Random Thoughts on How Life Goes on While Under Stay Home Orders

Mug rug I made.  It was a charity design to benefit
fire fighters in Australia last winter.  Applies all over the world now!

I've been having random thoughts while showering, watching updates and specials on the Covid-19 virus on TV, listening to Classic Upbeat, Classic Country, 60's-90's music on my Echo.  As a matter of fact, Alexa and I have been having all kinds of conversations!  And, by the way, Audible, Chirp and the free books on Amazon have been very popular at my house too. Hallmark Movies and Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and YouTube have all been my friends as well.  I have taken several sewing and embroidery classes online which has been quite intersting.  

6 more face masks finished!

Now my blog has been taking up some time and, oh yes, I've made multiple face masks for friends and family!  I do try to go for a walk around town each day that the wind is not blowing hard (which isn't real often, HA!).  

Filter fun while visiting on
Messenger

My immediate family has formed a group on Messenger and we try to get together each day to update each other and just joke around.  The filters on there are very popular as we are trying to have serious conversations.  All of kids are working from home mostly.  Marianne works from a tiny, one person office she walks a block to each day.  Danny has the Bowling Alley he needs to go to but he can do a lot from his office at home.  Carla and JJ are teaching preschoolers and kindergarteners online (quite a challenge for them as well as the parents) and Carla is trying online speech therapy for children which seems to be working quite successfully.  Just trying to set up a home schooling office at home has been very challenging for the teachers I have talked to!  I have been a guinea pig for Carla and, of course, my very outdated computer had troubles with Zoom!

Carla lives in Casper Wyoming where they have only suggested staying at home and have had no deaths from the virus yet in their city.  She says that the 8PM "Howling and Cheering" for all the emergency responders is very popular up there.  They go outside and everybody howls and cheers including all the neighborhood dogs. It is very cathartic and hopefully appreciated by everyone! Down  here around the trailer park I haven't heard a peep.  I wonder if anyone around town is doing it.....

I am amazed at what is being done for all us people who are at risk in this community.  As far as I know there are no confirmed cases of the virus and the medical center has not had anyone call or come in with symptoms.  Of course we would love to keep it that way!  People have suggested putting up barricades on the highways that go through town but that is totally unrealistic.  Trucks hauling supplies pass through town all the time and emergency vehicles and essentials must still be able to come and go!  It would be nice to think we will be untouched by the virus but I'm very happy that most people up here are abiding by the suggestions and orders the state has put in place for social distancing. I do worry about our safety once the stay home restrictions are lifted and tourists will be coming up to North Park.  Since no one has had the virus and we don't have a hospital, will we be vulnerable?  I think so. One other thought.  We live at 8500ft. elevation.  We have less oxygen up here and that is one of the problems people have with the virus.  They are having to life flight anyone who is sick with the virus to lower altitudes right now from other mountain communities. 

A doggy purse for Linus!

It has been very hard on the eating establishments up here.  They have a tough time keeping their heads above water in regular times.  Our family is very grateful to all the people who have supported the Bowling Alley by ordering take out during this time. I know teachers are working hard and probably stressing over their classes.  I have nothing but admiration for them.  I'm sure parents are having their problems "home schooling" their kids as well.  Good times for all!  Hehehe!

This brings me to what I appreciate about what is being done for seniors and others at risk in our community. Once a month the Food Bank of the Rockies sends a semi-load of food up to Walden for  anyone who is in need plus Seniors and pretty much anyone else as they bring enough food for all, and they don't want to take any back.  We all gather up at the Wattenburg Center and the food is set up like a cafeteria and people bring boxes, bags, carts or anything to hold the cans, bags, boxes, fresh produce, etc.  There is almost always milk, juice, cereal, frozen meat of some sort, dry foods like rice, beans, pasta and breads of all kinds.  Everytime there are some surprise things like bags of pistachios, Christmas candy, a gallon of raspberry vinegar salad dressing, a gallon of whole dill pickles, cases of yogurt, eggs, etc.  They have people there to help you carry all your food to your car.  It is very interesting and appreciated! Well, they have figured out how this will all work now that we cannot gather up there to get our food.  Volunteers will fill boxes for all and then we will drive up there and line up in our cars.  The volunteers will carry the boxes to our cars and put them in our trunk!  Problem solved!  I'll miss visiting while we used to wait in line inside the building but that's the way it is now!  

  A couple of the projects I had to make for the
 sewing class I'm taking online.  This is a trivet
or mouse pad made out of clothesline rope!

This is an i-pad holder that has prairie
points and a "Shrinky Dink" flower
for decoration

Another service the Senior Center is doing is paying a different eating place in town each week on Friday to prepare meals for any senior who signs up and someone will deliver it to our doors.  This will help the restaurants and the stay home people who are at risk!  I guess they are doing a similar thing and delivering school lunches Monday-Thursday!  How cool it is to live in a small isolated community!

More fun filters!

Well, those are a few of my random thoughts.  I have lots more!  Some are very radical, but that is for another time! 
  

JJ's Quilt is Finally Done!

JJ enjoys her new quilt!

 When I got to JJ's house with my fixed sewing/embroidery machine, she was excited to get moving on the quilt that Erin and I had started, I think, seven years ago! It is a memory quilt with 27 different pictures of family and friends from years past!  Erin and I made the squres by doing iron on transfers of the pictures, which we had scanned onto the computer and then printed on special fabric transfer paper (like you do for T-shirts).  We had purchased all different kinds of M&M material showing M&Ms for all seasons.  We framed each picture with various M&M fabrics; and then it quit raining at the cabin so we put it all away and went on to outside activities.

I HAD to get the Harley patch on there somewhere.  Also that cute lovebug!

When Erin got ready to leave we sent all of the squares, extra fabric and backing material with her so she and her mom could get it finished.  Seven years later they still hadn't even gotten it out to look at it again, so it was time for me to get it finished!  I had to add a few more pictures since Micah had gotten married and had 3 girls since we started but it worked out well.

JJ's grand daughters were included.  This was last Easter!

The Woopdpecker picture and (much to her Dad's disgust and Jim and Carla's delight) Cowboy Joe from UW.

After two more trips to Twin Falls to repair the machine (out of time and then my disastrous Miss Fixit needle case breakage) and doing some creative thinking, I started putting it together.  We noticed some spots of rust from irons on some of the squares and I figured I could cover them with cute little embroideries of butterflies or flowers.  Well, they were so cute we decided to put little embroidery all over the quilt!  After that I had to figure out some kind of backing since we had used the original backing for stripping.  We finally thought we would be like the "old timers" and also be "green" so we used what we had of M&Ms material and leftover border fabric along with what was left of the backing to piece together a backing. 

The pieced backing.  Those are M&Ms.

It all worked out well and then it was time to quilt it.  I sewed around each picture, the inside and then the outside of each frame and the borders.  I bound it and made a label and it was done! 

The final touch

Woohoo!  JJ can use it as a coverlet for her bed or just for a cover while she is reading on the couch or watching TV, since Ozzie likes to keep the house quite chilly!

A very cool bed covering!

 I took a lot of pictures of individual squares that will bring back memories to most of our family so I have decided to make a little scrapbook of them on my next blog!

And there it is!

 

 

Going to the Winter Farmers Market in Scottsbluff.

Dan is selling beef and eggs in the Open A Bar 2 Ranch booth.

Last week Bob and I went down to Danny's (Dan the Man) farm in Nebraska.  We spent a couple days at Stock Show and then came back to the farm.  Stock Show Time Again  (click to see it.)   I wanted to go the their Farmer's Market to see what it was all about.

Some of Kathi's hand painted pillows at the summer Farmers Market.

  Kathi and Dan have been selling their chickens, eggs and beef as well as some of Kathi's art work at the summer Farmer's Market for some years but there never was anywhere to sell those things in the winter.  This past summer Kathi got together with some of the vendors and they all thought it was a great idea to try a winter Farmer's Market.  Of course no one was ready to ramrod the whole thing so Kathi took it on.

Vendors are making plans in October for a winter Farmers Market.

  A friend of one of the vendors worked at the Hampton Inn and got them a really good deal on renting several of the conference rooms 2 Saturdays a month.

Live music by the Green Valley Homesteaders.

Kathi got quite a few vendors lined up and a live band that entertains every time.

Old fashioned country music was fun to listen to all afternoon.

The band had some help from one of the vendor's daughter.

  They also try to do a different charity every time to collect items or money to give.  They have done face painting for the kids as well.  It is especially nice because it is indoors and goes from 1 PM to 4 PM.  No more getting up before the chickens do and freezing until the sun gets up high enough to shine over the buildings in downtown Scottsbluff!

"Summer" Farmers Market.  Notice the warm clothing.  This was in early October.

 Bob and I went into town Saturday afternoon and spent it at the Farmer's Market.  I got to see many of the friends I had made at the summer market and met some new people too.  Danny and Kathi had some new items to sell--beef jerky and beef sticks made with no sodium nitrate!  They sold like crazy along with the 26 dozen eggs they had brought and the ribeye steaks, English roasts, probably over 20 lbs. of hamburger, stew meat, soup bones and believe it or not the only tongue they brought.  Three other people asked for tongue that day--I was the one they asked so I know it's true!  They had a special on marinated round steaks that day too.  Anyway it was a very successful market day for them.  This is the fifth one they have had and they seem to be very popular.

The sign needs to be updated!  This was a picture from an earlier market.  Thanks Kathi!

Some of the booths that were there were a bread lady,

Oh!oh! the bread lady is almost sold out, again!

a gluten-free baked products booth, goat cheese and pork, goat milk soaps and bath oils, fresh vegetables (mostly root veggies since it is winter!)

That's a big leek!

  There were spicy meat rubs, honey, home baked items of all sorts, hand made items including tutus for little princesses

Sweet tutus and other accessories for the little princesses.

 ruffled aprons for little girls,

MMMMMMM!  Fresh baked cookies of all kinds and those cute ruffled aprons!

beautiful knit scarves, hand painted trivets and clothing and of course the live music which livened up the afternoon!

The kids love the music and you can see them dancing all around the room!

  My friend Christina who makes unique jams and jellies did not have a booth this week but went home and brought me back a jar of her delicious jelly!!!  What a great person she is!

Christina selling her jellies and jams at an earlier market.

We got home and I have been inspired to get creative again after seeing all the great things.  I am now making lace goody bags for the little girls for Valentines day!

This lacy bag is in the process of being embroidered.  It did get done before the crash but no more!

  Carla and I are planning a quilting day next Saturday to make a quilt to donate to the Alzheimer's Organization.  Now, hopefully, my machine will work properly with no down time!!!!  I also know that JJ and Tunita are making plans for my machine when we get to Elko.

PS:  I just jinxed the machine and believe it or not, it completely shut down and will have to go back to Twin Falls to be fixed!!!

My faulty machine still working on the lace but about to crash!

PPS:  for more information on the Scottsbluff Winter Farmers Market you can go to ScottsbluffWinter FarmersMarket

Embroidery Machine Woes and 2010 Craft Fair

2007 North Park craft fair held in the high school halls.

Two weeks have slipped by without a comment from me!  Where does time go anyway!  I have been so frustrated this fall with a malfunctioning embroidery machine!  On Thursday just as I was gearing up for the fall craft fair here and just hours after I had mailed my check for a booth, my machine mysteriously shut down and only made clicking sounds when I tried to restart it!


I called Larry up at Twin Falls Sewing Center, my guru for embroidery machines and the man who keeps my machine going.  He said it either overheated or the power board had gone out.  By Friday I knew it was the power board.  This was the third time since the first of September that I had to box up my machine and Fed Ex it up to Idaho!  You may wonder why I wouldn't just take it in to my local Bernina dealer--Larry even asked me why that wasn't an option. 

Well, here's the story on that.  First, my "local" dealer would be like in Ft. Collins or Loveland 120 miles away over Cameron Pass.  Second, I have tried both of those dealers plus a dealer in Casper WY while I was up at Carla's, and a huge repair shop for commercial machines near our hotel in Denver this summer.  All of these except the last one would not even look at my machine for at least two weeks (they had to send it out to a repairman somewhere else or were overwhelmed with machines) and then could not say when they could get it fixed!  The commercial place would have fixed it immediately but did not have parts for home machines and couldn't get them unless they were a dealer--which they weren't!  Third, Larry always has fixed my machine the day he gets it or the day the parts get there and shipped it back the same day.  If the parts are there he can get it back to me in about a week.  The cost of shipping it is less than driving down to the valley anymore and Larry gives me great discounts ( I gave him a lot of business when I was teaching in Elko County).

  Although it may sound like he doesn't do a good job (3 breakdowns in 2 months) it really isn't like that.  Each of the problems has been about something else and he has always gone over my machine carefully before sending it back because of my isolation.  I think my machine is getting old and I use the heck out of it, so it wears out parts pretty quickly.  You might think I just need to get a new machine but Berninas do last a lifetime and it is just some parts that need replacing from time to time.  Well, that is enough venting.  It's just that it always happens when I am on a deadline so I have to be resourceful and flexible.

More Christmas decorations from 2007.

 This time it happened a week before the craft fair and I had plans for some great Christmas ornaments and fall(Thanksgiving) decorations and table settings.  Well, maybe next year.  Back to the drawing board......  I have some really great stuff I haven't  sold yet so it will be there and of course my old mainstay, Meemo's Mountain Munch will be back along with our Christmas Cocoa Cones.  I did get some projects finished and they will be there too along with some of my newest project--embroidered soaps!

Still more items.  I have some of these things for this year too!  Obviously not the food items!!!!

Our decorated cocoa and scone cones that can hang on the tree or wall decoration.  I have fresh made cones for this year and of course new Meemo's Mountain Munch, too!

Close up of one of our decorated cones.

Embroidered soap!

Close up of the soap.

When the soap gets down to the embroidery you can use the design for applique, key chains, ornaments or whatever.

Some cute stockings to hold small gifts or cards that can hang on the tree.  I have a few for this year.