Banjo Man decided yesterday that he wanted an old-fashioned cassette player. His reason? He wanted to take it up to the cabin and listen to his tapes.
Yes, he still has cassette tapes.
“Would you research it and order one on Amazon?” he asked.
Of course. It’s my Super Power.
There were dozens of them to analyze, but I settled on this small player after an hour or so of reading reviews and online articles. I ordered it early yesterday afternoon.
It was delivered at 5:57 AM. This morning. To our front door. There are lots of insane things going on in the world right now, but the almost-instant delivery of some Amazon products is one that truly produces shock and awe.
Enough is enough #1: Remember this? It’s why I haven’t been blogging. This project from the winter of 2017-2018 has kept me busy. And I have given up on it once again. I gave it my all for a couple of weeks and now it is back in a plastic bin waiting for 2025. I hope to be more patient next year and finish sewing together the second half, thus completing the actual quilt top.
Enough is enough #2: After six weeks of dealing with a diagnosis of “iron deficiency anemia” and four medical professionals having four different opinions on the severity and the source, I am done with worrying about it aside from taking an iron supplement. Talk amongst yourselves, people, and get back to me if you figure it out.
Enough is enough #3: The oversized closet in the main bathroom was so crammed full of stuff and so awful that I wouldn’t take a “before” picture. I’ve wanted to tackle that project for several years, but time and energy and motivation were low. But yesterday I waded in, hauling out mops, brooms, and a huge assortment of out-of-date “stuff”. I even found an empty gallon of paint and the bucket that belonged to it. Where on earth did that come from and how long had it been in there???
Enough is enough #4: Again, no photo, but the beautiful navy and cream Oriental rug I loved in my bathroom has gone to the dump. It shed. I mean, it never stopped shedding. I couldn’t take the mess any more, so Banjo Man has taken my pretty runner to the dump and I will no longer deal with blue lint and blue dust.
Next up? I don’t know. I’m going to roam around the house looking for things that annoy me.
How could I have forgotten these 20 blocks? Each one has 49 pieces. Yes, FORTY-NINE pieces! That’s 980 bits of fabric precisely sewn together.
No wonder I grew tired of it this quilt.
Then I discovered the bin underneath it: 240 rectangles (made of 3 pieces each) for the sashing, along with a gazillion little 2″ squares for the cornerstones and the 8″ squares for the 18 setting triangles (made of 5 pieces each).
So…do you think I’m crazy yet?
Of course you do.
This was the 2017 Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt, the last “quilt-along” I participated in. Her complicated designs were fun for a few years, but working on them didn’t leave time for me to design and sew my own projects.
My sewing station means I don’t have to get up to iron or trim pieces.
Will I finish it this winter? Hmmmmm….I’m not sure. We’ll see how long my patience and enthusiasm lasts.
Banjo Man thinks it’s beautiful, but he thinks every single thing I sew is beautiful. He loves quilts. Sometimes he comes into my office, sits down with a cup of tea and enjoys the explosion of fabric all around him. Then he picks threads off his clothes and heads back to his own office. It’s quite funny.
I’ll keep working on this until I decide which one of my own projects I will start next. We had about 8″ of snow Tuesday and much of it, along with plenty of ice, is still here.
The smallest, tamest, earliest Super Bowl party took place at our house yesterday afternoon.
Here’s what daughter Nancy and I watched:
Banjo Man joined us for the last quarter. We all agreed Vanessa should be the MVP (Most Valuable Puppy).
Then there was the food. We started with these:
A little later we wolfed down ham & cheese sliders and pigs-in-a-blanket.
The pre-game show began.
Who was the guy with the face tattoos and the silver teeth singing “God Bless America”? I enjoyed his performance, but what’s with the Frankenstein look?
I’m old.
Time for the National Anthem. Love me some Reba!!!
Dessert, anyone?
Daughter Nancy headed home before the game. I stayed awake until the third quarter and sadly never did see the Clydesdales commercial.
I did see Travis Kelce behave badly on the sidelines before the half. What was that all about?
He’s lucky I’m not his mom.
This morning Banjo Man told me all about the rest of the game and the intense overtime excitement and how the Chiefs won.
My grandmother, born in 1902, loved her costume jewelry, i.e. plastic beaded necklaces.
I saved them for a very long time, just in case I ended up with a horde of granddaughters who liked to play dress-up. Last week I spent a chilly winter day untangling dozens of necklaces and organizing them according to color. They will be donated to a library charity sale. Hurray for books!
This is only one very small part of Grandma’s horde.
I also sorted through two gallon-sized Ziplock bags filled with costume jewelry that I bought at auctions for daughter Nancy, who loved playing with it and wearing various “treasures”. Rhode Island was the jewelry-making capital of the world for many years, so there is no shortage of costume jewelry in secondhand stores.
Then I came across this.
They are not real, of course. When I was a little girl we summered at my grandparents’ house on swampy Hundred Acre Pond. Year after year it was heaven, with our days spent swimming and picking blueberries and catching turtles. At the end of our cove, high up on a little hill, sat a house rumored to be owned by a college professor and his wife. No one ever saw them. Unlike many of the other neighbors, they kept to themselves. The wife supposedly had had a nervous breakdown, but no one really knew.
One morning I was out in the boat with my grandfather and my father when we heard someone calling to “the little girl”. A woman came out of the house and rushed down the hill, so we rowed over to see what she wanted. She held out the jewelry box to me and said she wanted me to have it. I thanked her as she turned to scurry back to her house and that was that.
I’ve held onto that box of broken pearl necklaces for sixty-five years. I admit I have every piece of jewelry that anyone has ever given me, including my newborn hospital bracelet, but it’s time for the “pearls” to go elsewhere.
Maybe the mysterious woman on the hill was actually mentally ill. Agoraphobic, even. Depressed, unhappy or simply content to live quietly and keep to herself.
The thought just occurred to me that she might have been decluttering, too.
On this very chilly, gray, February morning (hurray! January is over!) I thought I’d share what’s been going on here this winter. We have no snow and don’t expect any. The sun is supposed to come out again on Saturday, which will definitely be a welcome sight.
Here’s what’s happening:
It starts with a backing. And then the batting. Banjo Man is not allowed to make a mess in the kitchen during all of this.
Then a quilt top is added:
Want to see the backing? It’s a chunk of fabric I bought 25 years ago at a long gone Fabric Place, a massive store that had all kinds of fabric and many, many sales.Pretty wild, huh? The quilt is finished and I am now stitching on the binding.
Next up, finishing a 7-year old Quilt of Valor.
And here is one of last year’s tops:
It has also been finished–my sewing machine just zips through “stitch in the ditch” lines so nicely–and is awaiting its binding.
Another quilt top from last winter is now finished and ready for a bed:
And here is the oldest quilt top of all. It was a Christmas gift from my in-laws back in the 70’s. My mother-in-law’s father’s sister made it, but it was never finished. I added a border to protect the stitches years ago, but was always afraid to quilt it. My hand-quilting skills are terrible and I have never gotten the hang of making those lovely, tiny stitches that look so beautiful. I wanted to do it justice, but I knew I couldn’t.
But this year I am determined to do it. Not by hand, though. I ordered a special wide white backing. And special white (not natural color) quilt batting. Unfortunately my closest quilt store in Groton, CT doesn’t carry this specific white batting and three out of four online orders shipped the wrong color, so this project was delayed for three weeks.
After I finish writing this post, I will return to the kitchen and go back to pinning. Another hour or so and I will be finished with this part of the process. Time to reclaim the kitchen and dining area at last…and continue finishing this long-unfinished project. I wonder when it was created. There is just no way to know, but it WILL be finished in 2024.
Our Nebraska friend Tom highly recommended this meat thermometer last year and I was very excited to finally use it Monday night. I needed to practice with the new technology (it works on a phone app) before summer, so Banjo Man found a sale on beef tenderloins
We were all set for a perfect medium rare experience.
I wish I could say I succeeded, but I didn’t. I’m not sure where I went wrong, but I followed the directions on my phone, removing the steaks (at 135 degrees) from the pan and letting them rest as instructed by the app. They kept cooking while resting, as steaks do, and ended up as “medium”. Where did I go wrong? Did the Meater Plus 2 thermometer steer me wrong or was this user error?
There are days when you just want to go to Paul’s Pasta and eat Italian food.
Especially on a gray January afternoon in New England.
Banjo Man decided on Thursday that we needed a field trip. We waited until daughter Nancy had the day off and off we went. Also on the agenda? A stop in Mystic to a photo-developing lab, then some strolling through the little shops at the Mystic Seaport. The kitchen store is always a hit, as was a beautiful jewelry store that is Nancy’s favorite. We resisted fudge and olive oil, but I did buy a Viking refrigerator magnet.
We were home before dark with leftovers and desserts. Banjo Man and Nancy moved the empty china cupboard down to the basement. I replanted my aloe plant and moved an old iron plant stand to the now empty corner of the dining area.
Guess who is terrible at having his picture taken? Believe it or not, he was having a great time!
Monday I went to a new lab for a round of blood tests. My oncologist hoped to discover why I was so tired other than being 72 and deep into the annual winter blahs.
Note: Turns out I am fine, just anemic. Easily dealt with.
The waiting room held several very ancient people. Okay, more than several. Quite a few staggered in and out of the doors to the exam rooms.
When my name was called, I followed a 40’ish woman through the door to a small, open area in the hallway. As she entered my five pages of orders into the computer, I watched as more very, very old patients managed somehow to navigate past. One woman stopped and, leaning on her cane, stared at us. She was obviously annoyed at having to wait her turn.
The lab lady, clearly out of patience, told her to go to the waiting room and wait to be called. Which she did, but not without huffily announcing her displeasure.
The lab lady rolled her eyes at me (we were wearing masks, per order of the hospital group) and muttered something, which led to me say, “I’ve never been here before. There are an awful lot of elderly people in this place. Is it because it’s so close to Brightview?”
Brightview is a nearby complex of Independent Living, Assisted Living and Memory Care buildings.
She shrugged and started feeling my arm for a good vein. “I don’t know.”
“I mean, I’m no spring chicken, but there just seems to be a lot of very elderly people.”
She stopped, needle paused above my skin. “What? Spring chicken?”
“Yes,” I repeated. “I’m no spring chicken and I have the white hair but I like to think I’m a little–”
“Spring chicken! That is SO FUNNY!” She started laughing. I mean, really laughing. She eventually apologized, took a deep breath and stuck the needle into my arm.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shoulders shaking. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”
“That’s okay,” I assured her, realizing she had never heard the phrase before.
She laughed through four vials of blood and putting on the band-aid. When I stood to leave and grab my coat, she thanked me for making her day.
And then this spring chicken walked in a lively manner down the hall, through the waiting room and down the stairs to the parking lot.
is there any more pie? 