The Brown & Turquoise Is Coming Along

     I can't even remember now when I started this quilt, two years ago? Maybe. It was a quilt guild education class project that was started but then put away when something more pressing came along.

     I'm going to have to leave it a square. I keep adding rows, but I just can't leave it uneven, so then I have to add to the sides. Should the light stripe come to a point at the edges or the dark stripe pointing at the edges? Should the dark turquoise squares be around the outside edges? Right now, yes.

     For now I have to stop and put it aside again. I am down to only 4 dark prints left. It's going to get too repetitive (boring) if I don't get some more. I hope JoAnn's still has some of them. I think I saw one on their website. I don't need much. I only have one more to add on one side and two more to add on the opposite side. Then I think I will stop with the piecing and see about a border. It may not need one. What do you think? Just a binding?

     I can see this as a table cloth or a nap size quilt. I really like the colors. I've thought about giving it to my bestest friend (since 5th grade) who lives in California. It would match her living room/dining room. If it will be used for a table cloth, it needs a light batting. I like to use cotton flannel. It gives the quilt a nice light padding. If it's to be used for taking a nap, the flannel will still give warmth in the mild California climate. I like to use flannel that has not been pre-washed. After the quilt is finished, I drop it in the washing machine set on warm wash and put it in the drier. When it comes out the flannel has shrunk a little, giving the quilt top and back a crinkled, aged look.

P.S. Turns out I started this last summer and blogged about it here. Cool, I'm not so far behind after all.

It's Somehow So Wrong To Be This Happy

     Is it wrong to be so happy that ants are dying? Somehow I'm so happy right now. Ants have decided that our living room and downstairs bathroom are the hip places to be. Party on?

I think not.

     I know, it's HOT and DRY outside. Everyone is looking for a cool place to be.

Cool?


     I truly feel bad there is suffering all around. But I say, if you're not helping to pay the rent, GET OUT OR DIE!

     I'm not a cruel person. I just think a person shouldn't have ants running up their leg when they're sitting on the potty. Or tickling their arms when they're relaxing in the recliner. It's very distracting from watching Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit. You'll want to make them the victims. Okay, I've had enough!

     While out on errands today, I bought a little bottle of Terro.


Just a little dab will do ya'.

In the bathroom.

     The bait was gone approximately an hour after putting it on the floor, so I put out some more. Oops, it spilled on the floor! They don't mind.

Look at them belly up to the bar.



Look, they're circling the wagons.

     They ate this so fast I put out another one. That black spot is not a wooly caterpillar. They attacked this in 5 minutes. Poor starving babies! So glad I could feed the masses.

In the living room

     It's crazy; a feeding frenzy. I had to put out a third little square of bait. A much larger puddle of bait. I mean corn syrup, yeah, corn syrup.





     Well, it's been two hours since their last feeding. You know how babies are; gotta be fed every two hours.

     Ah, ah, ah, ah. Stayin' alive, stayin' alive.

     BWWAHAHAHAHA!

Honk! Honk! Rush Hour In The Country

     I was coming home from the store this week. It was late afternoon/early evening. Normal rush hour time, but I was the only one on the road until . . .

     . . . 23 Canadian geese came crossing the road from the field on the left to the pond on the right of those trees.

 I tried to rush them but they were about to take flight. Beautiful wing spread!

     Four to six pairs of the geese come to the neighbor's pond every year to breed and raise their chicks. It's not unusual to see 40 - 50 geese living around the pond during the summer. It's always sad when they leave for the winter, but ALWAYS exciting to see them return in the spring. I wish we had a pond near our house so we could coax some to come live with us.

     As much as I have missed living in the city for the past 23 years, these are the things I would have missed if I hadn't moved to the country.

A Progress Report

     Yea! Emily's wedding quilt top is put together, minus a couple of borders. I want one of the borders to be purple to bring out the purple in the blocks, which I love. As usual I've had the material for a long time and won't be able to find the exact one, but I'll find something close. Something purple with white batik-ish leaves. I think a one inch purple border then one or two wider borders of fall fabrics. There's so many different fabrics in this that it won't matter if I can't find anything that exactly matches.

     Now it can join the other 4 quilt tops on the back of the door of my sewing room. My sister, Kathi, calls it a studio. Her studio is really nice. She knows what a studio is. Okay, it's a studio. 

Here are it's new friends. It won't be lonely. New friends will come, too.

Do you ever just get down on your knees and thank God that you know me and have access to my dementia?

     Recently while watching an episode of Seinfeld, I heard this quote by George: "Do you ever just get down on your knees and thank God that you know me and have access to my dementia?" I couldn't help but think of my husband, David. He has had some crazy inventions or ways of solving problems. Usually the solving just creates more problems. For example:

     One Sunday morning many years ago my husband asked me to get his blue dress shirt for him to wear to church. I looked in the closet. Nope. I looked in the clothes hamped. Nope. I checked the clothes that needed mending. Nope. I looked in the washer, the drier, the dresser, Nope, nope, nope. After looking everwhere I could think of, I told him I couldn't find it. He said, "Did you look in the filing cabinet under "S" ? This has to be the weirdest thing he has ever said to me. But, sure enough there it was. WHO files their shirt? I have never figured out that one.

     When we moved to the farm I wanted to have a clothes line. I had a drier, but you know how nice it is to get in a bed with freshly cleaned sheets that have hung out on the line. And David decided he was going to wear overalls all the time. They take forever to get dry in a drier. I aksed him one day to put up a clothes line for me. He thought for a minute and said, "Barbed wire would make a good clothes line. You won't need to use clothes pins." ARE YOU KIDDING? He was serious. I informed him that his clothes would have rusty holes in them if he used barbed wire. Some of his ideas make me chuckle; he has to be kidding, right?

     When David and I started dating, he had in his apartment a globe on a tall stick/post type stand. He read everything in sight and always wanted to know where the places were that he was reading about. This globe was so top heavy, it was always falling over. When we got married and bought our first house, he cut the stand in half and screwed it to the ceiling of our den. I came home from work that day and there it was, hanging like it was in outter space.

     When we moved to our next house, the globe came with us. If I remember correctly, it stayed in the closet of our office bedroom. Maybe he couldn't figure out where he could hang it in a rented house.

     When we moved to the farm, it followed us once again all the way to Missouri. This time any remnant of the stand was gone. It was now screwed to the handle of David's filing cabinet, where it remains to this day. The ever evolving revolving planet Earth.


From David's apartment to 214th Str, to Ladeene Avenue, to MO farmhouse.

     One time David had a broken bone in his foot and was put in one of those air filled walking boots. We were no longer milking cows, but we did have beef cattle and a few pigs and there were still plenty of chores. He HAD to be up and around. He thought if he could invent a crutch that could be strapped to his leg with a seat on the top, he could keep his weight off his foot and still get around to do outside chores. So he cut a crutch in half and screwed on some straps which could be buckled around his leg. We still had Emily's old pink bike in the workshop. David removed the pink banana seat and attached it to the top of the crutch. The Butt Crutch was born!


The maiden voyage



So far, so good.



Okay, that's gotta hurt!

     We had a lot of apples one fall. We don't spray our trees so the bugs really get to the fruit and most of the apples aren't fit to eat in hand. David hated the thought of wasting all those apples and tried to figure out a way to make a cider press. He took 2 five gallon buckets, one with holes drilled in it, and one without the holes. He thought and thought about what he could use to create pressure to crush the apples. "Ah Ha! The tire jack used on the tractor. A piece of chain and a block of wood and ... What else can I use to wedge the jack in to crank up the pressure? I know! The door jam between the kitchen and the dining room!" He was so pleased with himself. I was NOT happy!!! Especially one day when I came home and noticed a crack from the corner of the doorway to the ceiling. THAT made steam blast out of my ears. WHAT???? Maggie happened to be in the room and noticed the horror on my face. She said, "Yeah, I know. Dad said not to tell you." He told her the width of the crack told him when he had enough pressure. I've tried to find a picture of the "cider press" in action, but I can't find any. I can't believe I let this go by without taking any pictures. If they turn up I'll post some.

As you can see the crack is still there.

     Emily said she would help me take off the wallpaper and paint the kitchen this summer. I suppose I ought to finally repair it. It's almost a shame. I think it would be a good reminder to keep him from "inventing."


     Last summer there was the mulching of the garden experiment. You'll never guess, so I'll tell you: Mulching with carpet. Yes, carpet. Pulled out of a duplex and a church.  Synthetic carpet used as mulch. We're talking about a lot of carpet. We carpeted about 2/3 of our garden, which is about 15 fifty foot rows. Not a good plan as it turned out. We got a dozen tomatoes the whole summer. Maggie has blogged about it here and here. It's just too much for me to relive. It will be a booger to remove. Then what do you do with it? I'm sure when that happens it will be on the 6 o'clock news. Stay tuned.


This doesn't seem so bad, but carpet doesn't make
a good mulch. It became a solid mass of overgrown
mess, not to mention a haven for snake breeding, I'm sure.

     I predict more dementia, uh, inventions in the future, but these have been some of the biggies in our 32 1/2 years together. Not always fun, but never dull. I'm sure there will be a sequal.