I am learning to adult again. I like that term because there are times I forget to do things that are necessary for day to day--like buying groceries. When my milk is past the expiration date by a week or two, I think it is time. When Jeff and I were first together, I had a hard time trying not to "do it all". He was like that too, so we both learned to lean on each other. In everything we did, we did it as a team. Well as we all know there is no "I" in team, so I have to learn to be self sufficient again, since my team mate was drafted by the Angels in Heaven.
There are some things I learned from Jeff, but there were other things I didn't pay much attention to. Like the pool. Samantha and I managed to get it up and filled, as well as the filter and pump working. Um for some reason this year I have frogs that have determined that it is "their" pond. Imagine my chagrin as I am floating in the pool trying to relax, when one of the frogs decides that my chest is a great place to jump out of the water. The frogs have been evicted on multiple occasions only to return over and over. Yes even with all the chemicals and chlorine they continue to return.
I keep trying, but I cannot seem to get my water to stay clear, it is a bit cloudy. I have tried everything suggested, but to no avail. Imagine my aggravation when it is now clearing up with no assistance from me.
I have an 8 gallon waterer for the chickens. When I clean it, if I fill it outside of the pen I can barely lift it up the 2 steps to get it back inside--think of it this way a gallon of water weighs 8 lbs so an 8 gallon waterer full is 64 lbs to lift. I have started to take it out of the pen, clean it, put it back into the pen, and then fill it. On a couple of occasions the pressure from the hose has caused it to snake out, wriggling all over like a cobra, essentially soaking me, and any chicken within a 3 feet radius. Guess that comes from using the hydrant which has better water pressure than a normal tap. I end up leaving the chicken coop soaked, and smelling like wet feathers among other things.
The offending water hose.
The clean and newly filled chicken waterer. This day I had a pretty successful day, and didn't wind up totally soaked, but I have made sure I wear my chicken house/garden shoes.
The flies have arrived, and of course they adore the chicken house. I took some fly strips out to hang, which I have done in the past. 1st fly strip went up easy peasy. 2nd fly strip, the little loop broke off and it fell, I luckily had a hold of the cardboard tube so not a huge deal, but I did lose the tack. I looked all over through the bedding, even grabbing a magnet to look. Still no go. I stuck the cardboard end on a protruding screw. 3rd fly strip-- I have to crouch to go into the nesting box area. Hung the fly strip up, all of a sudden it fell from the ceiling, landing on me in the crouched/squatting position under it. It landed on my chest, rolled down my arms and hands, finally settling on my legs. OMG if you ever get that stuff on you, it does not come off! I scrubbed with hot water and soap, alcohol, finally had to wander downstairs to the laundry sink in the basement to use the Cherry Bomb scrubber in the ginormous bottle that Jeff had brought home from work. If I wasn't so fat, and old I would have just stripped, covered my whole body in Cherry Bomb scrub and climbed into the laundry sink to wash all that fly paper sticky off.
I will say that fly strips do a great job if you are a fly, not so much if you are a human. See the opening, that is the small door I crouch through to gather eggs.
I have been doing a lot of sewing trying to catch up and be ready for my class on Saturday. Sometimes my plans don't go exactly as I dream.
I finished up my arcs today.
I had finished my left facing arcs a couple of weeks ago. I have one more day before class. I have these flying geese arcs to complete.
I have 8 of these to make and each one is 40 pieces. The background that looks like green is really more of a Caribbean blue.
I have a few more fabric acquisitions.
Cute chicken and chick fabric, chicken feet prints, and a candy square. I love candy squares, I will add these to my tumbler quilt, or to assist in making the next set of quilts I am working on. Oh I guess I should share those soon. Yes I started something new.
Some fun text fabrics, and chicken fabric. The red and black which are side by side are chicken coops. I saw the gray and thought, just maybe it would match the fabrics in my ocean waves quilt, but no such luck.
Back to my adulting. I have purchased 5 cards lately to send. One to a friend who lost her mother, another a thank you note to a friend who sent me a book, a sympathy card to my ex husband who lost his father, and one for my ex mother in law. Yep huge fail on my part. I know I had them in my hand, I set them down, and cannot locate them again. When other people lived here I could at least pretend that they possibly moved them. Now I have no one to blame but myself. I did manage to send out one get well card to a lady from quilt guild that has shingles and she is really struggling to get well. So I am not a total goof.
I have been doing a lot of cutting, not much sewing though, and a lot (probably too much) fabric accumulation. Oh no she did not just say that!?!?!
I sat and calculated how many 2 1/2 inch squares I needed for my ocean waves quilt, and started cutting them out. I then calculated how many groups of 2's I needed and sewed them together. See that empty spot in my shoe box? Well it is now completely full with 2 1/2 inch squares, and 119 which are sewn into twos. I actually ended up cutting all the background fabric up for this quilt. So if I dispose of about 8 yards of fabric I can purchase more right?
I don't know why I put off making my bag lady block for the month for so long. I mean I can put this together in like 30 minutes. Sorry for the picture the outside is more of a green. But see the center hummingbird?
My girlfriend's mother was recently placed in a rest home, and my girlfriend's SIL basically boxed everything from the childhood home and told her take what you want. Problem is when someone boxes everything up you have no clue what they would consider important, what they would consider garbage and dispose of or junk and give to charity. Since I recently had to participate in the ritual I understand her pain, and frustration. Anyway when she heard I was looking for manly fabric for charity quilts, and because she had been in the military when she was younger, she started pulling fabric for me from her mother's stash.
Simple pattern, not floral, kind of manly colors and it is 3 yards!
I don't know if you could see, but it was from Woolworth's, and it was 69 cents a yard. It is nice heavy 100% cotton and it was stored well, no sun fading or anything.
As to acquisitions--
Barbara from Wont to be quilter recently showed her seam guide she used for her machine to mark her 1/4 inch mark. I have been using painter's tape, but I thought I would give this a try, so I ordered one.
Just piecing it is alright. If I am matching points, and stuff it doesn't work quite as well because I pin, unless I pin backward. Maybe there is a learning curve.
Some fabrics I was auditioning for a Christmas project. The two browns were too dark. The light may work.
A bundle of low volume fabrics from Pink Castle! Forty fat quarters! I think it gives me quite the variety.
The next 2 pictures are the fabric for the Quiltworx project called Cattails in the Meadow which I showed in this post. The fabric used in their quilt was Timeless Treasures Reclaimed West made especially for Judy Niemeyer who designs the Quiltworx patterns. Of course I am always a day late and a dollar short. This line was first offered during Fall Quilt Market in 2014. GASP! 3 years ago!
I have 2 more pieces which I am awaiting their arrival, poor lady was on vacation and was stressing, I told her no worries, just mail it when she gets home.
I have procrastinated to the point where I am under the gun to get my quiltworx quilt arcs and flying geese units done, and I only have 2 days. I guess we all know what I will be doing.
August is always a busy month around the house. August 5th was Jeff's birthday, and he always insisted he should get a birthday month, since when we married I created what her termed the triple threat to his manhood. Our anniversary, Valentine's Day, and my birthday all within 31 days! Also August was the month we met, a week or two after the end of the fair. I may not remember the exact day, but I do remember him talking about going to the fair every day because he had taken that week off for vacation, and his birthday.
I have been told I should do the things we loved to do together, and one of our favorite things was to go to the county fair. We always went on Thursday because that is ladies day, and Jeff loved that he only had to pay $2 for me, and it was tractor pull night. I jumped in our old truck and headed to the Monroe County Fair at about 1 pm. The weather had been kind of iffy all day, thunderstorms and rain off and on all day long. I ran into a friend from the quilt guild and we walked over to the domestic arts building to see how people placed. Only 2 ladies from guild entered quilts--and one of them was not me. Sorry I didn't take any pictures. Soon we parted company and I decided I would like to enjoy some fair food. Jeff and I always got Butterfly fries (spiral cut potatoes deep fried with cheese, bacon bits, and sour cream). Afterward I walked through the barns, I love to see the 4-H kids and their livestock, then wandered through the exhibits.
The antique tractor club has a display, but my favorite are these little hit and miss engines. Later on in the day they actually fired them up and I love the sound they make.
While this is not the above engine it is similar, so you can see how it worked and hear the sound they make.
This year is the Bicentennial for Monroe County Michigan and there was a special exhibit made to celebrate. There was a list of all the century farms, and pictures of their homes. Our farm can't be a century farm because it was not 10 acres or more, even though it is over a century. They did have some cool maps. I loved the old plat maps.
See the N Todd? That is the plot of land that Jeff's great, great grandparents owned in 1901. I have found deeds for much more land prior to that to the west, it appears they sold it off 20/25 acre plots for quite a few years before this map was created.
Now my house has a build date of 1860, and it is interesting that there was a map there from 1850 but the land did not belong to the family at that time. I also have letters from Jeff's great, great grandmother's sister inquiring how the build of the house is going which are dated from the 1880's so I am going to say that the construction of this house was long and arduous. The great aunt's house next door was the original settler's cabin. If you crawl under you see the huge posts and beams that it was built on.
I sat and people watched, and soon it was time for dinner. Of course I had to have a turkey leg. That was Jeff's favorite. The first year we took the boys they were 3 and 4 he asked them, do you want a turkey leg, they told him no we want corn dogs. So he got them corn dogs. Which they devoured, then proceeded to massacre Jeff's turkey leg, because that was good too. Sorry no pictures of my food.
I was undecided if I wanted to go to the tractor pulls or not. The past few years they have had more trucks pulling and no big tractors (picture a modified tractor with four 8 cylinder engines to run it). These are called super stock. Heck if you are interested check out the NTPA Pull 101. Anyway so Jeff hadn't really wanted to go, he liked the super stock, and at one time there were old tractors that pulled too, but they no longer did that either. Imagine my delight when I heard that there were super stock, but they also had some antique tractors that would pull too. So I decided to pay the $10 to go.
These are the legacy tractors, some of the original tractors which were built to pull back in the 70's.
Those white pipes are their exhaust stacks. Yes that was the rule they had to be that long!
That box on the front is a counterweight to keep the tractor from flipping over.
This one when it was revving up had flames shooting out of that big curved tube in the front.
Another with the tall pipes, it is interesting that certain manufactures were known for having good rear ends for pulling (the back axle).
Overall the fair was fun, I was sad Jeff missed the old tractors he would have loved it. The kegs on the front if this one are full of lead for counter weights.
Saturday would have been Jeff's 51st birthday. I had it suggested that we have a small birthday party for him. I got up early on Saturday morning and put flowers near the spot on the corner where he was killed.
Samantha put balloons up, but I haven't been able to get a good pictures. I hit the traffic light at the wrong time, too much traffic, or too dark.
I also made his favorite dessert home made coconut cream pie from scratch. I coat the pie crust with semi sweet chocolate so it is kind of like having a Mounds bar.
It had also been suggested that I write a love letter to Jeff, attach it to a balloon and release it. Basically a love letter to my loved one in heaven. I decided I would give the boys a chance to write letters too. Everyone got into the act.
Green, and gold stars with letters attached ready to go. I couldn't find yellow starts, and it is hard to find latex balloons anymore that they will fill with helium.
Soon they continued to float up and away until they were only tiny specks up near the clouds. Finn insists that Jeff is on the clouds watching him. :D
Saturday night a girlfriend and I went out to dinner at one of Jeff's favorite restaurant. She had never had middle eastern food, so it was fun to take someone with me to experience something new, much like Jeff had taken me long ago. Oh and she loved it!
Finally the original urn I ordered for Jeff just did not work out. It was art deco looking, stained glass, which was green and yellow, almost the colors of the old John Deere advertising, not the iconic green and yellow we know now, but it was not made well. By the time I had a chance to talk to the funeral home about returning it, his insurance had paid for the urn. So he has been sitting in this plastic box on my dresser in my room. I decided it was time to find him a more permanent home.
I will admit that when I opened it I sobbed for quite a while. Have I put his ashes in it? Not yet. Will it be buried soon, not likely. I would like to have us buried together in my family cemetery in Northern California, up in the mountains. Jeff fell in love with the area when we visited two years ago. He could not get over the mountains, and the color and clarity of the water in the nearby river. Jeff actually had been talking about selling our house and farm when he retired and buying a place there. Since that seemed to be where Jeff's heart wanted to take him, and being my ancestral lands my heart has ties to that land, I think it will be a perfect place for our hearts to rest for eternity when I pass on too.
I needed a break from working on Jeff's t-shirt quilt so I decided to pick up the Ocean Waves quilt. I haven't worked on it for quite a while. I will say sewing HST and trimming is very relaxing, but you can only do so many.
I cut out a lot of parts. An old shoe box is nice to stack them in so they are all grouped together.
I would then cut my light, draw the line....yes I like to draw the diagonal line. Then grab about 10 of a color and sew. Then cut them apart and trim.
The bloc-loc HST ruler helps tremendously to trim quickly. While I am trimming I cut tumblers, hexies, and parts for other quilts I will be doing soon.
I stacked my HST into a nice under the bed storage box. All pretty and easy to grab and sew. I have started laying out one block, sewing the rows together, then holding them in order with a binder clip. When I have several blocks ready I go and press my seams open, and come back and sew a block unit. Works pretty well.
Here is what I have so far. I have some more strips to cut into 3 inch squares and 2 1/2 inch squares and then it will be time to put this up and do something else for a few days. I really need to get back to my Desert Rose Quilt (Quiltworx).
While I was pressing and playing with the layout in the house, a nice breeze came up out on the sun porch.
I had squares all over the porch, and this is what my nice neat looking box looks like now. Little did I know that when I titled this post rogue wave that my HST would go rogue. I will say looking at the layout and my scrappy blocks from the Riley Blake line called Apricot and Persimmon with some solids thrown in makes me happy.
Of course we know that I had to share my most recent fabric acquisition.
Fun black on whites. Thimbles, and clothes pins! And some more chicken fabric for my chicken quilt. Nancy of Pug Mom Quilts is my fabric enabler lately. :D
I have SABLE....stash beyond life expectancy. But I have also been grabbing stash and using it, in charity quilts, and other projects. Even today I grabbed my 2 1/2 inch strips to us in the making of a charity quilt.
But.......that does not deter me from fabric acquisitions.
This one I am blaming on Nancy from PugMomQuilts! She sent me a message on Facebook with a link to equilter.com.
OMG Hunks with green tractors! I mean, my hunk may be gone, but the green tractors live on in my world.
Of course while I was perusing the site equilter.com I spied a batik with chickens, tractor, barns and a windmill. Gasp! All of our favorite things.
And more green tractors
And John Deere fabric with daisies
Some green and yellow for Jeff's quilt.
Squeee! and lots of chicken fabric!
I have been thinking of my RSC Saw Toothed Square and decided I needed these kind of aqua, colors. I know of a shop that has lots of reproductions and when I looked at their e-mail the other day and saw these I knew I needed them for my RSC which I should return to shortly.
The other day I decided a little quilt shop therapy, I had received a sale notice (e-mail) from Pink Castle Fabrics in Ann Arbor. I love it when I order, I can go pick it up after they notify me, so no shipping! Nice little drive on a lovely sunny day.
My polka dots were needing replenishing, and I had to have some green, and yellow polka dots for Jeff's quilt. Then I saw the green small hashtag, and the green and aqua gingham, and on sale too!
Of course while I was picking up my fabric I saw these candy packs at the register.
I just knew I could use these in my tumbler quilt. I really needed some nice neutrals. Yes they are already cut into tumblers and being used.
After I left I decided to wander over to the Ann Arbor Sewing Center. I needed some batiks in lavenders, aqua, and turquoise. I will just say that at one point this year I am pretty sure I had 4 Christmas Wall Hangings made- waiting to be sandwiched and quilted. I am undecided if with the insanity of life I was wrong and didn't have that many or I misplaced them, and have not been able to lay my hands on them again because I could only locate 2. I decided I needed to make at least 3 if not 4 more.
Of course seeing chicken fabric I had to have it.
I have also done some thread acquisitions. I really need to work on my quilting and get some things finished. Nothing like watching all of your bloggy friends finish up stuff to add to the peer pressure.
I like variegated threads for quilting. Especially if the quilt is scrappy. I have Creme Brule', Mocha Mousse, and Mango Mist. I think 2 of these will work well for the gurney quilt once I get it sandwiched. I have a few quilts to get sandwiched right now. (Hangs head in shame).
Finally a friend from high school and her spouse had been worried about me, and so he thought that maybe I should read this book called Option B by Sheryl Sandberg, it had been recommended by one of his colleagues.
Sheryl Sandberg is the COO of Facebook and suddenly lost her husband to a heart attack and as the cover says "facing adversity, building resilience, and finding joy." I am not too sure if I am ready to read the book quite yet. I have had a couple of other books sent me regarding grief which are on my to read list also.
I do know that I have seemed to find peace, and a level of contentment with life once more. I still miss Jeff dearly, and there are tears on a daily basis, but when I share stories of Jeff it is because they bring me smiles. I had to have a mammogram the other day and while standing there squished and in pain, I started laughing. Jeff said he would go have a prostate check and colonoscopy if I had a mammogram. Dirty bird got out of it. :D
