A
quilting friend and I were discussing how long we’ve been quilting, and how we
first started. Like me, she didn’t begin
with ‘easy’ projects.
When
I started with my HQ16, I belonged to a group wherein they advocated – uh, insisted
– that one must quilt, oh, about 21,047,273,987 ‘practice quilts’ before ever, ever
doing a ‘good’ quilt – especially one for a customer. Well, other than a smallish ‘picnic quilt’ that
I did in order to learn to set the tension correctly and to try out a
pantograph, I did no ‘practice quilts’.
I had neither the money nor the time for ‘practice quilts’.
In
fact, the second quilt I did was a baby quilt for my mother-in-law, my very
first paying customer (even though I tried telling her she owed me nothing).
Next,
I did the king-sized Harvest Sun quilt. I even did ruler work and custom quilting,
though it was a bit primitive. The quilt
is on our bed right this moment, and I am quite fond of it.
“Thank
goodness the quilt shop owner who sold me my Innova didn’t tell me any of those
things!” exclaimed my friend. “She didn’t
discourage me from doing custom quilting from the start. I used metallic threads in different weights
and colors. She didn’t teach me about
tension though; I got to learn that on my own!”
“Metallic
threads!” I returned. “Nope, you didn’t
start at the kindergarten level, didja?! I love metallic threads, but my needy machines
want their various tensions cared for quite tenderly whilst I’m using said
threads.” 😅
Last Monday afternoon, Victoria sent a picture
of the line drawing of a bird that I had given Violet, now all colored. Isn’t it pretty? I think she did a very nice job, for being four
years old.
“You should see her go at
it!” laughed Victoria. “Shondra would
say she’s fighting snakes. Carolyn takes
ten times longer than Violet, because she’s very meticulous. Violet just speeds right through it.”
“So funny,” I told Victoria.
“Shondra got that saying from your
Grandpa Swiney.”
Victoria was
surprised. “Oh, that’s funny. I didn’t know!”
Hester is the youngest of
our children who remembers her Grandpa Swiney.
She was three when he died. Lydia
was 14 ½ months, and though she often sang the funny little songs her Grandpa
used to sing to her, she has no recollection of him.
That evening, a friend sent a video of
her young granddaughter leaning over backwards until her hands touched the
ground, and then, all in one fluid motion, she turned a backwards cartwheel.
“Wow, I
am indeed impressed,” I said. “Had I tried that at her age, I would’ve landed
in a crumpled heap. My attempts at frontwards
cartwheels looked mostly like a toad frog trying to hop whilst suffering
from lumbago.”
However,
I could do 100 chin-ups without slowing. I have no idea
how many I could’ve done, had I kept going. 100 put me far ahead of the
pack, and I won the grab-bag prize – and P.E. was over, so I stopped at the 100
mark.
I was
strong, but I was not limber. 😏
Most nights while sleeping this last week, I used a satin
eye cover (filled with something that feels like sand, but is probably tiny gel
beads) that my sister Lura Kay gave me a few years ago. It seems to have help with the increased dry-eye
problem brought on by my eyelids not going completely shut when I blink or
sleep. They feel a little better right now, though Friday they were
particularly miserable.
I have a whole volley of different kinds of eyedrops: Bausch & Lomb Soothe XP for dry eye
syndrome, GenTeal Tears gel for severe dry eye syndrome (this is usually my favorite),
and GenTeal ointment for severe dry eye syndrome. The latter is especially for overnight – and
it’s like rubbing Vaseline all over your eyeglasses, so I only use it when my
eyes are really hurting, and never when I need to see well. I also have Systane gel drops and Refresh
eyedrops.
I have two homeopathic solutions: Similasan and Optique1 from Boiron. Those don’t help a whole lot, really; but at
least I can use them often with no harmful effects. The other solutions
should only be used four or five times a day.
Overuse can cause excessive watering of the eyes, even while they go on
feeling dry.
A doctor prescribed some eyedrops for me once, and I went to
pick them up at Walgreens – and discovered they cost $250! That’s not
all: they have now gone up to – get this – $350. I could use
our TASC card to pay for it, but that would use up an awful big chunk from the
Health Savings Account; so I’ve never gotten it.
There’ll doubtless be a bit of a
transition as the Botox settles down. At least my eyes are
blinking normally, rather than shutting hard at unexpected moments and
then not wanting to open nicely; so there’s that. But I don’t want to trade eyes that mostly
only act up in public to eyes that hurt! Still, if I
can walk into church, converse with people, and enter stores while my eyes stay
open normally, I will be happy about that.
Tuesday morning, Lydia sent a picture of
Malinda holding a heart-shaped tray of little muffins made with the muffin mix
and silicone muffin pan we gave her for Christmas. She's such a cutie.
I washed Larry’s work clothes (three
loads! – he wears a whole lot more clothes, when it’s so awfully cold out), paid
some bills, ordered groceries, and then headed to the quilting room. Later in the afternoon, I put a deer roast into the oven. At suppertime, I made some stuffing and
steamed some vegetables to go with it. We have a lot of deer meat –
roasts and steak and ground. I try to
make different entrées to go with it, so it doesn’t seem like the same ol’
thing every day.
Wednesday, I got the last two loads of
laundry done, cleaned the kitchen, and then quilted until time for church.
After the service, I bought the new
school annual, which was on sale in the front foyer. Carolyn, Violet, and I looked at a few pages,
and we had just found a picture of Carolyn in her classroom when it was time to
go. The little girls were sad, so I told
them they could take it home and look at it, and then give it back to me when
they were all through. Victoria protested,
but I said, “No, do take it – they’re all excited about it, and greatly
disappointed that they didn’t get to see the rest! I can wait.”
So we tucked it into the diaper bag
Victoria was carrying, and off they went, with the little girls bouncing in
delight.
We headed for Wal-Mart to pick up a grocery
order, stopping at Arby’s for a couple of big, yummy sandwiches to eat on the
way. I got a Chicken Club Wrap, which is
so full of such a variety of vegetables, meats, and cheeses, it’s like eating a
salad.
Larry brought home his W-2 form Wednesday, so Thursday I worked on our taxes. I use Turbo Tax, which makes it easy, though it takes a while to itemize all our deductions.
I need to get Loren’s financial documents
collected, too, and take them to his accountant. His taxes will be more complicated this year,
since we sold his house and vehicles, and he moved into a nursing home. I feel like Larry’s elderly Aunt Virginia, who
used to finish her letters with, “I don’t know anything!” (meaning, of course,
“I don’t know anything else to write!”) I
don’t even know how to track down all the information I need! 🤯
I guess I’ll just do what
Irena Bluhm, the Polish quilter whose family was so persecuted by the
communists, says, regarding quilting one’s quilt (in her Polish accent): “Ven you don’t know vhat to do, dust do... someting!”
That day, I finally
finished playing my way through my big, fat Christmas notebook, having started
the day after Thanksgiving. And look,
January isn’t even over!! 😁 I put the Christmas notebook away... and
behind it sat the little old hymnbook Andrew and Hester gave me, turned to page
272, not the last page, but the last ‘new-to-me’ song that I particularly like.
(One of the empty front pages is plumb
full of my list of the songs I ‘particularly like’.) Anyway, I played it... turned back to the
beginning and started over again... and remembered again how much I love this
little book. I’m going to use some of
our tax refund to have my piano tuned and the broken strings fixed. And then I shall record some of these songs,
as I promised Hester I would do, half a coon’s age ago.
Hester is now borrowing
my Christmas book to make a few copies of those wonderful old Christmas songs
that we love so much.
I told Hester, “I love
all the Christmas songs sooo much!”
Then, after a pause, “Well, almost all the Christmas songs.”
Hester, laughing, asked,
“😅 Jingle
Bell Rock? 🎶”
“Haha!” I replied, “I do
in fact like Jingle Bell Rock. (Don’t
tell anybody.)” Then I added, “It’s a
good one with which to conduct one’s morning exercises.”
“We heard it once this Christmas,”
Hester told me, “and then later Keira kept asking to listen to a rock song! I was so confused, because she doesn’t know
what ‘rock’ is, of course.”
When I was in grade
school, I loved it when our P.E. teacher put an old 45 rpm on his portable
record player, cranked up the volume, and played “Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!” while
we did jumping jacks and other exercises. Wheeee, that was fun and funny and right down
my alley. (Or ‘up my street’, as the
Irish say.) I don’t imagine it’s quite
politically correct, these days. Not
that I give a hoot.
OH!! I just found, tucked in a pocket on the back of
my Christmas notebook, the song Bobby’s mother Bethany wrote, “Praise Ye the
Lord, All the Earth and All His Angels” – her original penciled copy! All the notes (soprano only) are nice round
whole notes, because she didn’t put the timing in. She sang it to me over the phone, and I put
in the timing using the old computerized music program I had back then. I added in the words, and printed it for our
Christmas books.
I gave the paper to Bobby
after church yesterday, and he was quite pleased to get it.
I bid Hester adieu after
our little chat, saying I had to get back to the taxes.
“Bye!” she replied, “I hope the taxes go
well! I have a guy for that, so I don’t
have to worry about mine. 🤣”
She’s talking about Andrew, of course. Her CPA lives right in the house!
“Yeah, you do at that,” I agreed. “But you have to cook for him now and then, I
betcha!”
A little later that
afternoon, Hester sent us a video of Oliver, writing, “We found this bouncer
thing for $5 so thought we’d give it a try. I think Oliver likes it. 😆”
And there was cute little
Oliver, bouncing and going around in wide circles and laughing with every
bounce.
You know, half the fun of adorable baby videos is the
delighted parents in the background, laughing at their adorable baby. 😄
It was somewhere
around 11:00 p.m. when I finally finished our taxes.
Friday morning, Victoria sent pictures she’d
taken of the children for Valentine's Day, along with an audio clip of Carolyn
and Violet saying, ‘I love you, Grandma’.
At the tail end, Violet, as usual, was bouncing off to
do something, so her voice in her final ‘I love you’ was bouncing right along
with her.
Shortly thereafter, Hester sent a video of
Keira with the muffins she’d made with the tin and mix we gave her for
Christmas. She says, “Grandma, thank you
for the muffins! They’re so good!” Then she makes her characteristic little ‘smooch!’ noise, which makes me
laugh, every time, finishing with, “Love you!” She’s such a little dear.
All
that day, I quilted. I discovered that some
of the designs I was doing actually have a name: Overlapping-Feathering.
I thought, I should call this ‘Overlapped Feathering.’ Then I had the idea of looking
it up online – and whataya know, there was ‘Overlapping-Feathering’ like I was
doing, with plumes of feathers overlaying blocks that were finished with
straight-line rulerwork.
Solomon knew what he was talking about
when he said, “There is nothing new under the sun!”
(I
wonder if the person who first coined the name did their overlapped feathers on
purpose, or by accident like I did?)
I put three or four feathers and leaves
into the bodies of the birds, then rolled the quilt forward before quitting for
the night – and two more birds showed up.
A little later, I
went out to fill the bird feeders (with a cold, damp head from the shower), and
it was snowing a little harder than it had been earlier. Brrrrr, it was cold out there. Soon the feeders were very busy with American
goldfinches (my mother – and lots of other people – used to call them ‘wild
canaries), house finches, blue jays, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied
woodpeckers, juncos, English sparrows, Eurasian collared doves, and white- and
red-breasted nuthatches.
The next time I peered out the front
window, the Mercedes was all covered with snow. I texted Larry to find out where he was and if
he was planning to come with me.
He was
working on vehicles in Genoa, and could not come – and he said the roads from
Columbus to Genoa were slick and snow-covered, it was getting windier, with
gusts over 35 mph. I looked at
AccuWeather again. Their only advisory
was for a dangerous wind chill.
I
looked at a Facebook page called US 81 Corridor Weather Alerts, and discovered
a whole lot of people warning each other about the bad roads all around
Columbus, especially to the north, but also east towards Fremont. Roads were okay from Fremont to Omaha, and
Omaha streets were all right; but there were quite a number of accidents being
reported in our county and in adjacent counties.
Around here, they usually
spray the roads before any expected ice or freezing drizzle with various blends
of deicers referred to as ‘corn-based deicers’, which are generated by
combining corn juice, corn-derived polyols, and salt-brine. Larry and his friends call it ‘syrup’. “The trucks are out syruping the roads!”
However, if snow piles up on
top of that ‘syrup’, and if the temperatures drop way low, it pretty much
defeats the purpose.
AccuWeather didn’t
seem to know much that day, for the
weather wasn’t doing what their radar said it was doing (or not doing,
as it were). They thought it was sunny,
but I couldn’t even see the top of the nearby hill to our north, because of
falling and blowing snow.
The roads and the
weather continued to deteriorate. A cattle truck full of cattle was blown
over near O’Neill, a little distance to our northwest.
I decided my travels would be up the stairs to my quilting studio, rather than to Omaha.
“Don’t stumble on the stairs!” teased one of my
quilting friends.
Once upon a time when Lydia was about
three years old, we were getting ready for a trip to Canada. We had a pickup with a pop-up camper on it,
and we were towing a 1966 Holiday Rambler that Larry had fixed all up and
repainted. The three older boys would
sleep in the pop-up camper, and the rest of us, Larry and I, the four girls,
and Caleb, would sleep in the Rambler. Caleb
was the youngest then, at 9 months old.
I was putting some things into the
pop-up camper, stepping carefully onto the pickup’s hitch... then the bumper...
and then the step into the camper – and Lydia (who called herself ‘Liddle Liddeluh’)
stood watching, a worried look on her cute little oval face.
“Don’t try to hurt yourself, Mama!”
she said.
We said that for a long time, and
still say it, now and then: “Don’t try
to hurt yourself!”
The semi that was blown over was hauling 70 head of cattle, of which rescuers were able to remove 50. The surviving cattle were taken to Shamrock Livestock Market in O’Neill for safekeeping. The remaining 20 animals did not survive. Authorities spent nearly seven hours in the snow working at that accident, which was in a ditch full of both old and new snow. The O’Neill Volunteer Fire Department was aided at the scene by the Holt County Sheriff’s Office, A&J Towing, the Nebraska Department of Transportation, Emme Construction, Dr. Kirk Sholes from the O’Neill Veterinary Clinic, and numerous ranchers and farmers who brought trailers and tractors to get cattle back to the sale barn safely.
That evening, we had beef roast and vegetable stew for supper, and cherry crumble pie with ice cream for dessert. And cranberry grape juice, which went with the stew, but not the pie.
Here are a couple of pictures of the day’s quilting progress.
Dark maroonish/plum-colored thread is
hard to see on dark maroonish-plum-colored fabric! 😏😵💫😵
It was cold here Sunday, with a high of
about 6°, with a wind chill of -8°. It snowed
a little now and then.
We had dinner with Kurt and Victoria and
their three little ones. I wish you
could’ve heard Violet, 4, laugh when we were leaving, and I picked up one of
her little shoes and exclaimed in horror, “Oh, no! What am I ever going to do?? My shoes have shrunk!”
After posting more pictures from our trip
to Lincoln and Omaha a week ago, including some pictures of the trees and
bushes that were sparkling like diamonds from a freezing fog and mist, a friend
commented, “I love it when
there is freezing fog that leaves the branches of every tree and bush covered
in a layer of ice. We call it pogonip.”
‘Pogonip’?
I
looked it up... and then answered my friend:
“How ’bout that. Live and learn. I’d never heard of ‘pogonip’ before! I have now read all about it, at
Merriam-Webster and at the Almanac. Ah
can now go ta bed plumb happy, ’cuz ah done larnt me sumpthin’.”
You can see that bank of freezing fog in
the picture below. We were heading
toward Omaha, and those cold, saturated clouds were traveling to the east,
where they would soon be making roads slick and hazardous in Iowa.
Meanwhile, authorities again closed I80 from
Sidney all the way through Wyoming and clear over to the Utah border on account
of snow and ice and multiple accidents.
Some schools in the Panhandle are closed. That’s the third (or is it the fourth?) time
a sizeable piece of I80 has been closed in the last month and a half. I don’t remember that happening so often in
such a short span of time before – and I never remember it being closed
from the middle of Nebraska all the way to Utah.
There was a 44-vehicle pileup in Wyoming between Elk Mountain and
Laramie. One person was killed, and
several were injured.
There must be a new
writer for News Channel Nebraska.
Whoever it is needs a course on punctuation in general and hyphens in
particular. They write things like
this: the man was 45-years-old. No, no!
Write, ‘the man was 45 years old’.
You only use hyphens between those words when they modify a noun, like
this: ‘He was a 45-year-old man.’ Now they’ve written, ‘The vehicles were
piled-up.’ No, don’t put a hyphen
there! ‘Up’ is an adverb particle in
that sentence. You only put a hyphen
between those words if you say, for instance,
‘Look at all those piled-up vehicles.’
Siggghhhhh... No one who
works at News Channel Nebraska is ever going to read my helpful instructions.
This afternoon, I ordered birthday gifts for Oliver, Willie, Grant, and Justin. I already have a couple of things for Grant and Justin, but I wanted to get them warm shirts, too. I got pajamas and hedgehog toys for Oliver and Willie.
I’ve
been saving several things for Emma, and think I have enough.
Oliver’s birthday is February 3rd. Emma, Grant, Justin, and Willie’s birthdays are
on February 8th.
When I
was a little girl, I used to love watching Bobby’s great-grandmother embroider. She did printed cross-stitch, counted
cross-stitch, and all the other embroidery stitches. Her fingers flew, and the needle never paused,
even while she carried on a lively conversation. She’d weave the needle in and out, in and out,
and back up again, and it traveled from finger to finger, somehow, without
missing a beat. I was so fascinated at
how she did that. I thought of that as I
was admiring a quilting friend’s hand-quilted Hunter’s Star quilt that she had
pieced and quilted in two weeks. Other
ladies were amazed at how quickly she had made that beautiful quilt, especially
since she hand-quilted it. But one woman
wrote skeptically, “I wonder...”
That
always makes me curious about people. I
clicked on her main profile and took a look – and discovered that while she machine-quilts,
her sloppy quilting can’t hold a candle to the other lady’s precise
hand-quilting.
Isn’t
that generally the case? Ms. Cynic can’t
do it, not even with a machine.
Therefore, no one else can, either, especially by hand! Right?
Knowing
remarks like that can make a person feel badly, I proceeded to tell the
hand-quilting lady about my elderly friend and her embroidery. “I bet your fingers look a lot like hers
did,” I ended, “skillfully flying along, as you do your pretty hand-quilting.”
A
little while later, she answered: “What
a great story! I don’t know where I
picked up my skills. My Mom knew how to
quilt but we didn’t have a quilt on the frame very often, as we lived in a
four-bedroom house, with just the living room, kitchen, one bathroom, and a
utility room. There were eight kids, so
all the space was taken up. When she did
put a quilt on the frame, it was the four-board type held together with C-clamps. As you quilted the outside, you would roll to
the center. My Dad hated it, because it
took up almost the whole living room. To
get to his easy chair and TV, he would have to crawl under the quilt to get
there. We kids thought it was great, as
we would hang out under it. I can say
that I have always loved to sew, and got the knack of quilting pretty early on
(I’d say about 16). Thanks for sharing
all your comments.”
There,
I did my good deed for the day, counteracting someone else’s negative words. And I had an enjoyable time doing it, too, and
made another friend whilst I was at it, so there.
And now I shall head for my recliner; soon
it will be bedtime.
I think it takes me half an hour (give or
take a few seconds) to gather all my paraphernalia and get comfortable in my
recliner chair. (I never exaggerate, you
know.) (Don’t you?)
First, I put on my favorite fleece
pajamas.
Then I must fill the little vaporizer (very
helpful for my eyes), set it on the small table on the right side of the
recliner, and plug it in. I collect the
heavy and unwieldy battery pack for my laptop, pick up the open laptop, take it
to the chair, plug the battery pack into an extension cord, and plug the other
end into the laptop, which I place on the recliner seat until I am ready to be
seated.
I fill my coffee mug, put it into the
microwave for a minute, and play a couple of songs on the piano while waiting
for the microwave to finish warming the coffee.
Or, if I’ve somehow drunk all the coffee already, I make a cup of tea.
Then I get the coffee (or coffee), put it
on the mug warmer on the small table to the right of the recliner, and turn on
the warmer. I cover the mug with a
ceramic lid and put a coaster beside the mug warmer on which to rest the
ceramic lid when I get a drink.
I slide the Kleenex box over a little on
the side shelf of the hope chest so I can reach it.
I make sure at least three kinds of
eyedrops are handy – preferably Bausch & Lomb Soothe XP, GenTeal Tears gel,
and GenTeal ointment. I check the little
table for Carmex and Burt’s Bees Vitamin E and Peppermint lip balm.
I put my earbuds where I can reach them.
I get the heating pad in the right position
to heat my back. But every time I start
to sit down (yes, I remembered to pick up the laptop first), the top edge of
the pad folds over. Finally I get it to
stay in place while I sit down and lean back quickly enough to prevent it from
folding over again.
Then I remember that I need to turn it
on. The control is on the floor on the
left side of the recliner. I lean over
and choose the temperature.
The top edge of the pad folds over.
I eventually get it right, then realize the
heating pad that I roll for the back of my neck has fallen off the arm of the
chair. I pick it up, fix the edge of the
pad behind my back, roll the pad I just picked up, tuck it behind my neck – and
realize I need to turn it on.
This control, too, is on the floor.
I lean over to choose High, Medium, or Low,
and the top edge of the heating pad behind me folds over, while the heating pad
roll behind my neck unrolls and slips behind my back.
I get both heating pads properly back in
place, lean back comfortably in my chair, scoot the footrest into position with
my feet, put my feet on it, pull the fleece blanket over my legs, and turn on
the vaporizer.
I get the laptop situated on my lap, look
at the screen – and realize I have the wrong glasses on.
A good part of the above ritual then gets
repeated.
By the time I am happily ensconced in my
chair once again, I am too hot. I turn
down the heating pad behind my back. I
turn down the heating pad roll behind my neck.
I kick off the fleece blanket.
I go change into a flannel nightgown.
The ‘good part’ of aforesaid ritual gets
re-repeated, except now I’m cold. I turn
both heating pads back on, reroll the heating pad for my neck, tuck it in
place, and pull up the blanket.
By this time, I’m worn to a frizzle-frazzle
and don’t feel like paying the bills or editing photos or whatever industrious
thing I was planning to do; so I watch Russian car crashes in order to relax
properly before bedtime.
And now it took just a wee bit longer to describe
it than it actually takes to do it.
So, with no further ado, I shall move over
there (pointing) to the recliner, leaving you to picture it all unfolding as
described.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
