Modeling the Machinery

I haven't done a Vintage Thingie Thursday post in a while, and I think it's time to fix that!  



Recently, I sat down with my father to look through his scrapbook of the early years of his career.  This is my dad, Don, in 1961.

He wasn't a farmer, but he played one in print ads for John Deere.

Dad worked in the sales department at John Deere in Horicon, Wisconsin, the small town where he was born and raised and where he raised his own family.  The John Deere Horicon Works plant, in those years, made farm implements, namely, grain drills, fertilizer spreaders, and the like.  

Dad's main job in the sales department from 1958 to about 1963 was drawing parts in exploded view for the parts catalog.  His drawings were then sent to company headquarters in Moline, Illinois where they were rendered by artists and used in a variety of printed materials.

The sales department was also involved in photographing the equipment for ad campaigns and brochures.  My father was recruited to drive the tractors and operate the equipment for such publicity.  In his words, "They needed somebody tall who would stand out."  Six-four and athletically built, Don was their man.

Some of the photography was done here in Wisconsin.  Other shoots took place in Montana, North Dakota, and Texas. 

Here are a few more brochures featuring Dad modeling the machinery.

 

In 1960, Deere introduced its "New Generation of Power" line of tractors, which replaced the legendary "Johnny Poppers."  

"New Generation" 4010 Diesel

Dad traveled with the company to set up and demonstrate the equipment, including the unveiling of the new tractor line at the momentous Deere Day in Dallas in late August 1960 (just a couple weeks after I was born). 

His job also took him to state fairs to demo and discuss with local farmers the new tractors and machinery.

Nice pith helmet!

 

Though he enjoyed traveling the country, Dad said it was always good to come back home to his family.  I don't remember much about his days on the road, as my sister and I were very young at the time.  I do know that it was while he was traveling on business in Minneapolis that he bought my sister and I our first (the first) Barbie doll.

 

Looks like they had it pretty rough sometimes.

One of his funny stories from the road was of having to stay in Grand Forks, North Dakota for two rainy weeks while they waited for weather to clear long enough to do a photo shoot.  They set up the equipment near the field in a Quonset hut that was used to store potatoes.  It was April, and the potatoes had begun to rot.  You can imagine the smell!

During this extended stay and rain delay, their evening routine quickly became  humdrum—see a show (movie), go to dinner...see a show, go to dinner.  One night the crew wandered over to a tavern after dinner and debated how they might get their bar tab approved by management when they returned home.  One of the men, a writer for John Deere Magazine, motioned for the drink receipt, then flipped it over and began to pen their plight on the reverse side:

"To my dear old Mr. Davis,

Our car is Hertz, not Avis.

Our problem is the weather,

an opponent we face together.

So here's good cheer to the Horicon crew,

'Twas good old 'Alphonsio' who bought the brew!"

The story goes that Mr. Davis got such a kick out of the whole thing, he told them to put the tab through as "entertainment expense."

 

In 1963, Dad began a different but equally interesting phase of his career as one of a handful of salesmen to debut to dealers across the country the very first lawn and garden tractor manufactured by John Deere, the Model 110.

But that's all we have time for today, friends.  I'll continue this story another time. Hope you enjoyed this vintage tractor ride down memory lane with my dad.   Thanks for visiting, and be sure to check out the fun and eclectic linky party of all things vintage at Colorado Lady!

Sunday Sundry - Vol. 22

Like a kid in a candy store.  

That's how I felt last Sunday afternoon at a nearby Joann Fabrics that was having a store-wide moving and liquidation sale.  Of course, the pickin's were getting slim, and they were all out of the white quilting thread I had driven 35 miles to buy.  But that did not deter me from finding a few other mouthwatering goodies, including two half-yard cuts of fabric and some other notions.  Total for everything, twenty bucks!

Seeing this grouping reminds me what a child of the '60s and '70s I still am.  Peter Max, H.R. Pufnstuf, Tiny Chiclets and Rain-Blo bubblegum.  It's all there, and then some. 

I have always been drawn to bright colors.  You might not know it from walking into my house, where neutrals and earth tones predominate (maybe that's more the '70s talking).  But intense, happy colors still grab my attention and my heart.

Finished Bid-ness
I finished the wall hanging/table topper I'd pieced together last week from my mother's calico scraps.  I was going to do straight-line quilting, per the pattern photo, but then I changed my mind in favor of a little off-roading instead.  

I did an overall loopy meander, using that deep red quilting thread you see above from Joann.  Did it match?  Heck no, not really, but it worked for me, blending just enough...just enough for the citayyyyyyy.  Sorry I broke into Stevie Wonder there for a second.

For the backing, I used some leftovers from the coin baby quilt I still had on my design wall, snuggling up against another strip of mom's scraps.  The red reminds me of her heart, which was always in her sewing and crafting.  

It's hanging on the wall in my entryway right now.

What Goes Up, Must Come Down
That certainly applies to brownies that rise over an inch above their Pyrex baking dish.  

I tried a new recipe, which was delicious, but it was pretty startling to see the batter climb straight up above the pan during baking.  Agh!  It caved rather dramatically upon cooling, but still tasted ooey-gooey good!

Sorry I can't share the brownies with you, but I can share the Stevie Wonder earworm I've given myself, which is not at all a bad one to have.  Check out those orange amps!

Have a great day and a Wonder-ful week ahead!

Favorite Things Friday - Dragonflies and Crash Kings

Sometimes I rack my brain trying to come up with a Favourite Things Friday post, due in no small part to my propensity for waiting until the last minute and then scrambling.  But it was easy peasy this week.  I had a plan to tell you about a cool Christmas present, and then, on top of that, I discovered some new (to me) music just a few days ago.  So we have ourselves a two-fer!

Terry, my sister's fiance, is a whiz when it comes to working with metal.  He builds hot rods in his free time, which I've mentioned before.  I made him a quilt in 2009, which you can read about HERE.  

He came to the Christmas get together this year with some awesome garden stakes he made, and he gave each family one of his cute creations.  

The wings are made from upcycled stainless knives and the body is a long bolt.  I think it's fabulous!  

 

I love how the light reflects off the knives kind of like how it shimmers on real dragonfly wings. He says if you want it to rust faster, just stick it in a bucket of salt water.  I think I'll just let nature take its course.

His plan is to make a bunch to take to swap meets this summer.  I think they'll sell like hotcakes!  I'm keeping my eye out for utensils at the thrift stores to help keep him stocked with parts.  I've already got a bag of 8 or 10 started for him in the back seat of my car.

Favorite thing number two is a band called Crash Kings, which I just stumbled upon this week.  It's three guys, no guitars (except a bass), and the keyboard player plays an old Clavinet keyboard he's custom fitted with a whammy bar (!), which he can make sound like an electric guitar.  

There's a Jack White vibe to the song, "Mountain Man" which I've listened to more times this week than I should admit (obsessed much?).  P.S. - The keyboard player/singer is easy on the eyes, and I like his voice as much as his keyboard chops.

I couldn't decide which YouTube to post, so you get all four of my favorite versions of the song.  (The ones where he's playing the piano by himself at the radio station or the Gibson Guitar place are awesome in their own right.)  Click one or all! 

PhD Challenge Finish No. 1 - Doll Quilt

Done! Done! On to the next one!
Done, I'm done and I'm on to the next!*

I finished the first of my PhD (Projects Half Done) Challenge quilts this evening.  Woo-hoo!

It needed the quilting finished on it and binding.  I had straight-line quilted part of it some months ago and then put it aside to finish when I got  comfortable with free motion quilting.  Yeah, like that's gonna happen.  

Seriously though, I have gotten a little more comfortable with FMQ since participating in the Free Motion Quilt Along (which I am very behind on...more on that another time).

So, okay, it's not perfect—nothing ever is—but it's done, and done is pretty sweet!

I practiced quilting loopy daisies a few times and they still looked like heck, so I decided to just go for it.  My internal dialogue went like this:  It's a doll quilt, for Pete's sake, not the Mona Lisa.  And see?  There are seven little white squares to practice seven more daisies on.  I bet by the time we get to daisy number seven, they will look...less craptastic.

And lo, it came to pass.  The End.

No, not the end.  Let me show you the progression.  Here is daisy number one:

She is some tightly wound little thing, huh?  You can probably feel your shoulders tense just looking at it.  But one has to start somewhere.  I originally quilted just one leaf, but then went back at the end of the other daisies and gave her two more because I felt sorry for her.

And here is the last daisy I quilted:

Better.  Again, not perfect, but DONE!

I used a purple and blue dot vintage feed sack in the backing, as well as what I had left of the '30s reproduction fabrics that I'd won in a giveaway at Sew Happy (thanks again, Kristen!).  

I'll probably like it even more after a trip through the washer and dryer—the quilt, not me; I don't need any more agitation! 

*Can you name that tune?  It's lyrics from "All My Life" by the Foo Fighters.  My musical tastes run the gamut from Beethoven—which I quilted to this evening, believe it or not—to yesterday's Glen Campbell song, to heavy metal.  Oddly enough, when I finished this little doll quilt, I felt like rocking to the Foo.  I guess I like a little salty with sweet.  Balance, right?

Sunday Sundry - Vol. 21

I hope the new year has started off in a good place for you.  I enjoyed many of your 2010 year-in-review blog posts and quilting accomplishments.  Such creativity and productivity!  I thought about doing my own but decided instead to focus on what's ahead rather than revisit the past.  Though I'm not much for New Year's resolutions, if I were to make one, it would be that in 2011, I tip the scales decidedly in the direction of more, fully-completed projects.  Quilt tops actually quilted.  Patterns actually cut and sewn.  Ideas turned into reality, not just left to grow dim in a corner of my noggin and ultimately become dust.  I am sure that participating in Myra's PhD Challenge will help jump-start the process.  And then look out, because for me, there's nothing like tending to the final details of one project to fan the flames of burning enthusiasm for another.  

On Friday, while it was still technically 2010, I pulled out some scraps and a free table runner pattern I'd come across in one of my short attention span fueled clickety-clicks around the internet.  My mother had sewn some calicoes and other fabrics into long, skinny tubes at least a dozen years ago.  Near as I can figure, she was making a boatload of draft stoppers.  I laundered and opened a few of these along the seams.  There was a decent amount of fabric in each, probably four to five inches by width of fabric.  This led to pressing, and pressing to cutting, cutting to sewing, and before you know it, I had pieced the central portion of the pattern.

I think I'm going to stop at this point, nix the border, and just bind it in red to make a 24 x 24 inch wall hanging.  The rest of mom's scrap fabric tubes are going to Goodwill this week.  Most are not quilting-quality cotton, and besides that, they're taking up emotional as well as physical space; I think it's time to tend to a little housekeeping and move on.

Ghee Whiz
So what did you do on New Year's Eve?  First, I fixed myself a beverage, since I was able to get the top off the Frangelico bottle.  One shot hazelnut liqueur + soy/almond milk + Hershey's syrup = YUM.

Then I made ghee.  Because I know how to party.

You probably already know that I am dairy intolerant (If not, there you go.)  Specifically, casein, or milk protein.  So what business do I have melting down a pound of butter?  Well, other than the fact that the aroma of melted butter makes me giddy, from melted butter comes ghee, or pure butter oil.  And I can eat that.

See, butter contains fat (obviously), milk solids, and water.  As you melt the butter and continue heating it, the milk solids separate out and the water evaporates.  

The foamy stuff that rises to the top is the milk solids.  Some solids also settle to the bottom and brown.  You skim the foamy solids off (and thus the casein and lactose), the water boils out, and ultimately you are left with what is known as ghee (pronounced with a hard G, like "Glee" but without the L).  I let it cool a bit and then strain it through a cloth into a jar to catch any remaining solids.

Ghee has a wonderful buttery, somewhat nutty flavor.  It turns to a semi-solid consistency when fully cool.  You can spread it on toast, melt it over popcorn or vegetables, and cook many other things with it.  It has a high smoking point, and doesn't need refrigeration.  Baking with ghee can be tricky, because the texture of baked goods is affected not only by the fat in butter, but the solids and water content as well (which are removed in making ghee).  I don't bake with it myself. (Edited to add: I have baked with it since this post, and in some things it works just fine.  You have to experiment.)

Ghee is good, is what I'm saying.  This gluten-free bread from a mix, not so much, but that's another post.  The rhubarb-raspberry spread was tasty though.

Hoppin' Right In
Can you guess what I made on New Year's Day with these ingredients?

If you said Hoppin' John, you're right!  Eating Hoppin' John on January 1is supposed to bring you good luck and prosperity in the year ahead.  It's not a tradition I was familiar with growing up, even though we ate black-eyed peas (or their cousin, purple hull peas) often enough, especially when visiting relatives in the South.

I actually first found out about this originally Southern tradition while browsing a new cookbook many years ago.  I've made it a few times since then, but not every year.  Last week on Leah Day's blog, her husband Josh posted a Hoppin' John recipe, and I decided to make it once again.

Two thumbs up!  It's especially tasty with the green onions and a couple dashes of salsa picante on top.  And I feel lucky already!

There's more I could go on about, but I think I'll end this post today with a song from Glen Campbell.  When my siblings and I were playing music together last week, Dad requested we do one from Glen, his favorite singer, but the chord progressions escaped us at that moment.  So this one's for you, Dad.  It's Glen, singing and playing with Stone Temple Pilots—a beautiful rendition of a classic song.