Journal: Quilts, a Red-Winged Blackbird, & Curious George

 

Last Monday morning, I heard reports on the rural radio of scammers who pose as craft fair event organizers.  They collect fees – and are never heard from again.  Since Hannah sells Lilla Rose hair accessories at various events around the area, I wrote to tell her about it.

She wrote back to tell me that she knew about this scam, and had almost been caught by one last year.  The craft fair organizers with whom she does business have had to change the way they contact vendors.  “This has been going on for several years,” she said, “but has gotten worse since 2020.  I’m surprised it took the news agencies so long to report on it.”

Almost every day for the last couple of weeks, Newsbreak Nebraska has reported on someone – usually an elderly person – being scammed out of a sizeable amount of money (tens of thousands, many times), one way or another.

I think we barely escaped Loren losing a lot of money to that person who called saying he was the sheriff and demanding Loren give him his social security number, etc., a couple of years ago.  Loren was aware enough at the time that he was troubled about it and told me, thank goodness.  I spent a lot of hours contacting the police, the social security office, his bank, the place he keeps his investments, and so on, making sure everything was blocked from those thieves.

After that, we changed his phone number and never told him.  I heard him several times giving out the old number to somebody on the phone.  Think of all the times he did it and I didn’t hear him!  He was calling numbers he’d found in his multitudes of quack health advertisements.

After I had his mail sent to my house, I thought that would stop – but he kept finding old ads in pamphlets and magazines in various parts of his house. 

Anyway, if anyone tries to use his social security number from now until the day he dies, the social security office will get an immediate alert.  No one can use it to, for instance, borrow money or get a credit card.

I think that was a close call, though.  I knew scammers will usually be quick to use new information, so as soon as he told me about it, I hung up fast, found the phone numbers to those agencies I needed to call, and didn’t quit until I’d called them all.

Whatever I’d been planning to do right then, ... ... ... did not get done.

If you knew how many, many times I’d warned Loren to never, ever give that information out!

Before my sister-in-law passed away, she was receiving quite a lot of spam emails about fantastical products of all sorts, or with job offers that were waaaay too good to be true.  She’d tell me about them... I’d tell her it was spam and/or a hoax...  and a day or two later, we’d repeat the procedure.  Sometimes she even pulled those wonderful, amazing offers from her Spam folder – and answered them!

Other times, she and Loren would be all upset because they’d just been notified that their email system was going to be shut down, unless they doled out a pile of personal information.  Or that the registration on their vehicle was about to be pulled, for some obscure reason.  Or that, oh, I don’t know, the macaroni in their cupboard was harboring alien listening devices.

And let’s not even discuss jet chemtrails!  (Though that terrifying wealth of information came from some quack doc, rather than a scammer.)

I don’t like scammers.  😡

Wow, what got me started on all that?  A subliminal message in the Bavarian Chocolate coffee beans I just ground, doubtlessly.

Tuesday, I quilted a Curious George quilt (53” x 79”) for my great-niece-by-marriage, Dorothy.  She put it together, machine-embroidering eight of the squares.  It’s for one of her boys.  The backing is soft blue minky.

What a novelty, quilting a quilt in half a day, as compared to the 167 hours of quilting it took me to complete that king-sized-plus Birds of Colorwash Patch quilt!

I used white 40-wt. Omni thread on top and pale blue 60-wt. Bottom Line in the bobbin.  The batting is Soft & Bright cotton.  I reworked a pantograph of a baby long-tailed spider monkey into Curious George, who is more likely either a baby chimpanzee or a baby barbary macaque, neither of which have tails.  I added in a loop with a leaf under the monkey to fill in the place where a tail used to be.

When Caleb, now 29, was about 2 years old, he had a hard time wrapping his tongue around the word ‘curious’.  After a few attempts that got his two giggly older sisters giggling at him, he called his stuffed toy ‘George Monkey’.  (They went on giggling, but Caleb apparently felt it better to be giggled at for the name he’d come up with than for the pronunciation difficulties. 😄)

Wednesday afternoon, I began quilting a customer’s Starry Log Cabin quilt.  By 4:30 p.m., the quilt was loaded on my quilting frame, and I was ready to start.  I have no idea how people say they can load a large quilt in 15 minutes.  Their ‘large’ and my ‘large’ must be two different types of ‘large’, or they must be incredibly fast, and I must be incredibly slow! 

No...  I’m not slow.  I am picky, though.  I want everything perfectly straight, from the backing to the batting to the top, and I use my Rowenta steam station on quilts as I’m loading them, as I don’t want to inadvertently quilt in any wrinkles or folds.  Those ‘fast loaders’ never mention doing that.

By the time we headed to church for our midweek church service, the top border was done.  I used lilac-colored Bottom Line 60-wt. thread in the bobbin, and Omni 40-wt. in a soft Butter color on top. 

The batting is Quilters’ Dream wool.  I really like Quilters’ Dream products, from poly to cotton to wool.  One of these days, I wish to try the bamboo/silk.  I’ll bet it’s dreamy.  

... ((pause)) ...  

Did I just make a pun?!  😯 Dreamy Quilters’ Dream batting.  The only way I ever make puns is by accident!

Somebody wrote to me, “Can I ask what batting you are using?”

I really wanted to answer, “Sure!”

But... I was nice, and just told her.  😉

That night after the service, we gave Andrew a birthday gift:  a large (approximately half-gallon) Thermos water jug, black on the bottom blending into white on top, with the Sapp Bros. logo; and a like-new pocketknife that was Loren’s – a Schrade, I think.

A quilting friend, upon seeing this picture of my longarm and frame, wrote, “I am so very jealous of your setup.”

A good deal of the time, people think these machines and frames are far beyond their means, for a big, brand-new, computerized outfit is very pricey.  For instance, a 30” Gammill Statler Ascend 30 on a 12-foot Pivotal Access table is – can you imagine this – $57,999!!

Yikes.  So when quilters say what that lady did, I respond by telling them that mine was affordable for us because we bought it used.  There are a lot of very good used longarms available these days.  They used to be a lot harder to find.

I’m so thankful for my Avanté.  Larry got it for me just before Christmas of ... wow, it was 2017!  I just checked.  I was about to say 2018, and then remark on how I could hardly believe it had been that long!  😊

I always have high hopes of coming home from church and getting back to quilting for an hour or two; but Larry and I generally have a late supper and chat for a little while – and suddenly it’s later than I thought, and my recliner is looking enticing, and if the longarm is calling my name, I can’t hear it.  (“Lalalala,” she said, fingers in ears.) 

We were issued a winter weather advisory that evening.  It was to expire at noon Thursday.  There was freezing mist and snow through the night, making it slippery out there.

A few minutes before noon the next day, I glanced out the window – and it was snowing like everything.  I checked my weather app, and found that the winter weather advisory had been extended to 3:00 p.m.  I should’ve filled the bird feeders before the snow started!

That afternoon, a fellow quilter asked, “Do you ever receive a quilt that is so ‘wonky’ that you cannot quilt it?  Or do you look at the top prior to agreeing to quilt it?”

“I have received some real humdingers,” I answered, “but my customers are so lovely, and some have physical troubles, including bad eyesight... so I do what I can, and have never said I couldn’t quilt one.  I once got a flannel French Braid that was 9” – yes, nine inches! – wider on one side than on the other.  Furthermore, the lady had sewn wide sashing between the braids without first trimming all those points off the braids, and she’d ‘missed’ the braids time and again, and there were holes all along the seam.  I took the seam out, trimmed, and resewed – and found more holes when I was quilting.  At that point, I just increased the quilting density and made sure some lines of quilting crossed right over and around those holes.  My reward was when the lady, who rarely wrote more than one- or two-word notes to me, sent me a card via U.S. mail to say that when she gave that quilt to a man at a nursing home, he cried and said no one had ever given him such a lovely gift.  And she thanked me for going ahead with it, even though it wasn’t sewn well, so that she could give it to him in time for Christmas.  I got over any aggravation I had over that quilt, and just wiped my eyes instead.”

That afternoon, Victoria commented under one of the pictures of the Birds of Colorwash Patch quilt on Instagram, “I’m watching.  I’m excited 🤩🤩🤩🤩”

“You were not given permission!” I retorted.

(Of course, I knew she was going to see that quilt, one way or another, since she’s on nearly every social media platform I am on.)

“I was verrrry patient and didn’t say anything until I saw the word ‘complete’,” she defended herself.

“Only the quilting is complete,” I replied.  “It still needs binding... a label... maybe some doodads... and I plan to enter it in our County and State Fairs.  So you’ll have to don your patience, and wear it a little longer!”

A lady commented on the Curious George quilt, “Love the job you are doing – keeping it simple!  I really don’t care for overquilted quilts on the longarm – and they are so heavy with all that thread!”

(Repeat after me:  Thread is not heavy.  Thread is not heavy.  Fabric is heavy.) 

(Maybe she meant ‘dense’ rather than ‘heavy’.)

I betcha she did not notice that the overquilted quilt posted the previous evening was also done by me, whataya bet?  🤣

I answered her, “Thank you!  Even if I do love those overquilted quilts you describe.  But I love variety, and I like many different kinds of quilts, and many different kinds of quilting.  Isn’t it fun to stroll through a big quilt show, and see the great diversity?”

She did not answer.  She was probably thinking, Oops!  But I was not offended.  Everybody can like whatever they want to like.  (Of course they should all like whatever I like.)

(Kidding, kidding!)

I’ve never done these Swirly Feather Things before.  It’s sorta like rubbing one’s head and patting one’s stomach at the same time.  I was glad there was flowered fabric on which I could ‘practice’ – though I had practiced with pencil and paper before launching in with the quilting machine.

By the time I get to the end of this quilt, I’ll probably be ashamed of those first attempts.  😏

I quit for the night a little after 10:00 p.m., as my back was protesting.  Throughout the day, I’d applied Pain-A-Trate, Absorbine, Jr., Two Goats Lavender/Eucalyptus Arthritis Cream, Capzasin, Spring Chicken, and whatever else came to hand.  That helped – a little bit, for a little while. 

I’m becoming a wimp.  I can’t do those 10-12-hour quilting days any longer.  6 seems to be my norm.  But I’d had a bit of an arthritic flare-up ever since Monday.  That day, I took three Extra-Strength Tylenol tablets.  Tuesday, I tried a couple of Ibuprofen.  They helped enough that at least I could quilt for several hours. 

Wednesday and Thursday were better, so I only used the abovementioned topical analgesics.  I don’t take Tylenol or Aspirin or suchlike except for those rare occasions when I really feel like I need to.

I retired to my recliner, tucked a heating pad behind my back, rolled another and put it behind my neck.  I turned on the vaporizer beside me.  On the little table next to my chair sat a mug of steaming hot Vanilla Cream Hazelnut coffee by Cameron.  Then I plugged in my SD card reader and set about editing and posting pictures.

Custom quilting isn’t fast, but it sure yields pretty results!  😊

See the crosshatching in the arcs on the left?  If you knew how easy it is to forget to back up before going forward, on each of those arcs... 🙄 I turned off my music... I stopped chewing gum... I tried hard to shut down my busy, busy brain and concentrate, concentrate!  I was remembering fairly well by the middle of the border.  This brain exercise starts all over again after any lengthy intermission.  And now I’m doing the side borders as I go along, so there’s not a whole border to do all at once, in order to get into the swing of things.

A lady asked me if I drew those Swirly Feather Things onto the quilt with a stencil.

“No,” I told her, “I just grasp the handles of my longarm machine, hold my tongue just right, grab the floor with my toenails, and quilt away!”

By the way, I had no trouble at all pulling out the length of batting I needed from the giant roll on the bar under my quilting table, measuring, and cutting it.  I’m so happy about that!  The rolls were too unwieldy for me, before I had this studio frame with the batting bar.

Friday afternoon, I put venison steaks and carrots into the oven, baking them slowly on 280°, using the Mexican bean pot Lura Kay gave me.  As suppertime approached, wafts of aroma began drifting up the stairs to my studio.  I added potatoes and gravy, dressing, peaches, Pecan Sandies, and peach tea to the menu.  The little steaks were scrumptious, so tender and good.  Mmmmm...

Each time I used different rulers on this quilt, I took pictures of the rulers next to the stitching motif for which I had used them.  I did not want to be surprised when I finished the quilt to find that the bottom row was not like the top row! 

It’s like the kindergarten game, where children sit in a circle and one whispers a sentence into the child’s ear beside him.  He then whispers it to the person beside him – and on and on, until they get to the last person.  That child then says the sentence out loud – and it generally has no resemblance whatsoever to the original sentence.  That’s me, quilting.  😂  (But not this time!  Huh-uh.)

A quilting friend asked if I was marking the quilt, so as to get all the arches and crisscrosses evenly distributed.

“Yes, you can see a few smudges of chalk if you look close,” I told her.  “I rarely use that fat chalk marker; I like the more precise one – but it didn’t show up enough on that fabric.”

Now, this is the friend who has told me about an ‘elastic ruler’ she has made for herself, putting measurements on elastic with a permanent marker.  She then pins the elastic to the areas on her quilt where multiple quilting motifs need to be spread evenly.  She can stretch the elastic as needed to make everything turn out right.  It’s a great idea.  I haven’t gotten it done yet.

“I tell you,” urged Susan, “you need to make that elastic ruler for yourself to pin to the quilt top so you don’t have to make markings to keep things perfect!”

“I thought of that as I was smudging smudges,” I told her.  “And then I thought, But my elastic is way off downstairs, two stories down.  So I went on smudging smudges.”  🤣

Next, I thought, Why not be a lazy wastrel and look for an elastic measuring tape online?  

No sooner said than done.  

I was immediately reprimanded by Mr. Google himself:  “Why should you not use an elastic measuring tape?  You can measure the length of an object over and over again using an elastic tape, and you will get different values of the same length each time.  This is because elastic tapes are stretchable.”

Yeah, well, hmmmph.  And ‘duh’.  Bother!  I wanted to be a lazy wastrel!

Saturday, I was all ready to head off to Omaha to see Loren when I noticed:  Omaha was in a winter weather advisory until 6:00 p.m., with ice and snow and slick roads.  Larry, who was in Genoa replacing head gaskets in a Duramax pickup, would not be able to go with me, and he advised that I stay home.  So that’s exactly what I did.

At 2:30 p.m., I looked one more time at Omaha’s weather.  It was still snowing, and ice was accumulating on the streets.  

By 5:00 p.m., it was bright and sunny here, and I was wondering if I should’ve gone to Omaha after all.  But as I gazed out the window, I saw that while there wasn’t a cloud in the sky either above or around us, far over there on the eastern horizon was a smudgy gray bank of clouds – doubtless the winter weather that was still affecting Omaha.

I’m sorry to miss seeing my brother, though.  I have no idea if he understands I go there every Saturday, if at all possible.  Sometimes when I arrive, he says with a grin, “You’re late!”  Other times he says, “I thought I’d catch you, if I just stayed right here!”  And once in a while he says, eyebrows high, “Oh, I didn’t know you were coming!”

Daylight Saving Time started in the middle of the night.

I once sent this to a few friends at the start of DST.  

One wrote back, “Oh, I didn’t realize they had to do that each Spring.  What a difficult job.” 

No, she wasn’t teasing.

Yesterday, the hills north of Teddy’s house and the slope to our east were so full of snow geese, it looked like the farmers had planted entire crops of them – and thousands more were circling, looking for a place to land.  I’ve never seen so many all concentrated like this before, except over on the Missouri River corridor once or twice. 

As we drove home from church, we saw Teddy’s silver Ford Transit van traveling slowly down the county road half a mile off the highway, heading toward their house.  They were obviously watching all those geese.  

It really was a sight to see – and hear.  That many geese are noisy!

Later in the afternoon, giant flocks of the geese were flying over, many layers of them at various altitudes.  The wind was blowing at 28 mph, and probably with much higher gusts, up there where the birds were.  They kept getting blown off course, and their usual neat V’s were all messed up.

I sent a note to Teddy:  “On our way home from church this morning, we noticed that all your chickens were loose on the hills to the north.  We saw you watching them; did you manage to get them all rounded up?” 

His reply:  😄

From late afternoon until we left for our evening church service, there was no letup at all in the snow geese flying over.  The sky was completely full of them, from horizon to horizon.

It’s amazing to watch and hear them.

After church, we picked up some groceries at Wal-Mart that I’d ordered, then went home and had a late supper of creamy chicken noodle soup, cinnamon applesauce, and cherry juice.  For dessert we shared the last of the waffles Larry had made earlier that day, putting peanut butter, raspberry jelly, and syrup on them.  Yum, that’s a mighty good dessert.

Here’s a funny or two:  I recently saw an ad for a vintage Singer that read as follows:  “Nice old Singer with case, various parts, and charger.”  The photo called ‘various parts’ showed 3 presser feet.  The photo of the ‘charger’ ... was the foot pedal.  😂 

Whataya bet some 25-year-old is trying to sell his Grandma’s stuff for her?  

Oh, and there was another ad, supposedly for a ‘Singer’ – but the picture was clearly of a White.  A comment under the ad informed the seller that the photo showed a White sewing machine.  The seller responded, “Yes, the machine is white in color.” 🤣 

Seller was probably under the impression that ‘Singer’ is the proper terminology for all machines that sport those round circle thingies on the right and an uppy-downy needle thangamarolphgidget on the left.

A lady on a big Facebook quilting group wrote to me, “Watch ‘Whirls ’n Swirls’ series on YouTube.  She is amazing.”

I looked it up – and found a lady by the name of Tracey Russell demonstrating a sashing motif almost like the one I am doing, except she does only one feather, using the ‘informal’ way of doing feathers.  ‘Informal’ feathers are each done separately.  Mine are called ‘formal’, with retracing done at the top curve of one feather, and the feathers sharing a side. 

I was delighted to see the way she starts and stops when she needs to move to a different location on her quilt:  by carefully interlocking her stitches and clipping the thread, rather than by leaving tails, threading them into a needle, making a knot, and then ‘popping’ the knot into the quilt sandwich as the quilting pros regularly tell us to do.

This is exactly the way I do starts and stops (interlocking the stitches, almost like a backstitch), but I rarely mention it, because people gasp and clutch at their throats in horror.  It looks perfectly fine if you’re careful!  Really, it does.  If you’re careful.

Oh, how ’bout that! – there’s a robin and a red-winged blackbird side by side out in the front yard, getting a drink from a puddle of melted snow!  

(Picture is not mine; it’s from iStock free photos, shot by Michael Chatt.)  Robins sometimes make an appearance through the winter; but red-winged blackbirds head south in the fall, and we don’t see them again until mid-March.  It’s only 31°, but the puddle from which they are drinking is on one of the metal roofing pieces Larry has cut, ready to put on the roof as soon as it’s nice enough out to do so.  The sun has warmed the metal and melted the snow.  If Larry doesn’t get the roofing done soon, that big piece of metal is going to kill the grass.

Oh!  There’s a male and a female English sparrow in the lilac bush (which is probably dead) just outside my window – and the little male is singing his mating song, prancing (do English sparrows ‘prance’?) up and down the branches, and spreading his little tail feathers out all cute and cocky, quite as if he thinks he’s a miniature peacock.  (Photo from BirdNote .org.)

Yep.  Springtime is coming.

I must quilt!

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