Journal: Quilting Studio, Star Blocks, & a Birthday

 

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 29^th 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 8^th 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 64^th 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           ,,,>^..^<,,,