Journal: Quilts, Supercells, & a Drive to Grand Island

 

Last Monday night, we had yet another night of thunderstorms, lightning, and rain, and it lasted through Tuesday morning.  Things have gone from brown and dry to green, very green.  My August Lily hostas with the big white flowers are blooming like everything, scenting the entire yard with their aroma, a lovely combination something on the order of lily-of-the-valley, lilacs, and honeysuckle.  The white-lined sphinx moths like them.  They also like the tall lavender phlox.

By late morning, the sun was shining, and it was 74°.  It seemed we had gotten nearly 3” of rain last night.  Maybe.  There was some controversy about it online.  Some said 1.5”.  Others, 2.2, 2.5, 2, 2.8, and on and on.  And some areas that were seemingly right in the midst of the storm only got a tenth of an inch.  The most was reportedly 4.30” southwest of Wolbach, 55 miles to our west.

 A quilting friend mentioned that she had gotten two rows of rulerwork quilting completed in a day.

That’s commendable progress, when doing rulerwork.  When someone posts a picture of a big quilt with elaborate rulerwork and free-motion, and then writes, “Whew!  It took me a full day to get this beast done!” – I think, Lady, you need to put new batteries in your sundial; it done stopped on ya.

That afternoon, I put together the backing for Arnold’s quilt.  I found three pieces of red-and-white striped fabric that used to be Janice’s.  There would be just barely enough if I pieced it together.  Problem:  one piece felt like quilter’s cotton; the other two, a thinner broadcloth.  I pieced them together anyway.  The stripes don’t match up perfectly.  But we won’t tell anybody, right?

Next, I pulled out several long strips of leftover batting.  I abutted the edges and zigzagged them together.  With smaller quilts, I like to use up as many scraps as possible.  It’s somewhat dicey, doing that with big quilts, as they’re then liable not to drape nicely.  I do it anyway sometimes, and – usually – no one is ever the wiser.

When batting and backing were the right size, I loaded everything onto my quilting frame, put the pantograph in place on the quilting table, and started quilting.

By a quarter after eight that evening, the first row of Puppy Pause was quilted.  Look at all the seams in the batting!  Good thing batting is stretchy and smooshable, and good thing there are lots of seams in the quilt top, to camouflage the seams in the batting.  The pantograph is called ‘Dog Treats’.

After quilting two wide rows, I quit for the night and headed for my recliner.

It was bright and sunny a little before 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning when I hung out the bird feeders, but by 11:30 a.m., it was quite dark, and a severe thunderstorm was bearing down upon us.  It was 74°; the high would be 79°.

Fifteen minutes later, a meteorologist on the rural radio announced that an 82-mph wind gust had been recorded at Wolbach, the little town that got near 4 ½” of rain the previous day.  The 236 residents of that little village had better drive their tent stakes a little deeper into the ground!

By 11:55 a.m., it was thundering like anything and had gone very dark, almost as dark as it got two weeks ago Saturday.  So strange.

I had a few hours of quilting left on the Puppy Pause quilt, which I hoped to get done before our evening church service.  If the maid would clean the kitchen, I’d have a better chance!  But... I cleaned the kitchen, and then got on with the quilting.

That afternoon, Hannah sent me pictures of the Blue Jay she’d finished crocheting.  With this little creature, she had made either an animal or a bird for each of the children in the classroom where she’d been a teacher’s aide.  Look, the yarn glows in the dark!

The baby doves Hannah had sent pictures of last week, along with some in a nest in a nearby tree, had gotten blown out of their nests by Tuesday’s storms.  She put the two from the nest in the bush back; they were the only ones that had survived. 

Unfortunately, after Wednesday’s storms, only one was left in the nest.  She saw the mother dove earlier; hopefully that last baby will survive.

“The baby looks healthy,” she said, “albeit wet.”

“Poor little things,” I wrote back.  “Baby birds sure have risky beginnings!”

Then I told her, “By the way, the F.R.O.G. jam you gave us is scrumptious.”

That’s jam made with Figs, Raspberries, Oranges, and Ginger, and sweetened with honey.

“—although your father thinks there are only about three servings in a jar that size,” I finished.  “He is NOT the sort of person who would do well if he got marooned somewhere with a scant supply of food.”

“Neither would Levi,” Hannah laughed.

Larry’s “I’m hungry NOW” attitude, combined with his illogical optimism “Someone is on the way to rescue me even as I take this last bite” would not serve him well.

Actually, he’s more likely thinking, “As soon as I’m nice and full, I’ll be better able to contrive the proper manner of rescuing myself.”  And then, if I happened to be along, “Oh, you mean you wanted some, too?!!”  [surprised face]

“That’s funny,” said Hannah.  “Levi is exactly like that.”

Here are a couple of shots taken by different storm chasers two miles west of Burwell, Nebraska, last Monday.

At a quarter after 5, I finished quilting Puppy Pause.  I donned some glad rags for the evening church service, and then had enough time to cut the binding and sew it to one side of the quilt before time to go.

When we got home from church, we had a light supper of Campbell’s Sirloin Burger soup.  Well, at least mine was light.  I’m not sure we could say the same about Larry’s, after seeing all the crackers he dumped into his bowl.  😄

I went to bed at what should have been a decent hour, as I had to get up early the next morning to take my quilts to the State Fair in Grand Island.  But, as usual on Important Sleep Nights, I didn’t get much sleep – only about 2 ½ hours.  Sigghhhh...

I was ready to go fairly early Thursday morning, but we were in the middle of a dense fog, and it wasn’t in any big hurry to burn off, what with the temperature being in the low 60s; so I lollygagged around for a while before leaving home.

It would be warming up to a high of 84° that afternoon, so the fog would begin diminishing soon, I hoped.  Grand Island, too, was covered with fog that morning.

Driving conditions were finally good around 11:00 a.m.  It’s 66 miles from our house to Fonner Park, and takes an hour and 13 minutes, providing one doesn’t stop anywhere.

And providing there is no road construction going on.

There was road construction going on.

My GPS tried to get me to turn off of Highway 30, which slants from northeast to southwest, and make a square corner to the north on county roads.  This would add four minutes to my drive.  Neither the map nor the bossy GPS lady informed me of the reason for this detour – until I could see it for myself.

I thought, Sure, you’re always trying to give me extra miles to drive – shortly before I came upon roadwork that stalled me out for quite a lot longer than four minutes.  🙄

Just look at all the vehicles waiting to continue northeast, after the southwest-going vehicles got past. 

I got to the Expo Building at a quarter ’til one, two hours before they would lock the doors.

One of the ladies at the fair, checking in quilts (not being snippy at all; she was admiring Joanna’s quilt, and exclaiming over its size), asked, “Do you ever make small quilts?”

“Sometimes I try!” I said, and the ladies all laughed.  “They grow, while I’m making them.”

Several ladies nodded; they knew that phenomenon.

“The toddlers have to team up, in order to drag their quilts around,” I added.

That really made them laugh.  (Small quilts for toddlers are often called ‘drag-arounds.’)

This has been a problem ever since I can remember:  I start making soup...  then have to transfer everything to a bigger pot, because the stuff expanded when I wasn’t looking.  (Not because I put too many ingredients in, I tell you; it expanded.)  Sometimes when I made dresses for my little girls, we wound up hanging them in the closet for next year, and I then made more, in a smaller size.  Sigghhhh...

This must be the “I Made Too Much Again”/“I Made It Too Big Again” personality flaw.

After leaving the fairgrounds, I took my serger to the Quality Sew & Vac (and Bernina) store, as it’s locked up tight (as in, ‘it won’t go’), probably from lack of use, poor thing.

I drooled over a few big, fancy machines, then headed toward Eagle Scout Lake to see if there were any birds willing to pose for pictures there.

There was a small pond near the Bernina Store that was positively jampacked with waterfowl – but there was no place to stop and take pictures.  At Eagle Scout Lake, however, which is renowned for abundance of waterfowl, there was one white goose.  O.n.e...g.o.o.s.e.  A white-morph Ross’s Goose (Anser rossii), to be exact.

He was cautious, but not overly frightened; he seemed to be somewhat used to people.  Or at least li’l ol’ ladies with big cameras.

I wonder how Grand Island – which is neither ‘grand’, nor is it an island – got its name?  I knew this, once upon a time.

Let’s look it up again.

Annnnd... here’s the answer, straight from the Explore Nebraska History website:

Grand Island gets its name from a large, 40-mile-long island in the nearby Platte River that 18^th-century French fur traders named La Grande Île, which means ‘the big or great island’. 

The fur traders and trappers discovered the large, wooded river island in the late 1700s.  The island served as a well-known campsite and landmark for Native Americans, explorers, and travelers heading west on the Oregon and California trails.

When settlers and the Union Pacific Railroad established the nearby town in the 1850s and 1860s, they named the new community after this prominent local geographic feature.

I got back home sometime after 3:30 p.m.  It was sunny then, but by 5:30 p.m., it was totally overcast.  I pulled up a live weather stream on YouTube just in time to see the stormchaser who calls himself IRL step out of his car and immediately go to swatting at the air and announcing that there was a ‘swarm of gnats’. 

People in the live chat, seemingly prepared for the moment, immediately started answering:  “Who let the gnats out?”  “Pestulance!” (meaning ‘Pestilence’.)  “Nebraska overperforming as usual.”  Etc., and etc.

There was an ominous-looking supercell, accompanied by 80-mph winds, out by Broken Bow – and no warning on it.

These pictures were taken by stormchasers near Anselmo, 49 miles southwest of Burwell.  Brandon Hammons no soon posted the shot below than some man informed the Internet at large that it was fake.  “Totally AI!” said he.  “Car is on the wrong side of the road, too.”

All he had to do was watch the live stream, and he would’ve known it was indeed very real.  Furthermore, the car is pulling into the left lane, the better to safely go around the stormchaser who is stopped on the shoulder.

Upon being informed that it was a true, unmanipulated photo, the naysayer belligerently demanded, “Why then did we never see such photos up until recently?!  Just tell me that!”

The answer(s):  1) Stormchasers, 2) Far superior cameras and smartphones, and 3) Internet spreading such photos far and wide.

One man had a fourth answer:  “The government created that weather phenomenon!”

Right.  Out in the Sandhills of Nebraska.  Uh-huh.

He needs a higher-quality aluminum foil for his hat.

Meteorologist Ryan Hall (of the ‘Ryan Hall, Y’all’ YouTube channel) by chance clicked on a camera focused on Seven Falls, west of Colorado Springs. 

“What is this?!!” he exclaimed.  Then, “There’s a severe thunderstorm bearing down on them, and there are people just a-goin’ up and down these blamed steps!!!”  He watched in silence for a moment, then uttered his signature remark:  “That’s plumb wild.”

He checked out a traffic cam near North Pole, Colorado, at the base of the Pikes Peak Highway, where the storm was passing through right that instant.  Hail and rain were flowing together down the highway with cars and trucks plowing through it with abandon, creating snowy-white wakes that would’ve done big-lake speedboaters proud. 

Someone wrote in the live chat, “Slow down, you savages.”  hee hee

Them thar savages ain’t a-readin’ chats on live weather streams, nope.

Ryan then found a camera focused on Pikes Peak.  The camera was positioned at an elevation of 14,000 feet, a mere 115 feet below the peak itself.  There was snow on the ground, a couple of inches, I suppose. 

“Is that snow?!!” asked Ryan in amazement.  Upon being assured it most certainly was snow, he proclaimed, “Colorado is insane!!”  ((...pause...))  Then, “I gotta go there!”  A minute later, having found a camera aimed at a beautiful lakeside in Minnesota, complete with white sandy beaches and people having picnics and playing volleyball, he queried in total disbelief, “Minnesota?!  That’s Minnesota?!!”

People in the live chat confirmed it as a fact.

Silence.  Then, “I gotta get out more!” exclaimed Ryan.  😆

While I listened to (and sometimes watched) the weather, I looked at quilt design after quilt design, hunting for ideas and possibilities for Keira’s quilt.  I paused just long enough to pop some chicken egg rolls into the oven, then returned to the search.

Friday, after checking the forecast, I thought to quickly finish the binding on the Puppy Pause quilt and then take pictures of it outside.  I could machine-embroider the label later.  If I tried to do the embroidery first, it would be evening and too dark outside for good photos before I finished the binding.

I refilled and rehung the bird feeders, tidied the bedroom, showered and washed my hair, shined the bathroom back up, played the piano, made myself a tall mug of Maui Joe’s cold-brew coffee, and went to blow-dry and curl my hair.

A resounding roll of thunder made my eyebrows fly up and my ears flap.

When I had gone out to hang the bird feeders around 9:00 a.m., the temperature had been 78°, though it felt like 91°.  The high, so my weather app said, would be 86°, with a heat index of nearly 100°.  It would be hot, taking pictures out there, but nice and sunny, so they said!

I looked out the window.  Sho’ ’nuff, storm clouds were rolling in.  It was about to rain!

Meanwhile, out in the Panhandle near Scottsbluff, a stormchaser took this supercell photo.

Change of plans:  I would make the label first, as I’d wanted to do in the first place, in order to put it in the corner of the quilt and sew the binding over the top of it, saving hand-stitching on two sides.

I tossed a load of clothes into the washing machine, ate something, and headed upstairs to my sewing room.

It was a quarter after seven before I finished machine embroidering the quilt label and began sewing it to the quilt.

This, because the machine got all discombobulated when it tried doing the signature (below the paw on the right) and the thread shredded and broke, and I had to restart the machine.  The entire embroidery design, which, thankfully, I had saved – but edited slightly after the save – wound up shifted and resized.  I rebooted one more time, but it was still off-kilter.  And all that black outlining on the dog still needed to be done.  I moved and resized the design with my best guess, going by needle position.  It didn’t turn out too bad, for all that.

I paused to put a Detroit Pizza into the oven.  While it baked, I finished blind-stitching the label to the quilt.  It took way longer than it should’ve, because the thread kept snarling and knotting.  Why didn’t I just pitch out that strand and pull another one from a new and better spool of thread??

But finally I was pinning the binding in place for the last line of stitching.

In case you’re wondering about the name of the quilt, it’s from the pun, “Puppy paws never pause.”  Since they’ve all paused on the quilt...  (I know, it’s a bit obscure.)

It was half-past midnight before Arnold’s quilt was finished.  It measures 58” x 70”. 

I shut everything down in my quilting studio and went to put the last load of laundry away before hitting the hay.

Saturday was a pretty day, 76° at 11:00 a.m., on the way up to 86°; but the humidity was 76% and the dew point was 68°, making it feel like 90°.  The heat index was expected to get to at least 100°.  I decided that the indoor pictures I’d taken of the Puppy Pause quilt were quite good enough.

I spent a good part of the day working on the design of Keira’s quilt.

Victoria sent a video clip of Arnold singing Why Worry, When You Can Pray, that cute little voice perfectly on tune.  He had more vibrato than usual, however, because he was bobbing and hopping up and down vigorously as he sang.

“I think you need to go outside and play,” said Victoria at the end of the song.

“No, I was just jumping,” explained Arnold in great sincerity.  hee hee

“That’s how he acts when he needs a nap,” remarked Victoria.  “Like an energizer bunny in overdrive.”

She then sent an audio clip of him singing The Birds Upon the Treetops.  Here’s part of the lyrics: 

The birds upon the treetops sing their song;

The angels chant the chorus all day long;

The flowers in the garden blend their hue;

So, why shouldn’t I, why shouldn’t you, praise Him, too!

 

I once explained to some of the children that “the flowers blend their hue” means ‘all their pretty colors match and go together’.  The very next time we got everyone all dressed up for church, the littlest one (I don’t remember who it was) said, “Look!  We’re blending our hues!”

It rained part of the day Sunday, but was polite enough to stop during those times we needed to walk to and from the car.  The hostas that drape over the front walk, however, gathered up bucketloads of rain on their wide leaves, and dumped them all over our legs and feet as we scurried through them to the driveway.

So we walked into church with our feet saying, “Squeege squeege squeege squeege...”

I held my chin up and strode purposefully toward my pew.  Let everyone think it was Larry’s feet doing the conversing.

After the evening service last night, we chatted for a while with a few of the kids.  Before coming home, we put gas in the Mercedes.  It’s a picky thing, and requires high-octane premium fuel – the most expensive fuel at the pumps.  It took almost one entire Founding Father, namely, Benjamin Franklin, to fill that nearly-empty tank.

Did you know that Benjamin Franklin did not have a middle name?  However, he did sometimes use the pseudonym ‘Silence Dogood’ et al. as pen names for his writing.

We had a bit of rain this morning, but by 11:30 a.m. it was bright and sunny and 73°, on the way up to 83°.  I did some housecleaning, then made a fresh jug of cold-brew coffee.  The flavor of the coffee beans this time is ‘American Dream’ – fresh cherries and cream.

For breakfast I had a piece of the yummy French toast Larry made yesterday, with an egg, over-easy, on top.

Before I start on Keira’s quilt tomorrow, I plan to make a couple of little pillows to go with Arnold’s quilt.  That’s a matter of necessity, not just because I like to use up the last little scraps of leftover fabric, but also because there are two little pillows that go with his big brother Willie’s quilt.

I just looked out the window to see the birds at the feeders on the back deck – and there were seven of those big Eurasian Collared Doves back there!  I imagine some are young ones, recently fledged, but they all looked about the same size.  A couple are on the deck, four are on the railing, and one is perched atop the rebar from which the feeders hang.  The doves – Eurasian Collared and Mourning alike – have excellent eyesight and notice me almost the instant I peek out the window, unlike the finches and sparrows.

My afternoon snack:  Popping Boba Passion Fruit-Mango Green Tea with a few splashes of pineapple orange juice and Thompson Irish tea, along with a handful of mixed nuts.

A friend was telling me that one of her favorite songs is Blessed Assurance.

I love that song, too.

When someone asked the dear blind hymnwriter Fanny Crosby what her favorite of all her songs was, Fanny, at about age 90 (she lived to age 94), began singing Blessed Assurance.  Fanny wrote somewhere in the vicinity of 9,000 hymns, can you imagine?!

I would enjoy looking through the extensive archives, scrapbooks, early hymnals, and biographies about Fanny Crosby that are kept at the Bridgeport History Center in the Bridgeport Public Library in Connecticut.

Speaking of archives and museums, I once asked Hester if she liked going to museums.  She was about 11, I suppose.  We were on our way to a children’s museum in Fremont.

She shrugged, hem-hawed around a bit, and then said, “Oh, not really.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, they’re just so... ...” she paused.  “Museum-ish!” she finished.

Hee hee ...  I was in complete agreement with her.  Give us a trail to hike, anytime!

The other evening at church, Willie, age 4, pointed at my smallish church clutch and asked, “What’s in there?”, hoping for a tic-tac or a little calendar cutout or some such thing. 

I told him, “Piano benches, monkey wrenches, and the kitchen sink!”

He giggled and trotted off to hide behind big sister Violet (who’s not all that much bigger than he is).

I popped around Violet and whispered in his ear, “And fishes and sharks and whales!”

That made Violet giggle, too.

The design and method of construction I’ve chosen for Keira’s quilt is a bit different than any I’ve done before (which, I suppose, can be said for many of the quilts I make).  The way I go at new things that seem a bit daunting at first look is to just launch right in with Step #1, and, if possible, make that step something I have done before.

And then sometimes it’s best to go at these things like my cousin Robin did, when he was a little boy, maybe about ten years old.  He was afraid of heights, and he decided it was high time he conquered his fear.

My Aunt Evelyn walked into his second-story bedroom just in time to find him climbing out the window onto a ladder he had carefully positioned against the side of their big farmhouse.  She halted, heart nearly stopping, not wanting to frighten him into falling – and she heard him muttering to himself as he went out, placing one foot after another on the upper ladder rungs, “Just don’t look down, Robby, just don’t look down.”

Gotta git bizzy.  So much to do, so little time!  🙂  The consolation is that busy people are almost invariably happier than idle souls.  (I once said that to my sister, who always had way too much to do [much of it self-imposed], and she scowled at me and said, “I should be ecstatic, then.”  haha)

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