Since you asked

My new home will be inspected by the State of Ohio next Wednesday, June 5th. I know it passed Mr. Dan, the Maintenance Man's inspection, and Ohio will issue a blue check, too.

The next moving date Joe, the Moving Man, has available is June 13th. Or, in two weeks I am outta here. Theresa says I can have keys as soon as I sign the lease, after Ohio gives me a pass. So, I can load up pictures and such stuff and get them moved.

How do I move a loom? You're asking the person who has moved many a loom. The biggest key to a successful move is to have the warp off, gone, done, as is the current warp on this loom. The only other step is to secure all moving parts.

Ready for two guys to pick it up and start walking. This loom is made to collapse. It's a plus for transporting and a negative for using. The loom is not overly sturdy; I couldn't beat a rag rug on this loom. I doubt I could get a shuttle of weft through its shedd. It does weave decent fabric, though fifteen yards taxes the take up beam and the brake.

The entire studio is here; boxed and ready to be carried off.

Kitchen cupboards and drawers are empty and packed, save enough china and cutlery to last two weeks.

The boxes have accumulated around the furniture; I need to clear a path to get furniture out first. I assume that's how it's done.

In the meantime, it just keeps raining on the happy flowers Way down at the end, the iris are starting to bloom.

More odds and ends days

           

Either I am catching some thing or all the damn pollen is choking me. Neither is acceptable! I also find it of great interest that I mentally am able to handle this packing business, but physically, not so much. My formerly broken leg still hurts, then there is the matter of the knees needing replacements. I still manage to pack another box or two per day, and get most of them out to “central box staging” in the living room.

This morning I went to breakfast with delightful friends. One of those marriages made in heaven, wherein Jim not only does the shopping, he does the cooking! Lynn does the mopping up. And they seem to eat most every meal out!

We went to a favorite dive of theirs in Kenmore. Going anywhere with the two of them is like a scene from Driving Miss Daisy. Getting to Kenmore could be a short run on the freeway, or the scenic route through downtown Akron, currently in the midst of its version of A Big Dig. Since we all three are Akron kids, it’s memory lane passing the rehabbed buildings. 

Central Planning is installing a couple of roundabouts in sacred old Main Street. The two of them thought roundabouts are sacrilege, so I sang my praises of them, and we no longer entertain roundabouts.

I did have a burning question for Jim. How much is a pound of butter? He responded three or four dollars, once in a great while, five. I told him of my limited investigation, as I have not been the grocery shoperer for these last many years.

A couple of months ago I glanced at the receipt Laura handed me, and asked “Since when has butter been eight dollars a pound?” Well, she didn’t know. I looked in the fridge and saw I’m eating butter from Ireland. It is very good. However, I suggested she look down a shelf or two at Kreigers, and find Land ‘O Lakes, or some comparable brand.

The next time I remembered to look, the butter line item was four dollars.

Last week I shopped solo. At the butter counter, I realized butter was down to four dollars because Laura purchased the half pound pack of Irish butter. I know there is more local butter somewhere in that store, and I’ll find it.

Yesterday I stopped for a picture of the golf course returning to nature. Quickly, I might add. Those greens are rapidly becoming roughs.

Discombobulated

I bet a lot of us never heard that word. I doubt it's been around a long time, but probably was reluctantly added to the lexicon back in the seventies. I remember my parents and aunt and uncle throwing it into the conversation on those warm afternoons at cards.

Discombobulated is working for me right now. Our chaotic management is assembling the process that gets a unit occupied in such a shambolic way! I believe it's down to a one week lead time, but "It could be two, Honey." I choose to remain unfazed and unflustered.

I've arranged to be moved by a company that has a management person living right here in the park. In fact, when word got around, as it does, he dropped by with his business card and listened to my tale of park stupidity.

The next day a scheduling clerk called me with a quote of two men and three hours to load me up and unload me about a hundred feet away, as the crow flies. Sadly, that's not the way the road goes.

I putt along at packing. I'm an old camper, and can live on one pan and a mess kit indefinitely. I'm pretty much down to my room to finish packing. I moved in with a minimum, and am moving out the same, plus the studio. And that was a lot of fiddly packing.

Mr. Cat is not pleased, either. Discombobulated is his middle name right now. Laura is gone, and he seems to know she's not coming back. Well, even a cat can figure out something's up.

My great grandmother's doorstop stays placidly on guard. He is conveying to the cat, Keep cool. This moving business happens over and over and over, and the most it has cost me is some paint chips.

Throwback Thursday

I've started this post a dozen times and erased it and restarted it as often. I've put in another day at packing; I'm tired and at 7:30 it's too early to go to bed.

My sister sent me a picture of a family treasure she had re-framed, and I thought I'd make it the subject tonight. I am too tired to think of a title, until I hit on Throwback Thursday, to describe the bit of nostalgia she took to the framing shop. 

Then I realized it's not Thursday. Too bad.

Mom always signed and dated her quilts. A corner block of this Sunbonnet Sue has her name, Lenore, and the date she finished the quilt, 1936. I slept under this quilt, and I'm sure my brothers and sister did, after me.

When it was old and seer, our dad made a frame and put this worn out, dated corner of the quilt into it. Jan had it put into another frame and has hung it in her studio. I see the reflection of other things I know hang on her wall, but I also see stains of history.

Dad made a frame probably in the sixties after he retired and could pot about at jobs he enjoyed. Let's say 1966, for the math of it, which means the quilt gave thirty years of hard service and washings. 

I see a couple of brown stains that I can account for. As a child in the forties and fifties, I was prone to ear infections and one remedy was to run a vaporizer overnight, with a nasty brown "medicine" distributed by the steam. I remember it being spilled one night, before it landed in the vaporizer, and left a nasty mark on the quilt.

Mom was quite sad about that. "It will never wash out!" was all she ever said about it, though. If you enlarge the picture, you will see how thin it became in those years of service.

Mom made a Sunbonnet Sue quilt for each of her granddaughters. I wrote about her quilts years ago when I began blogging. That link is to the Sunbonnet Sues. If you put "quilts" in the search box, you can find all the posts I did of all her quilts we still have.

Weather, whether or not

Saturday was a nearly perfect day. All windows open and breezes wafting in the pollen. Today began dragging in the humidity, too, and suddenly it was time for windows down and air up.

Laura stopped for a couple of weeds in the garden on our way to the grocery store this morning, and she found our very own Mr. Toad has exited his winter abode.

How about that for stink eye? I just noticed his chest markings look like a couple of playful tadpoles. That would only elicit more stink eye. "Hruumph, stupid old woman. Tadpoles are not toads!"

He was close to the size of my hand, so I elected to let him be.

I have no idea what this flower is. The coral bells have grown up since last week, too.

So, back to the weather I led off with. We got to mid eighties today, and then the bottom falls out all week long.  The threat of severe weather in the middle of the country trumps my whining about forties overnight next week. I hope the potential for tornadoes spares people. 

I read an interesting quote, "They don't vote governments in son, they vote them out." Also from my lips to God's ear, we must exchange out these climate deniers, and that's just for starters.

My sister's chives did not overwinter, so I promised her a trowel full when I see her next. That could be sooner than later, or later than sooner. She says she will oversee the goods moving into the new abode as I watch them leave the old.

Laura is moving back with her mother this coming Saturday, and even has secured summer employment at a local Plato's Closet.  I'm packing slowly. 

My neighbor and I commiserate on the management of the park. Or lack thereof. We both come trailing blue ribbons in management and organization, and simply do not understand how people so deficient are appointed to positions requiring planning, scheduling and other elementary skills of property management.

I cannot get a move in date. Without a moving date, I cannot hire a moving company. "Yes, I'm moving, very soon, but I don't have the date. Can you rent me a truck and a crew for that day?"  I'm sure they think less of me than does that toad!

Today we pulled up all the garden art and stashed it on the porch. All the pictures are down. Now I need to fill boxes, taking care to leave out a sauce pan and my toothbrush.  Assuming, of course, I  get the nod from on high.

Holding pattern

It's warmer today, but I'm still cold, of course. The thermostat indicates sixty-nine in the living room, and I'm remain in winter attire. The front window is open for Mr. Cat's use, and I guess he's absorbing all the sunshine heat before it filters back to me. 

I check the drawing of the layout of the new unit frequently, to see where things will go. One great feature is the presence of a window on each side of the new living room. I wonder if it will be warmer.

Our new lives, Laura's and mine, have not yet begun. This is the last week of classes at school, next week are finals. Last week and this, she and her mother have organized interviews for a summer job, and interviews are being implemented. 

School work happens too, every day. Laura spent much of this week recording a video for her ASL class. A good deal of the time involved tears, lost in the intricacies of computer language. I know nothing and she is one rank above me. I suggested she consult her siblings, but that was dismissed out of hand.  Some time later her cheerful self was back in place; she resolved the problems and the assignment was finished.

I've been weaving. This is a difficult warp. Not irritating, just tedious. I knew the purple would be a problem; I was quite right.

Probably two-thirds of my fifteen yards are woven to the front beam, and suddenly this  bit of the bumpity bump boucle is balking at travelling through heddle and reed. It was abandonded yesterday, to consider its transgression and suffer bed without dinner. 

I was out and about this afternoon, phone in hand, and the blooms were interesting. I got some on the way home.

And, finally, can you see what I think is a tiny, abandoned bird nest in this pine? I cannot believe pine needles just fell in this pattern. It's a small nest, and I don't know birds this small.

And so, back to getting that thread on track.

Phones don't float, they sink

The Motorola back flipped from my pocket and went straight to the bottom of a very large puddle: glug, glug, glug. I retrieved it stripped it, took it home and left it to dry overnight.

In the morning, no luck. I went to the phone store. For $10 they would put it in the dry-out machine for an hour. If that worked, I could have it back for $100. Or, I could buy a new phone. Or...

I bought a Google Pixel 3, whatever that means. It is smaller by far than the Motorola's, I do not like Samsung and the other android brands, and the salesmen told me the Pixel 3 is the best camera on the market. When pigs fly, they could deliver the Brooklyn Bridge!

Here are the paper narcissus. They are done so soon. The ones with petals laid back are a day old.

Canterbury Bells. I do not recall them blooming so early in the past.

Dan asked me how I would move everything from the garden to the new lot, and I told him it would remain, and I hoped the new folks would take care of it. And the old grump actually said "What a shame; and it's looking so good. After three years"! The new camera doesn't seem to make any difference.

Back at the ranch

Dan, the maintenance man, asked me to stop and approve the way he intends to install the screen door. (That's Dan's back, in the next picture.)

I said I didn't need to stop; I wanted both door knobs on the same side. 

"I can't do that!" says Mr. Dan. "Then you won't be able to bring anything through the door."

"Why did you ask?"

"If you look at it now, you won't argue with me later."

So I went over, and took the opportunity to walk up my new steps.  The deck guys closed the risers, so my wheeled cart will work.

My front door, there, opens in, to the left. They did it that way at the factory. If the storm were hinged on the same side, it would open into the middle of the deck, using up much of the access room. 

"So, case closed?" asked Dan. I went on in.

I looked in all the rooms, but only took one picture. The window at the end of the drive will be the studio, and yes, it has the smallest bathroom in the entire park enclosed in that room. Definitely the cat's room, as there is no other adequate place.

I don't see moving before June. No water hook up yet; the state hasn't inspected yet. There is no shed, there is grading to do and grass to plant. But, it's happening.

Beautiful day, sad story

The national park has been here longer than I have, but not much. I've told the story of undervalued property, 400 displaced families. How Ohio Senator Taft and Ohio businessman Vail (who had land to donate) tracked down President Ford, on vacation in Colorado, on December 27th, to have legislation for the park signed, back in the seventies.

And so it began.

I've been fascinated by the golf course bounded by Akron Peninsula Road and Truxell Road. The corkscrew willow at the end of the pond on Truxell Road has been my header picture for the last many years.

The stately yews planted by Mr. Yesberger, straight row after row, have drawn me in for years. Sadly, the year I booked a tee time and a golf cart, for the purpose of photographing trees while a granddaughter drove the cart, I was foiled. I neglected to complete my disguise with a golf bag. I was not allowed to go on the course. I would distract the golfers!

It's the course where I followed the life and death of a young deer, who I called "The Little Guy". And, it's the course where a solitary heron has spent the summer these last several years. Today I saw the heron for the first time this year.

Mr. Yesberger, the owner and builder of this course, lived across Akron Peninsula Road, up (down?) a windy road. He died unexpectedly a few years ago, and title passed to an unexpecting grandson. The story only grows sadder; this young man could not carry on, and took his life.

I always knew there were covenants of some sort protecting the land from development in the circumstance of no heirs, but I was very hazy on the details. So, I sought them out.

That piece of legislation that President Ford signed in his vacation motel room in Colorado, has the only stipulation of its kind of any federal park  in America. In the event the land leaves the Yesberger family, it may not be developed, though it may be returned to its natural state.

The person who explained this to me wanted me to realize the amount of tax revenue lost to the village, the school, the library.  But my mind focused on "returned to its natural state". 

Yes, he explained. The ponds drained, the roughs gone, the greens gone, the sand traps gone, the hundreds and hundreds of trees removed.

This is still sinking in. 

I think I'll go post the picture I took today of the willow.

And they are no more

Deb and Steve of Elements Studio, held their studio open house yesterday and today. It was a complete success for me, and I hope everyone else did as well.

They used their garage and studio. It was a massive undertaking, just cleaning up ceramic dust and making enough room. Looking through from the garage, above, the shelving is a backdrop for Deb's carved scenes.

Bags of clay powder are stashed everywhere! I have a table of towels over past the woman in the red scarf, and those are sacks of powder beneath the table and behind the wire grids. Now you'll notice supplies stashed everywhere. It was a beautiful job.

Over in the studio now, here is a sweep of the room, with pottering paraphernalia neatly stashed everywhere. That wall of porcelain plaques over to the left disguises the big collection of odds and ends hidden on shelving.  

More displays of various artists' wares, going around the room.

And the last set of shelving. I'd guess Steve put some spare pottery there on the steps, to discourage anyone checking to see if there might be "more upstairs", in the studio attic.

I did not see the kiln anywhere, and cannot imagine where it was secreted away.

Another day in the rain

For weeks I've looked at the paper narcissus, asking, "Where are the buds?" And here they are. This time next week, a stand of the little white beauties.  The woolly thyme is quite taking over as ground cover; there are only a few stubborn weeds to deal with.

The rain keeps on sprinkling, day after day. The plants are so happy. Here is a sedum, an August lily hosta w.a.y in the back, Aunt Laura's iris and everywhere, air blooming crocus (colchium).

Here is Aunt Laura's iris, close up. They are ordinary little wild iris, but Aunt Laura gave me seeds, years and years ago.

Pink coral bells and my little stand of miniature daffodils.

Look at the puddle! Any step into the dirt yields rising water.

The chives are happy in their pot. They will be moving, soon.

And speaking of moving, here is a bag of marble chips I emptied when we moved here, three years ago. I wanted whatever I had in a pot there to have a nice background. I think I'll put on a pair of gloves and pick up a good many of them for the new rock garden.

Some more of my week

The plum (?) tree outside the Methodist church is in flower. Nancy and I led Tuesday, until the last hand, when we were swept away by their massive meld.

The week commenced rather coolly, daytime highs barely reaching the sixties, before disappearing. Yesterday Ruth and I took advantage of a fabulously beautiful day to go to Caroline's school and watch her team play its last softball game of the year.

At Ruth's house, mid afternoon and temperatures up to the eighties, I stripped down to one shirt. I tied the hoodie around my waist, just in case. As we sat in the bleachers and cheered the girls, the weather changed literally on a walk off walk. 

We watched it coming, coming, coming, and the big rain started and the temperature dropped thirty degrees in the time it took to  walk fairly quickly the hundred feet to the car. Such a storm!

Back home I began to work on a new project. I bought a skein of cotton yarn, plied with a fine synthetic boucle.  It is the boucle that makes an otherwise nondescript strand of cotton appear so crinkly and interesting.

I calculated enough yardage to put fifteen yards in each of eleven bouts on the loom, and that much at least is working out. I spent the rest of yesterday and most of today putting the fifteen yards on each bout. I've never warped this way, mathematically. Once there were eleven little balls of purple to put on bobbins, my work was over, theoretically.

I merely turned the beam and wound until each fifteen yards of purple was beamed on. A good idea, except I cannot recommend it for boucle yarns. I have figured out how not to have the little bumps catch in the tension box reeds, but it still must go through the heddle eyes and beater bar reed.  We'll see.