I Am So.... Busted

A friend asked me why I haven't blogged lately (like in two years?) and I have to admit that I'm lazy....  BUSTED!  Oops.

I've been quilting like crazy lately, mostly small things.  They are somehow so very satisfying, simply because they get done!

I found a delightful little piece of hand embroidery at a rummage and snapped it up for only a quarter.  Do you remember those "learn to embroider" kits that came from the Sears catalog or the dime store?  It really reminded me of those, but whoever embroidered it was a master at stitching.  Her stitches are so incredibly tiny!  Anyhow, I added some 30's reproduction scraps for borders and quilted away.  There's stitch in the ditch, clamshells, petals/wedges, and outline stitching around the cat and dog, the rocks, the clouds, the horizon.  Somewhere in one of those mysterious hiding places that we all have, I think I still have the four very-poorly-embroidered squares from my childhood.  They'd be cute put in a little quilt for my sewing room.  (....but only if I re-stitch the mess I made when I was ten or so!)

Next item up for show is a quickie quilt top, 30's reproductions.  It was easy, just plopping a solid charm on the center of a layer cake block, stitching around the edge, cutting it in half, and then doing the mix & match thing.  I used black thread and am having it machine quilted by a friend.  Trickiest part of this one was remembering to start sewing in the middle of each charm so that the thread break is hidden in the seam!  If the fabrics look familiar it's because the scraps for the little quilt above were cut from behind the solids in this one.  I love the black 30's fabric--it just makes the others pop.

That's two of the grandbabies who were drafted into holding it up.  The pic is six weeks old, back when my willow trees were still golden.  The next pic is TODAY, right after our third blizzard of the year.  I've shoveled more snow this year than in the last two or three years combined.  That's Katelin's furbaby Daisy--who refused to go potty outside until the snow was cleared away!  It is as deep my knees in my whole yard and up to my waist in many places.  It looks like the Farmer's Almanac got it right again since they predicted a hard winter.

Life Happens.... and a Cruise

I've been cleaning out my computer and such and thought, "Gee, it's been a while since I blogged."  Well, duh, but far longer than I remembered.  Not quite as long as visiting BlogWorld since I read other blogs, but still....

More Life Changes....  Rents in Minot have doubled and tripled so Kate and I are living with my oldest son.  It usually runs smoothly until our life styles collide.  i.e. I'm a lot messier than the rest of the household--and a HOARDER.  Step One:  Admit you have an issue.  Step Two:  Do something about it.  Yuck.  Too many other things are more interesting than diving into my rat's nest of a bedroom/sewing room.

Deliberate change of subject....  Seven of us from work went on a Girls Only Cruise to Georgetown, Grand Cayman, Falmouth, Jamaica, Labadee, Haiti, starting from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  I never thought I was the cruising type, but it was fantastic!  Thank you, Royal Caribbean....  I was worried about getting seasick, but I adjusted well.  Just don't watch the horizon if it's bouncing!  The shore excursions were really fun and I am now known as the Wild Child.  I climbed the five story observation tower in Grand Cayman--stairs but against a beautiful mosaic.  I've been to Hell and back and have the pic to prove it.  I rode the Jamaican bobsled and would love to go again.  I climbed Dunn's River Falls and am very, very glad that I did it this year--might be too decrepit to do that climb by the time I take another trip there.  And I zip lined on the longest zip line over water in the world.  Interesting.  I hung out at the beach, dipped my feet in the Caribbean Sea, and got a minor burn that has faded nicely.  And I managed to find at least one geocache at each destination.  We went our own ways during the day, sometimes together of course, and met up for dinner to compare notes and dine in style.  The food was miraculous and I only gained two pounds.

It's amazing though--I kept seeing some chunky old lady wearing my bathing suit in all the pictures.  If you catch her, ask her how she managed to jump in there with me.



Three million tiles in the mosaic!



It depicts what you would see on "the perfect dive".

Rock formations called Hell

Tour guide and I playing around

Seven Mile Beach

Zip line over Labadee

Smurfy, Smurfy Day

Oh how I get roped into the kids' fantasy lives....  We had a Smurf party!  Remember the old cartoon with a hundred little blue people running around, all named for his most dominent personality characteristic?  Brainy, Clumsy, Hefty, Farmer, Vanity....  and led by Papa Smurf who was the only one significantly older?  Pursued by the villian Gargamel and his cat.  Who created just one girl Smurf to trap all the others?  But Smurfette was saved from being evil by Papa and joined the village.  No s-e-x....  Baby Smurf was brought by a stork.  It was a cute cartoon way back when my older kids were little and now it's back with a full length movie.  Really cute actually!

Anyhow, I'm on Crowdtap, one of those survey groups (more interesting actually since there are discussion groups and you get feedback and donate your earnings to charity), and one of the activities was to hold a Smurf party....  So we did.  Oh my.... 

We decorated our people with blue sidewalk chalk.  It goes on easily, washes off, etc.  Crowdtap had sent a kit so we made Smurf hats, but had only ONE Papa hat (red...).  We made Smurfy necklaces and bracelets with metallic and alphabet beads.  The little girls loved the coloring pages that came in the kit and the older girls liked the computer games linked to the Smurf movie.  Kate and Hannah made Smurfberry tarts and we ate them while they were still warm. Yum! We made Smurfy punch with blue fruit punch and 7-Up--surprisingly good!

Then we watched the movie.  Would you believe that the favorite character is the CAT?  Actually I remember Asriel being less intelligent in the original cartoons.  He has developed a bit of sophistication and rolls his eyes back when Gargamel does something ditsy in the movie.  It's a good movie for the kids, with enough humor and insight for adults to enjoy too.

It was LONG party--over three hours since we had people coming and going and watched the movie, too.  What's the saying?  "And a good time was had by all"....   

Like Topsy It Grew

I don't know the origin of that saying and should look it up.  It's probably one of those politically incorrect ones, but it's also one that has definite connotations to some of us!  Did your mother ever describe a project that started out one way, changed directions, then needed something added, then....  You know, it grew like Topsy. 

This is my Topsy project.  I bought the BOM kits wwaaaaayy back before Kate was born, about 1998 or so?  Anyhow, it's the Thimbleberries Calendar series and I just loved the colors and prints.  The blocks were easy to piece and right before we moved from Dickinson I pieced them into a top.  Whoa... not big enough for a bed quilt!  So off I trotted to the fabric store for more Thimbleberries of the same line.  Fortunately, they still had it! 

I drafted out borders.  First a one and a half inch border of the black then a five inch blue border, then a border of flying geese circling around, then a seven inch blue border.  I cut the geese, cream for the background and scrappy geese.   Oops....  I cut the geese wrong!  and by this time we'd moved and I couldn't find any more of the cream background.  Okay, I started "fixing" flying geese blocks. 

That lasted until I had enough to make four Dutchman's Puzzle blocks.  The new plan was to put those four blocks in the corners and then do some fancy quilting on the now wide blue borders.  I do like how the wrap-around black border has a kind of Celtic look to it....

But the blue borders were boring!  Okay, dig out all my Thimbleberries books and trace out some applique patterns.  Not very many, but I love them!  I even added a few appliques to the pieced calendar blocks; a snowflake, May flowers, a school bell, a pumpkin face, and Christmas ornaments.  And I only spent 100 hours doing the hand buttonhole stitches....

So I've been quilting and quilting and every time I think I'm close to being done I notice that one area or another looks naked.  Sigh...  Not too much more, seriously!

***Oh, I did look up "Topsy" on Wikipedia--it comes from Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Topsy was a young slave girl who didn't know her mother or God, saying,  "I s'pect I growed.  Don't think nobody never made me." The phrase "growed like Topsy" originally meant being of unplanned growth, or sometimes just enormous growth.  Yep, that's my Topsy project.





TOP HALF




BOTTOM HALF



Time to Make Lemonade

Spoke too soon, didn't I?  All the hoopla of early June was only the flood monster's opening salvo.  On June 22 at 1:00 pm the evacuation sirens went off and one-fourth of our city was homeless, including all of my Minot children except one (DD living with BF).  From the safety of 50 miles away I watched the Corps of Engineers frantically shore up the secondary dikes to save the north-south route through town and add even more secondary dikes down the middle of streets, saving one side, giving the other side over to the river.  I watched the river fill some of the loveliest old neighborhoods.  I watched the boat tour down University Ave. and knew for a fact that Doug and Tina's house took water on the main floor, plenty of it.  Kate's school, Ramstad, is gone.  Our zoo, swimming pool, the two largest parks in town are severely damaged.  There really are no words to describe it all.  There are several videos out there worth watching, if you have the fortitude to do so.  It's heartbreaking: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXQHozCA7oU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb3c18302po
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMinotDailyNews#p/a/u/2/oqZNmb5deEk

But we survived.  No one drowned.  It was amazing to watch friends, neighbors, and even strangers opening their homes to each other, whether for housing, a complete garage, or even a corner, for storage, or a hot meal, or a shoulder to cry on.  Of 12,000 people evacuated, only 200-300 were stuck in the shelters.  Close to home, a precious granddaughter was added to the family.  (No, they did not name her Venice or Flo.)  We went back to our homes to dig out the muck and sewage.  I'm so very proud of the way my boys (men) banded together to gut first one house and then the next and the next.  They are a formidable crew. 

Doug and Tina's is the worst.  Only three feet of water on the main floor, but gone are the dovetailed hardwood floors, the barrel ceiling in the living room, the notched arch into the dining room.  Time to make lemonade--they didn't like the inefficient layout of the basement and the new utility room is convenient.  It will give them a larger family room eventually.  FEMA was enough to replace the furnace, ductwork, central air, water heater, sheetrock....  and they had decided to move all their furniture and appliances out the week before, even though they weren't in the evacuation zone at first.

Don and Kristi's rental property, closer to the river, had only two inches of water on the main floor, but the floodwaters receded slowly there and the mold had a good head start before they could go in.  It's gutted, ready to be worked on this winter.  The renters left a lot to be hauled away.  The house was their first purchased home and they'd kept it for an investment since it was relatively close to the college.  So no FEMA.

Only two blocks from me, Daryl and the boys at the Man House stayed dry through the flood.  His basement didn't survive the sewage though.  There are 25 lift stations in Minot--13 of them were either under water or broke down.  People going back to their homes found up to four feet of sewage in their basements.  Yes, we'd plugged the drains, but sometimes the pressure was so high that they blew.  One lady had her drain braced with a 2x4 against a floor joist.  It splintered the 2x4.  Daryl had only six inches of sewage, but that is a big basement to empty out.  They are working (slowly) to turn it into an apartment for Dwayne and his bride.

My house?  There's a guardian angel sitting on my roof, just over there by the chimney.  Several of my neighbors had sewage, but I came home to dry floors.  Didn't have utilities for a ~long~ time.  Yes, the basement is very, very damp and I still pull a bucket or two of water out of the dehumidifier every day.  We'd evacuated most of the furniture thinking that if I flooded it wouldn't hit the main floor.  We've pulled the carpets out down there and I've painted about a third of what I intend to paint.  We are surviving on the one upstairs bedroom until I can finish.

Had surgery last week--girl stuff.  It is driving me up the wall to lift only ten pounds!  I'm not messing this repair up though, so I'm behaving.  Lemonade for the past months?  I got to know my son's family much, much better since we were living with them.  They have a big farmhouse and the air mattress was fine.  Kate and Mikayla got to see baby pigs being born!  ....and I don't think I have to worry about paying for vet school in a few years.  Gabby loved the swings and sandbox (8'x12') and learned how to sit up properly.  I think the sand gave her just enough support so she strengthened her back muscles and learned to balance better.  Farm living suited my girls, even doing chores.  Except for those nasty goats.  I didn't like driving in so many miles for work, but at least I didn't get caught up in the two hour traffic jams when there was only one road open between the north and south ends of town.  I missed having internet available all the time.  But we survived.

It would be really nice though if life could get a little back to normal.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggedy Jig!

A very big sigh of relief to be home and still DRY!  I didn't have time to post before, but we were evacuated due the lovely Souris River flooding.  Evidently we're just within the 100 year flood zone--go figure.  We had record snowfall this year and then rain, rain, rain.  The river finally crested--don't ask me what day, my head is still muggy.  But we've been home and have gas, electric, and water back on.  Now to get the boys to put the downstairs toilet back on--it's in front of the dryer and shower! 

I am sending a few dozen prayers of thankfulness skyward for the cease in rain, for all the local volunteers who sandbagged, for those who opened their homes to "refugees" or who ran the shelters, and for the National Guard. Those saints came in like gangbusters to strengthen the dikes and put up secondary dikes very, very quickly.  Pics follow:





Yes, the river is touching the bottom of the bridge!




Kate's school




One of the old bridges that was converted to a foot bridge/park.



The Luxury of Being Creative

Let me say first of all that I really like my job.  The work itself is challenging enough that I don't get bored and the pay is decent if not extravagant.  I enjoy the company of my residents--their stories of when they were younger and their views of the world now.  I really like most of my co-workers and a few have even become friends.  Sure, there's always one that just sets your teeth on edge, but we learn to cope, right?  Avoidance works well....  Occasionally being deaf, dumb, and blind (or catatonic) would be a gift--not going on that rant today.

But I really LOVE to create--whether it's quilting or embroidery or sewing or beading or whatever.  I love using color and pattern and shape to make something new and different or to recreate something vintage.  I love handwork!  It is just so relaxing and seeing a nicely stitched finished piece is very rewarding.  And I enjoy filling my home with one of a kind "artwork".

I love gardening, even the weeding.  There's something very satisfying about looking at a clean row of vegetables or flower bed and tossing the weeds in the dumpster.  I love watching plants grow.  You go home and wham, the next day things have popped up six inches or blossomed!  Amazing....  Best of all, we love eating vegetables that are truly fresh.

I like solving puzzles--logic puzzles, crosswords, the ones that make you think!  I love geocaching--it's just one huge series of puzzles waiting to be solved.  You have to think outside the box to meet challenges set by other geocachers, the highway system, and Mother Nature.  I'm directionally challenged (drive around the block in a figure eight and I can't tell you which way is north anymore...) and learning to use a compass has been "interesting".  Picture me holding a compass, turning around in a circle to find north, and then pointing in another direction before heading off that way.

SO WHY DO I SPEND SO LITTLE TIME DOING CREATIVE THINGS???  Lately, it seems that anything creative or thought provoking is a LUXURY.  Even reading the blogs that I like to follow!  I come home and once again, the house has exploded and spewed out dirty dishes and dirty clothes and who-knows-what on the floor.  If I want a day off to stitch or garden or geocache or read blogs, it has to be time stolen from all those other chores that should be getting done--and aren't. 

The girls and I played hooky after I got off work yesterday.  We found one cache, played in the park, ate at MickeyDoo's, and crashed when we got home.   Today I'm paying for it--poor me--enough of the rant--off to the salt mines again....