The Saga Continues

My "Peggy's Sistine Chapel" is finally on the wall.

It's in a place where it can be admired from afar. We joked that it really should have been hung from the ceiling, but it was hard enough to get it up where it is. Our DDIL2 sent a relative who lives here to our place with a fancy ladder to put it up for us. It makes my heart sing to see it there. It's really upside down, but I planned on the panel with the lighter background to go away from the windows in our old place when I made it, and the windows were on the right, so it hangs this way, and I think it's fine.

I managed to get the other two big quilts up. This was the one I made from about half of the Keepsake Quilting Millennium Quilt Kit given me by a friend. There were 2,000 4" squares. I made half-square triangles with them and just played until I found a design I liked. You can tell I like symmetrical, not being symmetrical myself.

I thought I was very clever, and as soon as it was done, I received a quilting magazine in the mail with the same quilt (different fabrics, of course), made in 1880. I wonder if that quilt maker was playing with my mind from the next world. This one can be seen at the top of the stairs as soon as you walk in the front door.

The orange and white quilt is a Devil's Claw block. I copied it from an antique quilt belonging to a friend who wishes to remain anonymous.


Finally, my Friendship Star quilt went up between the door to my fiber studio and the door to the guest room. The laundry room door is right across from it, so I see it every time I come out of the laundry.

Each quilt is hung the same way as my Pine Burr quilt: I made two sleeves, each slightly shorter than half the width of the quilt and 8" wide after hemming each end. I folded the strips of fabric in half lengthwise and sewed them to the top of the quilt under the binding, which required undoing the top binding, since I hadn't thought to do it as the quilts were being made. We bought 8' battens from the lumber yard and cut each one at least 6" longer than the width of the quilt it would be used to hang. I put a nail about 3" down from the ceiling where I wanted the middle of the quilt to be. I measured exactly how far down from the ceiling the nail ended up, and then put two more nails the same distance from the ceiling where the batten would stick out on each side. So that's done!

I needed pajamas for this week's story, so I had to do some sewing for the latest additions to the vinyl family. I finished the top to Jolena's pajamas first. I had one sleeve on. She has been sleeping in a camisole for a top, but it's getting chilly, and the story will include a scene about Christmas Eve. 

Mariah also had pajama pants and a camisole top, but no real PJ top. I found the rest of the lime green flannel I used for the pants.

The top is based on Little Abbee's Slumber Party PJs, but with alterations for Götz Happy Kidz. The pants are from my pattern. (This is Mariah's first Christmas, and she has never seen a Christmas tree before.

For Billy, I wanted something a little more masculine. I used fabric taken from some girls' leggings in cotton and lycra. I made the pants from the same pattern, but I made the legs 1/2" shorter, so I could add a 1/2" cuff. I had to invent the top. I used some other patterns of mine, adjusted for opening in the back and having cuffs on the sleeves and a band around the neck. It was hard sewing on dark navy fabric, because I don't yet have very good lighting in my fiber studio, but once I got things under the light of my EverSewn Sparrow 15 (which I have come to adore) I was able to see well enough to sew. I needed two more sleep masks. Mariah got the same kind as the other girls, but Billy chose to eschew the lace trim and voted for fold-over elastic in dark navy to sort of go with his PJs.

The cuffs at the ankles and wrists, as well as the neck band, don't really show up very well because the fabric is so dark.

The dark thundercloud that has accompanied us on this move has not left us yet, but it proved to have a silver lining. Our new appliances were delivered on Sunday, so Saturday night, we got everything ready. When we pulled out the stove, we found mouse traps behind it. Not a good sign, but we've had mice before, so other than the "oh, ick!" response, we weren't too perturbed. What we found when we pulled out the dishwasher was much more disturbing.

What you're looking at (besides the dirt and dust) is live electrical wires chewed down to the actual wire by a mouse or mice. I'm surprised there was no mouse body or skeleton right at that spot. Maybe the power was turned off at the time. However, after the initial reaction of disgust, we realized how lucky we had been. This kind of damage could have started a fire, even if we hadn't been using the dishwasher. The wire is going to have to be replaced, which creates a lot of complications for the installation. However, we could very well have had a fire sometime in the near future, which was avoided because we chose to replace the appliances. The way I see it, the appliances just paid for themselves. At least the dishwasher did. What a close call!

Sunday morning we unloaded the freezer section of the old fridge and put all of the frozen food into the big freezer out in the garage. About lunch time, we unloaded the refrigerator section and put all of the cold food in ice chests, which we placed where they would be out of the way. Our friends from Lowe's came right at 2:00 PM. They removed the old appliances, putting the stove and fridge in the garage, because we hope to donate them, and the dishwasher in their truck. Then they brought in the new appliances.

The dishwasher and range are still not hooked up. DH had hoped to do that himself, but the part needed to hook up the gas is no longer available(!) and we need an electrician.  The men from Lowe's hooked up the fridge, though. It has an ice maker but no dispenser, our choice because we wanted to maximize the space in the refrigerator section. So here it is in all its glory:

I would have preferred white, but now white appliances cost more than stainless, and the almost-new microwave is stainless, so the choice was really out of my hands.

Here's a scene from last Friday's story, just to show we're in the Christmas spirit here, in spite of the turmoil.

Santa will be seen in this week's story.

What's on my needles: Still the Kisu Takki Cardigan for Jolena, the same as the Stavanger, but with a different chart. A few more rows finished on the sleeves.

What's on my Sparrow 15: The quilt sleeves for hanging quilts are done, so now on to costumes for my characters. Now that they all have their sleepwear (PJs and sleep masks), I have some other clothes cut out and ready to sew.

What's in my hoop: Still the Spring Flowers quilt, no progress again this week.


What's in The Doll's Storybook: Caroling and Dreaming. This week's story will be about Santa and why he gives children gifts. The dolls have a theory. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still The Ladies of Ivy Cottage by Julie Klassen, but only one more chapter, and Christmas/holiday music.

What's in my wine glass: Terrain Vineyards California Red Blend 2015 again. Very nice, and great value.

What's my tip of the week: If you have a new item that was packed with styrofoam and some of the little bits cling to something you don't want to throw away (floor, windows, shelves, pets, children, etc.) you can get them up quickly with one of those pet-hair rollers. The little bits seem more attracted to the roller than to whatever they've been clinging to.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

At Last! Part I

Wow! What a week! I had hoped to get the loom put together, but it was too busy. I did get all the heddles loaded onto the rods in the shafts. Here it is with just two shafts loaded, and there are four, but I did finish that part.  There are enough heddles (those things that look like wires hanging down in the middle) to weave something with more than 400 warp threads.

The heddles hold the warp thread, and the shafts can be lifted in various configurations as the weaver works with the weft thread on a shuttle. I hope to make some rag rugs for the house, and then (after I have the techniques down) for gifts.

The arrival of the final part of our shipment on Wednesday stopped the work on the loom, as there were other things to be done.

We were glad to have it come, because most of my kitchen equipment was missing or partly missing. (How can you use a blender if the container is missing?) We were lucky to have our 5th wheel parked in front of the house, and we ended up using most of the pots, pans, cutlery, knives cutting boards and towels from the trailer in the house. I'm still missing things, but we are still unpacking. Wednesday evening the kitchen was unusable because of all the boxes piled on the floor.

Thursday morning we went out to breakfast with my DBIL. It was nice to be able to sit for a bit. When we got home, it was back to work...to this:

I had brought half of my omelette and pancakes home, so I skipped lunch and had my "doggie bag" for supper. Working flat-out, pausing only to fall into bed late Thursday night, I started again in the morning, and by lunchtime on Friday, I had a nice cup of tea and this:

That's just the kitchen, mind you, and the breakfast bar was/is still covered with papers, DH's computer and some other stuff he will have to remove, so my job in the kitchen is now just to clean up after us.

I took time off from unpacking on Friday to advertise our packing materials on the Redmond, Oregon, Online Yard Sale Group on Facebook. We had this overflowing box of foam peanuts.

Then we had this large garbage bag full of bubble wrap (which had been tempting me to sit and make pop-pop instead of working), and an overflowing box of foam sheets and envelopes for putting between dishes.

We had seven or eight of the giant yard trash bags full of clean, wadded-up newsprint.

Then we must have had 40-50 boxes of various sizes, opened and flattened.

A nice young woman responded to the listing and said she would take it all. She had four children, and their landlord had said they had to move because he wanted to sell the house in the spring, and needed to start working on it. She came Saturday afternoon and got it all...in four trips with her large car (family of six, remember) packed.

We are gradually meeting some of the neighbors. DH was working out in the front yard, trying to tidy up our lawn hoses, when a gentleman from across the street stopped to talk. We found out from him that the previous owner had spent a month working in the house, fixing things. We can kind of understand his perspective now, how he didn't understand that we had such a long list of things to fix and wanted him to come down on the price. He had seen the house before he spent that month fixing. I'm glad we didn't see it then. We probably would have written it off. In spite of all the things we've had to replace, we're starting to feel like it's going to be a nice house. We keep discovering things we like about it. For instance, I hated to give up my laundry chute in our bedroom closet, which dumped laundry right into the laundry basket in the middle of my laundry room. Here I don't need a laundry chute, because the laundry is upstairs with all the bedrooms. All I have to carry down the stairs is the kitchen towels, cloth napkins and the occasional tablecloth.

Another fun thing about this house is that small planes land on a landing strip that is next to our street, but further to the north. We live on SE Airpark Dr., but off the bottom of this photo. Occasionally a plane will come down just above the trees across the street to land on the strip.

We watched one sail over us on Saturday. It will be fun if we can see one when the grandkids are here. It reminds me of when I was a small child, spending the summer with my mother and brother in New Hampshire, in a cabin just across the train tracks from Silver Lake. We saw an aquaplane land on the lake one day. The trains were fun, but that aquaplane was unusual. We hear the trains frequently here, too, which brings back pleasant childhood memories.

The long-awaited Billy has arrived. He was expected for some time, and progress was slow, often with no word at all. However, Thursday I received a notice that he was in Bend and would be delivered the next day. Here he is:

I think he looks a little like our youngest grandson, so I have named him William (Billy) Johan (for the grandson) Gotz (for the doll company).

I haven't cut his hair yet, just pulled it back in a low ponytail. My hairdresser offered to help me with the haircut, but she was leaving Saturday morning from LA for a cruise for two weeks. Billy says he doesn't mind waiting for his haircut, because he wants it to be right. So the hair will become part of the story. He looks pretty masculine in his cardigan and hat.

Wondering what he looked like as a girl? Here he is, right out of the box, still fastened in with the restraints. He has a puppy, a female Dalmation named Freckles. (The doll comes with a pink knitted hat, which was almost off when I opened the box, so I had already removed it for this photo.)

The girls will love the clothes. I like him better as a boy, I think.

This week's story was about recycling. I think I'm getting divine inspiration. I didn't know this was National Recycling Week in the US.

Saturday morning we went with my BIL to the Holiday Food and Gift Festival at the Deschutes County Fairground in Redmond. They had some interesting booths, offering wine, spirits, oils, vinegars, fudge, salsa, shortbread and other tasty treats. This place has a store in Bend, which we plan to visit sometime soon.

There were also several booths with quilted and sewn items, like table runners and aprons. This lady also had knitted dish cloths.

This booth has some lovely items, Hilltop Quilts. The owner doesn't have a website, but she gave me her card. Her phone number is 971-645-8772, and her name is Rita. She says she's living surrounded by boxes, too. She moved three weeks ago.

Here's the booth for Imperial Yarn. We bought some of the dryer balls, which you can see (barely, because we got the last package) in the top tray of the stand in the middle of this photo. They are made from felted alpaca. You can add them to your wet clothes in the dryer, and they function as dryer sheets do, to reduce static electricity and soften clothes. You can also add a few drops of essential oil of your choice to add a nice scent to your laundry. I already knew about them from my visits to the Blue Moon Ranch Alpacas in Utah.

We bought a new lampshade with a silhouette of a family of bears and some trees on it, and a hummingbird feeder made out of a fence post. We also picked up a bar of special soap for each of the younger grandkids from Penelope's Soaps and Such. (Each bar contains a LEGO Harry Potter character.) They will want to wash and wash to get the figure inside.

You may remember that we had to take Rocky to the vet on Sunday. By Tuesday, he was running and playing with Dusty in the backyard, and I had dropped the pain medication, just keeping the anti-inflammatory medication. We have an appointment for Rocky for November 20th for his intranasal Bordetella booster, as well as a check for blood pressure and thyroid, to make sure his medications are working. My BIL is coming for Thanksgiving, and (if no one gets sick), our Oregon son and DIL will come down from Beaverton on Friday with their two boys to spend what's left of the long weekend.

My foot has gradually improved with the treatment prescribed. I wish I could have gone to our new doctor before all the other attempts at treatment, but I'm so grateful to be able to sleep at night and to walk around without discomfort. I have much to be thankful for. Which reminds me, Thanksgiving is coming this week! Here's my favorite offering for my quilting friends at Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What's on my needles: Back to the Viipuri Cardigan for Jolena.

What's on my Sparrow 15: Still sitting in my future sewing room.

What's in my hoop: Still the Spring Flowers quilt, no progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: "Reading, Writing and Recycling." This week's story is about doing homework and recycling, oddly enough, from the title. I'm working on the story introducing Billy. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: The Ladies of Ivy Cottage by Julie Klassen. I've made some progress with the story.

What's in my wine glass: Terrain Vineyards, California Red Blend, 2015.

What's my tip of the week: I keep a basket at the bottom of the stairs for stuff that need to go up. It's elongated, so it doesn't take up much space but holds a lot. It saves time and effort.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

Keeping in Stitches and Paper and Food

We've moved on from buttonholes and buttons to decorative stitching with my new Eversewn Sparrow 15. Here's a look at the latest.

The polka dots sort of distort the appearance here and there, but the decorative stitching comes out very even. I had the stitch length dial set about in the middle of the buttonhole area (between 0 and 1) on this dial. 

I could have shortened the stitch further and made more like satin stitch, but this looked good enough for my story photos.

The stitch I used is the one in black at 5 o'clock on the dial in the next photo. The stitches indicated in other colors correspond to the S1 and S2 on the stitch length dial, so if you want the darker blue/green stitch indicated on the stitch pattern dial and the stitch length dial set on S1, you will get that stitch. I haven't tried those yet. (Stay tuned.)

I notice the price has gone up $20 because of the new tariffs on goods from China, so DH did me a favor to suggest getting it when I did. I think it's still a bargain

Now that I've tantalized you with the decorative stitching, here's the project I was working on.

The decorative stitching would have been nice around the neck, but by the time I thought of it, I already had the buttons on with snaps underneath, and they would be in the way.

That was very time-consuming (putting on the buttons and snaps). Next time, I'll make buttonholes and buttons. Even this tiny, it would have been much faster than sewing the buttons and snaps on by hand. Jolena will be wearing this dress in this week's story in The Doll's Storybook. The most recent story is here, in case you haven't found it.

Common Threads met at Lynda's. Almost everyone in our small group was knitting, except Ginny, who was working on this lovely needlepoint piece. She has started filling in the background.

It was raining, so it had cooled off. While I was at Common Threads, the appraiser was at our house, deciding its fate. Our agent says he does a lot of her appraisals, and they almost always come in about the contract price. After all, an appraisal tells you what someone is willing pay, and so does the contract. However, the appraisal also tries to justify that price to the bank. We don't expect any problems with it.

Preparations for the move continue. We have had some interesting meals. Like the Quorn Turk'y Roast we had in the freezer, which we're trying to empty. There was also a big container of bread crumbs in there for stuffing and toppings, and I found a container of mushroom gravy, which expired in May, in the pantry, so we had a feast; like Thanksgiving but with summer squash.

We also found one frozen salmon fillet, which I threw into some Thai stir-fried vegetables with rice.

I made some corn salad, a favorite of ours for summer. It keeps for several days in the refrigerator without going mushy, like my DH, but without the refrigerator. Here's my recipe:

Easy Corn Salad

Ingredients
• Dressing:• 3 T olive oil• 3 T lemon juice• 1/2 t Salt• 1/2 t dried cilantro• 1/2 t dried basil• 2 T salsa• 1 T pickled garlic
• Salad:• 1 16-Oz pkg. frozen corn• 2 chopped tomatoes• 4 green onions• 1/2 chopped red onion• 1 C chopped cucumber • 1 handful fresh spinach, chopped (optional)• 1 chopped avocado• 1 bell pepper (any color, optional)
• Topping:• Crumbled feta cheese

Directions
Mix dressing ingredients. Add to remaining ingredients in a large Tupperware bowl and toss. Top each serving with feta cheese.

I know it will last several days. It might last longer, but we always manage to eat it up quickly.

I made bread this week and discovered that the bread-machine pan is starting to leak. I tried to find a place to buy a new pan, but the pan for this machine seems to be discontinued. However, I found out you can replace the washer using a silicone washer you make yourself. I don't actually bake in my bread machine; I just use it for mixing the dough, so I think his first suggestion would work fine for me.

I have a nice stand mixer. Why don't I use it to make bread? The bread machine doesn't require that the liquid ingredients be heated to the right temperature first, so you basically just throw everything in the pan, start the machine and walk away.

Friday I took down most of the quilts on the walls. I should have popped them into the wash right off, instead of carefully folding each one and filling the big steamer trunk in our living room with them. I realized my mistake on Saturday, when I came down with a full-blown allergy attack, unusual for this time of year. I'm sure the quilts had accumulated dust from months, or in some cases years, of hanging around, watching my activities. It didn't show, but I'm pretty sure that was the case. I'll have to wash them at the other end. The steamer trunk is wood covered with painted canvas. I didn't want my quilts to be in contact with the wood for what could be several months, so I lined it with a sheet first. The sheet was one our granddaughter (DGD1) used when she lived with us. Amazingly, it still smelled like her perfume.

I packed a box of glasses on Saturday and had to stop because the box was full, and I still had this much. I got back to it late Sunday afternoon. I finished at 9:00 PM. I have 12 glasses that were too tall for the glasses pack, but I managed to get most of my china teacups in on top of the shorter glasses, with a piece of cardboard between, which I cut out at 4.5" using my paper cutter (I knew there was a reason I kept it out) and the only rotary-cutting ruler I have left with me.

Besides keeping busy with sewing, packing and cooking, I've had to lend a hand now and then when DH has needed help with mending the fence or reinforcing the posts for the rail for our stairs from one of the many decks outdoors.

Vroni is wearing her new checkered shirt. I think this was the best one of the four. I really understand buttonholes and buttons with my new machine now. It still isn't perfect, but I'm getting there. I made her the same kind of skirt Mandy has and the same Capri-length, stretch lace leggings. She wants to know when we're going to get back to quilting. She's ready!

What's on my needles: Still the Kisu Cardigan for Jolena, and still at the BO for the neck. Also the Coastal Skies shawl for me, which I worked on at Common Threads, so several more rows done.

What's on my Sparrow 15: Decorative stitching. Check. Now on to using the overcast foot.

What's in my hoop: Still the Spring Flowers quilt, no progress this week.

What's on my wheel: Stanzi is still waiting patiently. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finally finished listening to The Secret Book & Scone Society by Ellery Adams. Very little time to listen for a bit this week. It was an interesting book, but it didn't really grab me, although I enjoyed the fact that the characters had issues (i.e. they were human) and still were likeable. I haven't started anything new yet. It may be that I have been too busy to pay attention to a book.

What's in my wine glass: Durant Vinyards 2015 Pinot Gris from Dundee, Oregon. It brings back memories of our trip last summer, when we picked this up, and a reminder that our younger DDIL, Alexa (not the Siri wannabe) has a birthday this week. Here's the photo we took then of her with our DS2.

What's my tip of the week: If a quilt has been on the wall a long time, it's a good idea to wash it, or vacuum it (if it isn't suitable for washing) after you take it down. How do you vacuum a quilt? Place a clean window screen over the quilt and vacuum with the hose attachment, one area at a time. If it's a new and sturdy quilt but you can't wash it, throw it over a clothesline (if anyone still has one) or a porch rail and beat with a rug beater.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.