Preparations

You may wonder why I am so sporadic with the blog. Just now I am trying to develop a project to work on during the Baseball season. I can't stand to sit and just watch. I must have my hands occupied. So I will tell you what I am hoping to create. I have a fairly large chest of drawers filled to overflowing with small amounts of yardage, used for Quilting and used in my Fake it in Fabrics. I want to see if I can use them in making a 6x4 rug for in front of the love seat. 

I am cutting, on the bias, pieces as long as possible and two inches wide. Then I sew them together. After that I iron them so they are two inches wide. And then I make them into 1/4 inches. Folding the raw edges into the mid line. In a sense I now have hundreds of yards of bias tape. I have enough to now try to braid them together and then to eventually sew the braids together in an oval rug. It has been done using yarn or heavy wool materials. My little stiff things may not lend themselves to a soft yielding oval. I now have enough material to test, If it works I will have the most colorful rug in the world. Wish me luck, please.

I had an interesting time this morning, or last night to be exact. I always listen to KGO from San Francisco at night when I am awake. At two Ray Taliafero(sp) came on and talked about how small our world is getting what with our instant knowledge of what happens in every corner of the Earth. And what could be the next big step in our abilities. He said please call in if you feel you are on the edge of something gigantic. And he waxed so yearning to know what might be next. I decided to call in. It took an hour to get anyone to answer the phone. And then it seemed to take another hour hanging on to the phone. Finally it was my turn. I told him I loved the beginning of the program, when he was musing about what might come next. And then I asked if it would be correct to call him Prehistoric. He got a big chuckle out of that. Then I told him about my historic grandfather who was born in 1838. In 1928 he sat in our kitchen, listening to a little radio my mother had bought that morning, and when he heard Admiral Byrd speaking from  the AntArchtic tears streamed down his cheeks. I was 8 and I was more impressed by grandfather's tears than the voice from wherever. I didn't know grown men could cry. It is now 5.13 and my Daily Coyote just arrived.

olympic !!

In between the raindrops I managed another training session. I wanted to find a better route to the restaurant on C street. The most logical way is the shortest, but the alley is out. For the winter anyway. So I tried 9th street. Direct and straight. One problem. No sidewalks. But I found out that, that does not matter for there was no traffic and walking on the street was safe. A few dogs gave me loud greetings, but they were all fenced in. I met one woman walking in the opposite direction and that was pleasant. We stopped and chatted for a moment and since I had walked up a mild hill for two blocks, it slowed down my breathing. Until the very last block I saw no cars, one woman and on top of the hill I had full view of our gorgeous Olympic mountains.

I parked my walker outside the the door again and when I sat down at 'my table' it felt great to sit down and the smell was promising. It smelled of pancakes and waffles and sausages. All the breakfast customers had left and I was the only hungry one there. Met by a welcoming woman who looked like she might be the owner of the place. There was a special offered and I accepted. While waiting for my waffle I leafed through a magazine and then a young couple walked in and asked if they were in time for breakfast. They sat down at the opposite side of the place. I was engrossed then, in either my magazine or my waffle when I heard   'Gertrud ' . I was startled and looked around and there was no one new in the place. The young woman then said ' I am sorry. I thought you were a woman I used to know whose name was Gertrud.' My name is Gertrud. But I don't .... She said 'my name is Sarah. You once helped me make a cat.'

At one time, maybe twenty years earlier, Sam had been in a play in Sequim. It was the ODD COUPLE. He and Sarah's father were two of the four poker players and Sam had felt the four of them needed extra rehearsal time and had invited them to our house on a Saturday morning. One of them brought his daughter, who was probably five or six. I wanted her to be happy so I asked if she would like to go down to the beach to look for a pretty rock. She was a lovely child and we had fun exploring. We found a couple of round flat rocks that were perfect for a cat. And so we spent a few hours in my studio gluing and painting and whiskering. When the men were ready to leave, Sarah had a cat.

Through the years, whenever I ran into Sarah she would greet me with 'I still have my cat'. The cat went to college with her. It went to music school with her. Sarah has a beautiful voice and is now a Jazz Singer and she is a beautiful human being. I have never run into her any other place than the theatre at night and here in a completely different setting, I did not at first recognize her. But she has not changed. She is still a beautiful human being.

The Olympics

This morning I decided I had been dawdling in inactivity too long for my health. I checked the weather to see if I should wear sunglasses or a hat to protect my eyes. Should I wear something warm? It seemed like a mild day and nothing is worse than being over-dressed and perspiring. I had made the resolution to walk down to C  Street to eat breakfast.

I would walk with my walker, for the route I had chosen was very uneven footwise. I would walk the alley between 8th and 9th street. I live on 8th and G street. My progress was slow, for the ruts were a sign of a wet long winter. I had chosen the alley because of a memory driving that way soon after having moved here. The alley was green because of over hanging trees, and there were flowers blooming everywhere. But today there was no beauty in the alley. There were dead blackberry bushes, there were fences falling down, there were garbage cans overflowing with merchandise. Some of them that had lids that couldn't close, had been raided by crows or sea gulls. And after having gone a block and a half, it began raining. It was a mild rain, big drops but not too many of them.

In the restaurant, a nice homey clean one, I was too late for breakfast. So I ordered Fish and Chips. Everything tasted great. The salad was especially good. It took probably an hour and when my meal was finished and I had paid my bill I had a rude awakening. The rain that had been mild had turned very serious. By the time I got home, I was soaked to the skin. When I later spoke with Martha, she said Mom just because you feel you need exercise you don't have to train for the Olympics

Food

I hate to talk  about food for the thought of food is fattening. But our newspaper had a wonderful page about food yesterday. As soon as I read it I hurried to get dressed, made my shopping list, and drove down to our local Safeway. I needed beans and molasses and a small ham hock. And a spicy Mexican sounding sausage for tomorrows experiments. Which again calls for beans. Luckily we are having another cold snap and beans and beer and cornbread are perfect for that kind of weather.

Naturally, I cooked too much and gave some to a couple of neighbors. And when I finished my bean dinner, there was enough left over for two more dinners for me. So I will save the mexican sounding sausage for later, hoping I will get to eat that before it gets too warm. This morning, after I poured out the over night rinse water I put the pot on to boil and after I finished reading the paper it smelled so good I poured myself a large bowl of what one would have to call bean soup. It was very liquid and very good. I don't think I have ever had beans twice in one day.

After the beans had baked in the oven, I chopped the green kale leaves and added them to the pot. It made me remember when I was a child in Sweden and we four siblings were playing down at the beach. An uncle had salvaged the wood of a sailing ship that had hit a reef and sank. It was not a sailboat for the rich, but a fairly meaningful ship that carried freight through the straight of Oresund. We played in this mountain of large timbers, carried out some internal pieces so we could pretend the hole we made, was our living room. Naturally we got hungry and so we invented a new kind of sandwich. We took large kale leaves in our garden, spread what we pretended was butter on them (it was chicken mash we stole out of grandmother's hen-house) and then put pretend jam on that(red hawthorn berries) It was a wonder we did not get sick or squashed while this game was going on. Then my older brother who pretended to be the man of the house, took us for a walk and when reached our goal we could see Kronborg Castle in Denmark. I can remember how cold it was playing in that cold wind that constantly blew in from the North sea.

What is a Soup Party

Uncle Fred asked the above question and so I will try to describe the way Georgia fashioned hers.

When it was held in their roomy house, when we were neighbors, it was different than last nights party. I will tell of the first ones first. The people who came from far away had a problem as soon as they arrived. There was no parking place available, the streets were too narrow to park there. We who lived on the same street would walk up the hill. We would tell anyone we saw to park in our driveway, and since Georgia had invited the neighborhood, everyone else on the hill would help them out too.

We would knock on the front door and since no one could hear upstairs we would walk in and hang up our coats below. They had a huge living room and if it was your first time there, you were told to go straight ahead and help yourself to wine and cheese and crackers. When the word came that the soup course was ready, you would walk out in the kitchen, where on the square island in the center were placed eight or ten crock pots (or as some people called them 'slow cookers') All of them were labeled and you were told you had to have some of each. There was home made bread and butter. (baked by Mitch) It would take ages to taste all those soups and when you had found a favorite one, you would have to have another little taste. All the soups were made by Georgia or Mitch. When you were too full to eat another crumb, dessert and coffee was served. Again you would have to serve yourself. On a table in the corner was the large electric coffee maker and many many cookies.

They had so many friends that they would have to have at least one more party. We did not know the square dancers so we always hoped to be included with neighbors or bridge players.

And then the M.s house was sold and they moved to the townhouses at the Golf Club. A loss for the people at Four Seasons. 

Last nights party was fun and the soups were good and the birthday cake was beautiful. But the staff at the Golf Club, who made the soups were not up to Georgia's standards. Half a tea spoon too much flour in one soup and maybe a different cheese in another. They were all delicious but I only tasted three of them. Then maybe my age made me stop.

It was a huge success and so much fun seeing all those people.

The Soup Party

When Sam and I moved to Port Angeles we were invited to a soup party up the hill from us. We did not know the people who invited us. But we went. It was a fantastic party. Our whole neighborhood was there and many strangers. Our hosts were big in a church downtown, they were big in square dancing circles and they were big in bridge clubs but most of all, he had been Commanding Officer in our Coast Guard Station. They had a soup party (or two) every year after that and it was something we really looked forward to.

Tonight I am going to a Soup Party at the Golf Club. It is celebrating Georgia's ninetieth birthday. I think there will be many people over ninety. I will let you know in my next blog how many.