Curtains For You

I've had the boys a lot these last two weeks and will have them more because their school takes off almost every Friday and in some cases Thursday and Friday because of state basketball.  They have a good team and every year go to state.  I also had a sick boy a couple of extra days.  

This is not a post of boys because I am switching to a new computer and as I dislike change with a passion, it has been slow going.  The charger cord on the old computer is worn out, the spare cord only works if it is wiggled just right, and the computer itself being almost 8 years old and windows 7 is slow.  For those reasons, I have just transferred photos here, just downloaded Picasa here and it is now past my getting ready for bedtime (9:20), so this is what you get.

My daughter wanted new curtains for her kitchen so she found what she liked on pinterest, measured her windows, ordered 9 yards of material from Hobby Lobby after I figured the amount needed, and gave materials and information to me.  It took me two weeks to finish because of the aforesaid boy days.  I had a picture, I thought, of the pile of fabric on my table, but I don't.  They look very nice, if I do say so myself. 

 I finished them today.

It was a good day to sew, it rained half the morning and then snowed until noon, great fat flakes coming down that are a pleasure to all people that work indoors and don't have to be outside driving or working. 

The boys were saying March came in like a lamb.  And it did.  The first week we had 50 to 70 degree temperatures.  In fact, yesterday we saw 75 on the thermometer.  Today, we have snow. The lion is showing it's face.

It all melted before evening. 

There Comes a Time

When you have kids, you're in it for life.  

There isn't any of ... "my kids are 18 now and out of the house, I'm done."

 Nope, you're in it for the long haul. You celebrate their adult milestones just as much as their childhood ones.  

They have problems and worries; they get married; they have kids.  

When I first met one of my friends. Her children were all over 18 and "taking care of themselves".

I made the foolish comment (I didn't know how foolish at the time), something to the effect that her worries were over.

She laughed. I was afraid we'd never get her off the floor,

We went to a wrestling meet last night.  I would like to say it was the first I've ever been to, but I have a vague memory of going to one several years ago, I'm assuming a nephew was involved.  

I'm not a huge fan of wrestling, but when grandkids are involved, we go.

I reminded me a bit of all those taekwondo tournaments we went to back in the day.  

However, Lynette reminded me that they were a lot smaller and much less noisy. 

This was a meet for kids age Pre-K through 8th grade, so there were a lot of contestants and a lot of parents and a lot of noise.  I read in a novel sometime about an event that sounded like "a parrot house in the zoo".  This was something like that. 

The Pre-K events were not scored.  Each contestant had three matches that consisted of a minute each.  They all received a medal.

Zane 56#  Barry 38#

The second graders had three matches of 2 minute rounds.  Barry is more into this wrestling business than Zane is; he doesn't have the skill to wrestle effectively.  None of them do at that age.  

This time after two low point rounds, he rallied and went after his opponent that made for a very exciting match as we watched the points go up.  

Barry

Zane

All this time Christian was wallering around on us when he wasn't trying to take pictures on my phone or camera. It is rather amazing to me how soon a three year old can figure out how to take not just photos, but videos on either device. 

We were plunged back into early spring temperatures this week, instead of those lovely 70s last week. You know, 40s with right at freezing lows.

And snow.

I didn't want to walk around outside, but the boys spent one half hour outside playing. I couldn't persuade them to wear gloves, but in a half a minute they were back in putting them on. They had a nice time until someone got carried away and Christian came in crying with snow in the neck of his hoodie. A change of clothes and hot cocoa soon improved everyone's mood.

Barry loves to drink my ensure, but I don't let him very often, since it is an expensive drink.  He asks nearly every time he sees me, so this time I told him it was expensive and meant to be a treat.  Zane asked how much and I told him $1.50.

So, he went to his piggy bank and gave me a dollar.  He encouraged Barry to go get 50 cents, and he did.  So, he's getting his ensure, and I'm going to figure out a way to give them their money back. 

I play about 42 games of UNO in the day and a half I'm looking after those boys.  That isn't much of an exaggeration.  I usually bring playdough, but they've been tried of it lately so I brought my pattern blocks.  I had a wonderful time with them, but they may be a bit fiddly for this age and time. 

Christian made sandwiches. 

My efforts.  

The only interest Barry had in them was to mess up mine. 

Monday last week, we went up to check out Lorene's toilet because it was leaking.  Zane called a few days before to explain the problem, so he as well as all the other boys were interested in the project. 

After the toilet fixing we played a game of UNO, all 7 of us.  I was totally impressed with the skill, interest and sportsmanship of those boys.  

I have finished quilting on this quilt for the season. I have all the "Sunbonnet Sue" blocks quilted around and the filler blocks minimally done.  

This poor quilt is rather badly put together.  The corners don't match, some of the filler blocks are too big for the space so there is puckering, the girls aren't spaced on the blocks the same. Some have small feet, some crowd the bottom, the parasols aren't the same distance from the bonnet.  Either the person appliqueing didn't care or several people made blocks.  

The fabrics are pretty and when it is all done, I think most people will look at that instead of the faults.  I haven't quilted anything for decades, and never anything this big, so this makes a good learning project for me.  

Ideally it should have been taken all apart and redone, but thinking about it gave me so much anxiety, that I'm just going at it as is. 

These are some of my favorites. 

Now, it is time to start on wedding planning, in which deep cleaning the house is a part.  At least until yard cleaning is a priority. 

Summer Time

The problem with weeks is they soon turn into months.  And those months will soon turn into half a year gone.  Yesterday was the first day of summer.  I happened to hear that sunrise was 6:05 am and sunset at 9:11 pm. The longest daylight hours of the year.  

Tonight Jim and Lynette went out to supper for a daughter/daddy date and I was going to start blogging but I needed to finish the last little bit of the skein of yarn I was working on, then I had to eat my own supper, and write an email to my siblings.  So, Jim was home and mowing while I was editing these few photographs and now I will blog.  

I have been agonizing for a year over this quilt all over my table.  The blocks weren't put together very well and I repaired some of them, sandwiched the quilt and started quilting.  I have one block done and I need to figure out what pattern to put in the blank spaces.   I got the quilt top from my grandma's things after she died, but I don't think she put it together.  I first saw it when I was a teenager and she was a better seamstress than this quilt top would suggest.  The blocks are old fabric, the setting is new (new being over 30 years old). I wish I knew who sewed it together.  

I can't help posting another photo of this funny little plant.  I know I have one in last week's blog, but it is still blooming like crazy with a bunch of new blooms. 

We went to my folks over the weekend.  It was Father's Day and the most convenient weekend to visit, so we went.  Mom made banana splits for our Sunday dinner dessert.  Yum.  

My mom has been growing blueberries.  They have taken a lot of care and soil managing.  This is the first year she is getting a harvest. The amount of care they take is part of the reason

the plants I had died.  

That, and forgetfulness, and because I bought them BC*.

I found this in a Reader's Digest.  I think I read it before, and perhaps even put it in a blog post.  A cursory search revealed no current blog post so here it is, if it is again, I make no apology.

It expresses my feelings exactly about books. 

*BC=Before Cancer

Someone else's Sunbonnet Sue.  I was interested in the similar setting and colors to mine.

Busy Days

What a day, what a week this has been!

Now, if I can remember it. 

I did a lot of things this week including finishing two rag quilts, throw size, putting them in the washer to fray them and ruining the pump.  

You think I would learn.  Sigh.

So, I have been doing no laundry most of the week, which came to a crisis this evening necessitating a visit to the laundromat so Jim has jeans and we both have underwear for the morrow.  

I thought we could make it but the weekend and holiday intervened and the new pump didn't come in today.  It will come in tomorrow.  

I celebrated getting those quilts done (before the pump died) by cleaning my sewing area and getting all my mending and altering done and starting to repair a quilt top I found in my grandma's quilting things after she died.  

Cute pincushion handmade and given to me by a dear friend. 

I've been weeding in my flower gardens and not knitting because my wrist has been hurting.  We have been restructuring our flower gardens to reduce the size. I haven't been able to keep up.  We got the first stage done yesterday. 

It's been raining about everyday.  Not very much, but enough to put a damper on any outside plans.  I made a plan for our family to meet at the farm to have a picnic on Memorial Day.  The weather report showed chances of rain and storms for every day through the weekend.  I remembered then that anytime I ever make plans for Memorial Day it rains, so I wasn't too sure if we would end up with a picnic at the farm or in my living room.   

When I was a kid we went to put flowers on the graves of my dad's family.  It turned into a mini family reunion/picnic in the town where my dad grew up.  It wasn't a tradition in my mom's family or in Jim's.  We go up to his folk's graves every few years when it's not raining.  The most successful time we had was when we decided in the morning, "Let's go pick some flowers and run up to Broken Bow." And we did.  It was cloudy that day, but it wasn't raining. 

So, I spent a lot of time getting ready for that picnic, cooking and packing because we were going to a place with no running water, no power, and 45 minutes from home.  

I forgot several things, including the hotdogs, a long handled turner, something to serve the burgers and brats, plastic ware, napkins and cups, relish, ranch dressing and heavy duty rags.

I did have plates, paper towels, water (for washing and drinking), and a son and a daughter that left later than we did and was able to bring the things I remembered, which was the table service.

We duct taped the dessert server to marshmallow skewer/roaster thingy so we could turn the burgers.

I looked up what to call the things you roast marshmallows on, and one site just calls it a stick, metal, wood whatever, a stick. 

We had perfect weather and and we had a really good time.  We kept watch on the weather, which meant someone walking to the top of the hill or standing on the cab of the pickup.  As it got later, we packed most everything up.  When the dark clouds started rolling in at sunset, we packed up the rest and drove home.  I'm going to do another blog post for that day because I have lots of photos I want to use.  

I thought I would put one on here from the day for everyone's entertainment. 

Saving The Sheets

I am a tight-wad.

Not frugal.

Tight.  

People who know me well know this.  It might even be that people that don't know me well know this too.  

I also have a thing about throwing stuff away that still has life in it.  

A real problem.  

I am getting better, though.  

That being said, I also have a hard time getting rid of things that are old but are better quality than I can buy today. 

 For example, I like nice sheets.  I like sheets that are smooth and stay that way.  

(I also like flannel sheets that are not smooth, but that's different.)

Sheets with higher thread counts are the good ones, and are very expensive.  I bought a pretty high count sheet set on sale for my daughter and while they don't pill, you can see through them.  

I have a lovely sheet set that I picked up at a garage sale.  

They are very nice but I think they were discarded in the conspiracy that exists in the mattress market today.  

Mattresses are thicker, therefore all the sheets you ever had before don't fit them, thus you need to buy more sheets.  At the time I still owned a thinner mattress and the sheets, and with the elastic refreshed on the fitted sheet, they worked very well.

Fast forward a few years...

To celebrate the end of cancer treatments we bought a new mattress.  I didn't want to, of course, but ours was getting to be one those that has fallen in the middle and hilly around the edges.  As much as my husband and I love each other, spending every night in the valley just doesn't work very well.  

So, we bought a new mattress.  It was thick, the flannel sheets fit (having been purchased this century), the old ones didn't.

We struggled with the old ones, they didn't work.

We tried sheet straps, they worked half the time.  

I looked at sheet sets.

I was confused with the choices and annoyed with the prices.  

We used the flannel sheets as long as possible. Until the first of June, this cold spring.

Finally, after a few days of over 80 temperatures. we had to give in.

So, I was looking for other options.  I found a website with a tutorial on how to make fitted sheets, so how much harder should it be to add on to these sheets to make them deeper so they will stay on the thicker mattress?  

Actually, not hard at all if you know how to sew.  

This is what I did.

2 yards of 100% cotton, not quite white.

I drew and cut 8" strips to have plenty of room for hems and tucking under, 

I was going to rip out the elastic casings, but the elastic has melted completely away in most of the casings into gluey spots. Other spots had a few pieces of weird elastic so I had to cut away the casings.

I ripped out the corners so I had a big rectangle with the corners cut out.  Next, I pinned the strips to the edges of the sheets and serged them along the long edges to make a bigger rectangle.

I sewed the corners (the edges of the cut out square) with the sewing machine first, then after trying it on the bed to assure it fit, I serged the edges.

Then, I pressed up a hem/casing and sewed the ends of the elastic into the hem before the final sewing.  

After hemming, I put it on the bed.  With the edges all tucked in there is barely an inch of the new fabric showing. 

I made my elastic too long so I had to rip a bit of the casing to tighten it up after I was finished.  

I'm very pleased and I can use my sheets now until they wear out.  

I won this round.

Doll Fashions

A long time ago, I sewed up the body for this doll and put her together, made her a petticoat, drawers and chemise and took a picture and I thought posted them on my blog.  As far as I can tell I didn't.

I spent the last two weeks, sewing up the wardrobe I cut out that long time ago, and of course, falling into the trap of making a couple extra things.  

Fancy dress

Back View 

Purse

Shawl Front

and Back 

 White Lace

Velvet Cape, Bonnet, and Muff 

Petticoats 

Second Best 

Summer Bonnet and Cape 

Work Dress and Apron 

Large Cape and Winter Work Dress 

Larger Cape