Any Other Time...

You know when you're wearing store-bought clothes and you tug on a loose thread and the whole hem comes out?  Or the elastic of your underpants comes adrift from the pants part?  Well, DIL1 asked me to take up a dress hem so I sat down with my ripper this afternoon to pick it out.  I spent an hour ripping less than 6" of hem searching for that one magical thread that when pulled saves hours of painstaking ripping of black thread out of a dark navy dress.  But I finally found it--and z-z-z-z-z-zip it all came out.  Next I'll cut off the current turned up hem, then measure and pin the new hem, and sew it in.  I promised it by next week so that she can wear it while it's still warm outside.  (it's a sleeveless dress, you see)



In other sewing news the second grandkid swim shirt got its first wetting this week and it fits just fine.  I was happy to get a not-blurry shot of the model as he's got about as much energy as a small nuclear reactor and is rarely still for more than a nanosecond.








On the yarn side of things Hoot II, the Brown Owl got its legs and talons today so it's all done and ready to be played with and loved.  This Hoot looks much more jittery than the first Hoot.  I can't wait to hear what they name him/her/it.  As you can see from the back view, I ran out of the feathery yarn halfway through knitting the base so Hoot II has a bare bum.  I kind of like it though and I don't know why.









Here's the first carrot out of the garden.  It's barely a bite but it was sticking out of the side of the bale and I just couldn't resist.  I'll be washing it off and eating it as soon as I'm done here. 



Last Monday a neighbor with a pickup truck took me and my brush pile to the yard waste drop-off.  I knew he wouldn't accept a few bucks for gas so I offered either zucchini bread, banana bread, or cookies as a thank you.  He chose banana bread.  I have three medium size loaf pans that are exactly the right size for one batch of my Jamaican banana bread recipe.  So one loaf will go to LJ with my thanks which means Durwood and I will have to make the other two go away.  Awww, what a shame.

There's a little boy around who doesn't seem to like vegetables no matter how they're cooked.  He's skilled enough that he can eat the pea part and spit out the hull, and I don't mean sugar snap peas, the regular cannonballs. (Baba tried the other day and was successful but said it was quite a trick to de-hull a pea with no hands)  Well, Meemaw had a brainstorm last night.  I thawed out a half-pound of boneless skinless chicken thighs that I put through the grinder with about 2 tablespoons of minced onion, 1/8 c. of oatmeal, and a cup of semi-thawed mixed veggies.  Then I used a small scoop to make meatballs and baked them for about 20 minutes.  I've frozen them and bagged them so that the next time OJ comes to visit maybe he'll eat one.  If not, I guess Baba and Meemaw will be having chicken veggie meatballs in their next spaghetti supper.

August 26--Umberto Boccioni, Woman Seen From Behind in Front of a Window.  Della watched out the west-facing window, that's where the weather came from most of the time.  The house was on a bit of a hill so she had a longer view than if it had been on the flat plain down by the state road.  Today she watched storm clouds pile up and turn from pale to charcoal gray.  The light changed from sunny yellow to a strange green color.  The wind dropped, not a leaf stirred, and the tall grass that flowed down the hill to the river stood still.  She heard thunder rumble far off and watched lightning skip from cloud to cloud.  When the storm came she watched it cross the river and trample the grass with hail and hard rain before flinging itself against the window so hard that she stumbled back as if shoved.  For a full minute she stood still then she raced through the house to close windows and make sure the screen door was latched so it wouldn't blow off its hinges.

It's been gray and drizzly today, a good day for sitting on the couch sewing legs on a stuffed owl and picking out hem stitches.  It might be getting to be time to throw together some chicken and rice for supper.  See ya.
--Barbara