggled.

I shook her hand, told her how pretty she looked... and when she tried to remove her hand from mine to offer it to her grandpa, I held on and went on shaking it.

Not for long.  Malinda doesn’t quite know what to do with grandma when she gets all ridiculous.  So I only dabble in the ridiculousness, and don’t go all full bore.

I gave her a little pat on the shoulder and said, “You really do look beautiful.”  She forgave me on the spot for being goofy, and beamed at me.

We turned the corner and headed down the hallway toward the Fellowship Hall – and there were Jeremy, Jonathan, and Ian.  After complementing Ian, 6, and Jonathan, 8, on their new suits, I said to Jonathan, “...and you sat way up front in church, and didn’t bawl out loud once!”

He immediately stopped smiling, raised one eyebrow, and lowered the other one down hard.  haha  He’s such a funny little guy.

When Malinda was littler, she was quite timid, and never wished to hold anyone’s hands but her parents’.  But one day we walked out of the church, and the wind was blowing at about 45-50 mph.  Nearly knocked the child off her feet, and made me take a quick backwards step, too.

I said to her, “Oh!  The wind’s going to blow Grandma away!”

She looked at me quickly, both of us leaning into the wind.  Then, face quite serious, she said, “I’ll hold your hand, Grandma, so you won’t blow away.”

And we proceeded all the way to her vehicle, halfway across the parking lot, hand in hand.  💞

Tuesday afternoon, I went to my favorite little quilt shop in town, Sew What, which is owned by a friend of mine from high school days.  There I spent a gift certificate that Hester and Andrew gave me for my birthday of 2021, and another gift certificate that Teddy and Amy gave me for Christmas of 2021.  I also had cashed the rewards check from Boise Basin Quilters and a check from a friend for some quilting I did for her.

I bought a stack of reds and two big pieces of off-white-on-off-white (that makes perfectly good sense.  Really, it does!)... and a few days ago, I received the blue fabrics I ordered from The Quilt Crossing in Boise.  So I now have two sets of fabrics in my favorite colors.  (Well, I’m liable to say brilliant teal greens and teal blues are my favorite colors, next week.  Colors are my favorite colors, I guess!)  

There are two coordinating sets of blues... and there are actually three or four coordinating sets of reds.  Some can intermingle... some would clash, if they were side by side.  I will need more background, probably; but these fabrics should be the beginnings of several quilts.

For now, back to the photo-scanning and editing.  Soon, soon, I will finish this project. 

Wednesday, Victoria sent me some pictures.  This is the house in Glenwood, Iowa, where she and Kurt and the children had made reservations to stay overnight for their anniversary next weekend.  

They intended to then go to the Arbor Day Farms’ celebration in nearby Nebraska City. 

The house burned down last weekend.

We are so sorry for the owners of this lovely house, which was fixed up so prettily inside; but so thankful Kurt and Victoria and their little family were not there when it happened.  Whoever had been staying there got out safely, and no one was injured.

Below is a furry little gray spider I saw on a boulder alongside Snake River in southwestern Wyoming.  I used my 90mm Tamron macro lens to get a good closeup.  I crouched down to get a shot – and he rolled those two eyes atop his head back to look at me!

Can you see how the entire back of his head looks like a ‘face’, with the markings and colorations of his ‘fur’?  That’s his God-given defense, making predators think he’s a lot bigger than he really is.

When I posted the picture on Facebook, the usual plethora of comments followed, most of them on the order of, “Yuck!” and “Eww!” 

One lady wrote, “Ugh, I HATE wolf spiders!”

I responded, “No wolf spider.  Just a wee little fuzzy gray spider no bigger than my thumbnail.”

“It looks huge!” she protested.

“The wonders of a macro lens!” I told her.  😁

I once saw a very large wolf spider sitting bolt still out on our front walk.  It looked so odd, so kind of... lumpy?  I bumped it with my foot to see if it was alive, and was totally amazed when about a hundred teeny, tiny baby wolf spiders went scurrying every which way.

One of the girls – Lydia, most likely – who had happened to be standing beside me immediately took to the stratosphere.

This little gray spider is a ‘good’ spider.  He catches a lot of less desirable insects.  Spiders are intriguing creatures.  For instance, here’s something I only learned a few years ago:  While most spiders have eight eyes arranged in pairs, not all do.  Some species do not have any eyes at all, while others have as many as 12.  How ’bout that.

I often find Alpine asters, one of my favorite flowers, way up in the high altitudes, even above treeline.  Up there, they lie close to the ground – and sometimes they are almost purple, rather than this light lavender color.  They look so delicate, but in truth are very hardy.

Thursday, after a lengthy hiatus from quilting on account of that gargantuan photo-scanning project (35,000 photos and counting), I vacuumed and dusted my quilting studio, including the rails, quilt table, and quilting machine.  Next, I loaded a quilt that my friend Sherri had given me Wednesday night after church so that I could quilt it for her.

I cleaned and oiled my Avanté, chose the thread, and threaded the machine.  The quilt is for Sherri’s Aunt Janell’s new granddaughter, making the baby Sherri’s first cousin once removed – and the baby is also my great-great-niece – my late nephew David’s granddaughter, his youngest son’s first baby.  (Did you get all that?  There will be a quiz later.)

I chose a pantograph and got it aligned.  The center of the quilt is an embroidered piece done for Sherri by her Aunt Janell in the early 70s when Sherri was just a little girl.  That makes this quite a special quilt. 

Now, the Question of the Day:  Would I remember how to quilt??

Here’s the oval handmade rug that Teddy and Amy gave me for my birthday.  Amy found it at a craft show somewhere.  Isn’t it pretty?  I’d been hoping to make myself one of those for a long time.

I used 50-weight off-white So Fine thread on the quilt top, and 40-weight lavender/pink variegated Rainbows thread in the bobbin.  Both threads are by Superior.

I pressed the On button, got a grip on the handles, and started moving that big machine.

Yep and yesirree, I remembered how to quilt!  😄

Soon the first row was done and it was time to roll the quilt forward.  But first, I trotted downstairs and put some chicken into the oven; it was almost time for supper.

Since I’d had another of those nights where I awoke in the middle, couldn’t get back to sleep for about three hours, and then, once I finally fell back to sleep, I slept later than I had intended, I didn’t stay up and finish the quilt, as I might’ve done.  But it was done by the next afternoon.

When I got to the central embroidered panel, I stopped quilting and moved the machine around the embroidery, marking the pantograph with a pencil as I did so, using the laser light to show me where to mark.

Then I could just follow the panto, stopping to outline the embroidery and do a few fill lines when I got to it.  I used my glide foot so I could get close to the stitching, which is done with medium-weight yarn, without damaging it.

The neighbor’s dog barked.  I paused with the quilting and went to peer out the window.  Around here, if a dog ever barks like he means it, especially at night, I might take a quick look at the mountain lion news for Platte and Nance Counties (though I don’t worry about it as much, now that we have no cats).

That is, any dog but the stupid dog Jesse that lives across the lane.  Jesse is an Australian shepherd, a breed that is known for their intelligence.

Ahem.  Those ‘known-for-their-intelligence’ dogs weren’t raised by Mr. and Mrs. Grope.  Doesn’t matter what brand of dog they raise, they turn him stupid.

The dog yaps his fool head off at their blower, at the power washer, and at small black ants doing excavation, near as I can tell.  He’s liable to come roaring down the hill barking wildly at us at any given moment, whilst his mistress (who is a nice lady who probably bit off more than she could chew when she married her husband) yells, “Jess!  Jeh-eh-eh-eh-eh-sssssssss?  Jesseeeee!”  Jesse pretends to not know his name.

If the man (let’s call him ‘Mortimer’), who is of a different persuasion than his wife, is home, he bellows like a newly-weaned calf:  “JESSSSS!!!!  YOU COME HERE NOW!!!” 

Jess does not bother to return until he wants to. 

He has let me pet him a time or two, and he stopped chasing one of the cats when I physically made him stop, and then wagged when I told him he was a good dog for sitting down.  (Speaking of the dog, not the neighbor man.)  He could have lived up to the breed’s reputation.  (Again, the dog, not the man.)  We call him ‘Jesse James’.  The dog, not the man.

When Victoria was, oh, 14 or 15 or so, she hunted up a recipe for dog biscuits, made a healthy batch (to the detriment of Larry’s waffle recipe, come Sunday – there was no flour left) (Victoria did offer him some frozen dog biscuits), and set about training every neighbor dog she could find within a half-square-mile radius to do various tricks:  sit, shake, lay down, stay, etc. 

One timid Black lab who liked to explore our yard would immediately sit and extend a paw the moment I exited the door, for years thereafter.  😂  I reinforced the habit by exclaiming, “Good dog!” each time, and going for a handful of cat food.  (Dogs love cat food.) 

Here’s a cow elk we saw in Yellowstone National Park, east of Yellowstone Lake.  Look how suave and debonair she is, with that straw stuck between her teeth.

This bull elk was nearby, keeping a close watch on her.  Isn’t he a majestic creature?

I went back to the quilting.

I had a bit of trouble with the borders being too full.  I starched them... then pressed them... and managed to get it quilted all right except for one tuck that I just couldn’t shrink and press away.  Fortunately, it was in the dark purple area, and not awfully noticeable.

If you quilt, and have troubles with ‘friendly’ borders (they wave!), here are a couple of videos that are quite helpful in getting borders the right length and keeping your quilts square:  Cutting Borders, Getting Borders Right

I texted my daughters and daughters-in-law, asking for the sizes of their children.  Something one of them said reminded me of the time when Josiah, who was about five years old, got left behind in the store.  Looking back to see where he was, Teddy and Amy spotted him, standing on tippytoe, all in a twist, trying to scan the shirt tag at the back of his neck with one of those barcode readers on a pole.  😄

And then there was the time one of our little girls found a tag in her clothes, frowned, and said, “This says I’m still three.  But I’m FOUR!!!”

Lydia wrote to say, “It sure is a beautiful day today!  I took the kids to the park to eat lunch the last couple days.”

“Well, I look out my window every now and then!  😄” I told her, and sent her a picture of the quilt I was working on.

“That’s pretty!” she replied.  “I’m working on a man’s suit and the collar is not wanting to cooperate and the fabric frays terribly.”

“Aarrgghh,” I commiserated.  “That was always what caused me the most trouble of anything I ever sewed:  those double-lapeled collars on suits.  And of course I made them with wide-weaved gabardines... satins... taffetas...”

“This is also plaid,” said Lydia.  “It’s for a customer so it needs to be perfecter than if it was for my kids or something.  😜”

“Plaid suits.  I feel your pain,” said I.  “That was what the first suit I ever made for myself was:  a wide plaid in red, white, and blue.  It had an inset waistband.  Wow, was I ever flashy!”

Then, a few minutes later, “Hey, I found it!”

I attached the picture, telling her, “I thought I was utterly too-too.  I made that when I was about 14.”

“That’s pretty!” responded Lydia.  “The collar looks perfect, too.  🤩”

“I sewed fast,” I said, “but I was finicky-picky, and didn’t quit ’til I had it right.  Or until I’d made new creations out of my blunders. 😏”

I had so many conversations going with the girls, and so many of them say such similar things in such similar ways, I had to pay close attention to the names, so I didn’t get them all mixled (Caleb’s word).

A lady on an online quilting group wrote to say that she was preparing to scan a whole lot of old photos, and she wondered what I thought of those programs that automatically tag faces.  I’ve used them, but they don’t work very well for me, on account of 1) the huge amount of photos I have, 2) people changing through the 50+ years of my photography, and 3) the siblings and cousins who so closely resemble each other.  I individually label and date every picture I scan.  They are sorted into folders and subfolders.  All are in chronological order.  This is what works for me.

I got the Holly Hobbie quilt done just in time to take pictures outside.  The sun was too low for the best lighting, really; but... I took pictures anyway.

I think you can hardly see where I stopped for the embroidery, outlined it, and filled in a few areas; I’m pleased about that.

I did not visit Loren Saturday, on account of him and five other residents testing positive for Covid last week.  Hopefully the no-visitation restriction won’t go on for long.  That isn’t at all good for dementia patients, to not have visitors, and to be confined to their rooms (at least that’s what they try to do, when the patient has Covid – even if they have no symptoms). 

This is what the Executive Director wrote to me when I asked:  “We do our best to keep them in their rooms for 7 days or until symptoms subside.  If they refuse, which is highly possible, we ask that they wear a mask as much we can.  We tested again on the 19^th and had no new positive residents.  We will test weekly for the next two weeks or until there are no more positives.”

As I type, there are half a dozen English sparrows and a pair of cardinals in the bush outside my window.  Sometimes when the window is open, birds will respond to bird songs I play on my computer.  Cardinals will answer my whistles. 

I can whistle softly with a warble (though the warble is likely to do what my yodels do:  land on some peculiar note that has no place in the song whatsoever)... or I can make an ear-splitting whistle that used to bring the kids home from ten blocks away.  I thought it was anonymous, not at all like the neighbor lady who would poke her head out her front door and bellow loudly enough to wake the dead, “BEN-JUUUUH-MAAAAAANNN!!!!”

However, the kids told me that wherever they happened to be, if they heard a whistle, their friends would laugh and say, “Your mother is calling!”  So much for being anonymous. 

Dorcas once gave me a coffee cup that said, “Whistle and I’ll Come to You” on the side.  😂

Did I ever tell you the story of when I learned how to do that loud, loud whistle?

The Whistle

I learned to whistle – loudly enough to blow you off your chair – without fingers, using only my tongue, when I was 12, late one night as I was lying in bed.  My parents were asleep.

I had noticed that by curling my tongue a bit and blowing, I could make a bit of a hollow, whistling sound, and I thought, You know, if I could get my tongue curled exactly right, and blow hard enough...

I curled my tongue, took a breath big enough to expand my lungs a good three inches all around, and blew.

Mama and Daddy woke up. 

The entire west side of Columbus woke up.

I heard two pairs of bare feet hitting the floor, PLOP-PLOP, PLOP-PLOP.  Then my parents came barreling into my room without bothering to knock.  (We always knocked on doors before entering, at my house.)

Daddy:  “What was THAT?!!!!!”

Me, meekly:  “I was learning to whistle.”

Daddy, taking a deep breath:  “You learned.”

Mama, sitting down limply on the bed:  “My goodness.”  Then, “I thought...”  She swallowed.  “I thought you were being kidnapped.”

I could call my dog (and later the kids) (and eventually even the cats) from three counties away.  

A friend wrote to say she was using a slow cooker that day for the first time ever, and asked if I had one.  I do have a nice crockpot which I rarely use.  Victoria used it a lot when she was still home, often starting it early in the morning.  Lura Kay gave her a nice cookbook with recipes for crockpot cooking.

I always appreciated Victoria’s cheerful helpfulness with meals and housecleaning, without my even asking – but, though I never told her this at the time, I did not like eating breakfast with the aroma of beef, onions, carrots, and all manner of spices such as garlic salt, cumin, oregano, basil, parsley, etc., wafting under my nose.  It could totally spoil a good blueberry bagel. 

My friend sent a picture of the contents of her slow cooker, sans lid, writing happily, “One hour to go!”

“Are you taking the lid off that slow cooker?” I demanded.  “No, no, naughty!  Don’t take the lid off during cooking!”  Then I added, “But it does look good.”

I explained:  Slow cookers and crockpots work by trapping heat and cooking food over a long period of time.  Every time you remove the lid, the slow cooker loses a significant amount of heat, extending the cooking time required.  There’s no need to stir; the food won’t stick and burn unless you leave it cooking waaay too long, or it doesn’t have enough water content in it.

Victoria sent a video of Baby Willie in his crib, just waking up, all happy, as usual.  When his Mama appeared over the side of the crib, he grinned from ear to ear, kicked his feet – and grabbed his stuffed octopus, which made Victoria laugh.  He’s such a sweet baby.

Can you see the sundog in this picture?  It was shortly before sunset at Yellowstone Lake.  No, not the sun’s reflection (as some erroneously thought), but the partial rainbow to the left of the sun.

These colored spots of light develop due to the refraction of light through ice crystals way up high in the atmosphere.  They are located approximately 22 degrees either left, right, or both, from the sun, depending on where the ice crystals are present.

Sundogs are brightest in winter because ice crystals are more common, but can be seen at any time of year.  Sometimes we have ‘sunbows’, where it looks like a rainbow, all around the sun.  And sometimes the sunbows have brilliant sundogs in them.  We still have a lot of beauty in this old world, even if it is “waxing old”, as the Bible says!

Amy sent pictures of the children that evening, along with their dogs Sebastian and Ethan’s puppy.  The mother dog, Belle, was not pictured, as she does not do well with rides in vehicles.  The dogs are Anatolian shepherds.  The males generally weigh up to 140 pounds.

Sunday started out overly warm and very windy, and it just kept right on getting windier throughout the day.  Not a good day for wearing one’s best hat to church.

I used to wear hats to church all the time, but I never do anymore.  Mostly because I’m a pinhead and all (or almost all) hats are too big, and rest on my ears and give me a headache.  And also because they mess up my hair. 

Ethan was born during Easter Sunrise Service, 2004.  We went to the hospital to see the new baby that afternoon, and someone took a picture of me holding him.

I had hat hair.

Victoria invited us for dinner after the morning service.  She had fixed baked turkey, potatoes, carrots, and onions, and yummy gravy.  For dessert, she’d baked apple-rhubarb cobbler, with fresh-made whipping cream on top.  She made coffee with her air press, and poured heated cream into it, even managing to make a heart, of sorts, in the top of Kurt’s cup.

After we got home, the wind steadily continued to pick up.  I heard what I thought were the bird feeders clattering against the rebar that held them, and headed out to retrieve them before they got broken.

I started to step through the patio door onto the back deck – and discovered a 15-foot-long section of gutter hanging off the house, spinning around, barely connected. 

I hastily backed back inside, pulled the door shut, and got away from the glass.  45 seconds later, it came crashing down onto the deck.  Good thing I hadn’t gone out there!  That thing would’ve knocked me flat.

“You never video the good stuff!” a friend kidded me.

No, that’s right, I don’t!  Why, back when I had one of those big honking video cameras that rested on one shoulder, I could have it running... see something scary about to happen (like when Larry and the boys were hoisting a large, heavy glass patio door up a ladder to the second-floor addition) (what could possibly go wrong), and the video camera would suddenly be dangling from my hand by its strap, pointing straight at the ground, while I stared in mute horror at the scene in front of me.

A few minutes ago, I thought I heard a flock of Canada geese flying low over the house, conversing with each other as they went.  I peered out the front door. 

The sky was clear. 

But now the noise was behind me.

...

...

...

 

Oh. 

Never mind; it’s the coffee maker.

Halfway between our house and the town, they have been doing a lot of land excavation and leveling with large equipment, preparing to build a gigantic Harrah’s Casino and Horseracing Track, complete with a big hotel, restaurant, bar, parking lot, stables for the horses, and places for people to park their horse trailers and whatever rigs they pull them with.  Right now, there is nothing but acres and acres of black dirt. 

Or at least there were acres and acres of black dirt. 

I think a thick layer of it blew away yesterday in the over-50-mph winds.  There was a stretch of highway where it was nearly impossible to see through all that blowing dust and dirt.

During the afternoon and evening, there were multiple wildfires in areas to our north, south, and east.  At least three homes, several outbuildings, and a lot of woods and prairieland were destroyed.  Two firefighters were hurt, one seriously, with burns over 20% of his body.  

Farmers disced field boundaries (some corn is still in the field, and dry, of course), turned on pivot irrigation systems, and hauled water in semi tankers to rural firefighters.  During the night, it rained in the southeast, which helped considerably.  I think all of the fires are under control now, though still smoldering.

Some ranchers have offered their ranchland for cattle, hogs, or horses whose pastureland was burned.

In the midst of all that, a tornado went through 30 miles to our north, fortunately missing any towns, but destroying a grain bin and some crops.

I don’t remember such prairie fires happening here before – at least, not in such populated areas. 

If there are E5 tornadoes out in the Nebraska counties where nary a soul lives for miles and miles, and there are no trees to fall, no structures to fly apart, does anyone know?  

Well, of course satellite tells us these things.  But I have read accounts from days gone by where people were sometimes amazed to be traveling (usually by horse) through the boondocks and to come upon an area of prairie grasses and scrub brush totally ripped out of the earth for a 10-20-mile stretch, a quarter of a mile wide.

Oh!  I looked online for some pictures of the Nebraska prairie fires, and learned that about half of the small Missouri town of Wooldridge in the northeast part of the state burned Saturday after a wildfire spread from a farm field and destroyed or heavily damaged 23 buildings.  The entire town was evacuated.  One person was injured.  The blaze was sparked in a field by a combine that was harvesting crops.  A nearby stretch of Interstate 70 had to be closed for nearly two hours Saturday evening because of heavy smoke.

This afternoon, I ordered some groceries from Wal-Mart.  More and more items are not available for shipping these days (and we are too far out in the country for the store to deliver things); they must be picked up at the store.  I finally stopped trying to choose shippable items.  Alrighty, then; I’ll pick up my groceries.  Therefore, going with the flow, I ordered meat and dairy products while I was at it.  Frozen pie and ice cream, too.

When Victoria was little, she thought that blowing on her ice cream would ‘cool it up’.  After all, she reasoned, “When my breath is cooler than my soup, blowing on it cools it down.  So, since my breath is warmer than the ice cream, blowing on it will cool it up.”

Fish is in the oven... rice and vegetables are in the microwave...  I’ve timed it so that they will finish within 30 seconds of each other.  Cottage cheese and pears are on the table.  We’ll have Mint & Chip ice cream for dessert.

There went the oven’s one-minute warning beep!  Time to get out the plates and silverware.

Next, before I do anything else, I shall order some clothes for the grandchildren for Christmas.

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