Quilt For a Little Rascal

Thanks to Toad's choice of a name for his soon to arrive baby brother (which their parents are not putting on the birth certificate, giving the little one a more normal name for real life), my third grandchild all ready has his official alias on my blog.  He shall be known as Rascal.

I knew, long before I knew his name (IRL or blog-wise), long before we had heard if the baby was a he or a she, that I would be making it a quilt.  Not only a quilt, but one in the Redneck Baby style I had inadvertently established back in 2012 when making one for K3, my first grandchild.  When Toad came along in 2014, I made him a similar quilt of simple 6" squares.  So of course I would use that same design scheme for Rascal, their little brother.

In each quilt, I have used one same fabric, the cream colored one I call the "Jesus fish" fabric.  Each quilt also has John Deere tractors, although not the same fabric or even the same color.  And each one has an 'outdoors' aspect fabric, be it deer, or camouflage, or other wild animals.  Toad and Rascal's quilts also share a fabric with soccer balls, as soccer was their Dad's main sport growing up (and he still prefers to watch soccer over watching football).

Rascal's fabrics

Although they all share the same layout, and some of the same fabrics, each quilt is individual, just as each baby is unique.  Kind of like how siblings share genes, yet those genes are in different combinations.

Rascal's quilt has been finished, and now gifted, so it is okay to share it (and show it off) here.  I put on a skinny border with the John Deere green fabric, then a wider border in the outdoorsy fabric, and did a simple stitch in the ditch for quilting.

simple light blue backing showing the quilting pattern

Skies of Blue

We've had some gorgeous weather lately.  Not necessarily warm (although it hit 60 last weekend!), but lots of clear blue skies.  Which kind of tends to make me take impulsive pictures just to record the awesome depth of color.  Blue sky is just so cheerful; it's invigorating yet relaxing at the same time.

this little place here

gathering sap

Toad running toward the sound of spring peepers

blue, reflected

birch against blue

even blue in late evening

embers fly into an even deeper blue

Beauty in Damage

By and large, most of the wood we heat with at this little place here is long dead.  Very rarely do we have a tree that was cut down live, then cut into firewood.  If we do, it's because DH is doing some trimming or tree removal for someone we know.  At home, we just cut up the trees that have died and fallen over.  Because the emerald ash borer went through the area right around the time we were buying our property and building our house, most of our dead wood is ash. Someday we will probably run out of dead ash to burn, but after 11 heating seasons, there are still plenty of dead ash standing in the woods. 

Because I'm tuned that way, I tend to notice things that most people overlook.  Which is why, when I'm out helping DH with firewood, or am stoking the wood boiler myself, I get distracted and have to dig my phone out of my pocket to take pictures such as the ones to follow.

Pictures of insect damage that is revealed when the bark falls away from a piece of long dead wood.  The insects themselves were a negative, yet the trails they left behind I find somewhat beautiful.  Some look like patterns, some like fingerprints, and some even remind me of the petroglyphs we saw out west on vacation several years ago.

To Find Order, First You Must Make a Mess

At least, that's how it seems to go for me. Whenever I'm doing a deep clean, or reorganization, or just plain trying to get things back into the system that works for me (versus reacting to everyone else or everyone else cramming their stuff willy nilly into my system. . .) things get messy before they get clean.

DH has been working long hours again lately, including days away traveling. So, I took that opportunity to trash our living room.

Well, destroying the living room wasn't really the intent, but it was a side effect of the project.  What I really was focused on was cleaning out the closet in the 'sewing room' aka my sons' old bedroom aka the bedroom Toad sleeps in when the grandkids are here overnight.  Through the last several years that room and closet have become increasingly crammed with stuff.  Most of it intended for sewing or knitting or quilting, but yet, it was a jumbled chaotic mess.

First, I pulled out all the bags and boxes and piles of old jeans (worn out at the knees, or in the thighs, or with broken zippers) that my grown children have graciously bestowed on me in the last handful of years.  They knew that no longer wearable jeans are the base material for denim quilts, and that I'd also mentioned maybe trying my hand at throw rugs made from jeans, so of course they would gift me with this resource rather than tossing them in the trash.

Except that with the exception of the quilt I made DD1 & Honorary Son for Christmas, I hadn't made a jean quilt since 2008.  For the Christmas quilt, I used part of a bin of old jeans that have been around that long.  Ones I'd already cut the unusable parts off of.  So the 'new' old jeans that have come in since 2014--when I cut up the other batch and put them in the bin-- ended up in a hodge podge of piles, cartons, etc. Where ever they could be stuffed at the time that the sewing room/bedroom needed to be usable for an overnight guest.

What I ended up with, once I'd rooted around and found every last pair of jeans, was a pile more than knee deep on my living room floor.

whole lotta jeans

 A pile that I commenced to reducing by cutting off the unusable parts, and setting aside the legs, which are what I sew with.  That tallied two 13-gallon size trash bags of scrap to throw away, and an entire 18-gallon tote of denim for future quilts or rugs.

trash

denim fabric

Once that task was done, I moved on to my stash of fabric.  Again, I rooted through the closet (and piles here and there about the house) until I found every last piece of fabric.  All of it went to the living room where it was sorted by type: cotton for quilting/sewing, canvas/duck, flannel, corduroy, fleece, etc; and by color.  I have so much fabric!!  Way too much fabric.  But, that's what happens when things become a disorganized mess and you don't know what you have.  Plus, well, I have grandkids and cute fabric is cute fabric and I can't resist buying fat quarters and entire yards with the intention of making it into something the grandkids will love.

It's a good thing I did this while DH was out of town, because I had fabric everywhere while I sorted it.  The living room really wasn't usable for sitting or watching TV for a couple of days.

DH definitely could not have sat in his chair

or on the loveseat

or the couch (except for note "my" spot is clean, so I can knit, LOL!)

Even the ironing board got brought down to the living room temporarily.

While the sewing room and closet aren't totally done yet, all the major stuff in them (jeans, fabric, and old stained & outgrown knit shirts--for future rag rugs), have been sorted through and organized by kind.  It's a good start on reclaiming use of my sewing room.  Although, honestly, I've been thinking for over a year now that maybe I should move my sewing space into the basement (maybe once DD1 has moved all her belongings and household goods from it to her own house) and set up the sewing room with bunk-beds, toy box and bookshelves and turn it into a grandkids visiting space.

Tapped

On March 8th, the temperature rose above freezing.  Not uncommon this winter of wide temperature swings.  However, the long term forecast (ie. two weeks) showed not one day of below freezing high temperatures.  Many days in the 40's. A few above fifty degrees,even.  And to top it off, the frost laws went on--I know this because the seasonal sign at the end of my road appeared the day before between the time I went to work in the morning, and the time I came back home at lunch time.

You know what that means!  No?  You don't?  It means that it's time to tap the maple trees!!

Since I still have the vast majority of the three gallons of syrup I made last year, I decided to only tap six trees this year.  I could probably skip syrup making entirely, but you never know what the run will be from one year to the next.  If next year is awful weather-wise, and I don't tap at all, I don't want to run out of maple syrup.  So, I'm tapping this year and making syrup, just in case.  An insurance policy, if you will.

Last year, I found and purchased (for cheaply) a bunch of food-grade 5 gallon buckets with lids to store my sap in between when I collected it from the tree, and when I boiled it down a day or two or three later.  This year I decided to upgrade my collection system: instead of using rinsed out milk jugs to collect the sap, I invested in some plastic taps, tubing to fit those taps, and drilled holes in the lids of six buckets to fit the tubing.

This upgraded system will hopefully keep the trips to the woods during the mushy muddy Spring thaw to a minimum, as I won't have to run out there twice a day on good weather days to empty my full jugs, (or at all on days where the sap doesn't run as hard).  Plus, with the buckets pretty much sealed (as the holes in the lids are just barely big enough to run the tubing through), there should be a lot fewer bugs to have to strain out of the sap before boiling.  When the bucket is full, I can swap it out for an empty one, sticking a hole-less lid on the filled bucket before hauling it back to the house.  Or, I can even leave the full buckets out in the woods for a day or two if I can't drive the tractor or four-wheeler 

Last weekend, I tapped six trees, none of which had been tapped last year or the year before (I like to give my trees a rest since I'm doing syrup on such a small scale).  So far, one tree has run pretty well, the others so-so. Those six trees gave me roughly 13 gallons of sap by Thursday afternoon. Then the weather took an unpredicted dive, becoming windy with snow and daytime highs only in the low to mid 30's.  The kind of weather that sap doesn't run well in.  *sigh*

So, Friday after work, I began boiling my first run of sap.  I finished it off on Saturday, getting some beautiful golden syrup with fantastic flavor. I think it might even be Grade A.  The pictures below were taken right after ladling it into jars, so it's still boiling hot and cloudy looking.  It cleared as it cooled to room temperature.

For my first run of 13 gallons, I yielded 2 1/2 pints, plus about another 3/4 cup that went into a dish in the fridge to be used for ice cream topping.  Just need to pick up some vanilla ice cream next time I'm in town.  ;0)

Quick Sewing Project

A few years ago, while on a layover in some airport somewhere (Atlanta?  Detroit Metro?  Minneapolis?), DH commented that he'd like "one of those pillows" as he pointed into an airport shop we were walking past.  I glanced really quick in the direction he was pointing, but pretty much forgot about it once we were to our gate.

January 2018, when we again were traveling by plane together, he pointed out the U-shaped pillows again as someone walked past us with one attached to their suitcase handle.  "Get me dimensions, and I can make one," I told him.

Time passed.  I didn't give it another thought.  Apparently, neither did DH.  Scratch that.  He thought about those little travel pillows every time he flew, whether he saw them in airport shops, or in possession of other travelers, or just because he fell asleep in his seat and woke up with a crink in his neck.  But he didn't bother to get close enough to one to gauge how wide and long and thick it might be, so that he could relay that info to me and I could turn it into a sewing pattern.

When he got back from yet another work trip via airplane a few weeks ago, I decided that he was never going to actually do anything (other than complain about not having one) to facilitate the manufacture and acquisition of one of those pillows.  So, I did a little googling, a little printing, some purveying of my fabric stash (which turned up nothing suitably manly for DH to use in a professional capacity), and then some shopping.

Normally I'm not big on shopping.  Fabric shopping, however, is another story.  This shopping was fun; it was a good excuse to go to a quilt shop about a half-hour from this little place here that I haven't been to in a few years.  A quaint, cute, shop with high quality fabrics in a vast array of colors, patterns, and age range.  It was a nice excursion that netted not only fabric for a travel pillow for DH, but also one for DS2--who also flies frequently for his job and has a March birthday.  I also came home with 11 assorted fat quarters of fabric for random future projects.  Because the fat quarters were buy 10 get 1 free, so. . .

And, they happened to throw in a full-sized Hershey bar with my purchase!  Bonus!  Perhaps I should frequent this shop more regularly.

Once my new fabric was washed, dried and ironed, I set to work making travel pillows for both DS2 and DH.  They were super easy to make. (Even though I picked the seam out of the first one twice because I forgot which side of the fabric to attach the strap to that I wanted to add to each of them so they can be fasted to a suitcase and not get lost in transit or dashes from one terminal to another at airports.) 

This is the tutorial and pattern I followed, with the exception of adding that strap (the pattern does not include one).  The strap is easy to make though: cut a 2" x 8" strip of fabric.  Fold in half the long way and sew right sides together with a 1/4" seam allowance.  Turn right side out, fold one end in about 1/4" and then iron flat.  Sew shut the turned under short end.  Attach to the center top of your pillow, with the strap sandwiched between the right sides of the fabric and the raw edge even with the top of the pillow.  Then just sew it down when sewing the pillow front and back together. When you turn your pillow right side out, the strap should now be on the outside and sticking out of the seam at the top of the pillow.  I sewed the female part of a large snap about 1/2" from the pillow end of the strap and the male part of the snap about 1/2" from the finished (turned under and sewn) end of the strap so that when the pieces of the snap are connected, the strap forms a flat loop (make sure to sew the male part on the same side as the female so there will not be a twist in the strap).

I'm pretty happy with the resulting pillows.  Hopefully their owners will find them comfortable on their next trips via airplane.

DS2's professional, manly fabric

DH's professional, manly fabric

 (it nearly matches his luggage)

DH's, showing the strap for attaching to his carry-on

Big Tree Goes Down

The really big dead tree that DH and I had wanted to take out of our north fence line (originally talked about in this post) has finally been cut down!  DH got his chainsaw running smoothly, put a freshly sharpened chain on the bar, and we set out to cut down the big sore thumb between our field and the neighboring farmer's field.

The felling took a while.  The tree is so old that it had grown around (and enveloped) the old field fencing that runs between our field and the next.  This happened sometime prior to us buying the property in early 2002, and wasn't really a problem while the tree was living.  Now dead and needing removal, though, that wire hidden inside the wood was a matter of concern.  DH definitely did not want to hit metal with his chainsaw.  That's always bad news.

So, before he could start cutting, we had to find the remains of that old farm fence (long fallen down in most places), follow it to the tree, and try to estimate at what height in the tree the wire might reside.  Then translate to heights on DH's body on both the side to which we wanted the tree to fall (where he would make the notch that would guide the tree to fall in the desired direction) and on the side where he would cut straight and level to the center of the tree. Because of being in the fence row, there was nearly a foot of difference in height--on DH--from one side to the other.

figuring the height

making the notch

tree down

That tree had been dead at the top for so long that the upper branches were brittle and pretty much exploded when it hit the ground.  While DH cut the good wood into firewood sized pieces, I used the tractor bucket to scrape the debris out of the (still frozen) hay field.  Other than moldy hay, the other thing I really hate is hay with sticks in it!  Good horse hay, and a good hay farmer, makes bales that are both mold- and stick-free!

Now that the tree is gone, it seems like there is a huge gap in the fence line.  I can see all of the neighbor's house and outbuildings across the road a half-mile away.  When the tree was standing, you could sometimes see a little red of the edge of the barn on one side of the tree, and a little bit of the house on the other.  Now I can count four entire buildings, LOL.

Oh well.  Better to have taken down that standing dead wood on our terms (in the winter when it won't damage the hay field) and use it to heat our house than to leave it rotting away until some storm blows through and knocks it over to crush either my hay or the neighbor's corn.

Late Winter Day

On a not-terribly-cold (below freezing, but only by ten degrees or less) late winter Saturday, we had an impromptu family dinner.  It started as DD1 & Honorary Son coming down to stay with us before going to the wedding of one of DD1's high school friends on Sunday afternoon. From their arrival, it rolled into them seeing if K3 and Toad could come over to play for most of Saturday.  Then DS2 and Surprise drove over (to pick up some important mail of DS2's that was here) and DH decided we should cook out for dinner since a large majority of the family was present and the weather was decent for Michigan in late winter.

Way before dinner time, though, there was some work to be done.  DH and I had wood from those dead trees we'd felled a weekend or two prior that we had to pick up out of the field before warmer weather hit and the field began to thaw.  Toad decided that he wanted to help us with that.  Mainly because it would include riding out to the fence line on the tractor with his Papa.

He was a big help, though, picking up firewood and tossing it onto the wood hauler trailer just like DH and I.

Once the trailer was filled, of course Toad go to ride on top of the wood stack all the way back to the house.

We had left eight or nine of the larger chunks of wood out in the field.  Because, you see, we would need seats to sit on while cooking and eating our dinner that evening.  We were grilling out!  Using up some of the brush piles that had resulted from limbing those dead trees in the fire wood cutting process, DH's plan was to cook hot dogs over a real wood fire, the first 'grilled' dinner of 2019.

While they waited for the fire to burn down enough to cook over the coals, K3 and Toad set out to track some animals.  They followed deer tracks hither and yon through the field.

They came running back when it was time to cook the hot dogs.

After K3 and Toad went home, just before their bedtime, DD1 & Honorary Son went back in the house, but DS2, Surprise, DH and I stayed out for a while longer, sitting on our wooden 'chairs' enjoying the warmth of the fire and listening to coyotes calling less than a mile away.  It's mating season around here, so the coyotes have been more vocal lately.  I yipped back, seeing if I could get a response, and a few times I was successful.  Surprise tried it too, and we tried to get DD1 (who is excellent at calling coyotes) to come back outside but she was all ready comfy on the couch.

All in all, it was a good way to spend a day (and night!)

Yarn Along: March

I am joining Ginny today for the monthly Yarn Along.

In the past month, I've done quite a bit of knitting.  I started two projects: a pair of Cadence socks with the yarn my Mom sent home with me in early February, and a Beachcomber shawl destined to become a birthday present for Surprise next month.

My intent was to work on them simultaneously; on the socks because I'd gotten the urge to make socks while finishing the Kempii shawlette I talked about in February's yarn along post, and on the Beachcomber shawl when I was in need of something with larger needles. No hurry on either one as long as the shawl was finished in April.

What I found was that once I'd started the shawl, it was quite addictive with it's color changes, stripes, and lace panels and I pretty much worked on that alone until it was finished in less than two weeks.  It is still in need of blocking, but looks pretty good even without it.

I really loved the ease of this pattern, and just the whole look of the shawl.  It's big, asymmetrical, and being knit in a cotton/linen blend, is lightweight for the size.  I envision making at least one more of these--DD1 saw it in the works and loved it--and have a new color combo in mind for one for myself (someday).

Once that was off my needles, I turned back to my barely started sock for Mom.  I had made these socks before, for myself, and once I got into the charted part of the pattern, I remembered that these, too, are addictive knitting.  The charts are easy to follow and knit up pretty quickly.  So quickly that I'm nearly done with the first sock.

Kind of funny that when I made them the first time, in 2016, I talked about how I'd probably make this pattern again in the future.  You see, when I went to give my Mom her fingerless gloves for her birthday, I happened to be wearing my Cadence socks.  And when she gave me this current skein of yarn and requested that I make her a pair of socks 'when I had time', I asked if she had a particular pattern in mind.  She replied: "I like the ones you have on.  Could you make a pair like those?" So, I guess it's fate that I am making Cadence socks now.

In addition to a lot of knitting, I apparently did a lot of reading this past month too.  In the photo above, you can see the book I am currently reading: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver.  I have read some of her books before, and enjoyed them, but because of the topics and tone (so real) I have to be in the right frame of mind to read her works.   This one is really good so far, and yet personally touching me in a way that makes me hope I can continue the book all the way through; I might have to set it aside for a while.

The books I read and finished since the last yarn along are:

1. The Girl on the Dancing Horse  about Olympian Charlotte Dujardin.  It was interesting, yet not quite what I had thought it would be.
2. How to Walk Away by Katharine Center.  This book I could not put down!  I literally stayed up until 1:30 in the morning to finish it--and I am not a night owl.  I will definitely be looking for more books by this author.
3. Naughty on Ice by Maia Chance.  Another Prohibition Era murder mystery by the author I discovered last fall.  Her books are funny and intriguing.
4. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. She is another author that I greatly enjoy.  The depth of her stories is amazing.  I cannot imagine the hours of research she must put into her fiction-yet-almost-nonfiction story lines.

I've also thumbed through, but not yet read, the latest issue of Taproot, Issue 31: REVIVE.  In it, I found the perfect pattern for a needed item I'd recently told DH I wanted to make: little knit coasters for under the metal feet of his recliner.  I'd crocheted some (kind of ugly and very free hand thought up with no pattern) years ago for under the legs of our couch, but did not make any after purchasing his chair.  It had occurred to me, a few weeks ago, that those little coasters not only keep the couch legs from scratching the wooden floor, they also make it really easy for me to slide the couch out and back when I want to clean/mop underneath it.  Something I cannot do alone: move DH's big heavy recliner to clean underneath it.

Wouldn't you know that this newest issue of Taproot has a pattern for knit hexagons (which are knit in the round, then blocked into hexagonal shape) to make afghans, hot pads, throws, etc out of.  At approximately 6" in diameter, and left as circles, they are the perfect size and thickness for furniture coasters.  Yesterday, I made three, and today I am working on the fourth.  Then I'm going to get DH to tip up his chair so I can put them under the feet, and forever more I shall be able to slide that chair around to clean the floor underneath!