Autumn Arrived On A Smoky Breeze

I went out to plug in the fountain and it smelled like the neighbors were having a campfire. Turns out there's a big-ass fire in Minnesota and the smoke and ash are wafting our way on the wind. It smells nice and so far anyway doesn't seem to be bothering Durwood's breathing. He's deeply into tomato production these days. Last week he made 3 gallons of tomato juice. I was supposed to show him how to can it this week. There's no need, he's down to less than 1 gallon. But he's making more tomorrow so the lesson's back on. He also found a recipe for tomato soup in this cookbook I got him a few summers ago so some of them are going into soup. He is truly Tomato Boy, but very happy. He's also really enjoying his new role as grandpa to Porter. We went over last night for a visit and they spent time lying on the carpet communing with each other, and he just left to go play with her and let her out since DS & DIL1 are both working. I'm so glad he's got a doggie to play with and also that someone besides me needs him. It's got to be boring.

September 12--French, Glove. Enid smoothed the white leather gloves over her hands. They quickly warmed to match her body's temperature and made them feel a part of her. She danced the night away flirting with boys who suddenly seemed like men. She drank fizzy punch and the bubbles went to her head. This changed Enid was livlier, flirtier, and more beautiful than she'd ever been before. Her steps were light and her quips were sharp. She had a full dance card and left all of her partners dazzled in her wake. The ball ended with a crescendo of fireworks at midnight. She rode home with Aunt Louisa and Uncle Drake, the tires of the Pierce Arrow humming on the street. Her maid Mary was dozing in her room when Enid entered but she jumped up with a smile, eager to hear how the evening had gone and to help her mistress undress. Enid began telling the girl, only a year younger, about the night's gaiety and held out her right arm to have her glove removed. That's when the screaming began.

I confess that I fell asleep last night after having written only 2 sentences. I napped for about half an hour, then turned off the light and conked out. Before running off to do a couple errands with Mom I wrote the rest, but I did have the idea last night, I just had a little execution problem. I'm off to mow.
--Barbara

It's Monday Again, Isn't It?

Where does the time go? I know I complain about this too often but really, days just whiz by and I feel kind of dizzied by it all. I look forward to something, like going to the Quilt Expo with Skully and Cookie and the day comes, we have a long (2 1/2 hr.) drive each way, spend the whole day at the Expo, in yarn shops, bead stores, and outlet stores, and still it seems like it barely happened. It's only because my wallet is thinner and I have a bag of fabric pieces and a few new clothes that I am sure that it did happen. I need to find where the speed control is on my carburetor or something and dial it back to a more manageable speed. Durwood and I are both looking forward to having the cable guy come tomorrow to hook up our TVs to digital cable and give us (well, rent us) boxes so we can DVR shows that we don't want to miss. Just like real grown-ups! Even Mom has that and she's old. Really old, not just semi-old like Durwood, or old-ish like me but certifiably old. Not that she's taking old lying down, you understand, she still plays bridge eleventy-seven times a week and sews American Girl doll clothes to sell, she gets a couple cooking mags and makes herself all sorts of delish food that she freezes so she's not forced to eat the same crap day after day. You'd never know by looking at her that she's 83, even with that oxygen she has to drag around all the time. I have a cool mom, everyone says so.

September 11--Byzantine, Silver Plate. David slew the giant Goliath they taught in Sunday School but David Reed wondered why all the grownups thought that was a good thing when he got into so much trouble for fighting. He wasn't very big, he was shorter than most of the girls in fourth grade and most of the girls were smaller than most of the fourth grade boys. Being small had never stopped him from defending himself. He might be small but he was fierce and he was fast. More than one budding bully had tried to push David around but he stood his ground and he gave as good as he got, sometimes he gave even better. His mom wasn't pleased when he came home dirty and scuffed up with a torn short or pants but he heard his dad brag about how tough his son was. David bet that the Bible David's dad bragged on him down at his shop too.

Kids, ya gotta love 'em. Unfortunately, I have to go to work. See ya.
--Barbara

So What Did I Do Last Week?

I worked on this, trying to make a knitted flower and a crocheted bee to send to the Goobie for her mama to sew on her new winter hat. I suck at it, sucked at it all week. I might look for another pattern I can make, a one piece pattern of a flower to crochet, to hell with the bee.










On the way down to the Quilt Show I knitted on the log cabin parts of Bandwagon Block #7, got one side done, picked up stitches and knitted the next side, and picked up the third side.







The last few nights I've been trying to remember to knit a row or two on the Summer Fever Shawl. I feel good about it even though it's going slowly.



I really should unearth a wool shawl I've got OTN since summer's almost over and hold this one until late next winter for next spring. It'd be smart to finish some of the myriad projects I've got around here, wouldn't it?




Here's my loot from the quilt expo. I bought a pack of charm (4") squares ($5.99!!) to make a bag that Bells made last month. It's very cute and I want one, now I have the raw materials.










I couldn't resist the fat quarters for $1.49 and the batik yards for $7 at the Nancy's Notions booth. I love batiks and they're always so expensive.










A few (hundred) booths later we spied tables of fat quarters in very interesting prints. Here's the ones I bought: Dots & Teapots (don't you love the colors?)







Bugs & Butterflies (couldn't resist the little bugs making tracks in the sandy background) and










Fish & Flamingos (no explanation needed for these).


The vendor was from Nicholasville, KY just down the pike from where DD & DIL2 live. Small world. At another booth I resisted buying a flamingo umbrella for $23. I am amazed at my continued maturity.





Cookie and I spent quite a bit of the drive home talking about food, in particular grilled veggies. I had to make some and I took a picture for you to see. This is the second batch. You see I was taking the last of the first batch off the grill, rested the pan on the grill rim, and grabbed the hot handle with my bare hand. I dropped it, and all the yummy grilled veggies spilled onto the dirty patio right near where I had sprinkled ant killing granules early today. I had to throw them all out and start over. I cried, both over burning my finger and having to waste all that food. Not my finest hour.

In A Mood

Not "In the Mood" like the old Glenn Miller song, I've been in a mood for the last week or so and it came to a head this afternoon when I burned the daylights out of my right pointer finger. I had fired up the charcoal and then sliced up and marinated a bunch of veggies to make yummy grilled veggie sandwiches for lunch. We've got a nice screen that sits on the grill that keeps the smaller stuff from slipping through so I spritzed it with Pam and got grilling. I took a big cookie sheet out to hold the done pieces while the next batch was on the coals. While taking the last batch off I rested the edge of the cookie sheet on the grill edge because it was getting heavy. Like a thoughtless moron I grabbed the edge with my un-potholdered right hand, burned my finger, and dropped the whole shebang right on the dirty patio and perilously close to the ant killing granules I had sprinkled earlier. Damndamndamndamndamn. I cried and sucked my finger because I did a really good job burning it. I scooped it all up and dumped it right into the trash and started over. Luckily I had another of every veggie and I've got a nice shiny white place on the pad of my finger that hurts like the dickens. Yes, I put ice on it, any number of times, and I will again but it's difficult to type with all your fingers when you're holding a little ice pack on your finger. I watched the Kurt Russell movie "Dreamer" last night before returning it to Netflix tomorrow (I cancelled the disc part and kept the streaming when they raised their prices and they've sent me an email demanding it back, pretty politely but I got the message) and it was filmed in Lexington. It's a pretty good family movie and it was fun to see Keeneland racetrack and other things like a fancy stone fence that looked familiar. I miss my girls, wish they lived closer so I could go and visit more easily.

September10--Byzantine, Plate with the Battle of David and Goliath. Sela's hands ached and her fingertips were black from polishing silver all morning. She tried to convince her sister Rita that they shouldn't polish the daylights out of everything. "But they say on Antiques Roadshow not to remove the patina, really they do," Sela had said when she sat down to see all the family silver and the bronze statuary from the library lined up in ranks on the table. There were four different kinds of polish on the table too. "Don't be ridiculous," Rita said, "no one wants dirty, tarnished metal. They'll think it's junk." Sela shook her head but knew it was fruitless to argue with Rita. Rita always knew best and she had the starch in her backbone to back it up. Sela was the family noodle. "Or doormat," she said under her breath while she polished away hundreds of years of patina and dollars.

Now it's time to go make a pot of chicken soup so I have lunches next week.
--Barbara

Footsore

My feets took a beating yesterday. Hips too. The Madison quilt expo was a mob scene, a MOB scene, with every aisle clotted with women (and a few men) ricocheting from booth to booth, vendor to vendor, looking for the latest in technique, pattern, fabric, machine, or any quilting doodad you can imagine--and then some. I did not take my camera but believe me it was an adventure. I spent most of my money right away at the Nancy's Notions booth where they had fat quarters and half-yards of batiks on sale. About a row and a half later of battling our way through I was done but Cookie and I soldiered on. Very smartly, Skully abandoned us newbies to make her own way around. She did a "make and take" and rocketed past things that were ho-hum to her and a revelation to us. Cookie is just getting into quilting so patterns and kits attracted her; I was just interested in the pretty fabric. I found the most interesting print fabrics at a booth from Nicholasville, KY just down the pike from Lexington where DD & DIL2 live. The woman ahead of me in that line was from Sturgeon Bay, and the women who shared the table with us at lunch were from Green Bay too. Small world! After a quick lunch we zoomed through the contest entry quilts (another brain-overloading experience) and left. We found a couple of yarn shops where Cookie bought a book on Tunisian crochet and Skully a skein of mink yarn. MINK!!! They had a cowl on display that felt so soft it was unbelievable. She's going to knit one too. Nothing really called to me so I just enjoyed looking. We stopped at a custard stand to revitalize and then sought out a bead store as Skully and Cookie both like to bead. Then we took off toward home with a stop in Oshkosh at Land's End, Corning, and Eddie Bauer outlets. (DD, it wasn't nearly as good pickings as when we used to go together. Not nearly--and the Candle Cutlet is no more. Sad.) We stopped for supper at Rocky Rococo and then came on home. I will admit that I was totally pooped out when I got here.

September 9--Germany, The Adoration of the Magi. I'd have called in a psychologist if I had been Mary. The idea of a trio of foreign kings showing up to worship my newborn son would freak me out. The whole thing had to have fostered an uneasiness between her and her husband Joseph. Can you imagine how he felt being told that he wasn't the father of her baby? That had to change how he treated the boy. And what did they do with the gifts of the Magi? Did they sell the frankincense and myrrh for food or living expenses? I would have.

And that's when I decided I was just to sleepy to keep going, and I wasn't really going anywhere anyway. Adios.
--Barbara

Crack O'Dawn

At least it feels like it. I'm meeting my pals Cookie and Skully in about an hour to drive to Madison for a Quilt Expo. They're quilters, I'm not, but I do sew and they promised that we'd go to a yarn shop too so I'm in. Mostly I just want a day away. Last night I didn't manage to stay outside for the flyover after all. The kickoff was after 7:30 and A) the mosquitoes were eating me alive, even up my skirt, and 2) I didn't think they'd fly over in the dark. I was wrong. I guess four big fighters, afterburners blazing, came over. And I missed it. $%#^&! Ah well, better to not be scratching in my personal places at the quilt show. Durwood says it was an exciting game, though, all I know is that the Packers won. Yay!

September 8--Egyptian, Cosmetic Vessel in the Shape of a Cat. It was a lovely gift. Lila kept her eyes on the marble statue of the cat in her hands when she thanked Rance. She knew if her eyes met his everyone in the room would know how they felt about each other. "Why, Rance," her mother-in-law said, "you must have searched every second-hand store in the whole county to find a broken-eared cat statue like that. Did the Goodwill over by the tracks have a sale?" Drew put his hand on Lila's shoulder and squeezed. "Oh, hush, Mama," he said, "Rance knows Lila takes in strays." His words were slurred and it was barely noon. "She keeps me, doesn't she?" Lila reached up and took his hand, drawing him to sit beside her on the loveseat. She put the little cat statue down on the floor near her feet. "I'm a sucker for a sad face, it's true, Drew honey, but I'm keeping you and that's that." She and Rance had agreed that whatever it was they were getting up to in those stolen moments out behind the gazebo wouldn't lead to anything permanent. Nothing would change. No matter what.

Now there's a recipe for disaster, don't you think? Gotta run and gulp down some Cheerios so I"m not tempted to get a biscuit on my way to meet the girls. Later, dudes.
--Barbara

Football Mania

Green Bay is crazy today. Seriously crazy. They closed part of the street next to the stadium last week and built a gia... (no, that's wrong) a GIANT stage for a free concert this afternoon with Kid Rock, Maroon 5, and Lady Antebellum before the football game. (I know they're all singers but I havent' got a clue what they sing.) The Today show broadcast from the stadium this morning, even taste-testing beer that our very own DS invented!!!! It's called Expect the Wurst and he made it with all the spices that are used to make bratwurst and none of the meat or mustard. I have to work until 5 PM and fully expect most of the northern hemisphere to be in their cars and in my way between work and home. (I do have alternate routes I can take and am used to being creative getting home. We used to live 3 blocks from Packer Stadium and were virtual prisoners before and after games.) According to someone I talked to the other day the organizers are expecting an additional 40-60,000 people to attend. That's 1/4 to 1/2 of the population of the city cramming into basically 3 square blocks. Green Bay is a small place, people! I can drive all the way around the edges of the city proper in less than an hour, way less if I speed (which I usually do). Where do they think they'll park??? The city is instituting a "game bus" that has 4 different routes past hotels and bars to pick up game goers and then return them after the game. It's a great idea and should cut back on traffic a bit. It has royally peeved the cab companies who usually get the "I don't wanna drive" crowd and the "I'm already too drunk to drive" crowd, but it's a good move by the city fathers, I think. You can be certain that I will be perched in the backyard (this time with the digital video camera) to record the pre-kickoff flyover. It's really the only part of football I like. Then I just have to learn how to yoink it off the camera, edit out the bad-dish parts, and upload it so you can play it here. As a sign of my age and non-techie status I must confess that I printed off the instruction manual ON PAPER for the program we got with the camera so I can have it open at all times when I'm at my laptop cursing and gritting my teeth in frustration. Learning new things is so much fun.

September 7--Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat. It hurts him to look into his own eyes. He thinks that the looking-glass might break with the intensity of the blue eyes he sees in it. Every molecule in his body vibrates with color and energy. It radiates in the air, setting the whole room pulsing. His hand shakes as he dons the straw hat that Theo bought for him to wear in the sun. Perhaps the hat will bring some of Theo's peace to him. It does--for a moment--and then he feels it growing into his skin, the straw melding with his hair. His shaking hand forces him to use small strokes, to lunge at the canvas with color to try and capture the frantic movement he carries with him always.

Okay, now it's time for the thumb-twiddling to begin. I'm sure I won't have many customers today. It's game day. Eesh.

--Barbara