Journal: Labels, Tornadoes, Fires, & a New Quilt

 

Last Monday evening after supper, I remonstrated briefly with myself before I gave in and ate a Snickers ice cream bar for dessert.

I was still enjoying the final bite when I turned around and saw it:  the apple crumb pie I’d baked earlier in the afternoon.  So much for avoiding extra calories.  I WOULD have a slice of pie, thankee kindly.  I even had a little scoop of Häagen-Dazs New York Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream atop the pie, for good measure.  Yep, so much for ‘less calories’.  😏

It took five days before I ate enough less during the day that I lost the pound I gained on Monday.  And to all those who are shrugging a shoulder and rolling your eyes, yes it is too a big deal – because if I gain a pound a week for a year, I’ll weigh 52 more pounds, this time next year.  Imagine if I gained a pound a day!  Yikes.  I’m a-gonna lay off both the pie and the Snickers ice cream bars for a while now.

Fortunately, my favorite foods are healthy foods that are generally low-calorie.

Here’s Larry:  he comes home from work, walks right past something bubbling away aromatically on the stove, opens the refrigerator door, and stands there staring into it somewhat blankly.

“Did you think it was too hot in the kitchen?” I ask, and he somewhat sheepishly closes the door and then asks, “What’s for supper?”

Tuesday afternoon as my machine embroidered a quilt label, I watched a video of some British people renovating a very old chateau in France.  One man tried taking out some old pipes, creating a massive leak in the cellar. 

“As you can see,” he said in his British accent, “we’ve created a bit of a watuh fea-chah.  Kind of pretty, I think.”   😄

Here’s the label for Levi’s quilt, ‘Heaven & Nature Sing’.  I’d done the majority of it Saturday, but still needed to add the two bottom lines saying that the scenic/animal prints came from Levi’s late other grandmother.  I clipped as many jump stitches as I could; some, I can’t; they’re too small.  The newer Bernina sewing/embroidery machines cut those jump stitches for you as they go along!

I filled the bird feeders, and soon there were multitudes of birds around them.  The birds are singing their springtime songs these days; I enjoy listening to them.

I cleaned the kitchen, and then started making split pea soup.  I put onions, carrots, and chopped spiral ham in it.  It’s one of my favorite soups – as long as it’s not canned, or cooked ’til it’s mushy.  I paid some bills, did a few errands in town, and started embroidering Josiah’s label.  For once, I was going to tuck these labels into the corners of the quilts, and sew two sides down at the same time I put on the binding.  I rarely remember to do that.

Larry got gas fumes all over himself working on his old farm truck, so he ate his supper while sitting on the wrought-iron bench on the back deck.  I gave him some Chicken in a Biscuit crackers and a cup of coffee to go with his soup.  Reckon the neighbors will think he’s in the doghouse?

Larry regularly comes home smelling of gas, diesel, welding smoke, form oil, or worse, the aroma from one of the hog barns Walkers pours foundations for.

And I have an extremely sensitive nose!  Gas or diesel fumes will give me a headache before it even registers on me that I’m smelling it.

Wednesday, I made a label for the quilt I gave Bobby and Hannah recently, the one I originally made for my brother and his wife back in 2009.

Quilt historians think we absolutely must put the location of the creation of the quilt on our quilt labels.

If someone made a quilt as they traveled from New York State to the California Republic during the Gold Rush of 1848, they’d have to put “New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Unorganized territory, Texas Skillet Handle (a Skillet Handle is obviously skinnier than a Panhandle), and Mexican Cession (aka California Republic) Unorganized territory (as it still is).

The birds were warbling away.  So many birds!  The red-winged blackbirds were back, and today the common grackles returned in droves.  Or, I should say, in ‘plagues’, as that’s what a flock of grackles is called.

Hester and I were discussing (via text) shoes that afternoon.  I told her about discovering that Moroccan-made Rieker shoes fit me very well, and are pretty enough for church, into the bargain.  It was church shoes I needed.

I found a few on eBay at good bargains.  I’m tired of my feet and toes cramping every Sunday night, and figure it’s just gotta be because of the shoes I wear to church, despite the fact that I no longer wear the high spiked heels of yesteryear, but have dialed it down to nothing higher than two or two-and-a-half inches.

The pairs of Rieker shoes I got, all ‘gently used’, are around $150-$300 when new.  One pair was only $6.50!  The other were anywhere from $12 to $22.  I wound up with one pair that’s a bit too big.  It turns out, European 38 sometimes means United States 7, and sometimes 7 ½.  European 37 is sometimes U.S. 6 ½, and sometimes U.S. 7.  You’d think with the bigger numbers, they’d be more precise in sizing??

Hester wrote, “Now I’m thinking I should really check what spring church shoes I have that I actually like.  🤔  Might need to do a little shopping soon!”

I sent her this, with the caption, “The perfect spring church shoes.”

She responded,  “😅😅😅  Keira would think so!!”

I began putting the binding on Levi’s quilt, paused for our evening church service, and worked on it a little longer after we got home.  When I stopped and headed to bed, it was about three-quarters done.

Thursday, I finished binding Levi’s quilt and went to take pictures of it on the back deck — and discovered the wind blowing at a steady 20 mph, with 30-35 mph gusts.  (I’d sort of expected it, as I could hear it rattling the rafters now and again.)  Soooo... I took pictures of the quilt on the living room floor, though that floor isn’t big enough for this large of a quilt.  But I did the best I could.  🙂

The ‘Heaven & Nature Sing’ quilt measures 86 ½” x 90 ½”.  The batting is Quilters’ Dream wool.  There is light tan 40-wt. Omni thread on top and light brown 60-wt. Bottom Line in the bobbin.  The scenic animal prints were from a reversible quilt started by Levi’s late other grandmother.  We don’t know which of her grandsons she’d been making it for.  I took it apart and will make two quilts of the one; this is the first.  The green fabrics were from the borders of the original quilt.  The pantograph is ‘Bear, Moose, and Pines’, by Deb Geissler.

Next, I began putting the binding on Josiah’s quilt.

You know how I always complain that sewing the back side of the binding on a quilt (I do it by machine) is like trying to sew a porcupine, on account of all those pins?  Well, I decided to aim the pins inward instead of outward.

Not that I haven’t thought of such a thing before, but it’s backwards – not just the feel of putting in the pin, but backwards to the binding, because it’s not going to hold it in place as well as it does when one first puts the point of the pin in, right at the folded edge that needs to be positioned a scant 1/32” over the first line of stitching.  Where the pin comes out is not as important – unless you turn the pin around and point it the other direction.  Then it’s the exit point that matters, and exits points are harder to control than entry points.

But I was going to do it, and I figured, like anything else, I’d improve as I went along.

Once the pinning was done, I got on with the stitching in the ditch from the top side, pausing now and then to turn the edge back and see if I was catching that fold in the right spot.

For the most part, it looked fine.  I had to stop, repin, and resew two or three spots where the stitching missed the fold; but otherwise, all was well, and it really was nice not being constantly jabbed by all those outward-facing pins.  Here's the binding on the top side of the quilt:

And here's the binding on the back of the quilt:

Things were going so well, I decided to try sewing with air thread.

It worked just as well as it ever does.

Yeah, I had to refill the bobbin, put all the pins back in the binding, and resew it.  😝

Bobbins will purposefully strrrretch out their thread supply and wait ’til you are in the midst of a tricky part, sewing carefully along and removing pins as you go – and then, with evil, malicious sniggles, they send up their last little millimeter of thread and go on spinning gleefully in circles as you blithely continue sewing, not noticing the lack of bobbin thread until you’ve removed a whole heap of pins.  Bobbins are malevolent.

I finished the binding despite opposition from the bobbin.

There was a lunar eclipse going on late that night.  I walked out on the back deck and watched it several times as the moon turned a reddish color, gradually disappeared, and then gradually reappeared.  Here’s an animated picture from Science Tech Daily.

The never-ending wind seemed somewhat calm late Friday morning, so I went out and swept the deck, laid Josiah’s ‘Mane Event’ quilt out — and it immediately blew away.  I’m still chasing it, way up in Keya Paha County somewhere.  I’ll be back, as soon as the wind changes directions.

Actually, I managed to grab the quilt, wad it into my arms, and skedaddle back into the house with it before we both blew away.

I debated on filling the bird feeders, knowing that if I did, the deck would need to be swept again before I could take pictures of Josiah’s quilt.  But in the nearby trees was a small flock of pretty little American goldfinches watching me and making their cute little up-tilted chirps, quite as if they were asking, “Please?  Seed, please?”  I filled the feeders.

The silly robin who loves berry suet, apparently believing himself to be a nuthatch or a downy woodpecker, is back!  Or maybe it’s one of his offspring?  Robins usually only live a couple of years in the wild, and if this is the same one, he must be five years old now.  If so, it’s the one I saw hopping and fluttering up to the suet holder to grab bites back when he was a fledgling, still all speckly, four or five years ago, trying his best to do the Hummingbird Hover [that’s a combo waltz and jig].

The longest-living banded wild robin ever recorded survived 13 years and 11 months, according to the Bird Banding Laboratory at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.  In captivity, robins have survived longer than 17 years.

I did a bit of housecleaning and then started designing grandson Jeffrey’s quilt, which I will call Safari Animals.  Below is the panel I’ll be using. 

I barely pulled up EQ8, started measuring the panel – and ran into the first problem (there are always problems with printed panels, right?):  the pictures are not square.  They measure 14 ⅝” x 14 ⅞”.  😡👿  Apparently, the people who design printed panels don’t quilt.

I got a notification that my roll of batting had been delivered to my front door — but that front door seemed to be located somewhere in Enid, Oklahoma!  I immediately sent a note to two of my quilting friends on the Quilt Talk group, sisters who live near Enid, asking, “Did you two hijack the batting truck?!!”

I pulled up a chat window with a UPS representative.  She searched for the package, and told me that my name was not on that transaction, and the package was correctly delivered, and I needed to contact the sender, the Batting Super Sale Company.  Maybe the batting company gave me the wrong tracking number or transaction number?  Both numbers were right there on my emailed invoice, on my PayPal Summary page, and on the UPS tracking page.

However, the Batting Super Sale Company is located in Overland Park, Kansas (a suburb of KC), and this package started out from Virginia Beach, VA, went to Hodgkins, IL, then to Oklahoma City, OK, then to Enid.

I called them.  The answer:  someone (a very apologetic someone) at Batting Super Sale had inverted a couple of numbers in the tracking number.  My batting was out for delivery, and should be here by 7:00 p.m., the lady said.  Our weather was worsening, though, and that could delay things.  The nice thing about ordering from Batting Super Sale is that real, live people answer the phones, check into the matter, and give prompt answers.  I’ve been a customer for quite a few years now.  They have a big variety of battings, quilting and embroidery thread, that really nice Naked Bee lotion and lip balm for sale a few dollars cheaper than elsewhere, and even a few free patterns on their website, Batting Super Sale.  Their batting prices are always good, and they’re always having sales.  And they evidently have a second warehouse in Virginia Beach.

A second cousin of ours is in a nursing home in Minnesota.  I enjoy texting with her.  She wrote to tell me that someone had brought a baby goat, just a couple of weeks old, into the home for everyone to see. 

“It was so cute!” she said.  “We all enjoyed petting it and watching it play.”

That reminded me of the fainting goats some friends of ours had.  They didn’t tell the lady’s mother exactly what kind of goats they were, just for the fun of it.  So one day she was visiting... went to the back door to call the children to come in for supper — “SUPPERTIME!!!” she shouted in her usual loud voice – and was totally astonished when all the fainting goats fell over, stiffer’n boards.  🤣😂😆

 At about 5:30 Friday afternoon, the 45-50-mph winds suddenly died down to an eerie calm, so I grabbed quilt and camera and stepstool and dashed for the back deck.  And yes, I did indeed have to sweep it again, since a good deal of the bird seed I’d put in the feeders several hours earlier was all over the deck.  This was partly the fault of the birds, and partly the fault of the wind. 

As I stepped outside, I discovered that the sky to the east was very dark navy, and thunder was rumbling.  Overhead, it was still blue and sunny.

I picked up speed.

The quilt measures 96” x 101”.  The horse prints were found amongst Josiah’s late great-grandmother Elaine’s fabrics.  Some were sewn together by serger, as she liked to do.  She probably quit because the prints were all whoppyjaw, diamonds instead of squares.  I had to ruthlessly trim them to wind up with squares.

There is 40-wt. Omni thread on top in beige, tan, cadet blue, navy, brown, and dark brown.  The bobbin thread is 60-wt. Bottom Line.  The batting is Quilters’ Dream wool.  The checkered backing is also fabric from Elaine’s stash.  The striped light blue strips are from some of Larry’s discarded work shirts, which, amazingly enough, had fabric on the backs of each shirt that was neither stained nor torn nor burned!

I did custom quilting with rulers and free-motion.  My machine is an 18” Handy Quilter Avanté on a 12’ Studio frame.  It is hand-guided, not computer-driven.

My phone rang.  I glanced at it – Victoria was calling.

I sent a quick text:  “I’ll call you back in a minute; I’m trying to take pictures of a quilt on the deck before it rains.”

Getting it done minutes before the storm hit, I quickly brought quilt, camera, and stepstool back indoors, then called Victoria back.

Carolyn, 7, had wanted to call and warn me that a storm was coming – a dust storm.  A thunderstorm was following, hot on its heels, with 60-mph winds.  It hit them ten minutes before it hit me, as I live about 8 miles west of them.  Unusual, for weather to be traveling west.

Even as we talked, the sky turned yellowish brown, and then it sounded like someone was using a sandblaster on the house, and for a little while, visibility was practically zero.  I took these pictures after it died down a bit, right in between the dust storm and the thunderstorm.

About a year ago, I listened to an audio book on the Dust Bowl Years (mid-1930s), centering on families from Texas and Oklahoma.  It was a lot worse than I had realized.  I did not know so many people died.  Just think of this:  “The Dust Bowl, a severe drought that ravaged the Great Plains in the 1930s, is estimated to have caused the deaths of around 7,000 people, primarily due to starvation, dust pneumonia, and accidents during migration.” 

Causes of Death:

Dust Pneumonia:  The most significant cause of death was dust pneumonia, a lung disease caused by inhaling large amounts of dust during the severe dust storms. Starvation: The drought and crop failures led to widespread food shortages and starvation, particularly among those who couldn’t afford to leave the area.

Accidents During Migration: Many people, desperate to escape the Dust Bowl, migrated to other parts of the country, and some died during these journeys.

Other Impacts:

Homelessness:  The Dust Bowl left an estimated 2 million people homeless.

Agricultural Disasters:  Wheat production fell by 36% and maize production plummeted by 48% during the 1930s.

Migration:  Thousands of people, including those from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri, migrated to California seeking work.

The ‘maize’ is what we commonly know as ‘corn’.

7:00 p.m. came and went with no sign of the batting.  I wasn’t surprised; we rarely get such late deliveries out here in the country, and the thunderstorm had only recently died down to a gentle rain.  I figured the batting would arrive the following day.

But shortly after 8:00 p.m., there was the UPS man knocking on my door, an enormous roll of batting propped up next to him!  He was waiting for me to come to the door so he could bring it into the house for me, which I very much appreciated.

I got Dream Poly Deluxe batting this time instead of the wool I usually get, partly because it was on sale at a good price, and partly because I couldn’t remember trying their poly deluxe before.  Turns out, I’ve used it.  It’s quite nice, feels so soft, and has a lovely drape; but it’s much thinner than the Dream wool.  I’ll be a-wishin’ I’d have waited for the wool to go on sale, next time I use this poly!  It doesn’t hold a candle to the wool batting.

After putting together ten different EQ8 designs in a variety of color schemes, here’s the one I settled on for Jeffrey’s ‘Safari Animals’ quilt.  I’d like to get these fabrics, but I should just use fabric I already have, so it will look a little different in color. I hope I’m not seriously disappointed, if I don’t get the fabric I used in the EQ8 design.

As I played with EQ8, I listened to a YouTube livestream of weather across the States.  Here’s a comment I found under the live video from a police officer in Oklahoma, where there were several wildfires and dangerously high winds:  “Sitting here in my patrol car in OKC and a guy walks up to ask about the power being out.  Solved that puzzle pretty quick.  Then he asked about whether or not he should grill out on the charcoal grill in a few.  🙄🤦🏻‍♂️  I removed his arms and legs, for the safety of others.  He can have them back later.”

There were 130 wildfires reported in Oklahoma that day.  I have friends who live very close to those areas where there were wildfires, including Stillwater, population about 50,000, where at least 74 homes burned.  In Chandler, a wrestling coach and his son got caught by a fire while trying to protect their land and were severely burned.  Someone found them and they were rushed to a hospital, but the father died the next morning.  The son has had both of his hands amputated, and is fighting for his life.

There were tornadoes in Missouri, Mississippi, Indiana, Illinois, and Arkansas that night, many of them ‘large and extremely dangerous’.  Online, it says at least 42 people have died from severe storms Friday and Saturday; but on the radio I heard an announcer say the toll had risen to 46.  Someone answered, “These storms are getting more worse every year.”  ‘More worse’?

Saturday afternoon, Levi sent a picture of a plaque someone is selling (perhaps he saw it at their vendor event?) that reads, “God Bless Amercia Land that I love.” 

“It’s the thought that counts,” wrote Levi.

I responded, “The way most people grammer and speel is pathertic.”

“And you’re most people now, too?  Oh, how far the world has sank!” Levi answered.

And yes, he knows better than to write ‘has sank’. 

I therefore retorted, “‘Sank’.  That’s coffee, right?” – and added the picture of the vintage Sanka coffee can.

Levi immediately noticed the odd spelling on the can and wrote, “Caffein?  I don’t know that molecule.  I know CAFFEINE.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “they didn’t even speel rite way back then.”

Then I queried, “Did you ever get your tuner fixed?”  (The charging jack had come loose inside it.)

“Not yet,” he answered.  “I’m fixin’ to buy a new app.  Can I test it on your unfortunate plonker?”  hee hee, ‘plonker’.

“Yes indeedy,” I told him.  “It’s seriously out of tune again, probably from the weather.”  Then, “Here, I found this, though whoever wrote it couldn’t speel (or tipe), themselves:  ‘The American Heritage Dictionary (ed. 2016) has caffein as an alternative spelling of caffeine.  I haven’t found this spelling in any British dictionary (and I also hadn’t heard rhis spelling before, apart in a coulple of old scientific papers).’  They couldn’t gramer, neither,” I added.

“Whot an miserble lot of misspelings!” said Levi.

“‘Should of’ and ‘would of’, etc., along with ‘I seen him when he done it’ bothers my brain immensely,” I remarked.

“As it does mine,” agreed Levi. 

I bid him adieu with this:  “Well, off I go to the sink to wash them thar deeshes!  Later, crocodile.  After a while, alligator.” 

That’ll probably bother his brain for a good long while.  ((...snicker...))

After going through my fabrics and pulling out pieces for the Safari Animals quilt, I realized that I had plenty of reds but not enough blues to do this quilt without making it scrappy.  So I switched to red.  If you don’t like this as well, keep this in mind:  Jeffrey will like it better.

I got 23 of these done that day (ignore the print; I was using newsprint from another project).  I need to do 180 of the below units in order to make 45 blocks.  

Sunday morning at 7:30 a.m., I was sipping Caribbean Love coffee (with coconut, chocolate, hazelnut flavors) and curling my hair, getting ready for church.  I looked at the weather to decide what to wear, and was surprised to see it was only 6°.  Then, Oh.  That’s at Denali Park.  Here, it was 19°, with a feel-like temperature of 12°.  That’s a little better, I guess.

A friend gave me an adorable baby quilt last night in Anne of Green Gables prints; she made it for a little granddaughter.  I will start quilting it tomorrow, but first I need to move the fabrics I pulled out for the Safari Animals quilt, and then vacuum and dust.

We picked up an order at Walmart last night after church, then came home and had some of the Panera Bread broccoli and cheddar soup that I’d ordered.  Yummy, that’s good soup.

Before heading to the feathers, I watched a video of National Parks in Europe.   “There is rich vegetation along the river,” intones the narrator – as a video of a person walking on a glacier is shown on the screen.   “ Here is untouched nature at its finest!” he heralds, as a scene of a large valley with multiple small villages strewn along its length unfolds.  Quite pretty, yes; but it’s certainly not ‘untouched nature’.

This of course makes me wonder just how often I am being misled throughout the entire video.

A friend and I were discussing some of our friends, particularly those who are always willing to help.  My friend Kathy once helped me wash, sort, and fold clothes after our house fire in 1988.  We had five kids back then, so we had socks.  Lotsa socks.  Lots and lotsa socks.  Kathy was attempting to put socks into pairs.  It was not a job for the faint-hearted, for I bought colored socks, argyle socks, striped socks, tall socks, short socks, thin socks, thick socks, and everything in between.  I like variety! 

Other people with big families buy identical white crew socks by the truckload, to make sorting easier.

So there was Kathy, laboriously matching socks.  She held up two identically colored and striped socks – only one was about a foot and a half long; the other was only about six inches long. 

“Mutt and Jeff,” she muttered without cracking a smile. 

I was already struck funny at, oh, just everything in general.  That totally cracked me up.

In looking at some family genealogy today, I spotted the name of one of my great-aunts, Leta Marguerite [Swiney] Manning.  Here she is as a little girl, front row on the right.  My Grandpa Swiney is in the back, on the right.

I met Aunt Leta when I was 12, and we were attending my Grandma Swiney’s funeral.  We went to pick up her to take her to the funeral.  She would’ve been at least 80 then.  She came out of a tall, beautiful, old apartment building.  It had a long series of steps down to the street, and Daddy started up to help her – but she gave a little wave and a grin, put her hand lightly on the railing, and ran skippity-skip pell-mell down those stairs.

I was highly impressed, and thought, I’m going to be exactly like that, when I’m 80.  (Maybe I’ll still be able to smile and wave, who knows.  Heh heh)

By the way, when I say, a ‘tall’, beautiful old apartment building, I mean ‘tall’ by Shelbyville, Illinois, standards, not by, oh, say, Chicago, Illinois, standards.  ‘Tall’, as in, oh, maybe a grand five stories.  That ‘tall’.

If the family tree gets a little murky in the years prior to my 3^rd-great grandfather, it could be because some member of the family changed the spelling and pronunciation of the name from Sweeny/Sweeney to Swiney before coming to Kokomo, Indiana, from New Orleans, where a crashin’ blow from a huge right hand sent a Loozy-anna man to the Promised Land.  (There’s a possibility I have old family folklore mixed up with Jimmy Dean’s Big Bad John.)

My Uncle Bill, my father’s youngest brother, spent some years working on the Swiney genealogy.  Thomas Rolfe was my 12^th-great-grandfather – and he was the son of Pocahontas.  I recently told this to Victoria’s little Carolyn, who was studying Pocahontas and history of that time in school. 

“Pocahontas was your 15^th-great-grandmother!” I told her. 

She was plumb delighted over this news, and could scarcely wait for school the next day, so she could report on the matter to her classmates and teacher.

I did my first ‘gardening’ of the year this afternoon:  I removed five or six big pieces of shingles that had gotten blown off the roof last week in those 70-mph gales from my flowerbeds where they’d landed.  That’s all.  But it’s a start!  😄

Today, the high was 79°; but we’re expecting a blizzard and very high winds again Wednesday.

And now, since it’s St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a story from Ireland:

A minister walking the streets of a village in Ireland found himself being followed by a woman who kept asking him for money.  

“May the blessings of God follow you!” the woman repeatedly said as she walked along behind him.

The minister, himself a poor man, had nothing to give the woman, and indeed knew she had more worldly goods than he did.  As kindly as possible, he told her he had no money to give her.

Upon this, the woman intoned, “May the blessings of God follow you -- and never catch up!”

I didn’t give St. Patrick’s Day a thought when I got dressed this morning.  I have on a gray and cream shell and thin cardigan, a blue tiered skirt, and a navy sweater atop all that.  Oh, and light blue socks.

One time when I was in school, I forgot to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day.  Upon threats of getting pinched, I loftily informed my classmates, “When you have Irish blood, as I do, you don’t have to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, and if anyone pinches you, you can retaliate in any manner you choose.”

I did not get pinched.

The truth is, I just made that up on the spur of the moment to save myself; but in actuality, the ‘wear green or get pinched’ tradition is American, not Irish; so I wasn’t wrong.

Look! – Both little hummingbirds (from a livestream out of California) are perched on the edge of their nest!  They will soon be fledging.

Bedtime!