Hello
I hope all are doing well. I see more and more evidence of spring every day with daily changes in my garden as well as the trees see blooming on my walks.   It is wonderful to see the world filling in with green.

I spent a beautiful Sunday afternoon assembling stuff in the yard. My grandson gave me this windmill for Christmas. It moves beautifully in the light breezes now.

Then I moved on to this swing. That took three hours and really was a two man job. Eric came and helped at the end.   I need to seal it now.

There was one last challenge do for  the Textile Artists Stitching group this week. I will move on to it when I finish the folk art challenge from the week before. I have used this project as a chance to do some exploring with stitches and techniques I have not tried in along time. I am making progress even though it is slow.   Sense there is no dead line for this , I am enjoying the exploration.

I did finish my SAQA entry for the auction this week too. It is 12″ X 12″ and called Spring is Coming. I enjoy doing works for this great group and have done so for many years.
I will ship the last of my masks to the Navajo Nation this week too. They put out a call and I am glad to do this.

Progress Report: Big Pop This piece is 30″ w X 41″ t . We have been eating a lot of popcorn and I have always loved it so it seemed appropriate to make a bit of a tribute. The corns are appliqued on top of the curie cut  base unit.

I added paint to the kernels to add interest.

Blue Corn- Rework This piece is 40 “ X 32″ and is a rework of a older piece. I changed the orientation to horizontal and appliqued the corns on top. It was an okay piece before but this helps I think.

This is a shot of it before additions were made.

Ethel always said I made beautiful backgrounds. So when I was painting kernels for the first piece I just did additional ones in a smaller fashion for this piece. It was enjoyable and now the piece is out of the dark and will go somewhere I hope.

Queen Anne’s Lace Tiles This work is my attempt to try a project from a Quilting Arts Magazine article by Julie Hirota in the Oct/ Nov 2007 issue. I have only really applied the tiling and the attachment technique she suggested. The grommets attachments  are  a slow and some what frustrating process. It takes me about 15 min. to do each tile. I will finish it but doubt I will use this technique again. As my Dad always said” It is just as valuable to know what you don’t want to do as to know what you do want.” It’s part of learning.

Mayan Project I did do my first drawing for this project and then I enlarged it. It is early in the process. But I am looking forward to moving on it.   I hope there will be six panels when it is complete.

Thread Painting I decided to do some more birds for my next project  thread project. The Red-winged Black Birds will be a warm up  of sorts. The true challenge will be the Heroin as it is so large  with very little color change.   They are drawn on wash-away  and ready to go into the hoop now.

Drawing I did a lot of sketching this week but not a lot of the drawing.

Scarp Happy I am done assembling the top and I am working on the boarders now. I have two  borders on all four sides.    I plan to add  one more before I add  the binding.   The work also needs some additional quilting.

Childhood Memories- Grandfather Howard stories

Not only did Grandfather Howard collect coins and rocks he had lots of other interests. He sold Hudson’s and ran a SUPER 8 S station, The cars were mostly used ones. He was always quick to laugh and play jokes. He told this  story about how he fooled one of his dealership friends.   It seemed he took the engine out of one of his cars, then hauled it to Muskatine.    At the top of the hill they disconnected the tow rope and giving the car a starting push rolled down the hill where Grandfather skillfully “drove “ into the dealership. He got out and his friend came out and walked around the car looking in the windows and such. They went in to the office and completed the deal. When they came out the car was still setting out front even thought the dealer had told his mechanic to pull it into the bay.    Only when the mechanic laughing said he couldn’t did the joke get revealed.
Grandfather ran a Essix Super 6 gas station in town during the depression. He discovered that someone was stealing gas at night as he noticed unexplained shortages. So one night at closing time he put some rice in the nozzle of the pump. A few days later a man came to him with an ailing car.    Knowing what to look for, Grandfather quickly had his thief.     He took many things in trade for gas at that time. One of the best things he said was family photo albums as folks usually came back when they had the money to retrieve them. Years later when I helped Grandmother Ruth clean out the flour house one summer, we still found lots of those albums and I still have one of the more interesting ones full of strange faces and tintypes.   In the basement was a little green safe on wheels that we often played with as kids. We would wheel it about and try for hours to “crack” it. We were sure it was full of valuable stuff. The year I was a senior, at Christmas time,   when the family was gathered in the basement and enjoying the fire place – Someone asked Grandfather to open that safe. He did and I wish he had not. It was full of IOU’s mostly of folks who were long dead he said as he tossed then into the burring fire. Grand father closed the station in town as the new highway passed west of the main street. He built a new station, a Phillips 66 and diner there. Mom told stories about making pies at night to sell the following day at the diner. She was also a waitress  there and said she hated that job. Twice a year the a gypsy family would migrate through. The dilapidated vehicle would pull into the station, then folks would pour out, scattering in all directions. The leader would stand respectfully next to the pump and talk with Grandfather as he put in the gas. When the car was serviced the leader would shrilly whistle and all folks who had not returned before pilled into the car and off they went. Then Mom, Grandmother Ruth and Grandpa would see if they could discover what was missing- be it a wrench or a bottle or two of soda pop. Grandfather would laugh and say” Well they must need it more then we do.”
Eventually Grandfather sold that station and built a new one diagonally across the intersection. It was a DX station. He also built some tourist cabins there and did quilt well with that venture. The cabins were simple- a bed, a sink , a stool , and on the out side a car port of sorts.     He was successful at that venture.

Childhood Memories – More Grandfather Howard

My grandfather Howard was fascinated by electricity and gadgets. He wired all three of the houses that he helped build for my family and built one for himself and Uncle Dale and his family too. He even set up a wireless for Grandmother Ruth’s students so they could hear a broad cast by the president in her classroom. Grandfather purchased the first television I ever saw. It had a round screen that was about 6 inches across. It only got one channel- out of Chicago and was very snowy! He purchased a record recording machine when I was about 7. I recall cutting a record about the wonders of the park in Columbus Junction and I still have it somewhere. He did taxidermy for a while and I recall a owl that hung in the basement for years. The glass eyes fascinated me. He also stuff a three and half foot alligator from his Pecan Farm in Georgia. We played with it for a while then it disappeared when he discovered how dangerous the arsenic it was stuffed with was.  There was also a tanned fur rug of a badger that he as credited with creating.
He was a skilled wood worker. He built a little cabinet for me with doors and drawers. He then a few years later built a much more elaborate one for my cousin Tracy. I also was the recipient of a wonderful doll house that was a copy of the floor plan for the house in Carroll. It even had the stairs to the attic. It was to scale for my Betsy Mc Call. I had fun with mom collecting furniture and  doing curtains and rugs for it. I still have the dolls and the furniture, but the house went back to the Grandparent house when we moved to Muncie. It was in the basement for years turned on its side so one could use the walls as shelves to store other stuff on.       Grandfather  was in World War II in the Navy. When I was a teenager he gave me one of his old blue wool uniform shirts. I wore it with pride until I wore holes in the elbows. He had a great Macrame Belt that was made of small nylon cord done in square knots. The letters U S NAVY were part of the design. It was amazing to me.
He taught me to eat a baked potato when I was 6, with lots of butter, pepper and salt. He introduced me to lots of exotic cheeses. That became a game of sorts    and he would often pick up something especially strange just to test with me. I remember Coon Cheese- it was awful. One year at Christmas, I was dressed in my new white lace blouse and black and white plaid wrap around skirt and he gave me my first Pomegranate. It was love at first bite. It was also quite messy and I ruined my new blouse with the red juices, but it was worth it. I still look forward to my first Pomegranate of the winter and think of him when I eat it. He was always experimenting with food. The first year Eric came to Christmas with the family, Grandfather made turkey ( from his farm) with pink rice dressing. He had soaked the rice in Hawaiian Punch.
Grandfather was a justice of the Peace . I remember when I was in third grade he let me number the pages in his court book. I was so very proud. We had to play quietly out doors when he was holding court. In is capacity as Justice he married my cousin Russell to Donna in Whisky Holler on the Bell Farm. My cousin Danny, the oldest grandchild, could drive. He was bragging that now he could speed and get away with it as Grandfather was the judge. To that Grandfather said” You better not- I’ll throw the book at you!”   I had a wonderful grandfather and I remember him with great fondness.

Stay safe and keep Creating

Carol