Sunday, August 26, 2012

Good book! (And a few other happenings in my life ...)

I just finished reading the best book, "Living a Country Year" by Jerry Apps.  This is the best book I've read in a long time.  I know I keep saying that, but this one is special.  I recommend it highly.  Found it at our town library.

My brother Don and wife Nancy celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary Saturday.  What a great day!  It was at their church in Avon; a recommitment ceremony with a reception following.  They both looked so good!  On display were lots of family pictures by decade.  Nancy's wedding dress was on a mannequin.  We saw lots of family and some old acquaintances, too.  Just an all-around good time.

Wendell and I had gone to Portland the day before to the antique engine and tractor show there.  I have NEVER seen so many Case tractors together in one place in my life.  Wendell was in hog heaven!  LOL!  Case was the feature tractor and we took picture after picture of Old Abe's best.  It was a very hot day and I'm afraid I cause our day to be cut short by an hour or so.  I found a bench and urged him to go back and look some more but he wouldn't ...

It was sort of an uneven trip on the highways.  On our way into Portland, right by the Jay County High School, we witnessed an auto accident.  A woman stopped with her signals on as if to turn left into the school but instead turned right and hit a car that was passing her in a right-hand passing lane.  Scary and upsetting.  Not a serious thing but unsettling.  We stayed in Muncie overnight and then went on to the 50th celebration the next day.  On the north side of Indy on I-465 a truck ahead of us kicked up a huge hunk of semi truck tire tread and it hit my little PT right in the front right corner.  Luckily it only put a black mark on the underside of the front bumper.  We were holding our breath there for a while, waiting for something to fall off.  LOL!

Here's a quilted wall hanging I finished last week. Thought I'd share a picture of it with you.  I am still on a mission to finish as many of my UFOs as I have an interest in finishing.  Got another queen size quilt top ready to go to the quilters right now ...

This was a class project at Runaway Quilters Retreat a couple years ago.  Jane S. and I both took this class.  Runaway will be here again before we know it!
Today we went to church, then after lunch we took a little drive to the Big Peach and got probably our last peaches of the summer.  My they are good looking!  I can hardly wait to have one on my cereal in the a.m.  When we got home I went to the loom in the basement and just started weaving!  It felt good.  Hadn't really done that since Wendell moved it over here.  I had tied the warp on again and wove in the filler and header, but not the actual body of the first rug.  And it is going to look good!  I'm using a chunky yarn.  Definitely different than using cotton fabric like the first five I made!  Aunt Glenna promised me at Don's party that she has some old curtains to give me to weave with.  Yeah!

It is different here without a TV.  I have gotten lots of crocheting, cleaning, reading, Bible studying, writing, geneology, and other more important stuff done (than TV).  We got online to watch Master Chef the other night and were so annoyed at what happened that now we REALLY don't care if we ever get another TV or not.  But we probably will eventually ......

Have a blessed week y'all.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Electrifying time at the Foster homestead ...

We had a great trip to Grand Rapids to spend time with the kids and granddaughter.  Here's a pix of her with her favorite chick at Boulder Ridge Park, where we spent most of Wednesday.  At their house Veronica and I did all sorts of crafts together and Grandpa did a lot of snoozing on the couch.  It was a good time for sure.


After we arrived home Thursday evening almost immediately a storm came up.  What else is new?  It can't just rain here, it has to storm!  LOL!  We were sitting there, watching the tornado and severe storm warnings on TV, when a lightning strike hit VERY nearby and zap ... there went our TV and VCR.  Great ... just what we need.  I don't think we'll hurry to replace them.  There's nothing I've missed so far on TV anyway (but I will miss reruns of The Big Bang Theory ...).  Wendell thinks it will be fun to take them both apart, just to see what's inside.  

Friday we went to Bloomington and got my PT out of the "hospital" ... aka Town & Country Chrysler.  They put new control arms on it, fixed the AC and changed the oil.  It is like a new car!  Yeah!  We will just drive it till the wheels come off THEN get a new car.  Who wants a car payment right now, anyway?  Not me ...  plus I don't know what I'd get to replace it with ...

A new week is just over the horizon.  I think I'll probably be busy with tomatoes.  Here's a sample ...
Besides canning I've also been turning these into ...
my own fresh salsa!  Yum!

Have a wonderful week yourself!

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

De-cluttering ...

This a.m. I am back on the job of de-cluttering my house.  Getting "stuff" together for the garage sale Labor Day weekend (Sat.) in Worthington.  I haven't done this since we had a driveway sale before we moved to the country.  As you can see from this picture, it's about time ...

Some of the "stuff" from below the guest bath vanity.  ARGH!  And more has been carried out to the laundry room (which needs to be de-cluttered as well).  Sigh ...  On the plus side, I am cleaning the cabinets at the same time! 

Here's a picture of an old bathroom set including wastebasket, 2-pc soap dish, tissue holder, toothbrush holder & glass.  It is so ugly it's beautiful.  Do you want it???  Let me know and I'll give it so YOU ... if not it goes in the yard sale.  But I have to be able to HAND it to you.  LOL!

This is a pretty accurate color depiction, too.  And it's in perfect condition.
Last night was hooking at the library in Worthington.  It was an excellent group; kindred spirits I think.  Margo was binding; Teresa was trying to finish her small shaded practice piece; Jane, Jan and Becky were working on their current projects; I started something new.  It was a good night.

Wendell went to the WRVAA meeting last night (for the Elnora steam show).  He usually works in the sorghum shack but the iffy news on that front is that they don't know if they will be able to locate any cane this year for squeezing!  Yes, the crops have been just that bad.  There is a guy in Orange County that they are going to try ...  That would be sad if they can't do that demonstration.  But it might give Wendell the opportunity to actually "see" the show.  Hopefully, I'll be working the show in the weaving cabin, sitting on the porch, hooking.  Peggy, Beth and Sara work there and I offered my services last year and they seemed enthusiastic.  (The Washington rug hooking guild is no longer interested in demonstrating rug hooking anywhere, so I'm on my own.)  They spin in the cabin as well as weave.  There's a big, what I call, barn loom in the cabin.  I can weave now but I don't know about that loom.  I "think" it has thread heddles!  We'll see.  But I will be hooking somewhere at the show ...  Even if I have to sit under a tree and do it!

Today I'll try to finish cleaning that guest bathroom and maybe knock out the laundry room as well.  At least when I get to the master bath there is no "stuff" stored there.  LOL!  Have a blessed week.

Friday, August 3, 2012

End of a good week ...

Today I'll be getting ready for the Lee family reunion.  It will be great to get together with all of the cousins, aunts, uncles and extended family.  We'll also celebrate Mom's 94th birthday.  The Lee farm has been in the family for more than 100 years and it is a special place to be.  I have so many wonderful memories of staying with Grandma and Grandpa Lee there when I was a child.  I can remember just how things were then.  Of course it is different now but it is sort of like holy ground for me.  So even though I will complain about the heat and the no-see-ums, I will down deep be enjoying myself and those creature discomforts will not be as annoying as if, say, I was out working in the yard (ugh!).  

Today I helped Wendell get a new gasket on the bottom of our garage door.  It needed it.  What a job!  Of course it is never simple doing anything around here, and I ended up cleaning the inside of the garage door!  How did that happen!?!?  When I was done with that job, I just stayed down there and tied the warp on the loom for the final run of rugs with that off-white warp.  (Wendell moved my loom to the house a couple weeks ago ... YEAH!)  There is not a lot of warp left on there but I'm curious to see how this next yarn I'm going to use will look as a rug.  It is a big chunky yarn I bought, thinking I would crochet an afghan for myself but I began and could see it would be WAY too heavy.  So it will be a red, white and green rug instead.  After that I want to do another colorful rug for Errin Logsdon, who lost the first rug I gave her.  (Errin gave me the loom.)  The Logsdon home, in Freedom, was destroyed by fire last week.  They lost virtually everything.  Our home extension club has already collected recipe books for her and I donated three books to that cause, but I think another woven rug is in order, too.  Tomorrow and last week our church is collecting $$$ for the family.  That is one thing that is a "positive" about living in a small community.  The caring for each other.  The negative is everyone knows your business (or thinks they do ...).

This week we had a strong storm through come here.  Luckily Wendell and I were in Terre Haute at a Rex baseball game and missed it.  Thank God.  I would have been beside myself.  For some reason the wind scares me so.  Our neighbor, Frank Cecil, lost his carport, front porch and some of the NW corner of his little rental house down the road from us.  Debris is scattered in the fields and along the roadside for a pretty good distance east from his house.  Our neighbors, the Bewley's, lost several trees.  They just snapped off about half way.  Another neighbor, with just a garage, gazebo and bathhouse on his property, has a tree on the top of the garage.  We had a little damage in the woods, but just trees that were already weak.  We "did" have a pick-up-sticks day here on Wednesday though ...  I was way tired the next day!  And actually there is more out there to pick up, but that will have to be next week.  The leaves were just plastered to the west side of our house.  And lots of them looked like they had been shredded.  On the negative side -- it was mostly wind and no rain.  We desperately need rain, being an area of extreme drought, and it appears it just blew, hailed and rained just a little.  We pray for rain daily at our house.

Have a blessed weekend.