Moving On To The Third Block

I finished the Album block and started on the ship block. That one probably won't take as long since it has few fiddly details. I do plan to quilt in planking on the side of the ship, but there are just two small flower sprigs to contend with. Most of the block is background.

The World Turned Upside Down

Trump announced the date and place of his meeting with Putin today. Before he did so he tweeted that Putin swears to him that he did not interfere in the 2016 election. Despite every known indication, despite all of his intelligence agencies guaranteeing that it was Russian involvement and from the top, Trump believes Putin.

Isn't that swell. All you Trumpettes who worry about democratic socialism don't seem to give any credence to what will destroy the United States. "Don't trust the newspapers, Putin is a good guy, the only good news is Fox News."

You can apologize after you wake up from your stupor.

One Block Quilted

I started Wednesday afternoon and have completed one block, the eagle. At 3 plus days per block the center part will take approximately two months or slightly more. I did complete what I could of refinishing the wainscoting in my combined living/dining room in the new/old house and I have hung curtains in all the downstairs windows and some of the upstairs windows as well but that project is far from done.

We meet again with the architect and engineer early in July at which time they will take photos of the house and the springhouse to begin the design process. They indicated that they will make at least three different plans trying to incorporate the items we want. I guess the three are $ $$, and  $$$, but we haven't seen any numbers yet. There is one other item that I want now that I didn't know I wanted when we first met them because I didn't know it wasn't there. Although the house has central air conditioning courtesy of the previous owner, there is no vent for the air conditioning in the kitchen. That makes cooking in the heat and humidity very difficult and if you have read this blog for a while you know how much I like to cook. Even scrambled eggs for breakfast turns the room to an oven. I am pretty sure the HVAC system to bring AC into this stone-walled space will be seriously pricey.

It Says More About Her Than It Does About Me

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was turned away from a restaurant in Lexington, VA last night, by the owner who wrote that anyone who worked for Trump was not welcome (that's a paraphrase rather than a direct quote but the gist of the message is the same). Huckabee Sanders then tweeted that her refusal of service "(said) more about her than it does about me." She is absolutely right although I am sure she means the readers' conclusions to be in line with her own standards, not the restaurant owner's. (Apparently some people misunderstood my comments--for once in her miserable life Sanders is right that the owner's refusal says more about her than about Sanders. It means the owner is ethical and moral with a conscience that needs no examination, unlike Sanders.)

I moved from Utah to get away from the morally vacuous people who populate and control that state. I am nearly 70 years old and my husband is older but we picked up and left lock, stock, and barrel to get away from the governing mentality. Trump is an inexcusable blot on America. Even conservative voices with some degree of knowledge did not recognize him as a good business executive. He bankrupted cities and businesses throughout his personal endeavors to the point where he couldn't get loans from American banks and extorted money from the state of New York. If you aren't old enough to remember that, you should probably educate yourself. If you are old enough but don't remember it then shame on you. Atlantic City still hasn't recovered but Trumpettes insist that shows his business acumen rather than his business fecklessness. So if the medicine man comes to your town offering cures for your ills and leaves you with debt AND cancer, and you think that sounds swell, you only have yourself to blame.

Unfortunately, Trump is well on his way to leaving the US with debt and cancer. Even his own spokesperson had to admit today that North Korea is still an imminent and obvious threat to the US. So much for paying millions of dollars to get Kim Jong Un to Singapore and even paying for his $6000 a night suite of rooms and then telling everyone that you understand each other. Your new good buddy then went immediately to his older better buddies in Beijing and made further pacts with them. Aren't you proud of what you have done? I know there are voters in Minnesota who believe that EVERYTHING they see or read online unless it comes from the mouth of Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs or Laura Ingraham is a lie and that makes me weep for the United States.

Max In All His Glory

Even though no one asked I thought everyone would enjoy the photo of Max. Keep in mind that he usually has a very full coat of hair, approximately four inches long or so all over including his tail, of which he is indisputably proud. He holds it over his head like a pennant on a ship of the line carrying an admiral. Here is an older photo of Max first on a previous Baltimore Album.

  

There he is with some of his face ruff left, a ball on the end of his tail, and just a little bit on his feet which usually look like Chewbaca's feet. I suspect that he is more comfortable since it is fairly warm and definitely humid here. I would say it was $150 well spent but the groomer said she didn't want to do it more than once a year so even she thinks he is a thug. I am glad he loves me and follows me and purrs when I pet him.

I have been steadily quilting, starting with the eagle block, not because it is the first one I made but because it is more or less in the center of the quilt. I still have three leaves on the small branch and some of the outer cross-hatching but it is nearly done. I quilted feathers all over the eagle's body but I suspect that I am the only one who will ever really know since I quilted that part in navy thread on navy material and it doesn't stand out.

About Max

Max is our only purchased pet, a nearly 7 year old Maine coon cat who still had a rough start even though he was not from a shelter. He was the runt of his litter and I don't think that had much impact because when he came to us he was still a larger than your normal housecat kitten. But he had an undescended testes and rather than a simple procedure, he had to have what amounts to abdominal surgery to locate and remove the testes. Then after he recovered from that his big dog friend, who really is his closest friend in the animal house, stepped on him and ruptured a disc in his lower spine causing great pain and initially causing some partial and temporary paralysis of his back legs.

But he recovered from both of those medical problems and grew up very feisty. Are the events connected to his thuggish personality--I don't know. I have never had a cooncat before so don't know if he is representative or not. He loves me, follows me around, purrs when I am around; but he still won't let me do any grooming or at least not willingly. He doesn't seem to do much self grooming except for his paws which he cleans very carefully every morning in the dogs' water bowl.

We had Max groomed a couple of times in Utah at two different places. Both places refused to accept him back so at that point we asked our vet if he could at least shave him. Since the vet also did tooth cleaning he shaved Max when he was out like a light, but anesthesia really isn't the answer to a bad hair day. So today when Max met his new veterinarian for the first time, and she said that he was very matted, we explained the issues. He is aggressive anyway, he hates to have his back touched where the rupture occurred, and so on. She prescribed some gabapentin to be given two hours before any grooming and sent us on our way.

I looked online for a mobile cat groomer since I knew that Max would already be in distress if he had to ride in a crate anywhere. I found one near us and left a message. Lo and behold, she had time this afternoon but the problem is that she said she would be at our place around 3 and the instructions on the gabapentin said to allow two hours lead time. Well of course the groomer, like nearly everyone in the world except me, was seriously late. So even though Max was clearly mellow by three o'clock but far less mellow at quarter till five.

Bottom line is that Max got shaved today. He wasn't as bad as he could have been and no blood was drawn, either human or cat. If I had known that he would not allow much grooming (though even there he is better than at two years old), I would not have gotten him.

If anyone wants to see my nearly 19 pound monster, let me know and we can take some pics.

At Last--Quilting Begins

I finished the basting today, picked up the quilt sandwich from the floor, vacuumed the rug, dusted the furniture, located my hoop--I finally will quilt my project. Since the process of hand quilting isn't very exciting except for the quilter, there won't be much quilt news for a while. Certainly there are plenty of more important topics in the news but most of it is so downright disgusting that it isn't worth the words.

Of course Trump did rescind his order of family separation but if anyone thinks that makes him heroic that person is sadly mistaken and misguided. Sure we need immigration rules of all types but we don't need to terrorize babies and young children. Since folks who hire illegals are the starting  point we need to do a better job at checking those records. When I worked at the Sundance Film Festival, they scoffed at the laws and hired illegals from all over the world. The only good part about that is most of those folks are festival rats and not interested in staying here. The bad part is that the management of Sundance is right; no one cares. There are far better ways to make the system work than what we have been doing and especially what we have been doing in the last two months.

A Variety of Vases

There are more than eight vases in this quilt but the eight that are on the borders exemplify the variety that the late Sue Garman put in to her designs. When I approached the task of choosing the fabrics, I wanted each vase to be unique but also to be sort of possible as a real vase in a mid-19th century United States' home. So I picked fabrics that I thought might approximate the materials used to make those vases. These pictures are cropped to focus on the vases, not on the contents of the vases. In no particular order:

My husband picked out the fabric for one of the vases and I picked out the other seven. I like all the vases but my favorite, both to look at and to make, is the fourth from the top. Please let me know what you think. Any distortion in the photo is because the fabric isn't blocked yet.

Finish Marking Tomorrow

Pennsylvania has some hot, humid days in the summer. Today it is about 90F and tomorrow it's supposed to be 97F, but whatever it is, I will finish marking the quilt top tomorrow. I marked all the center blocks today with a fan blowing at my back and it will be the same tomorrow. The new/old house does have central air conditioning but because the old house has two foot thick stone walls, putting in the duct work meant that some of the ducts are in spaces where they are less effective.

Monday is always my biggest cleaning day as well, changing the sheets on the beds, dusting and vacuuming everywhere so I will do some marking before I begin the cleaning and finish after the cleaning. I always baste my layers on my living room rug so I want to make sure the floor and carpet are clean before I move all the furniture out of the way. Suzanne Marshall, a Paducah grand prize winner, had a book that showed her sitting cross legged on the floor basting, but she and her husband had planned her quilt room down to what kind of carpet and underlayment she had and I have never had that luxury. So I move the living room furniture off the antique Chinese dragon and phoenix rug and work on that. The rug is smooth, short, dense pile and the underlayment is a horsehair pad. For some reason it holds push pins better than my Indian rug in the dining room so that is why I work there. Yes, it is an antique and yes, I am sure it has value, but it was in my husband's parents' house and his grandparents' house before that so it has some moth damage and simple wear from being under one or another piece of furniture for too long without rotation. It's a family heirloom not a priceless antique.

The basting is my absolute least favorite part of quilting and having just recovered from a bout of sciatic nerve problems I am not looking forward to it. But it is at the heart of a good, hand-quiltingd job, making the difference between easy quilting and straight hanging and something resembling poorly made clothing. I may or may not finish tomorrow since the quilt is quite big but no matter what I will be quilting by Wednesday anyway.

Luckily we finished what we could of our wood refinishing yesterday in the main room. We cannot go further until we have some space to put the rest of the art. What we have done looks splendid after looking very tired, worn, and dry. I hung curtains in all those windows, and made some for an odd ship's prow shaped window that faces west. Anyone with quilts knows how harsh sunlight is on the fabric and compound that with  wool rugs and art work consisting of primarily works on paper and the necessity of having curtains no matter how crepuscular that makes the area is obvious.

Absolutely Wrong, Absolutely Abominable

Back when Trump was young he courted the press to make a name for himself which made it easier to borrow money. Then when his projects ended up going sideways, he excoriated the press but still thrived on the attention. He still thrives on the attention but now he demands that the attention be positive. When anyone or any entity points out the emptiness of the emperor's suit, he pouts and whines like a two year old.

No, America, the press is not your worst enemy--not by a long shot. When Trump shouts from the White House lawn that the press is the country's biggest enemy he is once again violating the Constitution. Of course he doesn't care because his supporters view the press as elite snobs who ignore the heartland. Not quite the "nattering nabobs of negativism" as Spiro Agnew styled them, but a more dangerous idea. Who talks about the press in this way, who wants to control the questions and the answers? Even Trumpettes know the answer but they don't want to acknowledge it.

Album Applique Done

My new/old house doesn't have a stair rail or big wall to hang quilts from so this picture is laid out on the yard outside the front door.

 While this began as the late Sue Garman's design, and is still substantially the same, there are some differences. I eliminated a couple of her blocks and added a couple of my own blocks and I changed the layout to have hearts in each of the four corners of the center blocks section. I didn't always follow her color choices and I moved the masts behind the sails so that I could stuff the sails and make them look full of wind. I added inked inscriptions and my final change will be to eliminate the final pieced border and exchange that for a shallow scalloped border, not on here yet.

Two Shining Moments

Yesterday I finished all but two flowers on the final border applique. That still leaves some berries and a fair amount of embroidery but is still a significant step in what has been an 18 month passage so far. Yippee!

Yesterday evening, my husband and I rescued a downy woodpecker from our side porch. We think this was an adolescent who flew in to the semi-enclosed space and then couldn't figure out how to get out. He got more and more agitated as his trial continued so I enlisted my husband's help and we captured and released the little bird. That's another feel good moment.

Just When You Thought You Had Heard Everything

A reporter asked Trump today how he had prepared for his summit with Kim Jung Un. He replied that he had not done anything, he was well prepared because he always trusted his gut. Well his gut is definitely getting bigger since January 2017 but I doubt that means it's getting smarter.

Breathtakingly Obtuse

Yesterday, Trump hosted a very brief event on the White House lawn. It was supposed to be honoring the Philadelphia Eagles football team that won the Super Bowl in February, but only one player agreed to attend so Trump rescinded his invitation to the whole team in a fit of pique worthy of the finest three year old. He insisted that the players' attitudes were unpatriotic, anti-American, and most intriguingly anti-Constitution. This comes on the same day that he finally unblocked the Twitter users whom he had blocked, two weeks after the federal judge told him that he had violated the Constitution for blocking them.

Anyone who knows even the smallest amount of history understands that protest is at the heart of why this is even a country. Where would we be without the Boston Tea Party? What if all those people hadn't met in Philadelphia in the late 18th century? Unfortunately, as I bemoaned earlier, civics isn't taught much any more. That doesn't excuse Trump who is older than I nor does it excuse his myriad followers who think that NFL players are spoiled millionaires who should be quiet. The funniest irony of the episode was Faux News showing Eagles players actually praying before the game rather than protesting before the game but Trumpettes are probably not paying attention to that irony.

The Final Crazy Neighbor

The final crazy neighbor isn't mine--she's my son's. He realized she was crazy and very bad news almost as soon as he moved in but what are you going to do right after you have bought the house? So now several years later, she hasn't gotten better, just worse. She has lived in the house her whole life, inheriting it from her parents at their deaths. She seems to think that makes her the boss of the block, but most of the time my son ignores her.

He couldn't ignore the latest episode. She doesn't work and therefore has plenty of time to get to know everyone's schedules, watching out her windows as the block goes about its business. So when she saw my son drive away followed shortly thereafter by his wife, she knew the coast was clear, at least for a while. She had always hated this one tree in my son's yard--she was always complaining about the leaves falling or mostly blowing on her adjacent property, even leaf blowing them back on to his property. I don't know about the laws where you live, but where he lives that is illegal. The tree was lush and healthy, growing a fine new crop of leaves, so when she knew everyone had left, she notified the fellow she paid to come and cut down the tree. Not trim the tree, not cut back the tree, but cut down the entire tree. My son has one of those outdoor cameras so he got video of the fellow carrying out the mission but once again, what are you going to do? He did make a complaint of malicious mischief to the police but I doubt very much anything will happen. 

For Crying Out Loud!

The good news is that I only have 12 or so inches of applique to go on the final border. It has been 18 months and I am far from done but at least I am getting closer. After the applique comes the embroidery--lots of veins on leaves, rose hairs, stems for all those berries. Then comes the marking of the top. I don't envision anything fancy. I do not do machine quilting but even if I did, the original Baltimore Album style quilts had very limited fancy feathers and wreathes so I don't plan to go crazy adding those. You can check out the Gorsuch family quilt online to see what the classic quilts used. I might try to fit in the date or if there is room somewhere some minor embellishments but most of the applique really fills the blocks.

The bad news is that we are led by a mad man who is being led by mad men. Listening to Giuliani and Trump outline their legal ideas is maddening and unnerving. Reading the Sekulow/Dowd letter to the DOJ is laughable and unnerving. Watching Trump announce a worldwide trade war is ridiculous and unnerving. Everyone who supports Trump is like all the people who were still buying and selling short in the summer of 1929 but even more ludicrous. As any economist will tell you, Trump hasn't been in office long enough for most of the economic news to be directly attributable to him. What is directly attributable is the rising interest rate and the international consternation. Trump may have done two years at Penn as an undergraduate but he never had to pay much attention and he still hasn't learned the skill.

Deliberate Confusion and Obfuscation

Trump has more lawyers than brains but that is not a surprise. He is also still a slimy real estate developer from NYC so very experienced in lying, stretching the truth, coercion, and double dealing. So it is no surprise that his lawyers are cut from the same cloth. Dowd, the lawyer who quit, clearly saw troubled water ahead. Sekulow, the lawyer who before Trump was only known for fighting for Christian religious freedom cases, is not capable of handling or hiding the dealings so today the various lies he has told in Trump's name came to light. The fact that he was caught in the lies seems also to be a deliberate ploy on Trump's part.

So Trump knew about the meeting in Trump Tower with the Russians before it happened, and he wrote the answer to the queries even though various people, not just Sekulow and Dowd, knew that he had done so. The fact that Trump lies is neither surprising now unusual--we are up well over 4000 proven lies in the time since his inauguration. The fact that his lawyers lie for him isn't surprising either, unless they try to lie in an official capacity when under oath.

Top that off with the trade tariffs and demands and the whole scenario gets far more interesting. Do Trump supporters stick with him if the economy tanks? Is his shtick acceptable if they get to be more openly obnoxious? Will they be openly obnoxious when the bottom falls out of the agricultural economy and steel working jobs aren't boosted? Gas prices are already rising and will continue, inflation is rising and will continue. At what point does pocketbook outweigh prejudice?