Month: November 2023

Thanksgiving in the books

Not much to talk about since this is always a slow period for me. And no pictures either.

We had a really lovely Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. Thursday my daughter was working, so we just slid things by a day. All three of my Iowa kids and their families were here. The one in Wisconsin called, but couldn’t attend. I cooked a glorious Amana smoked ham, home made rolls, cornbread and sage dressing, and two pecan and two pumpkin pies. Kevin smoked a turkey. My daughter in law made a huge apple crisp pie, a quinoa salad, and the cranberries. My daughter and son in law brought green beans and a corn casserole, while my second son and his partner brought sweet potatoes we baked. I wish I had thought to take a picture of the loaded counters before we had 13 people descend on them like locusts. We still had enough to give folks left overs. Today we have just nibbled because I am still full.

As for quilting, I have worked quite a bit on my class quilt. The best thing I have learned is to slow down and be accurate! It is something I had to learn in my piecing too. I just try to go too fast and then make mistakes or it just isn’t precise enough. If it isn’t right, I just get to spend the time taking it out and re-sewing so I don’t save any time at all! One of the problems was I drew the block lines with a chalk liner the instructor recommended, but it got blurred before I sewed it. That led to inaccurate measurements and all kinds of problems. I may not ever finish it, but I will do at least one of all the block designs we learned. I think I will just use it as my own sampler for other rulers I have.

I did get some relief from my steroid injection, but I think the PT will be more effective now that everything isn’t so incredibly painful. I have already gotten farther in 3 visits than I did in 6-7 weeks before. My goals are pretty minor – to be able to walk a mile. Now o can walk only half a block on a bad day, and sometimes even less.  Crossing my fingers I can get rid of my handicapped hang tag when it expires in March.

Back from server problems (I hope!)

For the last few weeks the site has been plagued by hosting problems. It would be up for 5 minutes then down for hours then up for 30 minutes  down for 5 … You get the message. I contacted Bluehost, did the standard wait for an hour for text support, you all know the drill. Nothing they did seemed to work, but a couple of days later it started working for longer and longer. I finally trust it to stay up long enough to get a post up, even though there isn’t much to say.

Kevin added a 2” lift kit to the UTV, so we took a short trip to the local OHV park to check it out. It is a small area, but it has enough variety to make sure everything was working well. It gave us a total 1 1/2” increase in height. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is gave us 11.5” in the front and 9.5” in the back now. That is a significant change and will be very  helpful in the Arizona rocks this winter.

We were the only people around so we had some nice animal sights. While we didn’t see this beaver, we certainly knew it was around!

Happy beaver

There were some visible animals though. We saw at least 20 turkeys in two groups, one big and one small, plus a single deer who didn’t see much in us to worry her.

Only part of the gaggle
A solitary deer looked at us

We also had one more group ride from the Volga, IA. There was an awful lot of rain beforehand, so this trip also was re-routed to mostly gravel roads. I felt sorry for the organizers. They had cleared more trails and gained additional landowner permissions for newer locations, and then they had to hit mostly the gravel roads! However even the gravel roads are lovely in Allamakee county.

Volga River
Corn and clouds

One of the characteristics of group activities in Iowa before the corn is cut is the guys head into the corn instead of the provided toilets. It makes for shorter lines for the women!

Standard stop

It wasn’t peak color, but it was still nice.

A bit of color
Red sumac was just past prime

We also took a trip to the largest OHV park in Iowa near Ft. Dodge. I was not a fan. I like to ride to see scenery, not for an adrenaline rush. The majority of the area is a bunch of trails emphasizing mudding and fast corners. Of course there were some lovely spots.

Perfect sign
Lots of brush and woods

We also went to a local community playhouse to see “Noises Off,” a backstage/front stage comedy of actors in a play. I am sorry to say it was awful! The actors did what they could with the play, but the play itself was pretty bad. Too bad because it is a lovely theater, and we hope to go to other plays there. We also went to a presentation of “Annie” at Gallagher Bluedorn theater at University of Northern Iowa here in town. Nicely done, but I never can figure out why theater seats copy airplane seats in size! My knees bump up against the seat I front of me!

I also got a truly disgusting cold/sinus “thing.” That has lasted for two full weeks now. I dosed myself with a huge amount of meds in order to visit a pain doctor for a steroid injection in my back. It is already a little bit better, and I hope it improves significantly.

No real quilting, but I am prepping for a class on ruler quilting offered virtually by a quilt shop not too far away. The result will be a whole cloth quilt using a Westerlee arc ruler. It will be three hours each night on three more nights. Our first night was a bunch of background and how to set up for the quilting part. I had to do an awful lot of marking to get started, and I still have to get it trimmed and sandwiched by Tuesday! We will see. I have a backup plan of scraps to use for the practice. Maybe my next post will be a picture of the result.