The Great Wasp Hunt

        It started one normal day with a wasp in the living room.  We always get a dozen or so each year...spread out over several months.  You know, one here, one there.  But this day, there was a second wasp.  Two days later, there were two more.  That day I sprayed poison in the house, on the walls, and outside.  I had to wash all the blankets because of the poison.  I also had to deal with a 9 year old yelling, "There's a nest in my bathroom!" over and over.  There was, obviously, no nest in the bathroom.

      So today, when a wasp went banging against the ceiling, I refused to use the poison again.   I look up what to do, and see window cleaner and hair spray.  I grab my hair spray and a shoe and go on the hunt.  I'm being quite brave, if I do say so myself, and creep up to the flying wasp to spray it.  "Pfssssst!" Drat!  Not close enough..closer...closer..."Phsss..."  "Yeow!"  There was one on the floor.  I had stepped on it.  I'm assuming it was poisoned some because it wasn't as bad as I remember them being.  I drop my weapons and limp outside.  I call Arlis and tell him to come spit on my foot.  His wad of tobacco immediately stopped the pain. 

      While I'm sitting there leeching poison, he goes around the side of the house and sprays poison, which blows in his eyes.  So then I have to guide a blinded blind man, while limping, to the faucet to flush his eyes.  He's fine now. 

        I rinse the tobacco off my foot and go inside.  Dad comes and decides to vacuum the wasps.  "See them going round and round?  That kills them."  Does he actually believe this?  We argue over it until he concedes to let me put the vacuum outside with the "dead" wasps so that all the live ones can crawl out.  I had to vacuum the house, so I emptied it, showing Arlis all the "dead" wasps that are now dusty white in color crawl away on the dirt.  I take it in, do some house work, and leave the vacuum in my father's room with the door shut.  I knew it was empty of critters, did he?

        We were supposed to pick up a rooster today.  I was supposed to do a lot of things.  But we wound up killing nine wasps that day, all in my living room.  For over a day we would go in and look around before sitting down.  Everyone would use the white couch because you could easily spot a dark bug on a white couch.  We found them all over the place, under things, behind things.  They've calmed down for now.  I hope we're through with them.

My First Quilt

      Over a year ago, like 2 years ago, I bought a Mennonite home ec book to learn to sew.  Sewing machines were giant evil monsters with giant evil fangs to me.  This was mainly due to never really having a good and proper lesson, and having a broken machine.  (pun intended) Sew, when dad bought me a used machine b/c the older one wouldn't work, I decided to try and learn again, as it wasn't broken that I could tell.  I read and followed the first book to make my first project, a small and simple quilt.

 Here is the square

       It's a log cabin design.  Each fabric is sewn to the previous and cut in a mathematical sequence allowing for quick and easy assembly without having to check oneself every stitch.  It was so easy, I got to where I enjoyed it a great deal and would spend hours at a time in the craft room with TV playing on my Kindle just sewing away.
     
 I placed all the squares out, asking Arlis for his advice.

It's good I did ask for his advice.  I rotated each piece one rotation and went to the next.  This turned out to be...

 See it?  Look closer-it's a swastika.

 Arlis, "So, this book is Mennonite?  And therefore German?  And you're blonde?  Bwa ha ha haaaaa!!!"  All jokes aside, I took his design advice, and did the following.  I also sewed four more squares.

 And then four more.  Some of the squares were different sizes, and there are tucks and creases where I lined up the strips.

 I wasn't about to pay for batting, and my wool needed carding.  A carder wasn't in the budget just yet.  But a huge amount of really thick felt like material went on sale for $1.50 a yard.  I bought a BUNCH!

And then sewed it to the back of the quilt.  It was very difficult to do this as the material was stretchy.  It turned out uneven.  But only if you look for it.  I made this to be used, not framed.

 I used mom's quilt hoop to comfort knot the quilt.

 I used matching colored threads for the knots, which I just happened to have.  That was cool.  It also turned out to be geometrically perfect, even cooler.  You can see how you just make loops or sew from each place to the next making sure two strings in each area are about a half inch apart or so.  Each knot area needs to be about 3 inches apart or so.

 You then cut through each loop or straight stitch.  (Don't forget the other side)

 And then tie a square knot on BOTH sides.  Here you can see how it all matched up.

 Here is the back side.  See how it's all geometrically cool and stuff?

 DONE!

 I had plenty of fabric left over, so I wanted to make pillow cases.  After much debate, we decided to go with accent pillows instead of cases.  I changed the square pattern to make it look better as a single.  The pillow was a project in the second book.  It's a cover over a basic stuffed pillow.  Arlis, "It even has snaps and everything."  I was real proud of myself.

 And here it is all together.  I'll make a second pillow once the chickroom becomes my craftroom again.  Dad used the quilt and said it was fine, but he did need an extra blanket.

     I went through a bunch of thread, bought a bunch of new things, and had to take my new/old machine in to get repaired.  But I now feel pretty good with a machine.  I've learned to basic sew, roll cut, comfort knot, and when to give up and take the machine in.  I have a self-healing mat with a roller and a new pair of shears.  It's a real shame that I bought all the good stuff after I cut all the quilting strips out and wound up with crooked stitches and different sized squares, but the point of this exercise was to learn after all.