It was a bit chilly
and cloudy here last Monday, just 60°. We
had creamy chicken noodle soup with butter croissants for supper, Oui peach
yogurt for dessert, and V8 Orange Pineapple juice to drink.
The longarm tech was
coming the next day, so I cleaned the French windows in my quilting studio. They’ve been needing it... I’ve been putting
it off... so it was a good time to get it done.
Don’t want the tech to think I’m slob, now do I?
I had already packed
away all the quilt paraphernalia I was working on and carted it into my little
upstairs office across the landing when I knew the tech was coming, so nothing
would be in his way.
The tech arrived at
about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. As I mentioned
last week, he came because the Avanté continued to skip stitches unless I used
a size 20 needle, even after he worked on it at the store and thought he’d
gotten it fixed.
Wow, it only took
the man 15 minutes, tops, to repair the machine. He’d forgotten his ‘practice quilt’, so I
quickly pulled out a couple of pieces of fabric that I thought would be big
enough and that I wasn’t planning on using.
I’ll probably need them tomorrow, right?
After the man left,
I carted all my Stuff & Things, Jetsam & Flotsam, back into the
quilting studio. It took me longer to
carry stuff out and then back in than it took him to fix my machine!
Now
hopefully it won’t take the Bernina tech too long to fix my other sewing
machine, the Bernina Artista 730. It’s
by far the best for embroidering, but the one I’m using right now, the Bernina
Artist 180, sews perfectly; I’m thankful for that.
I then got back to
piecing the star blocks. Here is one of
the patterns in EQ8 on my computer.
It got up to 80° that day, quite warm for the
29th of October. Hearing a loud
commotion from a whole lot of birds, I looked out the window and discovered the
large lawn across the lane chockful of grackles. One day last week, all the big maple trees
along our fence were totally covered with European starlings, and they were
singing (i.e., squawking) their heads off.
I have a cherry
tree, and in all the 21 years we’ve lived here, I’ve only gotten one solitary
cherry off of it before the birds ate them, and that one cherry wasn’t even
quite ripe.
Furthermore, when I
plucked it off and popped it into my mouth, a robin in the top branches
squawked angrily at me. “That’s MY
cherry! Mine! Mine!!!”
(That’s what it sounded like to me, anyway.)
Some years, the
cedar waxwings arrive in a town in Iowa that has cherry trees lining Main
Street. But... when the weather is right
(or maybe ‘wrong’), the cherries ferment. The birds strip the trees bare of cherries,
and the next morning, residents of the town find drunk birds staggering along
the sidewalks, unable to fly. 🫢🫨🤭
It was so windy that
day, the neighbor’s automatic sprinklers were all blowing water the opposite
direction the nozzles were aimed.
Late Tuesday afternoon,
Larry stopped by to get his motorcycle, as he was going to ride it to Norfolk,
40 miles to the north, to get the boom truck that was being serviced there. He used the crane on the truck to lift that
big motorcycle onto the truck bed, where he strapped it down for the drive back
to Walker’s shop. Once there, he lifted
the motorcycle back down with the crane and rode it home again.
That night, I used the
last box of soup mix from Cabela's – potato soup – for our supper. It takes three cups of water and three cups of
milk, so it makes a big potful of soup.
We sprinkled cheddar cheese on it.
I still have a small balance left on one of our Cabela's gift cards; I
should use it on more of that boxed soup mix; it’s scrumptious.
I finished these two
blocks that night – Sara’s Star and Sara’s Star Variation. These were the last of the ten 10” blocks for the ‘Consider the Heavens’ quilt.
I don’t like a messy
house, but there are almost always areas in the house that could use a good
dusting, especially at harvest and planting times. There are cornfields, pastures, and soybean
fields all around our house; and when the farmers are busy, our house gets
dusty fast. Our vehicles outside get
dirty, too, as first the dew covers them, and then the dust.
Below is my view out
the window in my sewing room to the north.
The cornfield north of those four evergreen trees has been harvested.
Wednesday afternoon,
it only got up to 47°.
I pulled out leggings for the first time this season. The squirrels were
racketing about like everything on the roof, periodically dashing lickety-split
along the eave that’s directly below the window in my front dormer. They’re so funny. I like to watch them go dashing along with a
nut in their mouths – then suddenly stop, dig a hole, paws a-flying, drop the
nut in, and then push the dirt back over the hole and pattity-pat-pat it down.
They won’t find all those
nuts during the winter and coming spring.
They bury a whole lot more than they need. Some of those volunteer trees around our
property are compliments of the local squirrel population!
This is the view to
the northwest.
It was Kurt and
Victoria’s 8th anniversary that day.
After church that evening, I gave them a Teabloom teapot – which, as it
turned out, had a broken infuser. There
was hardly any packing between the interior and the exterior boxes, and the
USPS man was not at all careful when he tossed it on our porch – and he didn’t
bother to put it in the plastic bin we have on the porch for packages, even
though it was raining. When I found the
box, it was all soggy.
I ordered a new
teapot and returned the broken one. The
new one arrived Saturday.
By the time I quit
sewing and headed for the feathers that night, I had completed two of the four
6” Tall Stars, other than removing the paper from the backs of them.
We finished our
potato soup that evening, putting bacon bits on it this time. We had those yummy canned biscuits with it,
along with strawberry applesauce and white cran-peach juice.
After
supper, I went back upstairs to my quilting studio. I was sewing away when I realized I’d been
hearing Big Equipment – and it was quite late.
I texted Larry: “You are making too much noise! And it’s 10:30!”
He promptly replied, “How
can I be making too much noise in the tub?”
Oh. Huh. My
sewing machine had evidently been humming along so steadily, I had not heard
the tub.
“Who’s running road
graders and back hoes and skid loaders, then?” I asked. Then, “Okay, now I see lights in the woods to
the east.”
It was the neighbor
man taking out some dead trees over there.
How ’bout that. Someone outside
making noise later than Larry does. 😯
About that time, I got
two notifications at once from AccuWeather.
One read, “Rounds of Snow & Rain!
A storm is bringing wintry weather in the final days of October.” The next one said, “Warmest Halloween
Possible! Expect record-challenging
warmth potential for Halloween as drought and fire risk continue.”
Okay, okay; the first
notice was for Utah and Montana, and was specifically referring to a Pacific
storm; while the second was speaking of the Northeast United States. Still, it was funny, receiving Notice 2 hot
on the heels of Notice 1.
Late that night (or early
the next morning, depending on your point of view), I finished all the 6” blocks: four Tall Star blocks, and six 8-Pointed
Stars. That was all the pieced blocks; now I was ready to cut the
non-pieced blocks and the sashing, and then start putting the quilt top
together.
Friday, I began
doing just that. By the middle of the
afternoon, one row was together, and the rest of the non-pieced
blocks were cut, along with some of the sashing.
This is the view from the
east window of my quilting studio. Teddy’s
place can be seen in the distance.
After burning the
midnight (and later) oil, I got the 'Consider the Heavens' quilt top entirely
put together.
Saturday, I dropped off
the newly-arrived Teabloom teapot at Victoria’s house, collected the broken one
and took it to the UPS Store, then proceeded on to Omaha to visit my brother
Loren.
I got back home a
little after 6:30 p.m. We had a supper of
Swedish meatballs and noodles, applesauce, and kolaches, and then I scurried
upstairs to put together the backing for the ‘Consider the Heavens’ quilt. It took several cuts and splices to get the
piece of fabric to the proper size.
There was only enough for Grant’s quilt; I’ll have to rummage up
something else for the backing for Leroy’s quilt.
Here it is – and yes
indeedy, it glows in the dark, as advertised! (Blurry, because the tripod
was in the car, and I didn’t feel like traipsing out to get it.)
There was an extra
hour that night! – so I loaded backing, batting, and quilt top on the frame,
cleaned, oiled, and threaded the longarm, and quilted just a few inches before
quitting for the night.
Amy wondered, “Do
you think Grant will flip the quilt upside down and use it that way, since the
glow-in-the-dark fabric is on the back?” 😁
I was about to close
my laptop and head to bed when I noticed a live stream of Oklahoma weather on
YouTube. I took note not only because of
my quilting friends who live there, but also because my nephew, our pastor, Robert
and his wife Margaret were in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where Robert would be preaching
Sunday at a preacher friend’s church there. When I saw that there were multiple severe
tornadoes, and that at least one was close to my friends’ homes, my hair stood
up on end, and stayed that way for a while, until I was pretty sure that the
twisters had passed them. The lady told
me the next day that one tornado was heading directly at them, then lifted just
six miles from their home. The wind
howled louder than she’d ever heard before, and there were tree limbs down all
over their country property, but their home escaped damage.
Sunday was Larry’s
64th birthday. We’re the same
age again! 😉
It was foggy that
morning, and drizzling through a thick mist as we drove to church.
After the service,
Hester gave Larry his gift from their family – a wall-décor canoe with ceramic
plates fitted into it. The artwork on
the plates was done by renowned painter Terry Redlin. Isn’t it beautiful? She gave Larry cookies, too.
It’s
rainy here today. I washed clothes and
sheets, refilled the bird feeders, watered the houseplants, shined up the bathroom,
and washed the dishes.
There are tornadoes
in Oklahoma again today, and also in Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri. I’m watching the weather on apps on my laptop,
as I have friends in all those places. I
don’t know if my nephew and his wife are home yet or not.
It was about 5:00
p.m. when we started getting rain from the northern bands of that same storm
that was producing all the tornadoes and severe thunderstorms.
Kurt and Victoria
and their four children, and Hannah and her youngest, Levi, came visiting this
evening. Victoria brought soup and
homemade bread for us for Larry’s birthday, and Hannah gave him two pieces of
framed artwork she’d made. She does
beautiful quilling (that’s artwork with tiny rolled and shaped strips of
paper), making flower arrangements around a piece of music – ‘Surely Goodness
and Mercy’, one of Larry’s favorite songs. The second frame has a picture of Larry and me
in it.
Quilling looks a lot
like quilting – only with paper. Don’t
you agree?
Willie was
delighted to find the canoe with the ceramic plates where I had propped it
temporarily on the loveseat.
“It’s a long boat!”
he exclaimed, all prepared to gather it up and play with it.
Kurt explained to
his small son that it was just for decoration.
So Willie, somewhat disappointed, got a book from the bookcase and went
to ask Grandpa to read it to him.
Grandpa did, of
course.
Little Arnold is such
a happy and cheery baby. If we big
people smiled as much as that baby does, our cheeks would be all tired and worn
out!
Meanwhile, Levi
tuned up a few notes on my piano, while Carolyn and Violet looked on.
As I type, I’m sipping Caramel Butter Crunch coffee from
Christopher Bean, and I can attest that it’s MMmmmm, good! Good thing it’s decaffeinated, since it’s
bedtime. (Not that caffeine keeps me
from sleeping.)
Good
night!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
