It's almost official.... May 9, 2020

I am about to go nuts from boredom.  Since I can't do anything else, I think I'll just sit here and complain.

With all of the craft stuff in this house, this should not happen. The problem is that all the projects I want to do have missing components, and I don't want to start them, for I already know how that works; I don't need any more UFOs (unfinished objects) hanging around this house.

It won't quit raining, so I can't work in the garden.

And it's cold.

Nanny called about noon yesterday and said I'd better come cover up the tomatoes because there was supposed to be frost this morning.  I had not heard that news and found it quite hard to believe.  I told her that The Husband and I would watch the evening news and come cover them with plastic if the weatherman doesn't revise his prediction.  By the time The Husband got home, I'd stirred up a blender of margaritas and some guacamole dip, and we enjoyed them while we waited for the weather forecast.  The weatherman said probably high 30s.  The Husband said it was supposed to be windy, so probably it wouldn't frost.  We decided to chance it, and finished our margaritas.  I bet Nanny was having a fit by nightfall, thinking we should have had our butts down there, covering up the plants, before dark.  And we probably should have, that's true.

I'm kind of in limbo about the garden.  The Husband has been thinking about buying a small tractor and some farm implements to go with it, like a tiller and a bush hog.  I would love that, but if he's going to do it, I'd rather he'd go on and DO IT before the garden gets dry enough to work, so that WHEN it gets dry enough to work, we could do it with the tractor tiller instead of the garden tiller. 

I think I shall go have that discussion with him right now.

See ya.

From the back porch - May 7, 2020

I doubt my brother is one of the two or three people who read this blog, but happy birthday to him.  He has been good to me since the day I was born, and I pretty much love him.  :)

I had to go to work again today.  The Boss called last night and said, "Have you heard the news?  Courts are open tomorrow."  She said that she wanted me to station myself in the main hallway to see how smoothly the entrance process was running.  So I got up this morning and got dressed, and tried to find my car keys and my shoes, and get to the courthouse by 8:45.  I hung out in the hallway for thirty minutes or so, shooting the bull with the lawyers while I watched how things were working.  Only people who had to be in court were allowed in the building until court was over.  A deputy was taking people's temperature on the porch, and would have turned away anybody with a temperature.  Less than half the people were wearing masks (I wore mine), and the rest of us were periodically removing them for a minute or two.  Our Clerk's office had positioned tables in front of the counter in an effort to stay 6 feet from the people on the other side of the counter, and there was a sign that said, "Please don't lean on the counter."  One young, smartass lawyer deliberately violated that rule.  I told the girls to spray him with Lysol if he did it again.  The judge backed me up on this.  The lawyer got a warning squirt, but not a full-on disinfecting.  If I had been wielding the can, there would have been a mushroom cloud of Lysol all around him.  Punk.

We only had about a half-day of court, so I left after lunch-time.  Hurried to the grocery store to pick up my grocery order, stopped at another grocery store to get things I'd forgotten to add to my list and things that the other grocery store didn't have.  Came home, put away the groceries, cleaned out the refrigerator, folded a load of laundry and washed two more, and put a roast in the oven, and then I came out to the porch to chill for a minute.  About 15 minutes later, I thought, "I should go ahead and put the carrots in with the roast.  So I got up, went in the house, chopped some carrots, and hauled the heavy roast pan out of the oven.  Almost dropped it as I was getting it out.  I put the carrots in and came back outside for a few minutes, then thought, "I should have cut that meat up so it will cook faster."  So I went back inside, took the roast out of the oven, and cut up the meat, and when I was putting it back in the oven, I DID drop it.  Gravy and carrots went all over the oven.  Of course, I had to stop and scoop most of the mess out with a spatula and a sheet pan.  Meanwhile, my supper is NOT COOKING, time's a-wasting, and it's not going to get done if I have to stop and clean the oven. It's too hot to clean, anyway.  I rinsed off most of the carrots and put them back in the pan and set the roast to cooking on top of the stove.  It's simmering nicely as we speak.

I was kind of cussing myself for messing up the oven to where I couldn't use it, for I'd wanted to make some kind of bread to sop up the roast gravy.  Then it occurred to me that I have two ovens, so I made some beer bread.  It just got done.

Now I have to go peel potatoes to go in the roast pan. 

Tomorrow will be self-cleaning oven day.

From the back porch - May 6, 2020

The Granddaughter for whom I am making the quilt (and her parents and sisters) came over Monday night.  They currently live waaaaay across the state and were here for a short visit.  I took her into the sewing room and showed her the quilt top.  The blocks are not sewn together, but I had pinned them  to a giant sheet of quilt batting so that she could see how it will look when assembled.  Her comment was, "Cool.  Where is the Marvel Comics stuff?"  She seemed moderately satisfied when I told her I will line the quilt with Marvel Comics fabric, if I can find any.

It seems I was a bit premature with Monday's "Back to work" post.  I did go to the office Monday, but learned that the courts where I work have not yet re-opened.  We are waiting on the state Supreme Court's approval of our re-opening plan.  It'll probably be another week before we hear if the plan is approved. 

I spent part of the day yesterday practicing my mandolin.  I'm trying to learn to play "I'll Fly Away."  It's a bit of a mystery as to how this came about, but I jokingly told my boss that The Husband and I will play that song at her funeral.  She has not let me forget it. 

Y'all, I SUCK at playing the mandolin.  My fingers are barely long enough to reach around the mandolin's neck, and they are stiff and swollen from arthritis.  Hopefully, I will have many years to practice.  Both of my boss's parents lived to be 90+; her dad even made it to 100.  If she inherited their tendency to longevity, she will probably out-live me!

Between yesterday's practice sessions, I worked on some embroidery designs.  Back in the fall, I did these farm animals to put on some placemats:

These designs are meant to be used with fabric that does not ravel, such as felt or flannel.  The stitches that hold the animal appliques to the fabric are running stitches that don't encase the raw edges of the appliques.  Earlier in the week, I had two customers request modified versions of the designs.  One lady wanted a "regular" horse (yes, that's a horse in the first picture, though The Husband says it's a mule).  Another lady wanted the same animals, but with satin edging that fully covers the raw edges of the appliques.  I'd already done a "normal" horse, just hadn't uploaded it to my Etsy store (shameless plug:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/sfancy?ref=seller-platform-mcnav ) because I haven't tested it, yet.  It's going to take a good bit of work to turn the running-stitch-edged designs into satin-stitch-edged designs, almost like starting from scratch.  Got two of them done yesterday, will work on the others today, then I have to test everything before I upload it.

Some time today, I need to walk down to the garden to see how the tomatoes and peppers are doing.  We had a hail storm Monday afternoon - marble-sized hail - that may have beaten the plants into the ground.  It needs to quit raining so that I can finishing plowing and get some seeds in the ground.

Back to work (kinda) - May 4, 2020

I am going back to work today.  The courts are re-opening on a limited basis.  I won't be going to court with the judge as I did before the virus outbreak; I'll stay at the office.  There will be only a few cases on the docket, and no one but the parties and their attorneys will be allowed in the courthouse.  If the judge needs some typing done, she'll just have to call me on the telephone.  I'll do the typing and email the file to somebody at the courthouse for them to print.

I did basically nothing yesterday, except make a grocery store run, cook dinner, and practice my mandolin a little bit.  All of my muscles are sore and most of my joints are swollen from Saturday's gardening frenzy.  I planned to go back to the garden to do more tilling, and probably would have done so to work out the soreness, but a storm came up and soaked the garden.  It'll be a few more days before I can get seeds in the ground. 

There's a rabbit living under Nanny's back porch.  When I am finally able to put seeds in the ground, he will probably eat everything that sprouts.  One year a rabbit (or something) ate the green beans as soon as they had two leaves on them.  When I went to the garden the next day, all that was there was a bunch of Y-shaped stems.  At the time, there was an old guy who was a security guard at the courthouse entrance, and we used to talk about gardening.  I told him about the rabbit eating my green beans, and how I was going to have to re-plant.  He said, "Just be patient."  A few days later, the green beans leafed out again, bushier and healthier than ever.  When I told the security guy about it, he said, "See?  That little bunny knew what he was doing!"

Tomatoes and Peppers - May 3, 2020

Yesterday was yardwork day.  Both our yard and Nanny's needed mowing, and I wanted to get the garden tilled and planted.  In retrospect, I realize that this was a rather ambitious plan.

While The Husband mowed Nanny's yard, I worked on our yard with the push mower.  Our yard is crazy.  There are hills, ditches and small spaces that are difficult to mow with the riding mower.  There's a wrought-iron garden arch that is too narrow for the riding mower.  I took care of those places with the push mower.  It took about an hour and a half to cut it all.  When I finished, I was pooped.

But not long after I finished mowing, a friend called, and while we talked, I rested enough that when we finished the call, I was ready to start working in the garden.

It has been two years since I've tried to raise a vegetable garden.  The garden spot gets mowed with the rest of Nanny's yard, but the ground hasn't been broken since 2018.  I dragged the big black tiller out of the shed, checked the gas and the oil, crossed my fingers, and yanked the cord.  It cranked on the first pull.  YES!

I went to work.

It took nearly two hours of plowing to get one row ready to plant.  I sent The Husband up to our house to get the tomato and pepper plants that I'd bought two weeks ago while I began "hilling up" the row with a rake.  Then I remembered that I'd bought epsom salt to sprinkle in the holes, and I jumped on the riding lawnmower and rode it up to our house to get it. 

While I was in the house, I decided to fix myself a bottle of water to take back to the garden.  The instant I started to fill the bottle, I realized that I had not visited the bathroom since I rolled out of bed at 6 a.m. (it's pushing 5 p.m. by this time).  I thought I could probably finish filling the bottle and still make it to the bathroom in time.  I was wrong.  Had to change my underwear and my britches before going back to the garden.

I'm moving a little slow today.  My daddy would have referred to it as being "stove up." 

And only one row done.

After we finished the day's work, I said to The Husband, "We need a tractor."  His eyes lit up.  I may hold off on tilling for a couple of days to see what happens.

The baby wrens in the window box flew the nest yesterday.  I am going to miss them.

Make It Work - May 2, 2020

I used to watch a television show called Project Runway hosted by a guy named Tim Gunn.  Tim would go into the `workroom where the contestants were creating their clothing designs to check on their progress, and before he left the room, he would say, "Make it work!"

Well, that's what I'm doing to The Granddaughter's quilt.  In case you haven't read my previous post and don't know this, when I finished the log cabin quilt blocks, they were wildly inconsistent, despite my best efforts.  Yesterday morning, I stood at my sewing table and stared at them for a few minutes, then I picked up my rotary cutter and my ruler, and I trimmed those suckers down until they were all the same size.  Doing so resulted in the outer strips being narrower than the inner strips, but at this point I do not care. 

When I began to sew the blocks together, I quickly realized that I needed a "design wall."   The "standard" log cabin block starts with a square in the center of the block, and strips are added all the way around it until the block reaches the correct size.  My blocks begin with a 2" square in a corner and grow outward on two sides.  My plan is to sew them together "on point," meaning that I'm rotating the blocks 90 degrees so that they are assembled as diamonds instead of squares.  I kept sewing the blocks together upside down or sideways.  Finally, I stopped sewing and cleared enough wall space to hang a big piece of wool quilt batting.  The quilt blocks will stick to the batting, and I can stick all of the blocks up there, arrange them like I want them, then pull them off two at a time and sew them together in the right order.  Hopefully. 

It is such a nice day that I might try to start planting the vegetable garden.  I hope the ground is dry enough.  I hope the tiller will crank. 

Friday Round-up - May 1, 2020

Well, damn.

The best-laid quarantine plans are only as good as the plans of the few people with whom one comes into contact.  The Husband and I have been limiting our exposure to people who we MUST see.  He has 28 co-workers, some of whom are working from home.  Of the handful of people who are coming to work, one of them went to a birthday party last weekend.  Yesterday, that person got a call from the health department informing her that one of the party guests had tested positive for COVID-19.  She was told to get tested, and she immediately did so.  The results probably won't be available until Monday.  Meanwhile, we bite our nails, hoping the co-worker did not catch the virus. 

This has been a frustrating week.

I have been working on The Granddaughter's quilt.  Until yesterday, I felt pretty good about it.  The quilt top will require 30 log cabin blocks and 20+ striped square blocks.  I finished the 30th log cabin block Wednesday afternoon.  When I laid them out on my sewing table, I discovered that, despite very careful attention to every step of the process, the 30 blocks were wildly inconsistent in size. They are supposed to be 8.75" square.  Some are 8.75" square, some are 9" x 9" square, and some are 9" x 9.5".  How the f* did this happen?  I was so careful!

Google provided the answer.

These blocks are assembled from 1" strips of fabric that I cut horizontally across the grain.  I should have cut the strips vertically, as fabric tends to stretch less on the vertical grain (I guess that would be called the "warp").  I knew that bias-cut fabric was stretchy, but I did not know that the horizontal weave stretches more than the vertical warp.  That mistake won't happen again. 

Meanwhile, what do I do?  Do I remake all 30 blocks?  I would have to get more fabric, even if I wanted to tackle that chore.  Do I cut the oversized blocks down to the correct size?  I guess I can, but they won't look the same.  Does that matter?  I don't know, since this design is meant to be a bit visually confusing, anyway. 

Maybe, like Scarlett O'Hara, I should think about this another day, when I am not so frustrated. 

Lord knows when that will be!