Journal: The Avanté Comes Back; The Cat Does Not

 

Tuesday afternoon, after a dearth of birds at the feeders, a little female Downy woodpecker came for a snack at the suet feeder.  The birds will return in droves, once seeds and, particularly, insects become more scarce.

I paid some bills, washed the dishes, and went to my sewing room.

That afternoon at a job Kurt was on, they were removing a porch from a house.  A mother cat ran away, leaving a kitten behind.  It looked to be about four weeks old.  She never came back for it all day long.  Kurt tucked the kitten in his jacket so it wouldn’t get hurt, as there was a lot of large machinery rumbling about.  The owners of the property said the cat and kitten were not theirs, and the mother cat never showed up again.  Sooo... Kurt took the kitten home. 

Victoria has been feeding it with a bottle filled with kitten formula, and it’s doing pretty well with soaked dry kitten food, too. 

“It’s drinking enough, according to Google,” said Victoria.  She weighs it on her kitchen scale to make sure.  “It’s gaining weight exactly on track:  half an ounce a day.”

“What do Luna and Yuki (their other cats) think of this?” I asked.

“Luna is noncommittal and would rather ignore it,” answered Victoria.  “Yuki is scared.  Petrified.”

Here are Yuki (on the left) and Luna (on the right).

So funny – a big, strong cat scared to death of a little bitty helpless one.

By the time they’d had the kitten two days, it had gotten attached and cried whenever they walked away.  At first, it had cried when they picked it up.

They will care for it until it’s a little older and a little stronger, and then take it to the shelter.  “It’ll easily find a home, with how cute it is,” Victoria said, and I’m sure she’s right.

Larry got home at about 3:00 p.m., then headed to Omaha to get the BMW X5 SUV, riding his BMW motorcycle.  Once there, he discovered that the front-wheel bike carrier that hooked onto the vehicle’s hitch receiver wasn’t nearly strong enough to hold that 800-pound motorcycle, so he had to leave the SUV there and ride the motorcycle back home again.  At least he found out before he started home and had some calamity on the highway.  We would have to go get the X5 another day.

I finished attaching borders to the Vintage Airplanes quilt that night.  

My Bernina Artista 730 was misbehaving.  Something was wrong in the bobbin area, and had been getting worse.  Now and then it would get bound up, jerk the needle in all sideways, and then hang onto it while the motor whined and tried to draw the needle back up.  😬  The needle usually got bent.  I’d shut the machine off quickly, draw the needle up with the hand wheel, remove the bobbin, clean and oil it, put a new needle in... and, until Tuesday, things went back to working properly.  But this time I could not get the bobbin out without using a pair of pliers; and after that, the machine sounded all clunky and bad.  So I got it ready to take to the tech, and am using my older Artista 180.  I’ll wait to do the label for the Vintage Airplanes quilt until I get the 730 back.  It’s so much easier to do embroidery on the 730 than the 180, and the CDs my friend gave me won’t work on the 180.

Wednesday, I shined and tidied a few areas around the house, rehung the bird feeders, watered the houseplants and the flowers on the porch, and started a load of clothes.  At noon, it was 57° with a windchill of 52°; the high would be 64°.

I pieced the backing for the Vintage Airplanes quilt and loaded it on the longarm, but I couldn’t load the quilt top or the batting until I got my longarm back.  The binding is cut, the strips sewn together, and the seams pressed.  I even sewed some buttons back on Larry’s suit sleeve, which somehow lost three of its four buttons.  I removed the remaining button and put four fairly alike buttons on in its place.  They don’t exactly match the buttons on the other sleeve, but who’s gonna be able to see the buttons on both sleeves at once?  Well, unless he lifts both arms in a boxing stance.   And he’s unlikely to do that at church.  (I hope.)

There was still an hour before time to leave for our midweek church service.  I was dressed and ready... and could neither quilt nor embroider.  So I pulled up EQ8 and started designing one of the galaxy/planet quilts for Grant and Leroy.  I need to come up with good names for them!  (For the quilts, not for the boys.  Their names can stand as they are.)

Wouldn’t you know, Larry didn’t feel well that evening, and stayed home from church – so he didn’t get to wear his ‘Don’t-Do-Any-Boxing’ suit. 

After I got home, I finished the quilt design and named it ‘Consider the Heavens’.  The words are from Psalm 8:  “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained...”

This will be for grandson Grant, age 11.  I have the center panel, and an all-over glow-in-the dark galaxy print that daughter-in-law Amy (Grant’s mother) gave me for the backing.

Thursday, I designed another quilt, which I will call ‘The Heavens Declare Thy Glory’, for grandson Leroy, Grant’s older brother, who will be 13 next month.  I have the solar-system fabric for these blocks, and I think there will be enough of the all-over glow-in-the-dark fabric for the back of this quilt, too.  If not enough for both quilts, I’ll run a wide strip of it down the center, with narrower navy or black strips on either side.

I ordered some background fabric for ‘Consider the Heavens’, and then hunted through my stash for coordinating and contrasting fabrics.  I’m making it ‘controlled-scrappy’ (multiple coordinating/contrasting fabrics) so I don’t have to buy more fabric.

By the time I quit for the night, the first block for the ‘Consider the Heavens’ quilt was done, and the second one was underway.

Friday, I filled out our mail-in ballots, got them ready to take to the drop box near the courthouse, and paid a couple of Loren’s bills.  Before heading for the quilting studio, I made chili, then left it slowly simmering on the stove.

Then off I went to continue work on Block No. 2.  I didn’t realize until I was well into the middle of it that this paper-pieced block had a quarter of a gazillion Y-seams.

I stared at it long and hard for a moment or two, but there was no getting around it:  there were a quarter of a gazillion Y-seams.

Ah, well.  I’ve sewn Y-seams since I was a young teenager making myself those stylish princess-style dresses with the inverted V’s above the waist, and again later when I made myself and the girls fitted dresses with V-shaped waists.  I can sew Y-seams.  In fact, I would not have realized they were anything I should be alarmed about, until I heard multiple quilters fretting and stewing over them, and engineering alternative quilt blocks that avoided those dreaded Y-seams.  For some unknown reason, this block is called ‘Hopatcong’, meaning ‘stone water’ or ‘stone over water’, i.e., ‘bridge’.

Meanwhile, the whole house was smelling steadily more scrumptious from that simmering chili, even all the way upstairs in my sewing room.  I trotted downstairs to stir it, taste it, and add more spices or ingredients if need be.  Mmmmm...  It was good.  It only needed to keep simmering, blending the flavors... and it should be about perfect in two or three hours.

This chili has kidney beans, ground beef, potatoes, onions, red, orange, yellow, and green peppers, celery, tomatoes (fresh from someone’s garden – one of Larry’s coworkers gave them to him), tomato paste, and canned, fire-roasted diced tomatoes with garlic and onions.  I generally throw in a cup or two of brown sugar so the flavor is a little more mellow, not so acidy.

Larry and I each polished off a big bowlful of the chili for supper.

Finishing the Hopatcong block (I’ll never remember that block name), I started the next, which is called ‘Star of the East’ – and found another four Y-seams in it!  (Oh – there were only twelve Y-seams in Block No. 2; I counted.  So my first estimate of a quarter of a gazillion was... close.)

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two reasons why I so often wind up making finicky blocks:  1) I like the way they look, and 2) I just plain enjoy making them.

Saturday, Larry went with me, first to Nebraska Quilt Company in Fremont to drop off my Bernina 730 and pick up my Avanté, then on to Omaha to visit Loren.

My new smartwatch had arrived Friday; I’d ordered it the day before after my VeryFitPro watch fell apart (the plastic around the charging prongs broke and is forever embedded in the band).  So while Larry drove, I synced the new watch (a Shang Wing Lynn2) with my phone and got it all set to my preferences by the time we got to Schuyler. 

This one has a few more functions than the old watch, including alerting and showing texts I receive, and checking blood pressure and blood oxygen levels.  It can find my phone by ringing it.

I’ve always had a heartrate in the high 50s / low 60s.  Even after running up and down the steps multiple times, my heartrate rarely goes higher than 68-70 bpm.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, 75°, on the way up to 79°.  However, it has been dangerously dry for the farmers who are harvesting.  They were asked to refrain from harvesting Thursday and Friday, and still firefighters had a couple dozen wildfires to cope with.  Some barely had time to get one fire contained before they were called to another.

Leaving the nursing home, we continued on to Eppley Airfield to pick up the BMW that had been languishing in the parking lot there since Monday.

On the way home, the sun was right in my eyes a good part of the time.  It’s hard to drive straight into the sun – and, wouldn’t you know, I’d forgotten my sunglasses.  But I did get some pretty pictures.

I raised my seat as high as it would go, moved it forward, and pulled the visor down.  I did all right, and by the time the sun would’ve been below the visor, it went behind a cloud, thankfully.  I got home at about 7:15 p.m.

I’ve just mixed myself a Citrus w/Taurine 4C drink.  They come in powder form, in packets sized to go into 16.9-ounce water bottles.  I thought it was like their Tea2Go when I ordered it.  It’s not.  I don’t like it.  Bleah!  Remind me to never order the stuff again!

The lemon flavor is even worse.  Sort of like drinking dusting spray, with sidenotes of pollen.  😝😜

And then there’s the orange flavor, which is reminiscent of squashed stinkbug, with hints of Eau de Skunk.

If I can tolerate the stuff long enough to swig it down by a quarter, I top it off with water again, and then it’s nearly bearable.

After church last night, Larry carried my Avanté up to my quilting studio and got it properly positioned on the carriage and the rails.

We warmed up a couple of bowls of chili for a late supper.  The pot was still half full afterwards, and we’d had six good-sized bowls out of it.  We like to put a dollop of sour cream in our chili (or soup or stew), and then sprinkle a bit of shredded sharp cheddar cheese on it.  I never knew I liked it that way, until we had various Italian soups at the Olive Garden restaurant.

I put the rest of the chili into freezer bags, stacked them in a box, and put the box into the freezer.  I put enough into each bag for one generous bowl of soup – and filled ten bags.  That will taste good some cold winter night.  And it’s always fun to find one more bag of soup in the freezer after I thought it was all gone.

For dessert, we had banana splits, made with Kemp’s frozen yogurt.  I sliced all the rest of the strawberries – about half a pound – to put on top.

It’s a pretty day, 76° at noon, on its way up to 80°, with a chance of light showers.

We have well water, and our shower head gets iron deposits in it, and the pulse function then stops working.  I used to take the head off and soak it in CLR (rust remover) every 3-4 months, but I finally figured out what to do to avoid doing that:  I just give the head a little spritz of CLR after each morning shower, and all is well.  I like the pulse function, either by itself, or with a couple of other spray settings.

Victoria sent a picture of Willie, and I responded, “Tell him Grandma says, ‘I love you!’”

It wasn’t long before Victoria sent an audio clip with Willie saying, “Love Grandma!”  💞

Victoria then sent a picture of Carolyn, Violet, and Willie having ‘tea’ after the girls got home from school this afternoon.  They were using their little china tea set and Victoria's antique teapot.  By then it was raining in town, and they couldn’t go out to play.  The rain didn’t start out here for another hour or so.  We did, however, have 45-mph winds that nearly blew the bird feeders into the next county.

“Tea and crumpets! (or sumpthin’),” I wrote back to Victoria.  “With that picture on the wall, and the pretty table setting, it looks like you’re in a fancy little French restaurant.”

“They’re having crackers and cheese,” she told me.

“What fun,” I responded.  “The little extras you do, they will always remember with fondness.”

Hannah made me this beautiful doily for my birthday.

I invariably display doilies upside down.  Hannah quietly fixes them.

This time, she chose the location for it and put it there herself.  Right side up.  😅

Well, my Avanté is ready and waiting.  I’ll quilt the Vintage Airplanes before continuing with the ‘Consider the Heavens’ quilt.  I need to ask for the grandchildren’s clothing sizes and start ordering some Christmas gifts for those who will not be getting quilts this year.  Only two more months ’til Christmas!  Can I get these two Solar System quilts done by then??  Gotta hurry, hurry, hurry...

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