Pest control

It was going to be a day to catch up.  I got up early and made a batch of steel-cut oats for the kids' breakfast.  And, since everyone likes brown sugar, I figured I'd save a step and add it at the stove.  Then I opened the Tupperware cannister with the brown sugar in it and a couple of little white squashy things fell out onto the stovetop.

Plodia interpunctella, the Indian Meal Moth, in the larval stage.  And no, I hadn't cleaned my pantry thoroughly for a few years.  It was worst on the top shelf, which is above my eye level and where the honey container sat in a puddle of honey (Secundus doesn't clean up after himself) and the chocolate chip cannister had its lid ajar (Secundus again, with some others, not sealing it after grabbing a snack).  I mean, ick.  Even when the containers are sealed, they can crawl up into the crevices of the lids.

We have nice pull-out shelves in our tall pantry cupboard in our kitchen, remodeled 5 years ago.  So I pulled out the shelf boxes and cleaned them out, wincing each time I found a wriggly critter.  I threw away about 3 pounds of chocolate chips, half a pound of brown sugar, a bunch of crackers, nuts, and beef jerky.  Then I vacuumed out the nooks and crannies of the cupboard walls.  You know that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the one where they're in the Well of Souls and the snakes come out of the holes in the wall? Imagine that scene played out in grotesque miniature as the little worms poke their heads out of the pre-drilled holes where they had made their little nests.  Except even when I vacuumed, their webbing held them tight in there.  I had to poke each little hole with a toothpick and then vacuum again, and I'd have to go back every half hour or so to catch another one wriggling away.

I ran a couple dishwasher loads of the storage containers to sterilize them and will think about putting stuff back very carefully after I'm sure the cupboard is completely clean.  And maybe tomorrow or Saturday I can tackle the main pantry, which I'm sure has some issues too.

For some reason, I wasn't very hungry today.

WIP Wednesday

My various piecing projects are inching along this week.  This is block #62 in the Farmer's Wife Quilt: Old Windmill.  The pink print is from my daughter's quilt, soon to be revealed, and the others are scraps from all over.  Lots of HSTs on this one.

And block #63: Ozark Maple Leaf.  I would never ordinarily have put these two fabrics together: oak leaf print leftover from my Tree of Life quilt and vintage sweet pea fabric from an old nightgown.

I now have a total of 107 blocks for the Crumb Along quilt.  I can't remember exactly how many I need, but I'll start laying it out when I have 25 more.  That could be as early as next week at this rate!

This week I started and finished machine-quilting my daughter's quilt.  She sewed down the binding yesterday and today, and tomorrow maybe we'll get the label on and take some pictures.  Now I need to decide what's next onto the Megaquilter... I have a couple to choose from!

On the knitting front I've started a new pair of socks and a baby item.  No pictures yet.

Linking up to Freshly Pieced, where you'll find lots of other quilty progress to look at.

Sweet Tomato, er... Pumpkin Socks

I finished the fourth pair of Stashbuster Spirals socks, and the second using Cat's Sweet Tomato Heel.  Quarta obligingly posed with a little help from the pumpkin we carved with Aunt Beth's pumpkin carving kit.

They fit pretty well across the heel.  Mainly there were three leftover yarns; the orange is my homespun.  She pronounces them "so so comfy." I am now through with the Stashbuster Spirals pattern for awhile and will make a pair of plain socks for Steve.  Ultimately I want to try making argyle socks, but since that will involve intarsia I probably need to work up to it.  Haven't really been clearing much time for knitting recently.

I took Quarta's quilt off the Megaquilter yesterday and here she is sewing a red button/cherry on top of her cupcake.  The binding is attached and she has gotten her lesson in blind hem stitch.  I'm looking forward to sharing it with the blog world when she's finished, but here's a sneak peek.  I'm really proud of the work she did on this, most of it when she was still 8.  Maybe I'll let her read the next Harry Potter book.

Smudge wanted to get in on some of the photo shoot action.

Book Review - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest

The third book in the phenomenally popular series by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the last one, in my opinion, that should be read by a child under the age of 10 without fairly extensive parental oversight and debriefing.  After this, the books grow progressively darker and Rowling becomes one of those authors who Kill Off Characters.  And while the body count in books 4-7 may be appropriate to the context of the larger story arc, and the context may be appropriate for a Young Adult series, the eager 3rd and 4th graders who devoured the first few books may need to wait a few years for some maturity to set in before their parents let them loose on the last 4 books.  This book, I believe, is the turning point.  In many ways it is still a kids' book, and the mischief and pranks and teenage angst are all what you would expect in a kids' book.  But the larger context is a war amongst wizards and the potential return of a great, powerful Dark Lord.  Children discover they cannot trust everyone, and underlying the whole story is the horrific threat of the soul-sucking Dementors.  Even some kids in the recommended age range (8-9 and up) may find parts of it disturbing.

I admit to being torn on this one: my 9-year old really wants to read it and I will probably let her next time she asks nicely.  Her oldest brother read it before he was 8, and the 4th book before he was 10, but I would probably put her off longer than that on the 4th book.  This third book has a movie counterpart that is one of the better adaptations: they are all good in their ways, but this one successfully tells the story and retains the pacing and characterization of the book in a way that the later films do not.  (The later films tend to show only highlights from the books, leaving out the charming bits that make the books such a joy to the eager reader).  For many of us longtime Potter fans, this was the book that made us fans and ensured we would be staking out the bookstores for the new release of each new sequel.  In many ways, the enduring appeal of this series is for adults even more than children, but we probably shouldn't be greedy with this book.  It belongs to children first and foremost. 

In this book, Harry loses his temper with his dreadful Aunt Marge and finds himself on his own, more isolated that the maltreated orphan has ever been before, and expecting any minute to be expelled from Hogwarts.  There is a terrible criminal on the loose: Sirius Black, an escaped convict from the wizard prison, Azkaban.  Even the Muggle world is on the lookout for him.  Harry's best friends, Ron and Hermione, are at odds because Hermione's pet cat keeps attacking Ron's pet rat.  And Harry is afraid he is hallucinating when he sees a giant black dog -- or is it really the Grim, the ominous portent of death, as described by Sibyl Trelawney, professor of Divination?  Things begin to look up when he seeks special tutoring in how to repel Dementors from Remus Lupin, the shabby and occasionally sickly Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.  Hagrid, his first friend, is tormented by his own worries, and Harry's antagonists, Draco Malfoy and Professor Snape, are just as sneering and nasty as ever.  Harry also begins to uncover troubling information about his late parents and their friendships; he is faced with some ethical choices which will have serious ramifications in the future.  The kindly headmaster Albus Dumbledore keeps a close eye on Harry, but not too close until the end of the story: for the one thing Harry must learn is to face his troubles on his own, and win his way through by his own wit, character, and courage.  This he does, showing that he is ready for even more demanding challenges in the future books.

End of the First Quarter

I'm surfacing briefly in the midst of the end-of-term grading marathon.  No pictures today, because I like my pictures to be pretty and it's not a pretty picture.  I give a mean, 4-page, brain-dump final exam to all three of my Latin classes, and since it's the first of the year and the first ever for the 6th graders, I need to grade them carefully and thoroughly and get an idea of the kids' strengths and weaknesses.  Each final has a vocab section and at least one grammar section, and I give those two sections of the final as a pretest quiz the week before, so they can either test out or study up on them and ace them on the final.  A surprising number of kids do not take advantage of that opportunity.  In fact, almost all of the kids who got an F on the final exam would have passed if they had mastered the material on the pretest.

Overall, my bell curve looks nice, with a gratifying number of A's and B's.  The tests also have a sentence translation section, a Latin quotes section (e.g., sine qua non, Adhibenda est in jocando moderatio, Gloria in excelsis Deo, etc.), and a matching section on Roman History (6th grade), Roman culture (7th grade) or Greco-Roman mythology (8th grade).  I'm regularly on the lookout for interesting, classically-themed pangrams to spell out secret messages in the matching sections.  I can do it in Latin and feel even cleverer... various abbreviated forms of "Magistra made this," but I don't think the kids get it.

Then in addition to the finals, I have the Lingua Angelica worksheets to grade (Gloria in excelsis for 6th grade, Veni Creator Spiritus for 8th grade) and the final grades to compile by next Wednesday.  And I have to have the syllabi for all three classes to give out Monday morning.  I am so glad I did the whole year's worth of lesson plans in the summer.

Good news: the Megaquilter is working.  I finished reconnecting it today and have done a bit of Quarta's 9-patch/ freeform applique first quilt, and it's humming along nicely.  I was worried because it took a good month to set it up when I first got it and we had a lot of technical problems getting all the pieces to work together.  But a tune-up was what it needed and it's working okay.  Now I need to find the time to use it...

Wip Wednesday

I'm in a holding pattern this week - still making a bit of progress on my two most active quilt-alongs, but not much more because last week was parent-teacher conference time and this week is finals week.  There is an insane amount of grading in my immediate future.  I'm not much farther along on my knitting projects, either.

Farmer's Wife Quilt block #59: Night and Day.  This one was definitely only achievable for me by paper piecing.  I chose scraps of a light blue ocean fishing print for the Day (I mostly cut around the fish!) and scraps of a dark blue celestial chart print for Night.

Block # 60: Noon and Light.  This one is a wee bit smaller than 6.5", I've been doing the Crumb-along and wasn't as careful as I should have been with the seam allowance.  But I ripped and resewed three seams and I think it will work.

Block # 61: Northern Lights.  Okay, I guess.  At least I'm past the halfway mark now.  This quilt is going to happen.

Another quilt past the halfway mark is the Crumb-along quilt.  I made a bunch more blocks this week, bringing the total to 71, I think.  I kind of want to finish all the crumb blocks and then have a big cleanup of my sewing area.   But it's fun.

I have the Megaquilter back but still haven't reconnected it.  I need to get busy with that, but it will probably have to be after finals week.  Be sure to check out all the other goings-on at Freshly Pieced, and also take a look at the Bloggers' Quilt Festival if you haven't already.

Quilts of the Past: Tree of Life

I'm taking this opportunity to share a 12-year-old quilt with the Bloggers' Quilt Festival.  I've never blogged about this quilt before, but it was hugely influential in my development as a quilter.  And I love it.  I think I've mentioned before that I love tree quilts.  Ironic that all these years later, I'm teaching at Cedar Tree Classical Christian School and still making tree quilts.

This quilt started back in 1998, I think, when I was living in Colorado and connected with a lovely group of quilting ladies called "Hearts and Hands" (and if any of you read this, friend me on Facebook!)  I grew up in Ohio, and the dryness of the Colorado climate made me homesick for the big beautiful trees on my family's wooded property south of Akron.  So when it was my turn to choose the block of the month, I chose the Tree block, most of them in green but a few in Fall colors.  Since the blocks were slightly different in size, I framed them up with mitered frames and trimmed so they were all the same size before joining them together.  I knew I wanted to complete the quilt with applique leaves of all kinds -- I collected patterns by doing leaf rubbings with my son's crayons.  I made a special point of including some sassafras leaves and several maples, my favorites.  Also some aspen leaves in honor of Colorado.

It took me a few years to design the setting, do all the applique, and finally the machine quilting, which was the most ambitious I had ever attempted (and still is probably the most elaborate machine quilting I've ever done.)  I finished it sometime in 2000, after we had moved to Washington.  It hung in our dining room for a few years, and is now hanging in the fellowship hall of our church.

It's about 60" square.  The block in the center of the bottom row is mine, the rest are from my Colorado quilting buddies.  I did most of the applique leaves using the freezer paper and spray starch method, but a few leaves were done with glue stick where I had to cut through the back to remove the paper.  I quilted it on my Viking 630 with invisible nylon thread; in the ditch around the patches and applique, medium stippling around the borders and close stippling around the trees, with triangular feather motifs in the background setting triangles.