Me, Myself and Memories

Updates from August, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Noreen 2:32 pm on August 12, 2022 Permalink  

  Perfect Day 

  For once, the weather was perfect for a solo road trip.

  I happily turned in my tuna can of a loaner and got my sweet ride back.  From there the 103.5 radio station was turned on and we headed to Bird Island to the Bernina shop.

  All summer long I have eyed a new hoop for my Bernina.  It is called a “free arm hoop” as a knit shirt can be stripped onto the hoop for embroidering without the worry of stretching the shirt out to keep the back side of the shirt from getting caught in the stitching.  I do have to update the firmware of my machine.  Amanda had Kelly download the firmware onto a flash drive and Amanda wrote out the instructions.  I will do the update tomorrow when the house is quiet so as to not miss a step.  I enjoy this young couple and the strides they take for a great shop that customers always feel comfortable in.

  My next stop was Fairfax to visit the Fairfax family.  Kersten, Kevin and myself visited in Kevin’s shop.  I got a brief synopses of their motor trip to Seattle.  Fun times taking in the change of scenery and the fact that Kluge, the fur baby, also did well.  A safe trip is the best culmination.  I am extremely happy that Kersten is taking a break from being a W-2 form worker.  The smile on both of their faces told the rest of the story.  Getting out from under daily stress will make each day feel a bit brighter whether the sun is shining or not.  Hats off! 

  Dennis was happy to have me home safe and sound.  Dennis and friend Dewayne may be checking out an auction tomorrow.  It is the same fellow’s goodies that the Cub-Lo-Boy came from.  Just think of all the ka-bitzing that could be heard.

  This older one on Stauffer has had quite the last seven days.  A family gathering, one medical appointment, my annual eye appointment, lunch with the stitchers and today’s solo road trip.  I feel blessed to have been able to take it all in and even more so, for the rest each night.  It is time tomorrow for me to see if the lights will turn on in the studio.    

  The temps are promising to be sweet for the next week.  Bring it on.

   
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  Noreen 3:19 pm on August 11, 2022 Permalink  

  Laughter The Best 

  Laughter is the best medicine.

  Today seven of us stitchers got together at Baker’s Square.  On the way to Mankato in my loner car, it rained so hard between Madelia and Lake Crystal the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up.  A few miles farther and the highway was totally dry.

  Back to the stitchers.  All seven of us come from different backgrounds and of different ages.  Literally the common thread is just that . . . fuzz and thread.  One of the gals, Isy, still enjoys stitching quilts by hand.  I sure do admire that.  Her and I are the same age.  Nancy does mostly sewing for her church’s mission work.  Lu loves to work with tiny pieces and she is the gal that shared her scrappy quilt pattern with me that I just finished.  Anita has been a quilt shop owner and her knowledge and history is on board.  Anita purchased a Bernina as mine several years ago.  Denise has tailored sewing in her past and now is an avid quilter.  Sharon has made the most beautiful garments imaginable.  I have seen her photo album.  Sharon has been doing embroidering for some time and also can kick out some neat piecing.  Lori was absent today as she was camping with family.  Lori also purchased a Bernina at the time that Anita did.  

  Half of our group does embroidering and quilting and the other half is strictly quilting.  No matter, what each has been into during the month, it is all hashed over as we enjoy the company of each other.

  I arrived home safe and sound in the tuna can, aka: the loner from car dealer.  Tomorrow morning I will head to New Ulm to pick up my trustee vehicle that has had front end tie rods, new tires that have been balanced and aligned plus an oil change and all that goes with that. 

  As long as I am out and about, I will continue to the northwest and see Amanda at the Bernina shop in Bird Island.  Their shop closes at one in the afternoon each of the five working days.  I have questions and an agenda.  On the way home I will stop to see my Fairfax family.  I really feel kind of carefree to do some of my items now that the doctor appointments are not the top priority.  Sweet.

  On thinking of some of our conversations today, it may very well bring a squeaky laugh out of me when I least expect it.

   
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  Noreen 12:32 pm on August 10, 2022 Permalink  

  Early Afternoon 

  I don’t usually write a post this early in the day.  It feels like I have put in a day thus far.

  Again with the garden shoes to tackle more of the volunteer clover amongst the perennials.  I pulled some by the roots, I hacked some out with a hoe.  I am gaining.  By nine this morning, my arms needed a rest.  I carried my harvest to the burning ring.  As I was heading into the house Dennis was headed to the back garage to check the tire pressure in the rider mower’s tires.  I had had my job planned and Dennis has his plan . . . also to pursue.  The acre will get mowed today.  Using the weed whip is not on my schedule today . . . I checked.

  The studio was also in my plan.  I was curious how a design was going to turn out.  When I had downloaded a design several days ago, I realized that a freebie had been included.  Curiosity got the better of me.  The freebie didn’t have the same amount of stitches as my choice had had.  Nonetheless, we tried it out.  Just as the design was finishing, Dennis visited the studio.  Hmm.

  Dennis’ nephew furnishes Dennis a phone so Dennis can run errands for him.  Dennis was due for a new flip phone.  No smart phone is needed for the ole cowboy.  Besides, who would teach him the ins and outs.  When Dennis took the new phone with his old phone to Radio Shack for the phone numbers to be transferred . . . no dice.  Dennis’ old phone was too old for that process to work.

  Now you all know why Dennis found his way to the studio.  I will manually load the numbers, but it is not going to be a rush, as at 12:30, I had a carpenter arriving looking at doing a job for us.  Nathen came. Nathen looked.  Nathen did not say “No.”  It is the same front door job that many before Nathen have looked at, but no one came back.  Time will tell.

  I did get six numbers loaded for Dennis and then decided to get an oven dish started that I could pop into the oven after my eye appointment at three.  I know by the time the eyes are dilated and such, it will be after four before I get home.  I also need to run one errand while I am out and about.  The phone job is on hold.  For the fellow that doesn’t carry his phone 99.9% of the time . . . the phone job is on hold.

   
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  Noreen 2:39 pm on August 8, 2022 Permalink  

  A Great Morning 

  When I realized the temps were in the 60s, I dug out my garden shoes.

  It has been a long time since the soil around the Hosta was wet enough that weeds could be pulled up by the root rather than breaking off.  As I made piles of clover and sand burr plants, Dennis got them to the burn ring to dry out.  

  A year ago I put pavers around our giant Maple and Dennis filled it in for a heightened flower bed.  It was great not having to bend over and just stand next to it to tackle the weeds.  When it came time to get up onto the flower bed next to the tree trunk, that’s where the choice culprits were, Dennis was standing behind me to give a bit of a heft for me to get up the twelve inches next to the trunk of the Maple.  Success.  Dennis was right there when it was time to descend safely.

  If I had had more physical power than my want power, I could have tackled a bunch more at the ground level.  I settled on taking out all of the Bleeding Heart stalks that were spent.  The pile of greenery to dry out is quite high.

  I know I have spent my abilities when my left foot begins to turn in.  My body has its way of shutting me down when I am too stubborn to acknowledge the smaller hints.

  I have begun stitching out an embroidery design in the studio.  When I realized my bobbin was about empty, I decided on taking a break to fill some bobbins and to also come to the first floor to see what the mail person left.

  With that being said, my blog post has now been completed and I am heading to the studio to push that little green button and work towards finishing that design.  Shutting down the process completely is a shot in the dark, on having everything remain aligned when the sewing machine is powered back up.

  We are having leftovers for supper.  Yippee!

   
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  Noreen 12:51 pm on August 7, 2022 Permalink  

  Wonderful Rain 

  During the early morning hours, I did hear thunder.  Getting up at six the rain came down in what I would call a good soaking rain.  It was very welcoming.

  I was up early for a potty visit.  Dennis slept until ten this morning.  

  We had had a very busy day yesterday traveling north to the city of Darwin for a family gathering.  My mom, Lena Riebe Wendlandt, has a lot of family in that area.  Granted, us cousins are now left to continue the family stories.  Dennis chimes right in.  Some can talk tractors.  Some can talk collectable guns.  Dennis knows no strangers.  The dish towels I had done for the family members went over great.  I had done those in the early winter of 2021.  I did put two towels back, one for Kevin and one for Carrie.  They all joked, I should do caps for next year.  Blank caps to embroider on are a bit too pricey . . . but it was fun to think about doing it.

  We drove in heavy rain as we traveled north and could only hope there would be some saved for our neck of the woods.

  I was weary when we got home.  I had not done anything but sit, but it was out of my norm.  Dennis is the fellow that drove the little red pickup the 120 miles one way.  Home felt wonderful.

  This morning, I was determined to try something I had not done for a long time.  I wanted to make sure I could still remember the steps to find an embroidery design, get it saved to a file and then transfer onto a flash drive to insert when I am ready to stitch.  Out of site and out of mind can happen very easily.  Success!  There are many brands of thread.  Design companies use their own unique brand when hawking their wares.  I do have printouts of conversion tables for several thread companies. The conversion chart allows me to know that the Floriana number for the color cinnamon is the number in the Isacord brand that I sew from.  I have invested in one brand only.  The eyeballs were doing a lot of back and forth.  I printed out the picture of the design and then put my thread numbers to coincide the thread changes as they would take place.

  The spools of colored thread needed are lined up on my church tables.  It was time to clean out fuzz and thread from under the hood.  A bit of oil where indicted.  I swapped out the number twelve needle that I had used for the scrappy quilt for a number eleven needle, not such a large poke in the material, that I like to use for embroidery.   The embroidery module is on the sewing machine and tomorrow we should be good to do some stitching.  The scrappy quilt was a timely project.  The last time I embordered was when making nephew Larry’s Christmas stockings.

  It being fairly comfortable to run the oven, I do have an oven meal prepared for supper.  My own concoction:  1 can of Hormel Chili with no beans, 1 can tomato soup, I can of golden mushroom soup, 1 lb. 85% browned ground beef and a heaping 2 cup container of pasta needing to be boiled.  When all was combined, I finished off by folding in whatever was left of grated Parmesan in a container in the refrig.  350 degree for an hour or until the thermometer reads 155.  Dennis finished it off by grinding black pepper over the top.  Whatever would I do without my round blue speckled enamel roaster.   

  This next week looks like a keeper and by tomorrow we will know how much rain fell.

   
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  Noreen 1:40 pm on August 5, 2022 Permalink  

  A Warm Afternoon 

  I had big plans for this forenoon.  I would be in New Ulm by eight and have repair work begun on the car.  I had calculated a good three hour sit in one of their very soft chairs in The Quick Lane waiting room.  I wasn’t too concerned as the tie rod work on both fronts would be covered by my warranty.  The four new tires and the oil change would be out of my pocket.  It was just a good feeling to get this done as the amount of miles I would be putting on before winter would be minimal.

  I had barely gotten into watching the news when a fellow came in carrying one of my rims.  I was given a loaner car as that rim had a crack in it and they would be having a used rim from Nebraska in by later next week.  So be it.  

  The only place I wanted to stop at was Hy-Vee on my way home.  The loner car was a 2005 red Ford sedan car that felt like I was driving a tuna can.  I came out of Hy-Vee and headed for the red Ford sedan.  I got my groceries in the back seat and noticed something on the dash.  I had just put my groceries into someone else’s red Ford sedan.  Oh my gosh!  I was amazed that a car alarm had not gone off.  I had already put the grocery cart away, so I nicely opened up my red Ford car door that was parked right beside it and began swapping out groceries.   Good grief!  I rolled my eyes the majority of the miles home.  Leave it to Grammie!

  Tomorrow we are heading to the Twine Ball Town of Darwin for a noon picnic.  The Riebe cousins do this every year.  It is a happy group that enjoys catching up with each other.  Myself and two other cousins, Arlan and Dorothy are now the eldest.  That was my purpose in stopping at Hy-Vee.  Dennis and I travel the farthest and I had made up my mind, I would not be spending any time in the kitchen this afternoon.  Cold pared fruit would be traveling with us.  Many man the grill and many plug crock pots into the electrical service in the park.  Surprisingly the Riebe clan stuck around Dassel and Darwin.

  Each year, someone has made or acquired favors to celebrate the calendar year.  Needing the physical therapy, I began doing dish towels last fall.  Mills Fleet Farm in Mankato always has a great buy on the white looking feed sack towels already hemmed.  My tote of many towels is ready to be put into the little red pickup.  Many different colors of thread were used.  Not too many look-alikes.  I took the count of how many were in attendance last year and then Dennis decided on making twenty more.  Good ole cowboy.  Dennis has gotten to know this group and looks forward to it as much as I do.

  I know we will have a long day, but a very good day, tomorrow.  I will do a post on Sunday.  I have already been told the little red pickup leaves at ten sharp in the morning.  I can already lay odds, that my sweet ole cowboy will be in the drive, sitting behind the wheel, close to 9:30.  

  Just as the weatherman had predicted, it is warm out this afternoon.

   
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  Noreen 1:47 pm on August 4, 2022 Permalink  

  A Thursday 

  The weather has been a roller coaster.  Today is a winner.

  I have been digging through several small drawers and seeing what can be seen. 

  A while back when I was in Hobby Lobby, I ended up in the very back of the store.  Looking at different sizes of picture frames as I had an idea for a small pieced quilted project that would look good framed.  The idea of the pattern was that once the pieced item was done, different items of memorabilia could be added and attached to it and then have the total project put in a picture frame.

  In the very back of Hobby Lobby amid the frames were hinged memory boxes.  Hmm.  I purchased two of what was to be had.  Each was different.  Each would hold its own unique items depending on the bulk of them.

  As I have found items here, there, everywhere, I have trundled them to the studio . . . my creative place.   I look at the items from time to time.  I don’t want to rush into this.  

  In the meantime . . . I have been spending some time on the Etsy site and Pinterest.  I need to have a pattern or a project to use my mom, Lena’s, prairie points.  Mom used these points to finish quilt hems.  She felt that the edges of quilts wouldn’t have as much wear and tear with the prairie points taking the brunt.  I believe Lena was planning on making more quilts than she could.  There has to be something that will use her stash up.  Wright’s was a company that sold sewing accessories and Lena found a site that was selling off bolts of prairie points in various colors.  Twenty four yards per bolt.  Yup.  I have Lena’s stash.  I just could not part with them.  It’s one of those “emotional attachment” items.   I will continue seeking and searching.  

  Dennis has announced that we are going to the Home Town café for supper.  It has been listed on our realtor’s website.  The owner’s have already cut back on their Sunday brunches.  Like everyone else up and down our Main Street, original owners aren’t getting any younger and help is difficult to find.  We will visit them once in a while giving them as much support as us two older ones can.

  Tomorrow, I need to be in New Ulm by 8:15.  My car is getting new tie rods, new tires and an oil change.  Busy morning for me.

   
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  Noreen 12:47 pm on August 2, 2022 Permalink  

  A Corker of a Day 

  There is a hot breeze blowing today.  Our dewpoint is sitting at 74 with humidity in the mid 60s.

  Before the day got too long, there was one project on my hit list.  Our walk-up attic is typical of a 100 year old home’s attic.  It smells like an attic in the hot summer months.  Dennis had been out to the Fleet and Home store and came home with a jar named Fresh Wave odor removing gel.  It is actual crystals  that will in time disappear.  It was time to take the empty container down and leave a full one behind.

  When I opened the closure at the top of the steps, I was taken aback that the small window was open.  The window had been kept closed with an aluminum full turn button.  That window is as old as the house and the soft trim indicated that the turn button needed to be turned into the wood not so badly worn.   It’s a good thing that we had put a screen on that window decades ago.  I could only imagine the bats that would have found this opening at tree top level.

  In the middle of the room was a collection of items I had pulled together another time when I had visited.  Older paper bound books that were meant for the recycling bin, and a three ring binder that I recognized I had put together decades ago.

  As I walked down the attic steps backward, moving my stash with me one step at a time, the kitchen floor felt secure when my feet felt it underneath.

  The older books clunked as they hit the recycling bin.  The three ring binder, we opened on the dining room table.  It was a journal of 1993 when our town had received seven inches of rain in a short spell.  The infrastructure of the city couldn’t handle all that rain and our basement filled with water from the sanitary storm lines coming up from the floor drains and up out of the toilet.  It was four feet high of pure fecal mess.

  The city cut the power to our home and we stayed in the Super 8 until such time that the mess was down to a thick sludge on the basement floor.  With dumpsters in the drive, it was a mess with a smell that took on a life of its own and needed to be cleaned up quickly.  What carpeting we had in the basement needed to be cut up into small pieces to be able to put it in five gallon pails and carry it out.  I had documented everything with photos and a running written journal for insurance claims.  Seeing what we went through that year, I can only imagine what Kentucky is facing . . . to a much larger event. 

  Yup, I am saving that three ring binder as a reminder of what a sweet forever home we now have.   The city has since improved infrastructure.  We have since tiled the interior and my studio was created.  I so appreciate my studio.

   
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  Noreen 3:24 pm on July 30, 2022 Permalink  

  Last Weekend 

  This is the last weekend of July.  A lot has gone on this month and the time has gone fast.  Would I like this hot month to repeat itself . . . no!

  Dennis’ daughter, the RN, was here today from Mankato.  I think she may have been checking up on the care her dad has been getting . . . from me.   A little too late.  This was her first visit since Christmas.  Oh well.  Submarine’s surface when something is needed.  She came to pick up the vehicle that has been stored in our back garage.  Good thing Dennis kept the battery charged.  Sweet ole cowboy!

  I hemmed my scrappy quilt late yesterday afternoon.  I had quilted it on my sewing machine by free motion under the needle.  When all was said and done and the fuzz and thread got picked up, I laundered the quilt and dried it in the clothes dryer.  It gave the batting a chance to puff up a bit after I had mashed it down with the stitching.  This is my quilt and it is on my bed in the porch bedroom.  It is a busy quilt and it is growing on me.  It is not the traditional quilt that repeats the block pattern over and over.

  I have not even given myself time to think about what will take place in the studio going forward. This scrappy had kept me busy since late winter.

  It is getting warm outside and that should not surprise any one of us.  One thing I can say is that the mosquitoes have not been bad.  No rain over a long extended time will do that.

  “Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay.  Close by me forever and love me I pray.”

   
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  Noreen 1:47 pm on July 27, 2022 Permalink  

  A Quiet Day 

  The ole cowboy felt what he had been through yesterday.  For the most part he was “out” of it for the procedure.  He remembers how narrow the table was and that he couldn’t put his hands over his chest to rest them from hanging down the sides of the table.  A nurse with cold hands would put his arms back down.  According to Dennis, it will be a while before he gets the buzzing sound out of his mind from the laser work as it was being done on the artery in his left leg.  Amazing what has been accomplished for a quality of life that would not have been thought of not too many years prior.

  While Dennis napped this morning, I put together an oven meal for tonight’s supper.  It’s cool enough outside that having the oven on for supper won’t heat the house up for the entire night.

  I did do a studio visit this afternoon.  I managed to get the binding cut and pressed in the double fold method.  I usually like the binding cut on the length of the fabric, but there was not enough after the backing to do it.  It’s a bit of this and a bit of that to have enough for the binding to match the backing as well as the sashing in between the scrappy quilt blocks.  This is the calico that Lena had sewn into one large piece, most likely for a full sized quilt.  My 64″ x 64″ is using it to the fullest. 

  Yesterday, sitting in the hospital waiting room for five hours, I now have a head cold.  There was no shortage of cool air circulating.  Today, a sneeze once in awhile and a voice that is two octaves lower than usual.  Not even a need for a tissue, just a head that feels a bit woozy.