Checking In

I was going to put aside the scrappy string rings and work on the Iron Work quilt over the weekend, but I'm this close to having all the string rings done.  So I just kept on creating the string strata, cutting wedges, and sewing them together.  It has been my happy place this past week.

Having mounds of strings all over is a good kind of mess.  It reminds me of playing in a pile of leaves.  You know you've got to rake them up eventually, but you're having too much fun to stop just yet.

Other than that, it's been life as usual lately.  That doesn't make for riveting blog fodder, but here are a few snippets of randomness, in no particular order.

Tonight's rainbow over the neighborhood.

I spotted a bumper sticker the other day on a Ford Windstar which read, "Vans are tangible evidence of evil."  That had me smiling for blocks.  I like a driver with a sense of humor.

Anybody watching Dancing With The Stars?  There is some great competition this year, but I have to give props to Donald Driver.  And not just because I'm a Packer fan, but the guy is really doing well! 

I enjoyed all the threesomes last night (wait, that sounds bad).  Well, what did they call them?  Dance trios or something.  Anyway, Driver's three-way jive was truly "fun, fun, fun," as judge Len put it.  Now give the man a 10 already, would you?

I had a great conversation with a 93-year-old man while waiting for Norm at physical therapy.  He was a World War II veteran, having served at Okinawa.  He had some interesting stories and related them like it was yesterday.  Sharp guy.  Said he was only one of two surviving members of his unit.  I never did get his name, but it was a pleasure to spend a few minutes talking  to a member of the "Greatest Generation."

In a moment of radio roulette the other night, I spun the dial until I landed on something completely different—the polka station!  You cannot listen to polka music and feel bad.  It's like a natural law or something.  Corny jokes and oompa music was a welcome change of pace—for about a half hour, anyway.

"All the signs of a bleeding heart" (No Way Down, The Shins)

I'm also enjoying the music of Tab Benoit, thanks to a tip from Sandi at Piecemeal Quilts.  Good call! 

And I think it's safe to say that I am fairly obsessed with The Shins new album, Port of Morrow.  Here's this week's favorite song.

Weekend Wrap

A sweet friend sent me an email Friday that there was a big stash of Pyrex at the local Goodwill.  What a great tip!  

Unfortunately, I had not checked my email until right before starting a work shift, so I couldn't go there immediately.  As you might suppose, by the time I did make it there, it was crickets in the Pyrex department.  Nothing left.

But all was not lost.  In my quest to scour the shelves for any misplaced or wandering Pyrex, I found some other treasures, like this vintage picnic basket.

I'm typing "picnic basket" here, but in my head, I'm hearing a Yogi Bear voice say "pic-a-nic basket."  Also, "Mr. Forest Ranger, sir."  You too, now?  Sorry, Boo-Boo.

Classic cartoon references aside, I also found a couple cute metal recipe boxes.  One probably dates to the late 1950s or early '60s and the other one with the strawberry motif is probably late '70s, early '80s.

That makes four such boxes in my house...another collection, yikes!

I knew nothing about these vintage serving bowls except that I liked them.  There were two, and who am I to separate twins?  

They will be brimming with with freshly picked raspberries in the coming months, and green beans.  Not together, though.  You really do need two different bowls for that.

There was more sewing this weekend too, since the weather was deciding to be all cool, cloudy, damp, and April-like.  I just holed up in the sewing room and knocked out a couple more scrappy string rings.

I think this one is my favorite so far:

On second thought, maybe it's this one...

...or was it this one?

Okay, I really can't pick a favorite because they're all winners.  I'm halfway there—six more to go!

I also made a few more string blocks for the String Thing Along charity quilt that Brenda will be putting together.  These will go in the mail tomorrow morning.

What kind of trouble (or fun) did you get into this weekend?

Positraction

I got back into the sewing room this week, cleared the debris from the space immediately around my machine and put some seams together.  Awhile later, I emerged with this recommendation:  Next time you're feeling irritable or out of sorts, make a binding.  It cures all manner of ills, trust me.

Scrappy binding for the H2H Quilt

A simple task like that is what you want when you're in one of those moods—something not at all complicated, but one that nudges your brain out of whatever gear its been spinning in.  I think you'll find that once you've finished pressing and winding the colorful yardage of your creation, you feel not only relaxed but productive and ready to move on.  It's true.  You can Google it.

(And what would those search terms be, I wonder?  The "I-hate-everything binding cure"?  How about "Zen finding by minding your binding"?)

What also helps is when the doctor says your husband's fractures have started to heal and he can get rid of the hip immobilizer and start to bear weight and do some PT.  This was our good news on Thursday.  Hopefully, by this time next month, he will only be using a cane or—why not aim high?—no assistive device at all.

Norm admitted to being a bit anxious about shedding the immobilizer at first.  I'm sure some people want to fling the thing out an upper window when they're done with it, but he actually felt secure and supported.  I imagine it's like having to wear the big elastic compression bandage around your midsection 24/7 after a C-section, and when you finally take it off, it feels like your guts are going to fall out on the floor.  Or maybe that was just me.

While I worked yesterday afternoon on the computer, I heard him chinking around the house on his crutches, testing his freed-up extremity minus the Storm Trooper getup.  And so far, so good. 

Beyond the binding—and I guess I've really been talking about different types here, but back to fabric—I went on to make another scrappy string ring (Dresden).  Oh, they're so fun!  Especially when working with some scraps from friends.  They all played nicely together.  

Sometimes I get a fleeting moment of hesitation as I put mint green next to olive next to grass green in these assemblages.  But then all I have to do is look out a window or simply recall our drive through the Wisconsin landscape on the way to the doctor Thursday.  It's spring here, and that means varying shades of green bursting forth, all mixing together beautifully, along with barn reds, silo whites, and gravel grays.  Even the sky is various shades of blue. It all works.

I'm linking up to the party at Sarah's today.  Check out the creative fun at Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

Sunday Sundry 4-22-12

Let's pop the lid on another edition of Sunday Sundry, shall we?  It's been awhile.

Friends, I have spent a good deal of my spare time this past week trying to piece together something other than a quilt.

I've been doing some genealogy work, and it's led down some interesting trails, one that leads all the way back to the middle ages and a place called Shropshire in England.  Does anyone who reads this happen to live near there or have visited?  It looks like an entirely lovely place, there on the border of Wales.  Of course, things must have been somewhat less than lovely when the ancestor decided to shove off across the pond around the mid seventeenth century.

Whittington Castle, Shropshire (photo credit)

I have had some crazy dreams in the midst of this research.  One night, after clicking back and back and back and back on an ancestral line on the internet, I dreamed I was part of a relay team, but the hitch was that we had to run a 13-mile course backwards—as in literally running backwards.  If you turned around and ran any of it the normal way, you would be disqualified.  Speed was not as important in this race as was just doing it properly.  

Now, I am not a runner in waking life, never have been, but this navigating the course backwards thing?  I thought, I can do this!  In my dream, the other members of my team disappeared one by one, dropped out, or maybe got disqualified, I don't know.  As for me, I was into this running backwards thing and really putting the miles behind (in front of?) me.  It felt kind of...awesome.

But back in the here-and-now, in my non-REM hours, I am eager to move forward. On Monday, I am due to have a couple of relatives drop by who are also researching our family history.  The plan is to share what each of us has, and I am hoping to pass the baton, as it were, to the more willing and able.  This work is fascinating, but I'd rather be sewing and working on things for which the finish line is in sight.  First, though, I'm going to have to clean up the paperwork strewn across my sewing table, ironing board, and numerous other surfaces in the sewing room.  I can't even see my cutting mat at the moment, and that's a bit disturbing.

A pair of mallards dropped in for a visit.

It's been sort of cool and dreary this week, but the sun shone today and Norm and I needed to get out of the house.  We went for a drive to a Goodwill about a half hour away, where I spotted this. 

In all honesty, my first thought was that it was rather fugly, albeit in an interesting kind of way, which prompted me to turn it over and look for a mark.

Haeger!  I should have known.  It had a layer of schmutz and spider poo on it, but it cleaned up nicely, and now I think its true beauty shines through.  I mean, just look at that gorgeous glaze.  No, seriously, the glaze.  It'll take your mind off the stuff that looks like brain matter.

I thought it was perhaps a cookie jar, but on finding this grouping on flickr, it appears that it was part of a canister set.  I intend to look it up in one of my Haeger reference books, but that's another thing buried somewhere around here that I need to excavate.

I've also been in the mood to find some good, new (to me) music.  What are you listening to these days?

Green as a Mallard Head

I don't spend a lot of time being envious of anybody, especially my brothers, but I will admit that when I saw this picture, I was a little green.

L-R standing: My brother Darrell, Jase Robertson, brother Russ, nephew Nathan, niece Samantha; cousin Jason in front.

My brothers and a couple of their kids spent some time visiting family in Louisiana over spring break, and during that time, they got to meet Jase Robertson from Duck Dynasty!

Jase is my favorite redneck. Of course, my brothers probably didn't know that, so they didn't even get me anything autographed.  Hrmph.

Have you seen this reality show on A&E?  I admit I watch it, and spend equal amounts of time laughing out loud as I do groaning and rolling my eyes.  I mean, good gravy (with squirrel on top).

Of course, it was my brothers who introduced me to the Duck Commanders on DVD a couple years ago.  Then I caught the show and got sucked in.

I haven't heard the full story firsthand, but I hear my cousin (first cousin once removed?) Jason knows the Robertson bunch and made the introduction.  Otherwise, they're not in the habit of meeting with the fans that may wander through their place in West Monroe, Louisiana.  How cool is that!