Two Finished Smocking Projects

Terry finished up two smocking projects this weekend. Quite an accomplishment as she had to work around the bulky framework of Chester.

 The first was a Wee Care Gown. One of the service projects of the Smocking Arts Guild of America is to provide these little gowns to still born babies across the country. Each chapter donates dozens of them to local hospitals.

The second project was this smocked Christmas ornament She added the ribbons on the top and bottom to the ball I had featured a week or so ago. While these are certainly less fragile than the old glass ornaments, they are still somewhat dangerous for little kids or cats. There are dozens of straight pins in this thing!

We've probably got a dozen of these 3" diameter ornaments in various colors. If we ever get around to putting up a Christmas tree again, we might need two--or three! One just for the smocked and stitched ornaments, one for the Hallmark ornaments and one for all the other ornaments.

New embroidery piece by Terry

Terry will be picking up a newly framed piece of hers today. It's embroidery but in a 3D mode. The "trees" are created by snipping some of the horizontal threads on the even-weave and then gathered the verticals to create the trunks. They are placed in front of a scene from a birthday card I got in September.

Looks pretty nice.

Fun Times North and South

While Terry was driving up to Syracuse for a meeting/stitching session with some of her friends, I drove south to the Harrisburg/Hamburg areas of PA to visit the Bass Pro Shop and Cabelas.

If Terry had driven a little further she would have reached Lake Ontario, about as far due north of the Aerie as you can go without reaching Canada. She ended up spending the night when the ladies went out to dinner and didn't finish until 9 PM. She says they had a great time and the restaurant was an excellent Italian place on the north side of town in Dewitt near the airport.

I, too, had a great day even though I stayed in state. First, I visited the Bass Pro Shop for the first time and dropped about $100 on "necessities" for the upcoming fishing trip: lures, knife, polarized clip-on sunglasses and such. Second, I drove over to Cabelas and bought myself a new "tool" in the form of a S&W M&P in .40 caliber. Plus tools to clean it and all my other "tools" and ammo. I've been looking for a long time and had narrowed my choice down to Smith & Wesson and Springfield. Both had excellent reviews on the Cabelas' site but then I found out that the Springfields are manufactured overseas so I paid a bit more for the S&W kit. The only "bad" thing about the purchase was that the digital background check system was/is down while they make some changes. That meant filling out the paperwork the old fashioned way and then hanging around for close to an hour while they did the phone in thing. Good thing it was a slow WEdnesday afternoon and not a busy Saturday morning. (And why do they need to know if you're Hispanic/Latino? That's one of the specific questions on the form. Some of the others are just plain dumb. "Are you an illegal alien?" Really?)

Just doing our best to boost the economy. 

Oh, and I got to drive around a lot (350 miles round trip) and walk around the two stores a lot and my knees did NOT hurt! Not at all. Hooray!

*Sigh*

Whenever we go to a museum that details earlier human life and that may contain any clothing and/or stitched work at all, Terry begins to give me impromptu lessons on embroidery, smocking, lace making, and such. Today was no different.

Cutwork and heirloom embroidery.

Redwork (embroidery) done in blue thread.

Sometimes the work even puzzles Terry a bit. She didn't know the name for this type of work--although she recognized it as some form of smocking. She'll find out exactly what type once she is able to go on line again.

Smocking (the woven cloth draped over the headboard).

Early 20th century sewing machines like this one are also of interest to us. The Singer models were quite common and many are still in operating condition today. We have one in our living room that has been refinished and currently serves as a radio/phonograph stand. This one is a little less fancy than ours and the brand, Jones, is a new one to us.

Treadle sewing machine by Jones.

Yeah. Some of this stuff is sinking in to my thick skull. Sad, isn't it?

Aerie Report, April 22, 2010

Being as it was Earth Day, I spent a couple of hours today playing in the dirt. I weeded the two large garden plots and turned over the earth in each. I can confirm that the black flies are out here, too. I was working in short sleeves and got a couple of bites on my forearms.

I raked out one bed to make it ready for the planting of onion sets. I'm doubling the number of onions going in the ground this year for three reasons: 1) we ran a little short this winter in the home-grown onion department 2) Terry wants some white as well as yellow onions and 3) they require so little attention once they get started. Since we will be gone for much of the summer, that last was a vital part in the decision.

The other bed is where we grew cukes, tomatoes, and string beans last year. It had a thin layer of straw on it over the winter. I turned that in but found the soil to be pretty solid lumps of clay despite the 20 bags of top soil I mixed in there last year. I'll let it sit until Saturday afternoon before adding more top soil and raking it out.

We're not planning much of a garden this year since we'll be on the road for much of the summer. The only other plants that will go in the ground are melons and squash--winter squash, not zucchini. If we put zukes in we would have baseball bats by the time we get home in late August and those aren't good for much except, well, baseball. The melons and butternut squash, as pre-started seedlings from Agway, will go into specially prepared mounds of a mix of topsoil and cow manure. With luck, we should have a bountiful harvest if the borers don't get them. Since we haven't had any borers in the zukes the last two years, we should be okay.

We will not be planting any lettuce or spinach--they will just bolt while we are away and will not get used. Nor will we bother with tomatoes. It's too short a season, and they require lots of water and flower picking to keep them tight. The same for bell peppers. Our season is too short and they just don't do well even in pots on the deck. We'll pass on the cucumbers for the same reason as the zucchini. And string beans? If no one is here to pick them once they start producing, they too will be like baseball bats when we get home! I suppose I could grow navy beans or lima beans but then I'd have to dry them to store them properly.

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Terry went with a few of her stitching friends today to visit the History Center in Ithaca, NY. One of the women she knows had an exhibit of Hungarian embroidery there and she gave them a personal tour and explanation of the materials. They had lunch at Moosewood, a famous vegetarian restaurant.

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We took a little walk outside after dinner this evening and found quite a few wildflowers growing along the ATV/log skidding trail that winds around the hill. Parts of the slope are quite moist so there were violets, spring beauty, trout lillies, columbine (still too early for flowers) and even horse tails. There were another four or five we couldn't identify from memory. I'll have to go back there tomorrow with my camera and see if I can get some pictures. The forecast is for nearly an inch of rain on Sunday and if they are correct, that should mean an abundance of growth early next week.

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I planned to go down to the Mansfield Agway tomorrow morning to get some bags of topsoil, but I got a call this evening that the cap for the Tundra was in and they would like me to be there around 10 AM to get it installed. They're about 30 minutes away and installation should take about an hour. I'll get the dirt after. The cap is too important. My Tundra will have a whole new appearance by noon.

Aerie Report, April 19, 2010

Beautiful day here at the Aerie. The sun is shining brightly and there's a fresh breeze blowing out of the north. The overnight temperature was in the low 30s (enough to put some frost on the truck windshield this morning) and has not risen above 60 degrees which is fine by me.

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Terry went up to Horseheads today for one of her EGA meetings. A handful of ladies got together to do some stitching and gossip about folks who didn't show. The usual.

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I went to bed last night with reduced but still significant pain in my lower left back but, as I expected, woke up this morning with no pain at all. It just takes some serious R & R to get the nerves to stop their silly swelling and the pain disappears like that.

So, of course, I spent four hours on the hill with Mr. Chainsaw cutting tree tops into smaller brush piles and logs into firewood lengths. Four hours seems to be the limit for the chainsaw. It's a homeowner's Craftsman model (42cc bar with an 18") and it's not made to work all day. Fine by me! But I sure wish it had a better way for communicating when it feels it's time to quit. Trying to get it started with that pull cord when it doesn't want to run any more could through a guy's shoulder out.

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When I got back to the Aerie, I spotted a Turkey Vulture floating in the breeze BELOW the cabin. I thought I could smell something in the way of rotting meat myself and wonder if it was trying to zero in on the location. I did see one on the road when I went for the mail around 8:30 AM and it was feeding on a dead rabbit. That one lifted up and made one circle before landing again as I went passed.

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Later, there was a small helicopter moving back and forth down in the valley. Looks like they are ferrying small bags of equipment from Point A to Point B for the gas crews.

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Got a phone call from Alpin Haus this morning saying the part for the trailer's AC was in and they will be repairing it today or tomorrow. The part cost $20 but labor will run around $60.

UPDATE: Trailer is ready for pick-up. I guess my next two days are planned. One day up to pick up the trailer and take it to the Bolt Hole; then an overnight and early departure on Wednesday to get back to the Aerie.

Aerie AM Report, March 1, 2010

Terry made it back to the Aerie last night from Princeton where she had two days of classes with the Princeton Pleaters SAGA chapter. She says she had a fine time visiting with her Mom and daughter in Linden and with the folks she knew in Princeton.

The instructor for the classes she took was from just outside Sydney, Australia. having experienced the near blizzard and two feet of snow, she swears she will not be coming back unless it's 55 degrees and sunny.

Terry took off this morning for more stitching. This time with a local group from EGA.

Friday she's off to Baltimore for another stitching soiree. When that ends she'll head further south to visit for a few days with her aunt and cousin in Sumter, South Carolina.

Have needles will travel, is her motto.

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I finally got the official notice of recall for my Tundra in today's mail. Called the dealership's service department and I'm scheduled for 1 o'clock this afternoon to have the accelerator mechanism "corrected" so I don't accidentally speed off at mach 1 or something. It will take me almost as long to drive to the dealer's as it will to have the service performed. Then, of course, I have to drive home. Figure a 2:1 ratio for travel time: service. *sigh* The joys of rural living. Everything's twice as far as you think.

UPDATE: Just got back. It's 1 hour and 15 minutes each way. It took just 30 minutes to do the repair. The ratio of time traveled to time for repair was closer to 5:1. *double sigh*
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On the positive side, the weather seems to have taken a break. March has entered as a lamb--at least for now and at least for here. Temperatures are going to "soar" into the mid 30s today and there's no more than a snow shower or two on tap. Those two storms AccuHunch was trumpeting last week appear to be either further east or further south than anticipated. Hence, Maine and the Carolinas will get snow but we won't.

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Another "oops!" moment in the IPCC report. Remember how they were saying hurricane frequency and strength were directly tied to Global Warming? How as the earth got warmer we would see more and stronger hurricanes? Well, a recent peer reviewed study (a real peer review, BTW) says it ain't so.