Sewing Up a Storm, a Real Storm, and the Legacy Video

During the night we had a terrible thunderstorm with lightning cracking right overhead. Pepper moved up from her usual position by our feet and cuddled between Craig and me, seeking our touch. (That's very unusual for a Seeing Eye Dog - they are trained to tolerate storms and usually she does, but this one was a doozy.) Tammo got off his bed and curled up on the floor next to Craig - clearly both dogs were bothered by the storm.

I was, too. Normally storms don't bother me, but I lay there wide awake and thinking of Abby. Listening to the loud noises outside. Watching the constant bright flashes of light through the blinds. It was a rough night and no doubt I will take a nap today. (Most likely Pepper and Tammo will, too.)

I am spending most of my time in the sewing room preparing for The Feast of the Hunters' Moon. I've been productive, so productive that I needed to run up to Leslie's farm and get more block print fabric.

I have a Facebook page for my business, and I posted the following finished items yesterday. Within twenty minutes, I had a sale.

This block print bed gown was purchased by Brooke, the leader of the Feast sewing circle and Leslie's successor as director of the Feast. She sews all her period clothing by hand and is a better sewist than me.

To say I was surprised is an understatement but as Leslie pointed out, with the Feast just seven weeks away, Brooke  has so much to do, she doesn't have time to sew any clothes for herself. 

A red hip length cloak with single faced silk ribbons. (Yes, real silk! LOL) Why single faced silk ribbon instead of double faced? Because it is historically accurate - silk is slippery, and double faced silk ribbon does not stay tied shut like single faced silk ribbon does. 18th century folks knew that and wanted their cloaks to stay tied shut so they used single faced ribbon. (Your history lesson of the day. Haha!)

A men's voyageur shirt. Again, I used hand blocked fabric and often there is evidence of that hand blocking. Look at the two blue bands. You can see a vertical line down each of them. That's a place where the printer did not align the wooden print blocks quite true. Look at the top red band carefully and you can see not one but two small misalignments.

Blocking errors were common during the 18th century so this fabric, misalignments and all, is very true to the time period.

A woman's apron made from osnaburg, a very heavy, unbleached type of muslin. The drawstrings are twill tape.

A second osnaburg apron. Aprons sell well, so I try to have four on hand at every event - two from osnaburg, and two from bleached white muslin. (I also sell pinner aprons but I haven't begun those yet and will share more about what they are when I finish them.)

Finally, just when I think I have nothing more to share about the wedding, I discover that that is not true.

Mountain Mama Jessica has put together two wedding videos - one that was so our family could all enjoy the day's memories, and then this one that's posted here. Her purpose for the second one? She made it for Craig and me to show us our family legacy.

I'd wondered why she'd kept filming us throughout the day, but I sure am glad she did. The ending made me tear up. Thanks, Jessica. I love it and I love you. xoxoy

(By their own admission, my kids "sure can have fun together." Yep, they sure can!)

The August give away will be announced soon. Stay 'tooned!

Christmas 2022: Kids on the Road

I have decided that I will go ahead and write about this past  Christmas - while James' passing was incredibly sad for us, we did have many moments of joy. If you don't care to read about it, just come back in a few days and the blog will be back to usual. 

Due to the tremendous winter storm that was blowing across the United States, our kids all decided to leave their homes a day early to beat that storm to our home. In retrospect, this turned out to be a very good idea.

Jessica and her family had the farthest to go, coming all the way from Santaquin, Utah and through the Rocky Mountains and then across the high plans of the West on 80. They left on Tuesday and drove into the wee hours of Wednesday morning when they pulled into Sarah's home in Iowa City and crashed for a few hours.

The storm was barreling down behind them, so they only slept a few hours, and then they piled into cars and continued on to Indiana. Jessica, Andrew, Todd, and Sarah went in one car so that Jessie and Andrew could continue to sleep,

while JC and Trinity, both university students who were home on break, drove the "cousins car"

where Cambria

and Titan caught some shut eye, too.

 

Aside from a stop for lunch in Peoria, Illinois, the two families kept moving and made it here before the weather turned nasty.

Craig and I had worked hard to prepare for everyone - Cambria and Titan would be sleeping on air mattresses in my office/horse room,

Sarah and Todd in my sewing room,

Jessie and Andrew in Craig's library,

and last but not least, JC had the bed in Craig's office all to himself. (Trinity was staying in her Aunt Lisa's spare bedroom across town.)

It was good to have them safely in town and to know that Cole, Emily, and their crew had made it up from Nashville, Tennessee safely and arrived at Curt's home.

I would be even more grateful for that when I got a phone call at 6:30 the next morning from Lisa.

Another post will drop around 10:00 EST.

 

Sewing Up (and In) a Storm

The view from my upstairs sewing room allows me to see storms roll in and yesterday, although the sun was shining and it was in the high eighties, I glanced out the window to see this approaching:

A cold front was coming through with a severe thunderstorm in its wake. Naturally I went downstairs to snap some pics and as I stood on the patio, something really awesome happened.

I suddenly felt the cold front sweep right over me with a very sharp, cold wind. It was like there was a line between that hot and cold air, and I felt  that line as it crossed over my home. Never have I actually felt the boundary between two air masses - it was amazing.

Shortly after that boundary passed over, it began to pour. 

I retreated into the house and went back upstairs - I was almost done with a shirt for Ian to wear to the Feast (the kids are going in period clothing) and wanted to finish it.

It's a voyageur's shirt and made from a hand block printed cotton fabric from India. The pattern replicates fabrics found during the 18th century.

I think that shirt will fit him, but if it doesn't, I have a larger one on hand just in case.

This one is for Lukie. Like the other two, it was block printed by hand and you can see evidence of that if you look closely. Look to the left by the V neck - see how the pattern is not quite matched up just under the cream stripe? That's it.

I'm taking the shirts out for the boys to try on after they get home from school today, and I will also take Mila's pattern to show her. It just arrived in the mail yesterday so she hasn't seen what I have in mind for her yet.

I will have to go through my fabric stash and see if I can bring her some choices for it.

I've also got some new fabrics in for the Mercantile. Next year's BreyerFest theme is Driving Forward, so I have been looking for horses and ponies in harness.

I've found a couple so far but I am concentrating on sewing 18th century items right now.

I'll start stitching these as soon as the Feast is over.

This is just the first batch of new haversack fabric - I got another batch in the mail yesterday that I haven't even opened yet.

Stay 'tooned!

Summer Storm

Summer storms in the midwest often roll in fast and we had a good one blow through recently. It was a sunny morning and Pepper indicated that she wanted to go outside.

When I stepped out into the back yard with her, I saw this unusual cloud looming over the homes behind us.

A front was moving in, and the leading edge was right over us.

In a matter minutes, these black, roiling clouds followed that leading edge of the front.

Craig and I stood on the patio and watched the storm roll in. It was coming at a good clip and passing over us fast.

When the wind kicked up and began blowing things over on our patio, I took Pepper inside. Then I stepped back out to snap some more pictures.

Storms fascinate me, and this one had really interesting cloud patterns within it.

The rain began to fall and the lightning was getting close, so we headed back into the house.

The storm blew by as quickly as it had come in, and later when I checked the horses, just a few clouds remained as a reminder of the storm we'd had. That, and some greener grass for the horses.

Live Show No Go

Since early January, I have been looking forward to attending the February Great Lakes Congress show. I was planning to bring Horsiemama's Mercantile and vend as well as show some of my models.

I spent quite a bit of time stitching up haversacks to bring 

including some orders that I said I'd deliver in person, weather pending.

Well, that weather really started "pending" about a week before the show date. My heart sank when I saw this Futurecast for snow early in the week and I began checking the weather several times a day in the lead up to the show date.

On Wednesday the Futurecast turned into the forecast, and and it was even worse than anticipated. Not only was a heavy amount of snow expected, 

but ice was, too. And West Lafayette was right in the bullseye for the heaviest amounts of ice. Even a trace glaze of ice is treacherous; a quarter inch of it would bring this part of Indiana to a halt for several days. (And that may happen; we are expecting bitter cold for several days after the storm.)

Sadly, I started contacting those who had wanted me to bring them haversacks and explained that I would not be there. 

My customers were all understanding and so I will be mailing their haversacks to them instead of hand delivering them at the show.

I'll miss the showing, I'll miss the buying, selling and trading, 

but most of all, I'll miss reconnecting with friends who I haven't seen for a while. 

Marilou Mol (above) and Liz Cory with me at GLC shows.

My 2022 show season isn't beginning quite as I had hoped.

Storm Coming In

 It's winter and so you expect cold, snow, and even some ice.

We haven't had a lot of snow and what we have had has been light.

But according to the forecast for next week, we are expecting a monster snow and ice storm similar to one  that hit when I was a teenager. That storm dumped almost two feet of snow and I remember struggling though that heavy snow to feed and water the horses.

We couldn't get our cars up the hill to the house for days and had to park them by the road at the bottom of the driveway.

I'm no longer the person who has to get out to the barn and feed twice a day. But that doesn't mean I am not watching the weather and thinking about how the horses will fare if we do get that storm.

A heavy snow coupled with ice does mean that I won't be able to get out to see Abby until the snow melts and roads and lanes are plowed. 

Due to the very cold temperatures we are having, I was considering skipping today's barn check. I know Tim will be out and let me know if Abby has a problem.

But I am reconsidering that. Cold temperatures don't keep me from getting up the lane in my car or hiking out to the pasture like snow and ice do.

I'd better see my gal while I can, especially if the forecasts are correct and this big storm does come through.

Surviving High Winds

Years ago, my 4-H Horse and Pony Club leader stabled his horses in an old barn much like the one Abby and her friends use. Strong winds one night brought that barn down while the horses were in it (none were hurt, luckily.) I think of that sometimes when I am visiting Abby in the old barn and wonder, "Could that happen to this barn?"

I thought I might find out yesterday.

A big storm came through at midnight Wednesday night/Thursday morning with 100 mph winds. (Believe it or not, I slept through it all, but Craig was up and thought we might be having a tornado. He said our home actually shook, and that he heard popping noises on the second floor. Miraculously, aside from overturned patio furniture, our home was unscathed.)

I woke up to reports of heavy damage, especially to Bookston, a town a little to the north of us. My first thought was of Abby and the herd, also a few miles to the north, sheltering in the old barn from the storm overnight.

I texted Tim right away. He has herniated a disc in his back and I wasn't sure just how mobile he was that morning.

But Tim being Tim, he had already checked the barn and horses. (I am so lucky to keep Abby at his place!)

Then I turned my attention to Brookston - my mother owns property there. (An orchard and fifteen acres of woods.) News reports said the town was without power and that the two highways that intersect in it were closed due to downed trees and power lines. I drove up at noon to check the orchard property and see if we had sustained any damage.

Because 43 was closed, I had to turn onto S 200 E and go the back way to the orchard.

The grain silos at S 200 E and E 1250 S, just a mile from our property, had been damaged. 

 Two had been pushed to the side...

 ... and another completely shoved off its pad and crumpled.

Crops had sustained wind damage, too. Field after field had corn all leaning toward the east.

The woods my mother owns were in good shape, although I could see at least one tree had been snapped off at the top.

Sadly, some of the old apple trees had sustained some damage.

It is a little hard to tell, but these are more apple trees that have been toppled.

Surprisingly, despite the massive tree damage, the houses I saw had very little damage, even those surrounded by trees that had been destroyed. There was rotation documented over the area, but my guess is that this was not a tornado - it was either a macroburst, derecho, or straight line winds. (The National Weather Service will be out today and giving its opinion later. Update at 9:00 PM: The National Weather Service has determined that the damage was caused by straight line winds and not a tornado.)

In the meantime, Tim's old barn has weathered yet another Indiana wind event.