Lazy Saturday - February 27, 2021

 

I have accomplished very little today.  Cooked breakfast.  Unloaded the dishwasher.  That's about it.

For want of a better idea, I picked up the mandolin.   Yesterday, I kept trying to make a chord, and my stubby, arthritic fingers would not reach all the notes.  I don't understand this.  Little kids play the mandolin, and if they can reach the notes, I ought to be able to do it.  There are some videos online that show how to stretch your fingers, and I stretched them good yesterday.  They are a tad sore today, but I stretched them again and learned how to play "Swallowtail Jig."  I can't play it very fast, and I'll probably forget how it goes by tomorrow.  It's one of those Gaelic-sounding songs in "E Dorian," whatever the heck that means.  I kind of like it.

I wish you could hear these frogs singing.  Tree frogs, I guess.  They're plumb obnoxious.

From the back porch - February 25, 2021

 

A couple more degrees on the thermometer would be nice, but porch-sittin' is still perfectly pleasant with a light sweater.

The Boss turned me loose a little early yesterday, and I used the time to visit with my new granddaughter.  Bless her heart, until yesterday, she'd never seen me without a face mask, and I could tell from her expression that she was a little confused about who I was.  But we talked for a while, and after a few minutes she blessed me with a smile for the first time.  :)

Today, I've been thinking about gardening, thanks to some seed ads that showed up on my social media feed.  Now that The Husband has a tractor, we should be able to get the vegetable garden in shape a little earlier than usual.  He has promised to buy a tiller to pull behind the tractor; he'd better hop to it, for I am making plans.  Yes, I already have a tiller - "Big Black," if you remember - and I don't mind running it.  But tilling the whole garden with it for the first time every year is a big job, one I'll gladly give up.

This afternoon I delivered Nanny a casserole dish that I've been riding in my car since the new granddaughter was born, and while I was down there, I peeked at the garden plot for the first time since cold weather drove me in the house.  Before the first freeze, I cut the three cabbages that remained in the garden, but did not pull up the plants.  I'd piled pine needles around them before the first frost, and today I saw big tufts of green sticking up out of the pine needles.  They're making heads again and look remarkably healthy considering that they were encased in snow last week.  I left a brussels sprout out there, too - one that had pea-sized sprouts growing on the stem - hoping that the sprouts would have time to mature.  We piled pine needles around it, too, but I didn't see any sign of it today.

Last fall, we dumped numerous tractor-bucket-loads of pine needles on the low end of the garden.  At the time I was thinking we'd plow them in this spring, but now I'm thinking I might rake them up before we start plowing and use them for mulch around the tomatoes.

I also want to move the pea patch out of the "regular" garden.  Nanny likes to have more purple hull peas than I can grow if I want to grow anything else.  There's a whole big field in front of her house that isn't used for anything.  All we do is mow it.  I don't see why we couldn't give the peas their own space.  

  

Back Porch - Day 2 - February 23, 2021

 

Man, it's nice out here.  Probably 60 degrees.  Sun shining.  Wind chimes gently tinkling as water drip-drip-drips from the last of the snow on the roof.  I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a jigsaw puzzle, when I thought, Why are you inside?  

My kids gave me this jigsaw puzzle as a Christmas present.  They bought it online and it didn't arrive by Christmas; I just got it this weekend and started on it Sunday.  It is a topographical (I guess that's the right word) map of the area where we live.  It is challenging.  I've about gone blind from it.  

Let me tell you about this weird/creepy thing that happened at work today.

I was standing on the sidewalk in front of my office, smoking a cigarette and playing a word puzzle game on my phone, totally engrossed, when behind me a man said, "Excuse me, ma'am."  I whirled around, startled.  He was a handsome, clean-cut, stocky-built African-American man, about 40, I'd guess.  He was wearing a disposable blue face mask, a black suit with a silver and black vest, white shirt, and a clerical collar.  Except for the vest and the collar, I would've pegged him for a lawyer.  I can't remember if he told me his name, but he showed me a laminated card that I barely glanced at and told me he was a minister and that he was working to stop crime.  I expected that he was going to ask me for money for his ministry - and he eventually did - offered to have some kids wash and detail my car for $45 when the streets dry up - but I had $2 and some pennies in my purse, so I politely declined.  

Before he got to the car wash part, though, he told me that he had stopped a woman from being mugged by two men who intended to take her to an ATM and make her take out her money and give it to them.  He said had God laid it on him to be at that place, at that time, to save the woman.  He also said that he could read minds.  

I tested him by looking him straight in the eye and, with a pleasant, engaged look on my face, very deliberately thought, You are utterly full of shit.  

If he got the message, he didn't say.

But before he left he told me I need to put the cigarette down because it would make me sick, that it was making me sick right then.  

Maybe God told him to be there today.  >:-0

From the back porch - February 22, 2021

 

Yes, I know that last week I said we were in single-digit temperatures here (or maybe I didn't say say it, but we were), but Tennessee is trapped between the frigid north and the sultry south, and sultry wins the battle this week.  There is still a good bit of snow in the shady parts of my yard, but the rest of the snow vanished today, and I went to the office for the first time in about 10 days.    

I got a lot done during my confinement, though.  A friend who visited here last month and saw the shape my sewing room was in dared me - nay, shamed me -  into cleaning it up.  You already heard about some of the UFOs I finished last week:  my son's quilt and placemats, a couple of cosmetic pouches, and a baby quilt.  Here's the baby quilt, all done.

Although the sewing room is in a much better state of organization, it is still an eyesore.  But I am itching to get back in there and mess it up again, because I found all sorts of goodies - patterns and fabric and such - that I'd forgotten.  Once I re-stock the pantry and get my office desk cleared off again, I wouldn't mind a few more snow days.  ;)

I put on my gardening gloves for a few minutes this afternoon, and picked up my pruning shears, and it felt plumb delicious.  No, I wasn't just playing "dress-up"; the fairy rose bush near the walkway has been snagging my arm every time I walk by it, and it was time to give it a haircut while the sun is shining.  I pruned it back hard.  It is a vicious, thorny thing that grabs at me all year long.  I hope I killed it (but I probably didn't).  

Snowmageddon - Day 9

 

I didn't make much visible progress yesterday in cleaning the sewing room.  Things were steaming ahead until I tackled the UFO pile.  In that pile were the makings of two cosmetic pouches and one baby quilt.  The pouches had been cut out and interfaced.  The baby quilt was (I thought) pretty close to done.

I started this quilt several years ago, but I can't remember what spawned the project, whether I was making it for a grandchild or just goofing around.  The pattern is a combination of "Sunbonnet Sue" - an old and varied applique pattern - with rings of applique hearts and butterflies.  "Sunbonnet Sue" is one of the machine embroidery designs in my Etsy store (shameless plug):  SFancy Applique Sunbonnet Sue 5 x 7 | Etsy

For some reason, I had chosen to try the "quilt-as-you-go" method on this quilt.  I had assembled four rows horizontally; now they needed to be assembled vertically.  The problem was that I could not remember how to do it.  Perhaps I'd saved the instructions in the pattern cart.  

The pattern cart is a waist-high rolling cart of shallow drawers.  I use these drawers for project patterns and assorted junk.  It started out fairly organized, but over the years I have slapped stuff in the first drawer that had room, and it's become a mess.  So, as I looked for the "quilt-as-you-go" instructions, I sorted all of the patterns - hats, purses, knit/crochet/macrame, embroidery, felt, general sewing, etc. - and relocated the accumulated junk to more logical places.  The "quilt-as-you-go" instructions were not there, but I did find the instructions for the pouches, and I pulled them out and placed them with the pouch pieces, planning to tackle the pouches as soon as I finished the quilt.  

Not finding the instructions, I unrolled the quilt bundle to see if a little studying would make the process apparent.  (I could have googled it if I could've remembered the phrase "quilt-as-you-go.")  When I unrolled the bundle, I discovered that only one of the four strips had been quilted.  The other three weren't even marked for quilting.  And just the marking was going to be a bitch (probably the reason why I abandoned the project in the first place).  So I decided to put the quilt away and make the pouches.

The pouches needed zippers, which were not among the pouch "ingredients."  Thus, a search for zippers ensued.  One of the granddaughters likes to sew, and she is fascinated with zippers.  I let her use a few of them, but put the rest out of sight so they would not tempt her.  Out of sight, out of mind, you know.  

It took me an hour to find the zippers, but the time was well spent, since I found everything else I've looked for over the last few months.

Anyway, the pouches got made, and late in the afternoon, I tackled the quilt once again, after refreshing my memory about how to put it together.  The marking and quilting still had to be done to three of the four strips.  I marked one of them and quilted it most of it before dinner.  Marked the other two after dinner.  This morning, I finished strip #2.

I'll have to fill up a few bobbins before I can finish the rest.  I hate filling bobbins, and have put it off as long as I can by writing this post.  

Time to get back at it.

Snowmageddon - Day 8

 

Can there be any more snow left in the heavens?  I sure hope not; I've had enough.

After saving yesterday's post, I went back to the sewing room to cut more triangles to fill in the jagged edges of the quilt.  I didn't like the green triangles (see yesterday's pictures), but I didn't think I had enough of any of the other fabrics to make the 18 triangles I needed to fill the gaps.  However, when I walked into the sewing room, I saw the striped fabric shining through the clear plastic bin where it was stored.  There was plenty of that striped fabric to make the triangles, but the triangles I was envisioning would require lots of tedious cutting and sewing that I did not want to do.  You see, the day The Granddaughter made a face when she saw the quilt, it stopped being "art" and started being "a blanket," and I wasn't willing to put too much more work into it.  Yesterday's goal was simply to get it ready to be quilted.

Then, it occurred to me . . . . 

When I was cutting the original triangles to make the squares, because of the way the stripes were colored, there were a lot of left-over triangles.  I had saved the left-overs, and whenever I had two color-matched triangles, I had sewn them together.  Long story short, I found 14 completed, properly-sized triangles in the stash box.  Hallelujah!  It didn't take long to make the other 4 triangles, and 4 smaller ones to complete the corners.  It's ready to be quilted!

Snowpacolypse 2021 - Day 7

Is it Wednesday?  I'm having trouble keeping up.

The Husband has attempted a trip to his office today, and I am alone in the house for the first time in more than a week.  The roads are terrible.  Out in the boonies where I live, there's no chance of having a road crew come by with a snow plow or salt.  The Husband drove my Wrangler to work, thinking it would be more stable than his 4 x 4 truck.  He will be in trouble if he wrecks my Jeep.  ;)

Today I am trying to finish a quilt top I started for my granddaughter more than a year ago.  I finished the blocks some time ago.  Yesterday, I sewed the blocks together in strips.  Today, the plan is to sew the strips together.

I should kick myself for attempting this pattern, and then I should kick myself again for the way I decided to assemble the blocks.  

My first mistake was to let the granddaughter pick one piece of fabric around which I would build the entire quilt.  She picked a diagonal stripe, shades of blue and green, interspersed with black.  At first glance, the colors appear neon, but when viewed individually, the colors are actually more pastel.  I had a devil of a time picking out coordinating fabrics.

What to do with the stripe presented another challenge.  Certainly, the fabric would make a nice border, but I wanted something a little more imaginative.  I ended up cutting triangles out of the striped fabric and re-assembling them into squares.  This was mistake #2.  No matter how you slice them, triangles will have a bias edge.  Bias edges stretch.  It takes 4 triangles to make the block I envisioned; this quadruples the stretch problem.  It was a royal pain in the ass to cut those triangles so that the colors would match up, and that black stripe in the fabric makes every little mis-matched seam scream "look at me!"  My measuring/cutting/sewing skills were not quite up to the task.

For the alternating blocks, I chose a version of a log cabin pattern.  In case you don't know, log cabin patterns are made up of one square and a bunch of skinny strips.  They can be assembled in various ways.  I chose to assemble them so that, if I chose my colors correctly, they would have a 3-D effect.  I thought that this 3-D effect, coupled with the eye-crossing striped blocks, would look kind of cool. If you're counting, this was mistake #3. The more pieces a quilt block has, the bigger the chance that the assembled block will be "wonky."  Generating multiple blocks of exactly-matching size is above my pay grade.    

But I pressed on.

By last summer, I had built all 50 of the blocks.  I pinned them to a big piece of quilt batting, and the next time the granddaughter came over, I was excited to show her how the quilt was going to look when the blocks were sewn together.  

The look on her face made it obvious that she did not like the quilt.  She ended up confessing (for the first time) that what she really wanted was a Marvel Comics superhero quilt.  We'll talk about that later.  I decided I'd keep the quilt for myself.  

Mistake #4 was deciding to turn the blocks "on point" so that they presented as diamonds instead of squares.  To get the effect I wanted, every log cabin block had to be turned in the same direction, with the light-colored square at the bottom of the block.  I can't tell you how many times I sewed a log cabin block upside-down in the strips.  Turning the blocks on point meant that the outer edges of the quilt were jagged, and I have to cut more triangles to fill the jags.  

I would prefer to fill those jags with striped triangles instead of a solid color, but that would require more sewing, more cutting, more frustration, so I decided to use one of the colors from the log cabin blocks.  Because my sewing room is in such a mess, finding the left-over fabrics was a challenge.  I'd prefer to use the light blue (the outer edges of the log cabin blocks), but only the green fabric had enough yardage to make the number of triangles I need to fill in the jags.

When I finally get this sucker assembled, I'm taking it to someone else to quilt and bind.

Progress - February 15, 2021

I woke up yesterday morning determined to be productive.  Specifically, I intended to clean up and organize my sewing/craft room.

On the way to the coffee pot, I glanced out of the living room window.  A gang of brown-headed cowbirds had commandeered the bird feeder.  Several cardinals were perched on nearby limbs, complaining without effect.  Little wrens and chickadees were hopping around on the ground, looking for remnants of the seeds that had spilled onto the ground Tuesday night when a burglar tore into the bird feeder, but the pickings were slim.  I put on some shoes and went outside to scatter more seeds on the ice so that the little birds didn't have to contend with the bullies.

Mid-morning, a friend called, and we had a marathon phone conversation.  By the end of our chat, we had both committed to doing something useful before the day was over.  After we hung up, I headed to the sewing room.

Back in the summer, I'd embroidered a set of farm animal placemats for my son's house.  Weeds (months?) later, I sewed backing and binding onto them, but I did not finish the binding process.  In December, I considered finishing the placemats and giving them to my son for Christmas, but I only finished one of the six placemats.  Yesterday I finished them, and added a "hot pad" embroidered with an image of my grandfather's barn..  

While I was on a roll, I decided to finish the quilt I'd started for him several years ago.  All it lacked was binding.  Amazingly, I actually found both the quilt and the binding that I had cut when I was cutting out the quilt pieces.  It took a couple of hours to sew the binding on the quilt, but it is now folded and ready to give to him this weekend, just in time for his 40th birthday.

The plastic tub where I'd stored the quilt is still full of UFOs (unfinished objects).  Since I expect to be snowed in for several more days, I think I'll try to empty that tub.

Snow Day, Cont'd - February 15, 2021

 As I sit here this morning, looking out of my living room window, I am just furious with this weather.  It is colder than a well-digger's butt outside.  The ice that fell last Wednesday night is still here, topped off with yesterday's dusting of snow.  Last night, the weatherman said that we're due for up to 9 more inches of snow by the middle of the week.  I just heard a local news reporter say that the current temperature is 9 degrees.

This is absolutely ridiculous.  

It looks like it will be several more days before I can go to work.  I ought to spend the time cleaning and organizing my craft room.  Don't be any money on that happening.

Snow Day - February 12, 2021

 

I didn't really trust the TV weather people when they said an ice storm was coming.  Nevertheless, before I left work Wednesday, I contacted people with whom we'd scheduled conference calls to give them an alternate phone number, just in case we couldn't make it to the office Thursday.  Good move.  During the night Wednesday night, the ice came - not a terrible storm, but enough to make the roads treacherous.  

Yesterday morning, The Husband called all of his employees and told them to work from home, and he set up to work in our home office.   I wandered around the house for a couple of hours, looking for something to do.  You might think that with all the new "toys" I've bought, I'd have plenty to keep me occupied.  But all of the projects I wanted to do lacked one or more crucial ingredient, I could not settle into anything productive.

About 10 a.m., I said to The Husband, "I think I'll run up to the dollar store.  Do you need anything?"

He said, "WHAT???"  Like I'd lost my mind.  But I'd watched several vehicles pass the house, and they were moving pretty much like normal, and although trees blocked my view of the steep hill up the road from us, it sounded like the cars and trucks were climbing it without incident.  I intended to try it.

The Husband followed me outside as I went to check the road conditions for myself, pointing out how slippery the sidewalk and driveway were.  Undeterred, I went to my car, intending to crank it and warm it up for the short trip, but the car was encased in ice.  I could not get the door open.  Watching from the doorstep, The Husband had his "told you so" look on his face.  I came back inside, took off my coat, and watched some of the impeachment hearing.  

Two hours later, having had all the TV I could stand, I filled my watering can with hot water, took it outside, and de-iced my driver door enough to get in and crank the engine.  Turned the heat up full blast and set it to blow on the windshield.  Twenty minutes later, I still had to hack ice off the windshield.

But I made it to the dollar store and back without incident.  Yeah, these country backroads were slippery, but I was careful.  I remembered my daddy telling me, "When you're driving on ice, you have to drive like you don't have any brakes, because you don't [have any brakes]."

It was a l-o-n-g afternoon.  I spent most of it slaying Nintendo monsters (I am a BAD ASS with a virtual sword in my hand).  ;)  

I am going to do better today.  

Kitchen Table Musings - February 8, 2021

 

I spent the whole weekend at the kitchen table, trying to learn how to use Inkscape, a graphics program.  Thank goodness for YouTube videos (in this endeavor and many others).  

You see, I've been trying to come up with a way to use the new heat-press machine for something other than t-shirts for the grandchildren, the point being to make the machine pay for itself and all of the crap I had to buy to go with it (the pipe dream of all crafters).  I spent some time adding up material costs and figured I could make a little money with t-shirts IF I could come up with designs that would sell.  

I've had an idea about a cartoon character (of my own creation) combined with a realistic Jeep image.  Combining the two proved to be a challenge, hence the need for the weekend spent trying to learn enough Inkscape to get the job done.  

While pondering, I had a thought that excited me; I could do up some shirts and sell them at a Jeep rally that we've attended a few times.  I had no clue what a vendor booth might cost, or if space was still available, but I fired off an email to the dude reportedly in charge of such things.  Haven't heard back from him, yet.  Haven't heard back from the Jeep club as to whether I can use their name/logo.  

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that the designs I was pondering to put on shirts to sell was most likely a violation of some copyright/trademark law.  I did some research and concluded that using a Jeep image (or even the word "Jeep") in my designs could get me sued, or at least get me a "cease and desist" letter.  So, nix those Jeep-related designs. 

Back to square one.