Ah, the memories

Ken and I caught the tail-end of a t.v. ad the other night and burst into laughter simultaneously. Apparently the commercial had triggered the same memory for us. I'll get to that in a minute.

Our old neighborhood was nothing if not interesting. We lived there for 25 years and were witness to all manner of happenings.

A day care center was part of the neighborhood. One afternoon as I drove home from work, I glanced in at the day care. Imagine my surprise when I spotted one of the little charges on the roof of the daycare's front porch. That's right: on the roof. Probably I should have stopped to alert the staff of their missing child. Yes, I really should have done that, but I was eager to get home after a hard day at work. I only hoped the child would be escorted off the roof before his mother came to pick him up.

Three houses to our left, the owners were surprised to come home late one night and find an elderly man, a complete stranger, sound asleep in one of their beds. Turns out the gentleman had arrived from a long drive to visit relatives...who happened to live in an almost identical home three houses to our right.

Late one night after Ken and I had gone to bed, we were awakened by lights flashing on our bedroom blinds. We got up and peeked out the window. A tow truck, with flashing light on its roof, was backing into a driveway across the street. Soon the tow truck hitched onto the residents' car and...hauled it away. Ken called the sheriff's department, thinking we might be witnessing a theft. No, he was informed, we were witnessing the repo man at work!

Our favorite memory, though, and the one triggered by the t.v. ad the other night, happened on a quiet, lazy summer afternoon. We were both in the house at the time. Suddenly we started hearing what sounded like a rumbling sound, then it became a loud, scraping sound. We looked out our living room window in time to see a car driving by, hauling a boat behind it. The thing was, though, that the boat wasn't on a boat trailer. It was being hauled directly on the ground! The car turned into a driveway just beyond our house, causing the boat to make a wild, wide circle as it entered the driveway. The driver cooly unhitched the boat and got back into his car. He wasn't able to leave the driveway fast enough, however, for the boat's apparent owner came out of his house with a baseball bat and proceeded to leave several impressive dents in the hood of the car. I'd guess this day marked the end of a friendship.

A few days later when Ken and I were out for a walk, we followed the scrapes made by the boat and were able to trace it to its origin, about half a mile away on a side road.

Oh, and the t.v. commercial? As I said, we caught only the tail end of it, but a car is speeding down the highway, hauling an engine or something behind it, without benefit of trailer.

We love our new neighborhood, but it just doesn't offer the drama of the old one.

Lobster Tales, Chapter Two: the final chapter

I should have taken Pete up on his offer to give me a wake-up call the next morning. When I have to get up at an outrageous hour, I set my radio alarm, but then I wake up constantly throughout the night to make sure my alarm is working and I haven't overslept. I bet I got a grand total of two hours' sleep, max, last Thursday night.

My friend and fellow A∆K member Lynn picked me up at 5:00 a.m. sharp. Her car's trunk was full of lobster meat, it was raining to beat the band, it was chilly, and we told ourselves and each other how happy we were to be out and about in this madness.

How do eleven sorority sisters pack 430 lobster box lunches in a little over two hours? It's not easy, but we've become a well-oiled machine after years of doing it.

Five of us worked in the kitchen; one mixed the lobster, with a little mayonnaise, in two-pound batches and passed it along to the two "sandwich makers," of which I was one. We filled the buns ridiculously full of the fresh lobster meat, full to overflowing, actually.

Then we passed the filled sandwiches on to our assistants, who wrapped them in foil and delivered them to the crew in the dining room. Here the sandwiches were boxed with a bag of chips, a thick homemade brownie, a fancy napkin, and a thank-you-for-supporting A∆K note.

About 1 1/2 hours into the ritual, when all seemed to be going well, the thing that happens every Lobster Box Lunch day happened again: we began hearing whisperings about the number of boxes yet to be filled, the amount of lobster meat left, and whether we'd have enough lobster to make the remaining sandwiches.

I've heard this every single LBL day since I retired from teaching in 2004 and could attend the LBL event. And I've never seen us actually run out of lobster meat. I've seen the hysteria, the panic, the cold-to-the-bone fear, but I've never seen the worst happen.

...until this year. We'd run out of lobster meat with 40 sandwiches yet to be made.

We'd done the math correctly; we'd ordered the correct amount of lobster meat, but then several last-minute orders came in on Friday morning. Orders are supposed to be finalized on Wednesday night. Hence, the problem.

I made a call to Pete; he said he could supply six more pounds of lobster. It wouldn't, however, be ready until 9:00 a.m. I'd forgotten, when I called him, that it was now only 7:30 a.m.

So we lobster ladies sat around for awhile, chatted, and waited for 7:45, when it would be time to head into Portland for the extra six pounds.

By 10:00 a.m. the additional lobster meat had arrived, and we were back in business. The final boxed lunches were made, we loaded up our vehicles for any deliveries on our routes home, and we were done.

Another successful Lobster Box Lunch fundraiser could now be put to rest. And what a deal our customers got: a generous lobster roll, a bag of chips, a homemade brownie, all for $8.

Lobster Tales, Chapter 1 of a two-chapter story.

My assignment this past week was to procure the fresh lobster meat for my sorority chapter's annual Lobster Box Lunch fundraiser.

I did a dry run last year with our former lobster-procurer: she took me to Portland's Commercial Street, showed me the pier where the lobster wholesaler is located, and in general led me through the paces.

I felt confident as I took on the assignment, solo, this year.

On Thursday my trusty Honda (auto, not motorcycle) and I made our way down Commercial Street. I love Commercial Street. It's lined with little shops and big businesses, sight-seeing boats, numerous restaurants serving the freshest seafood on the planet, squawking seagulls, and fishermen just in from a morning's work on the water. I'd love to have a chance, just once, to see Commercial Street one-hundred years ago. Ken and I have a large framed print entitled "Commerical Street, Portland, Maine, circa 1902." We both love that print and comment often about it. (What intrigues me is that Commercial Street, in earlier times, didn't even exist. The waterfront was farther "up the hill," not far from Congress Street. Commercial Street was built from landfill, in other words.)

I drove past DiMillo's Floating Restaurant and to the first street on the right immediately after DiMillo's. This put me onto Portland Pier. I slowly made my way out to the end of the pier, past Dan Lilley's law office and J's Oyster Bar. As I inched along, I couldn't help but wonder how old the pilings holding up the pier might be and in what condition? The pier is home to numerous buildings and also accommodates several parked cars and trucks. Heavy parked cars and trucks.Thought-provoking. (During unusually high tides, which visit Casco Bay perhaps once a year, Portland's various piers have to be evacuated because they're under water. Thursday was a bright, clear, sunny day, for which I was thankful.)

The last building on the left: New Meadows Lobster, "...live Maine lobsters from the ocean floor to your front door." Or, in this case, cooked, shelled, and packed-in-ice Maine lobster from New Meadows' warehouse to my car's trunk.

Pete met me. Pete told me to be there at 12:00 noon. I'd noted, as I drove to the pier's end, that my car's digital clock registered 11:59. I hoped I wasn't too early.

Pete's my new bff. He's a good guy, hale and hearty, and he didn't expect me to go out onto the lobster boat to do the actual lobstering. For that I was thankful, too.

Pete, however, is perhaps just a smidge too amused by the fact that I call myself a "sorority sister." I guess he was picturing someone nubile and striking. Sorry to disappoint him, but perhaps my generous check for 84 lbs. of fresh lobster meat, strictly knuckles and claws (or "k and c," as Pete calls them), helped to ease his disappointment.

I'd hoped to get a good view of the huge cruise ship docked just behind Pete's company, at the next pier, but I wasn't able to see it from New Meadows. So in place of discussing the cruise ship, I mentioned to Pete that shelling 84 pounds of freshly-cooked lobsters must be extremely hard work because I know, from too-occasional experience, that shelling one Maine lobster is hard work.

Pete agreed with me and said he can't find local folks who are willing to work that hard. Instead, a Korean lady does the shelling for him, and she often brings her entire family with her to help with the task. The lobstering crew at New Meadows starts work at 4:00 a.m., Pete said. He offered to give me a wake-up call on Friday morning, the day my "sisters" and I would make the actual lobster rolls. I declined.

As Pete loaded the lobster meat into my car, I wondered how I could possibly find enough refrigerators to store the containers for the next 18 hours. Pete assured me I was worrying for nothing: the lobster meat, in 2-lb. vacuum-sealed bags, was packed in ice. It would, he insisted, be fine in those styrofoam containers until the next morning. I hoped he was right.

I thanked Pete, left the pier, and headed home, hoping I wouldn't get car-jacked along the way. I was carrying precious cargo, for sure.

I (heart) felting

I get a charge out of knitting something super-ginormous then throwing it into the washing machine to felt it down to a reasonable size.

I've knitted and felted several pairs of mittens.

And several pairs of clog slippers. (I wore these all last winter and can hardly wait to tuck my chilly toes back into them in a few weeks.)

Numerous handbags. And now, these Project Bags, which are even more enormous, pre-felting, than the handbags I've made.

The Project Bag pattern comes from Kaleidoscope Yarns. It's knitted with a double strand of wool yarn. I like Paton's Classic Wool for felting, although I've used other 100% wool yarns with equally good results.

Here is my first project bag before it was felted. As you can see, it measures 27" across. After felting, it measures about 17" across.

Or, to put it another way, before felting a Project Bag is large enough to accommodate one almost-five-year-old girl.

Or it could hold a litter of puppies, or maybe four watermelons, or even a small, compact car.

After felting the Project Bag is just the right size for holding, well, your current project.

I'll be filling my Project Bag with yarns, needles, and knitting directions, I suspect.

Project completed...and a visitor

I finished the A∆K state banner a few minutes ago. Hooray!

Now I can pack away all of the paraphernalia that goes with a project like this and get back to my knitting.

Yesterday, as I was about to sew together the three sections of the banner, I made a last-minute change in the arrangement of the sections. I like this one much better.

Then I added the three border strips. I was dubious about the use of the purple, but it's an official color of A∆K, so I felt it needed to be there a little more prominently than solely in a few of the violet blossoms. Now that it IS one of the border strips, I like it. It gives the overall design some "pop."

This morning I attached the cotton batting middle section of the "sandwich," added the backing, then made the bias edging to machine-sew to the front edges and hand sew to the back edges. (That's the bias edging underway in the first photo.) That's now done, and I've added a little patch on the back with my name, my A∆K chapter, and 2010, for history's sake.

So, it's done.

And speaking of violets, my favorite little Violet paid us a visit on Sunday.

The first thing she wanted to do when she got here was go out to my flower garden to check on the fairy houses she and I made in August.

She was pleased to see the houses are still standing and in good condition. Best of all, though, is that she could tell the garden fairies have been in their new houses. She could tell, she said, because "the beds have been moved a little, so that means they've been sleeping in there."

Here Molly the Dog and Violet check on one of the fairy houses.

If I didn't already know Violet had paid us a visit, I'd be able to tell by this scene on my coffee table: acorns and an oak leaf.

The last few times Violet has visited us, she has left acorns behind.

She must have been a squirrel in an earlier life.

Another banner update

I'm obsessed with this project. I think about it night and day. For the past week our kitchen island has been littered with fabric, stencils, iron-on interfacing, "Heat'n'Bond," scissors of various sizes, glue, freezer paper, pencils, pins, and other extraneous materials.

I've made a second, emergency run to Marden's for more fabric.

And of course, I've neglected the housework, which is always easy.

I think this will be the final design, which is drastically different from the original design. At the top is the A∆K logo, which needs to be included somewhere in the piece. Scattered about the logo and elsewhere are violets, the official flower of A∆K.

In the middle of the night I awoke suddenly with the solution to cutting out the "Maine" letters: first iron a piece of interfacing to the back of the plain navy fabric, use the erasable pen to trace the letters backwards onto the interfacing, cut them out, then apply some Heat'n'Bond to the back of the letters to secure them to the middle strip of fabric before machine appliquéing them in place. I was assuming the middle strip should be white, then I thought perhaps blue would be better, but Ken says white works better. I'm still not sure which it should be.

The machine appliqué of Portland Head Light was surprisingly easy. I followed Linda's advice and did a test appliqué with scrap fabric, to get the feel of the process and the machine, before tackling the actual Head Light appliqué. (That was a good suggestion, Linda.) And Heat'n'Bond is my new very best friend. It makes appliqué a breeze, with absolutely no puckering of the fabric as you guide it under the presser foot.

I still have to sew the three sections together (after appliquéing the violets and "Maine" in place), then I'll add three narrow border strips around all four sides...and the hard part will be behind me.

I'm finding, though, that the closer I get to completing the banner, the more frightened I grow that my A∆K sisters won't like it.

But I guess if they don't like it, then they can step forward and take on the task of making a newer, better state banner, can't they?!

It's beginning to look a lot (or at least a little) like....

Portland Head Light!

The "New England Lighthouses to Applique" book arrived from the eBay seller on Monday, so I spent the rest of that day in a semi-paralyzed state as I studied the task ahead of me. What, oh what, had I gotten myself into?

There is so much tiny little detail in the appliqué pattern: Did I really want to get involved with this?

But I'd said I'd make the new A∆K state banner for Maine, so I told myself I'd best do just that.

Tuesday morning I high-tailed it to Marden's in South Portland. If you're not a Mainer, then perhaps you don't know Marden's. Marden's is a huge store, with locations throughout Maine, that sells "surplus and salvage" items: bras to wall-to-wall carpeting, greeting cards to furniture; you name it, Marden's probably has it and at a ridiculously low price.

At some of the Marden's stores, and thank heavens at their new store in South Portland, they have a huge fabric department. This is a quilter's haven, for most of the fabrics are top-of-the-line, name brand quilting cottons for $2.99-$3.49 per yard. I know. I know. It's almost too good to be true. The sales lady in the fabric department on Tuesday told me busloads of quilting group ladies descend on Marden's regularly, and there's a big group coming in from Pennsylvania in a few days.

With my Portland Head Light appliqué pattern in hand, I pushed my cart up and down the rows and rows of beautiful cottons, looking for just the right color and design for each segment of the appliqué. What I couldn't find, the sales lady helped me find. She knows her fabrics and, apparently, loves helping others. I hated to tell her I wanted only 1/4 yard of each of about fifteen bolts of fabric, but she didn't seem to mind tackling the job of cutting the quarter-yards for me.

Yesterday and early this morning I began cutting out the segments of the design. It was exciting to put the little pieces on the layout and see a close resemblance to Portland Head Light emerge.

And when Ken asked me, finally, what I was making, I said, "Come look at it and YOU tell ME."

He took one look and said, thankfully, "Portland Head Light!"

Phew. If he'd said a potato barn in Aroostook Country, I'd have scrapped the project then and there and returned to the comfort of my knitting.

Originally I was disappointed when I placed the pale blue sky piece on the layout. Why had I chosen such a pale blue? Then I discovered, after all of the other pieces were in place, at the bottom of the fabric pile lay the actual sky piece. It works much better, and I have no idea why I even bought the pale blue piece.

I stopped to update this blog because I'm now dreading the next step in this banner-making project: applying Heat'n'Bond to the back of each fabric segment, ironing it on, peeling off the top layer of the Heat'n'Bond, placing the fabric pieces in their final position on the liner fabric, and ironing them in place. I've never worked with Heat'n'Bond before so I'm not sure what to expect.

After the pieces are all bonded into place, the machine appliqué begins. I've never machine appliquéd before, either. Help.