Journal: Quilts & Sundogs, Raccoons & Opossums

 

The blue jays have been creating a ruckus lately.  Can you tell this one is pigging out?  His crop is full of sunflower seeds!

Finally, last Monday, my rag rug was dry.  Larry carried it upstairs and helped me spread it out in my quilting studio.  It’s so soft and nice, and smells so good.  The whole upstairs has a soft, lovely scent of geraniums.

I have finally, finally, gotten the stains off the kitchen counter in this old farmhouse.  I used CLR – multiple times.  And I scrubbed.  And scrubbed.  The stains, all but one small, stubborn one that may remain until doomsday, are gone. 

No, never mind; I got that last stain off, too, scraping it carefully with a butter knife.  (Don’t tell anyone.)

Now, please pass the hand cream.

I took a picture of the top shelf on my bookcase in my sewing room and sent it to Hannah and Joanna, writing, “You should recognize a few of these things.  😊  Janice (my late sister-in-law) gave me the little sewing machine years ago.  The needle goes up and down, the hand crank turns, and there’s a little drawer.  I pulled it open – and found a small handful of tiny fabric triangles that Victoria put in there when she was wee little.” 

I discovered later when I picked it up that it was a music box!  I’d forgotten that.

On the shelf sits the following:

The handmade Ukrainian doll Joanna gave me for my birthday, October 6^th of this year; the aforementioned little sewing machine; a vintage Singer sewing tin, also from Janice; a fluffy, handmade Peruvian Alpaca wool teddy bear Joanna gave me for my birthday last year; a framed photo of Larry and me; a resin teddy bear at an ironing board, from Janice; and a handmade Christmas ornament from daughter Hannah.

Joanna purchased the doll and the teddy bear at Lavender Thyme, a boutique where she works.  Hannah purchased the ornament at one of the vendor events where she sells Lilla Rose hair jewelry.

Hannah made the doily on the left, daughter Dorcas made the doily in the middle, and Janice made the doily on the right.  I think.

“I was right!” responded Joanna.  “The doll looks like she’s always belonged there.  😁  I forgot about that puff-of-fluff teddy bear too!”

“Every now and then I pick it up and read the tag,” I told her, “just to be sure it’s still made out of Peruvian Alpaca wool. 😊”

Tuesday, it ‘warmed up’ to 25° by noon.  There was a windchill of 12°.  It would only get up to 33° that day.  I spent the day quilting.

I posted some pictures of the quilt, writing the following:  “Today I got another row, minus one block, quilted on the Cross-Stitched Teddies quilt for granddaughter Malinda, 6 ½.  These are the cross-stitched bears my daughter-in-law Amy found at a secondhand store, all on one piece of fabric.  I cut them apart, framed them, and added Irish Chain and Ohio Star blocks to the mix.”

One of the first comments under the pictures:  “are these cross stitched”

I really wanted to reply, “No, they are hand-carved.”

Or, “No, they were spot-welded.”

Or, “No, they are 3D printing.”

Or, “No, they were done by laser lights.”

Sadly, I refrained from all that cleverness.  Instead, I merely replied, “Yes”  (Note the lack of a period – this means something, but she would never know that.  😅)

News Channel Nebraska, who badly needs to hire an edjeecated editor, can’t even get their own name right:  “Stay with Mews Channel Nebraska for updates.”  🤦‍♀️

But anyway, in the news...  Would you believe this nice man was sentenced for drugs and theft?  Poor little man.  👀

By Wednesday, last Sunday’s snow was mostly all gone, except for some on our porch on the north side of the house.  It would melt by the next day, though, when the temperature got up to 58°.

By the time I stopped quilting and headed to church that evening, there were only two more rows to go on the Cross-Stitched Teddies quilt.  Please ignore the wayward seam ripper here.  Surely you know I nevah, evah use one o’ them thar thangs!

I had been told a week ago last Tuesday that my sewing machine, which I had taken to Nebraska Quilt Company for a tune-up, would be ready in a day or, at the most, two.  I finally emailed them the following Tuesday.  Twice.  

The young woman who had first worked on it then called me and asked what, exactly was wrong with the machine.  I told her it was skipping stitches.  She had not had it skip, and she told me the needle positioning mechanism was fine (the man who had looked at it the previous week thought it was loose, though he did mention that he had never worked on a Bernina as old as the 200-730), but the ‘balance’ was off a bit.  I wondered if she remembered that she ‘fixed’ the ‘balance’ (I wondered what that meant, exactly) the last time the machine was there?  I explained that the skipping took place before and after it traveled over seams.  She said she would have it ready soon.

She called back a couple of hours later to tell me the machine was fixed.  I said I could pick it up Thursday – and then thought to ask her, “Did you get the machine to skip stitches?”

“Um, er, ah, well, uh, no,” she said.  🙄  She asked me to bring in some fabric and show her.  I wonder if she even tried sewing over seams??

What if I couldn’t get it to skip stitches??!

Before

After

A lady, Sue, from whom I purchased in early 2020 the very machine that was (hopefully) being repaired – and I were discussing how long it takes us to load a quilt on our quilting frames.

“I don’t know how others can load so fast!” said Sue.  “Guess I’m too picky and have to try to get everything perfectly smooth and straight.”

“It takes me a while to load a quilt, too,” I agreed.  “The bigger the quilt, the longer it takes.”  

Those YouTube videos showing people loading their quilts in ten minutes flat...  Well, hmmmph.  And pfffft, too, for good measure.  It’s a twin or a full, right?  The backing is one solid piece, and not a crisscross of seams, right?  I’ll betcha they’re not trying to use up a gobba (definition: a whole a-buncha) pieces of under-par batting, either.  (One more Frankenbatting, and then I do NOT want to do that again.  Bleah.)  Sometimes after having a debbil ub a time trying to get everything straight, I give up and think, Well, this quilt will be an irregular quadrilateral – and then I am pleasantly surprised when, upon removing the quilt from the frame, I find it astonishingly square.  ¯\(ツ)/¯

Here’s yet another ad on rural radio that makes my brain protest:   It’s a mattress ad, and the man says, “We spend the majority of our lives on a mattress,” etc., etc.

‘We’?!  What’s this ‘we’ business?!  We do NOT spend the majority of our lives on a mattress.  At least, nobody I know does.  It is recommended that we spend a third of our time sleeping; but I am sometimes fortunate if I can spend a fourth of my time sleeping.

Thursday, I went to get my sewing machine in Fremont, arriving a little before 3:30 p.m.  I stopped at Fremont Lakes State Park on the way.  There are both Greater and Lesser Canada geese on the lakes.

The lady who worked on my machine had not tried sewing a straight stitch on two thicknesses of fabric and traveling over seams, even after I told her that’s when it skipped!  Instead, she was sewing fancy stitches on a nice, flat ‘quilt sandwich’ (two pieces of fabric with thin batting in between).  

When I saw that, I smiled at her and said, “I have no trouble with fancy stitches or with thick fabric and batting, either!”

I’d brought along some fabric – a 12” strip, and another piece with multiple seams.  She set up the machine on a table in their back room, and I gave it a try.  There were no skipped stitches.  She had given me a spool of embroidery thread to use; I wonder if that made any difference?  I don’t piece with embroidery thread.

However, she did tell me she’d removed some thread from inside the tension discs; I reckon that could’ve caused some trouble.  Also, I saw that her thread path went through a loop on the top right side of the machine, on the right side of the bobbin winder.  I had not been using that; maybe that will make a difference.

When I was embroidering the last label, I did notice that the embroidery thread would pop out of the tension discs just as I was about to put it through the final loop before the needle.  Maybe the thread between the tension discs was causing that, and the slippery embroidery thread was particularly prone to slip loose?

Oh, and by ‘balance’, she was speaking of how far the needle moves to either side when it’s doing a fancy stitch with the needle position set at the middle point.  I seriously doubt if that was causing my skipped stitches on the straight stitch with needle position at far right; but then, what do I know? 😏

Anyway, there were no skipped stitches on my practice piece.  I thanked her and asked how much I owed.  The store owner had said there would be no charge, but that was when he thought someone had left the needle position bar loose.  Since that was not the case, and she had actually fixed something that may very well have been causing the trouble, I did not mention the ‘no charge’ thing.  Jesus Himself said, “The labourer is worthy of his hire,” after all!

I knew she’d be a bit perplexed when she pulled up my ticket and discovered the man had put in an estimate of $0.01 – the lowest amount he could plug into their software – and I didn’t want my face to give anything away, so while she prepared the ticket, I wandered through some nearby aisles of fabric, feigning intense interest in a snowman table runner and kit.

I heard her say, “Huh,” in a surprised tone.  Peeking through some shelves of fabric, I saw her tilt her head at the screen, then glance toward the rear of the store as if debating going to ask somebody something.  Then, evidently deciding against it, she just filled out the ticket as she thought best.  She’d worked on my machine for 45 minutes, and only charged me for half an hour.  She’s a personable young woman, easy to talk with.  Her hair, previously John Deere green and brilliant teal, by turns, was lavender that day.

I’ll find out how the machine works tomorrow.

Leaving the Nebraska Quilt Company, I proceeded on to Omaha to visit Loren.  I took him a navy velour sweatshirt that I had found in one of his closets when we were cleaning his house.  I’ve saved a couple of big boxes full of clothes for him, just in case he should need them.  

He was really pleased with it, and said I’d brought it just in time, as he’s going to be heading north to Greeley in the next couple of days.  (Greeley, Colorado, he probably means, as he often traveled through that town on his way to Rocky Mountain National Park – though he did sell memberships for NFIB [National Federation of Independent Business] around the little town of Greeley, Nebraska, in years gone by.  So who knows which one he was talking about.  Asking him certainly wouldn’t give any definitive answers!)

After a nice visit, wherein whilst a-looking at a vehicle ad in one of the National Geographic magazines I’d brought him he informed me that he used to drive a car with a steering wheel on the right, I walked with him to the dining room, as it was time for their evening meal.  I wished him farewell, and headed home.  

He’s doing well, though he has a steadily harder time getting up from a sitting position.

On the way home, a sundog appeared in the western sky.  I again stopped at Fremont Lakes, as the setting sun was turning everything to gold.

I watched an American coot swimming along, then suddenly dive.  He was underwater for a time, then popped up some distance from where he’d gone under, with some tasty morsel in his bill.

Once upon a time, when Caleb was about 5 years old, we were driving past the cemetery in Fremont.  Hester, 9, suddenly gasped and pointed at the tall chapel there in the middle of the cemetery.

“Ohhhh, look!!!” she breathed in a tone of horror.  “Too many people must’ve gone into that church, and it sank right down into the ground, and left nothing but the steeple sticking out of the ground!”

Caleb stared in astonishment.  “Oh, no!” he exclaimed, quite horrified.  “What happened to all the people?!”

And then both Hester and Lydia, 7, went into gales of mirth.

Caleb looked at his sisters reproachfully.  Then, “Hester,” he said quietly, and that was all.  😆

The sunset was beautiful, as I drove westward.

That evening, Hannah sent a picture, writing, “Joanna finished crocheting this infinity scarf last night.”

Isn’t it pretty?  The stitch is called “Sophia”.

Friday, I cleaned the kitchen, then made apricot Jello.  I cut chunks of peaches to put in it, and used a cup of 100% peach nectar for part of the liquid for the Jello. 

That done, I quilted the rest of the day.

It was Larry’s 63^rd birthday.  I got him a shirt on Amazon like some we saw in Hill City, South Dakota.  There’s a bison on the front, and it says, “Do Not Pet the Fluffy Cows!”

When Larry got home from work, he asked if I wanted to go get something to eat.  Sure!

We went to Arby’s.  I got a Chicken Something-Or-Other wrap.  Too much wrap, and too much breading on the chicken (why anyone puts breading on chicken that’s going into a sandwich is beyond me); but it tasted pretty good.  I peeled off and discarded a lot of the tortilla wrap.  It bothers me to waste stuff, but it bothers me more to eat so much flatbread and breading, all at the same time.

Larry got a Chicken Bacon Ranch sandwich like I got last time we went there.  And we ordered Jamocha shakes and diet Coke.  Larry decided we both needed a size large Jamocha shake. 

“I never get a size large!” I protested.

“But it was only 60¢ more!” he defended his decision.

“That is not the deciding criterion,” I informed him.

But apparently, it was.

We were so full afterwards, we didn’t have any Jello until midnight, when we each had a small bowlful after Larry got home from working on a pickup in Genoa.  Is Jello a good midnight snack, do you think?

When I stopped quilting that night, there was only one more row to go on the Cross-Stitched Teddies quilt.

It’s so nice having my rag rug back on the floor!  It’s much warmer underfoot than the oak flooring, and my feet don’t get nearly as tired, with that softness under them.  

I finally remembered to time my quilting (cross-hatching, mostly) on the very last teddy-bear block.  It took 50 minutes.  I did not keep track of my quilting hours, but it was probably in the vicinity of 40 hours or so.

Saturday, I finished the quilt.  It measures 76” x 76”.  As I’ve mentioned before, daughter-in-law Amy found these cross-stitched bears, all on one piece of fabric, at a secondhand store.  I cut them apart and added the Irish Chain variation and Ohio Star blocks.  The blocks each measure 10”.

I used white 40-wt. Omni thread on top, and white 60-wt. Bottom Line thread in the bobbin.  The batting is a conglomeration of multitudes of polyester batting scraps I had.  I found the backing, something thin and soft that probably has a bit of poly in it, in a bin of fabric Janice gave me a few months before she passed away.

I was so pleased to discover that the stitching showed up on the back better than I had expected.

I did the quilting on my 18” Handi Quilter Avanté, which is hand-guided.  There’s a little bit of free-motion and a whole lot of rulerwork in the quilting.

The closeups of the binding are especially for the woman who, upon learning that I was preparing to put binding onto another quilt entirely by machine, which is how I do it almost always, exclaimed, “OH, NOOO!  You’re going to RUIN it!” 

So... does it look ruined??

See all those pins?  It’s like sewing a porcupine!!!  But that’s what I do, in order to get the bindings as perfect as possible.  It wasn’t much fun, though, when an edge of the quilt that was draped on the floor got flipped so that the pins all aimed straight upwards — and I stepped on it.  And I do not wear shoes around the house.  😮😯😦😧😨😩😳😵🥴😵‍💫

When Larry got home from work that afternoon, he had a yummy pumpkin dessert that Victoria had sent home with him.

Jeremy and Lydia and the children came visiting that evening, bringing Larry his birthday present – a GoPro from all the kids (the ones who live here in town, that is).  Maybe I will no longer have to flip his videos right side up with my video editor on my laptop, when he gets his phone attached upside down to the front of his jacket while riding his dirt bike! 

They brought some cake for us, too. 

AND! – they gave him a gift certificate for one aviation lesson.  😮 ✈️

I took Lydia upstairs to show her Malinda’s quilt, when I thought Malinda was otherwise occupied.  When we came back down, there was Malinda at the foot of the stairs, looking up, obviously wondering if she could come upstairs.  I put my hands on her shoulders and told her, “You can’t go up there! – because... it’s almost Christmas!”

She looked at me when I started the sentence, a little surprised... then beamed, then ker-plunked onto the loveseat and bounced vigorously a couple of times, out of sheer delight.  Christmas!

Sunday, I didn’t feel so good, and my eyes were being miserably troublesome if I took them anywhere (and even if I didn’t); so I stayed home from church and listened to the services online.

Victoria had invited us for dinner, but instead she sent dinner home with Larry:  roast beef, potatoes, carrots, onions.  Mmmmm, it was good.

Larry helped me get some outside pictures of the quilt on the back deck – a bit of a trick, in a gusty Nebraska breeze.  😅

Regarding the cross-stitched bears:  Judging from notes in the box with these and other partially-done blocks and fabrics Amy also gave me, I suspect the lady who made them passed away, and her family sorted and labeled things the best they could, then donated them to a secondhand store in a town about an hour's drive from us where there are often similar fabric donations.  Amy stops there when she can, and has found quite a lot of nice fabrics, kits, and things.

The screen saver on my laptop was scrolling through all my pictures, and this photo of my dog Sparkle – part German Shepherd and part Collie – showed up.  I took this picture beside a river in Colorado in 1974 when I was 13.  Sparkle was not yet a year old.  I loved that doggy so much.

Last night I downloaded a bunch of photos from the game cam that’s been on the back deck.  There are pictures of birds... opossums... raccoons... cats... and people.  There were 850 photos on the card.  I discarded about 600 of them.  We set the camera back up closer to the feeders.

This morning, I put the first load of clothes into the washing machine, filled the bird feeders, and brewed up some Vanilla Hazelnut coffee by Cameron’s.

An online quilting friend was telling us how her new little dog has a bad habit of chewing everything.

I, commiserating with her, wrote, “I have a Dog-Chewing Story!  (raising hand)  Here it is.”

Our dogs used to camp out at my feet while I sewed, especially at night when everyone else was sleeping.

Late one night many years ago, there I was, sewing a loooong ruffle lickety-split, really going full bore.  It was the middle of the night, and not another creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  Ebony, our Black Lab, was sound asleep under the table – or so I thought.

Wrong.

She was chewing the cord to my sewing machine.

And then she chewed through it.

All at once, my sewing machine stopped in mid-seam, its light went off, the dog yelped, sprang straight up, and ka-blanged her head on the underside of the table.

I, who am not jumpy, went directly into the attic without benefit of a ladder.

It was right before Easter, and those little girls had to have their ruffled dresses.  Sooo… I awoke Larry and implored him to come and repair my cord.  He clambered groggily out of bed, put on his slippers, went out into the garage to get his electrical box, came back in, and spliced the cord.

I thanked him profusely and went back to sewing.

He replied, and I quote, “Grum grum grum” as he shuffled back to bed.  Yosemite Sam in person.

The dog did not again chew cords.  One of the children’s Bibles, yes (doing her Ezekiel impersonation, no doubt).  Cords, no.

Here she is as a puppy in 1987: 

And here she is the next year with us on a pontoon boat on Lake Dillon in Colorado. 

Above are Keith, Ebony, and Hannah.  Below are Joseph, Larry, and Teddy, with Ebony in the foreground.

Storytime over, I put wet clothes into the dryer, started another load in the washer, cleaned a bathroom, and made myself a toasted, whole-wheat bagel with gobs (i.e., heaps and mounds) of melted butter, chokecherry honey on one side, and peach jam on the other.

Here’s a funny:  a lady on Facebook wrote this comment under my quilt photos:  “Your quilt is just scrumptious!  The colors!  The size of the soft green borders, combined with that raspberry binding!  Scrumptious!!” – and that, immediately after another lady wrote that while she liked the quilt and the quilting, “Not so much for the border fabric color.” 

Good thing I’m not giving the quilt to her, ay?  😆  (Reckon she’d have preferred neon lime?  Road construction orange?  What?)

Here are pictures of a family of raccoons, an opossum, and three Eurasian collared doves that the game cam caught.

Once again, Facebook has blocked me, this time for sending ‘too many messages in a given time’.  I was responding with a ‘thank you’ to people who had complimented my quilt.

Since Facebook allows feedback on such things, I like to make mine stand out.  Maybe only robots read that feedback.  But maybe my words will make even a robot sit up and take notice.  Here’s my first feedback:

“Kindly give me back the ability to answer questions from my friends and other quilting people.  I can’t even tell people ‘thank you’ for their kind comments!  What a way to improve the world:  stopping people from saying ‘thank you’.  Facebook is an awful platform, and knotheaded people have programmed its bots.”

(I can say that with aplomb, knowing I have stated a fact.)

A few hours later, hoping they had let me out of Facebook jail, I tried answering a question regarding my quilt.  I got a popup stating the following:  “You Can’t Use This Feature Right Now.  We limit how often you can post, comment or do other things in a given amount of time in order to help protect the community from spam and keep Facebook safe.  You can try again later.  If you think this doesn’t go against our Community Standards let us know.”  (Omission of needed commas theirs, not mine.)

I clicked the link to ‘let them know’, and wrote this:  “And now I can’t even answer perfectly decent questions by perfectly nice people!  I’m a li’l ol’ white-haired quilting lady, trying to respond to lovely quilters – and your idiotic site has blocked me ‘to keep Facebook safe’!  You’re all part of a large flock of imbeciles.”

(That’s sort of like a flock of ibises, only a lot dumber.)

Whataya know, I can now respond to comments again!  Maybe my ‘time-out’ would’ve been over in any case; but I like to think that my sparkling and scintillating feedback helped hurry the process, and might possibly encourage them to ‘fix’ the bot so it doesn’t throw innocent people in the hoosegow for the dastardly deed of saying ‘thank you’ one too many times.  🙄

Just another reason to like MeWe better than Facebook!

Here’s the kitty that lives down the hill that both looks and acts ever so much like our Teensy cat did.  First time I’ve ever known him to be on our deck!  He’s peering down toward the ground, one story down.  It was almost midnight.

Half an hour later, here’s a raccoon with his head between the rails, also peering down at the ground.  I wonder what’s down there?  A skunk?  An opossum?  A bobcat?  An owl?  A mouse?

I have now ordered a 70mai dash cam, using a gift card from Keith and Korrine for both Larry’s and my birthdays.  It should be here in two days.  Reckon I might possibly be able to install it myself, and surprise Larry next time he drives the Mercedes?

For supper tonight, we had chicken tortilla soup and Ritz crackers, the rest of the apricot Jello and peaches with cottage cheese, some of Victoria’s yummy pumpkin dessert, and Cranberry Blueberry Acai juice and Vanilla Hazelnut coffee to drink.

The laundry is done (were there four loads, or five?) and everything put away.  The kitchen is fairly clean (though one side of the sink is sorta full of dirty dishes; but they can wait until tomorrow).  The bird feeders have been brought in, depriving raccoons and opossums of their middle-of-the-night smorgasbords.

Tomorrow I plan to embroider the label for Malinda’s quilt, and then get started on Elsie’s Kitty quilt.  Amy gave me several pieces of cute fabric for it.

I have not used the Bernina 730 yet.  I decided to finish the binding with the 180, as it needs to be used more often than I have been doing.  About the time it starts sounding normal again, I pack it away back under my table!  I’ll be using the 730 to embroider the label – but first, I’ll check it out on some fabric with a few seams, using normal thread, just to see if the stitch-skipping issue has been corrected.

Time for bed! 

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