String blocks

A couple of people asked about the quilt blocks I helped Shelly work on. They are called scrappy string blocks, and a bit of search turned up a nice tutorial: Scrappy String blocks. I found a decent picture, too.

When I made them for Janice, they were on a paper foundation. The paper was telephone book pages. These are less common these days, but yellow page books are fairly available. Shelly used parchment baking paper from an enormous box of same she had acquired. Whatever works for you.

The foundation paper must be a square, for these blocks. I built a supply of these by tearing out one phone book page, folding it diagonally, and then folding the excess at the bottom to produce a square. I used a ruler on the short bottom fold to tear off the excess paper. 

Open out the square. From any box of your many precut strips, put one strip centered on the fold. Secure with a pin, top and bottom, so it doesn't slip.

Set the sewing stitch very small. This makes the paper tear away more easily. Put the next strip along the first and sew with a quarter inch seam. Press with your thumbnail, and sew down the next strip. Press down and continue to the end of the square.

Reverse the block to sew a strip to the other side of the first strip. Thumbnail press, and continue. The blocks need pressed, trimmed, and the paper torn off. Then set together as you please.

A lovely sight!

I longed to finish that dratted towel warp this weekend. I wove whenever I could last week, and spent most of today weaving. Yesterday saw a couple of hours in the morning, before my daughter Shelly came for lunch and with  a project of her own.

She had a tote of quilt squares sewn on paper and the paper needed torn off. These are the very same squares I used to sew for Jan and she would turn into little quilts for children in need. Shelly and I tore off all the paper backings of her stash of squares.

The gist of this story is, now she has Shelly sewing single bed tops and Jan is donating them to a group called Good Knights. This group's mission is to give a bed to children who do not have a bed.

And there are thousands of children here in Northeastern Ohio, who sleep on the floor for want of a bed. The single bed quilt tops Jan is making now go to this project. A bed and a quilt.

I smiled, remembering all the bags of scraps left behind my sewing chair by Jan's quilting customers. I asked Shelly if the quilting customers were still leaving bags of scraps at Jan's studio, and the answer is Yes. She probably will never run out of material for quilts.

But I digress. I really hoped to reach the end of the warp today. I wove an entire tube of the blue, but didn't trust the warp to last for one more tube of blue, so I went to my usual end of warp ploy, cream towels.

And I wove and wove and wove all day today. I did not take off the blue towels because that would involve tying the warp back to the front beam, and wasting many inches. I just kept weaving the cream.

Every time I looked at the back beam, there were still a couple of turns of warp left. Until suddenly one section had just one turn left! It was that wonderful event that happens to weavers on occasion. One bout is short!

The length of towels is still on the beam. I am too tired to take them off and secure the ends. A job for tomorrow afternoon. As soon as they are finished into towels, they will go on the web site and that will be the end of towels.

My next project is much more complex. I can weave a 36" width of fabric on this loom, and that will be my next undertaking. It won't be plain fabric; the surface will be a textured pattern very like the leaves of the Hosta plant named August lily.

This is what is called an overshot pattern. Every row is separated by a row of plain weave, the over and under of potholder weaving. I'll use the rest of the towel colors. I'm looking forward to this, but it will be some time in coming. There will be 18 bouts to wind on and then thread through the heddles!
 

Adjusting again

At supper last night, Rose busted me for missing another bingo game. "Why weren't you at Bingo?" was the second or third thing she asked. I replied it was the same as ever, "No quarters!"

"Why don't you go to the desk and get a ten dollar roll?"

"I've lost every quarter I've invested. I even thought I'd break the cycle when Lisa counted out the quarters in the stamp box and there  only were seven dollars. I told her not to look for any more, I'd take that magic number and compound it. I lost it in one week."

Rose rummaged in her Rollator seat and thumped this tiny purse near my plate.

It was deceptively heavy and rattled suspiciously. "Did you pay in pennies?" I asked, because she did owe me for towels. I opened it.

"No more excuses!" It appears to be two or so weeks of Bingo. I thanked her, and will play. No one makes a living from Bingo here, and no one goes broke. It takes four dollars to play, and all these damn quarters just circulate among us. No where to spend them. No vending machines. Once I bought a stamp!

Bingo is subject to statistics. I had discovered a card with frequently called numbers, and made sure to select that card for every game. It worked, until a newcomer with a long bingo background made sure to learn my card's number and made sure to arrive early enough to select that card thereafter. The first time she had it she won the jackpot. The card was due. Now I need either to find another "good" card, or get to the game early enough to secure that card.

I turned over another new leaf in December. When I finished the last loaf of Heinen's bread I put the toaster away in the cupboard and began going downstairs for breakfast. It means getting up half an hour earlier, to be sure Kitty is properly cared for. Not an onerous undertaking, but my schedule is jumbled. Sleep and shower are in disarray. A first world problem, to be sure. Nevertheless, more adjustment is required.

I prefer a shower in the morning. All the years I was on the road I showered at night, after a long, dusty day in the sun. The shower generally happened even before dinner, giving my hair as much time as possible to dry before bedtime, which was around midnight, with the alarm ringing around seven.

Now I sleep nine or ten hours a night, and generally wake with a start when the alarm rings. Several mornings a week I shower and wash my hair, then dress and dry my hair, prior to all the other morning obligations. Now it's looking as if my only option is to return to showers at night, and drying my hair before I go to bed. As I said, first world problems. However, preferable to getting up another hour earlier 

It is that time of year, again. I took the holiday ribbon from its shelf and put it on my door again. I will find a larger storage bag at the end of this season, so less fluffing will be required next December.

Two old ladies get a job done

From the table talk, it was apparent to me that Rose wanted an RSV vaccination in addition to the current Covid jab we had here at the Atrium. I wanted the shot, too, and made a phone call to the drug store to make an appointment. I was told the shots are also available every Thursday, without appointment.

Another night at dinner I told Rose I was going to the drug store for an RSV shot today, and if I could figure out how to get her into my car, she was welcome to come along. I thought with Uncle Walt's handy little stool and some sturdy perseverance we could get the job done. In fact, we decided to have a dry run of inserting little Rose into the Pilot on steroids last Tuesday.

As luck would have it, last Tuesday Aurora had a snowstorm on steroids. We had more than a foot of snow, with high winds, lasting to early afternoon. It was so bad I even cancelled my long awaited mammogram. Rose and Joanne did not leave the building. It was do or do not today.

I was in the lobby, with the upside down stool on my walker and the key on my finger, waiting for Rose to come back with her "outing" walker. Nathan came from his office, probably headed for the men's room, and halted abruptly. I know I looked suspicious, and he began a conversation. I told him it merely was two old ladies with adventure in mind. He volunteered someone to bring the car around, warmed up. I handed him the key.

Rose returned, but no car appeared. I told her Nathan had gone to fetch it and I sure hoped nothing was wrong. I hoped the low tire light wasn't on again. I'd promised the dealer I'd make an appointment to fix it in that event. Finally Nathan and the Pilot appeared. He had snow in his hair, and had spent all that time cleaning the car!

Nathan supervised Rose climbing into the car and even stowed the stool and her walker. We were off.

At the drug store, Rose led the way, straight to the correct window. There were two people ahead of us, but already shot up and leaving. After the administrative preliminaries, Rose and I were seated in the line of chairs. While we waited, two more people took seats, one on either side of the two of us. The nurse approached, with two (and only two) syringes in her hand, asking who was there for RSV shots. 

The woman who was seated to my right offered her bare shoulder. "Excuse me," said I; "Rose and I were first." The bare shoulder retreated. A clerk called out to her, "Are you registered?" The bare shoulder went back to the counter, Rose and I had our jabs and were off.

Nathan is a new character and if you want to identify him in this charade, he is the Managing Director of Independent, Assisted and Memory Care units. A very nice fellow.

Good company

This isn't easy! I was working on a draft for the next weaving project, first working it out, then daydreaming over it; thinking about some interesting colors, or applications of color. Perhaps hemstitching top and bottom. Then my mind interposed: blog before you forget what fun it was!

This year the dining room was arranged in two longish tables, consisting of a dozen or so of our square dining tables arranged as two long tables down the dining room. There were plates and napkin wrapped silverware settings on each side of the tables, plus a setting for the head and foot. About twenty settings were put out at each table.

I arrived in the Bistro, and attached myself to Rose, her daughter and son-in-law. In the dining room, Rose was seated at the foot of the table, I was on one side and Lauren and Mike opposite. At the last minute, in came Frank. His party had been ignominiously cancelled, he said, and he was looking for a meal. If he promised not to talk, could he sit by me. I answered "Yes," on the condition he did talk. And so he did.

The five of us were a very congenial group. Frank and Mike had lots in common and knew a lot of people in common. Lauren and I even had similar interests; we both ride (rode) motorcycles. Lauren has several skydives to her credit, a sport I would never take up. Rose conducted the laughter.

Dinner was good, too. Turkey, ham, baked sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce. Pie and ice cream for dessert. I noted all the marshmallows were scraped to one end of our bowl of sweet potatoes. We ate our way through the feast, and kept laughing and talking. 

Finally Mike noticed all the other thanksgivingers were gone, save we five, holding down a table and a quarter. The kitchen staff were clearing the tables of festivities, table cloths, napkins, till only we five were left. It was still a couple more stories, before we took the hint of Rose's and my walkers produced from their parking places along the wall. So, Goodbye, a pleasure to know you, and with a couple of dinner rolls in my pocket, we went our separate way.

A lot of pictures were taken (by staff), but none have posted yet on Facebook. Here's a picture of our dining room. For the "feast", the staff had a long table down the center strip. It leads to the kitchen. All the square tables were lined up like railroad tracks. The staff distributed bowls and platters of food around the tables, to be passed. It was lovely. And the rest of the time we have dinner in groups of three or four around the individual tables.