Making Valances for the Living Room

One of the projects I wanted to get to after the quilt top was done is new valances for the living room windows; three of them. The windows in my house are not standard size, they are squat and wide at 44.5" wide by ~41" tall, measuring from outer edges of trim. There's a bit more than a foot of wall space above the windows, and in the living room there are beams above that, abutting the ceiling. To give the illusion that my windows are taller, I've been meaning to make valances that hang from the bottom of the beams to just below the tops of the windows. Adhered to mounting boards with hook and loop tape, the effect should be clean and effective. The mounting boards can be screwed to the underside of the beams.

Mounting board in place with hook and loop tape stapled to the edge

A few weeks ago I went shopping and found a suitable fabric of good weight, on sale for $5/yard. Four yards gave me enough for the three windows plus a new curtain for the bird room window. Getting all matchy-matchy. I also found some gold fringe on clearance--to add just a bit of bling to the bottoms of the valances. All-in-all, not a big expense.

The mounting boards protrude 3" from the wall so I sewed a 3" border onto each side of the valances. Since I don't have a serger, the seams were done in the French style, except for where the seams fall within the hems; they were simply butterfly pressed open.

The spot where the top and bottom hems meet the French seam were simply clipped almost to the sewing line so they could be pressed open. I sewed double hems for top, bottom, and sides by hand, using chevron stitch.

Then I sewed the fringe to the bottom edge and hook and loop tape to the top edge (before turning the hem) using the 1940s White Rotary machine.

The above picture is the first valance I made, and I sewed the hook and loop tape in the wrong place. It was supposed to be at the very top edge. Next time I'm in the shop I'll get more hook and loop tape and re-do this one, but it's OK for now.

The effect is just what I wanted.

You can see how this one is sitting a little too high because the hook and loop tape is in the wrong place.

I like them so much, and I found an eight yard bolt of fabric at the thrift shop the other day, so now I'm making 2 valances for the dining room as well. $15 for 8 yards of good quality, heavy fabric, what a bargain!

Quilt top is finished

The pattern is "Everything's Blooming" by Erica Kaprow.  It's been a wonderful project and I really enjoyed experimenting with color for each block. 

 Click on images to enlarge.

A few details...

I will now start quilting the top I finished last year. This one will be set aside for a while.

Musings

The sound of split wood clacking as it lands on the wood pile. The sun is now much gentler than at mid summer. The warm fresh air that somehow hints that the end of its turn is nigh and cool will soon follow. The sense that flora and fauna are turning towards a quiet rest after fulfilling summer's obligations. The peace, broken only by the clacking wood pieces and their echoing back from the woods. The thought of cozy evenings inside by the fire. Today was the first day of wood stacking for the season and it feels good.

I ran across this poem recently and wanted to share it . . .

If

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

     But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

     Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

     And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

     If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

     And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

     Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

     And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

     And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

     And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

     To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

     Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

     Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

     If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

     With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

     And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Many years ago, a dear friend back in Greenpoint, Brooklyn gave me the following typed out on a piece of hand crafted paper for my birthday. I think it, too, is worth sharing . . .

from Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino

The inferno of the living is not something

that will be; it is what is already here,

the inferno where we live every day,

that we form by being together.

There are two ways to escape suffering it.

The first is easy for many:

accept the inferno and become such a part

of it that you can no longer see it.

The second is risky and demands constant

vigilance and apprehension:

seek and learn to recognize who and what,

in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno,

then make them endure, give them space.

Borders

 

The borders for the quilt are being appliqued but I've run out of perle cotton for the stems. So even though two borders are appliqued, one is missing half it's stems. I'll continuing to applique while waiting for new perle cotton.

The finish line is coming into view now. I still have not sewn any blocks together but there's plenty of time.

This month has flown by!

Zucchini and cucumbers and tomatoes are coming out of the garden now and it all tastes so fresh and real. Luckily, there's a farm in Rumney, only 15-20 minutes down the road, that sells home grown produce; a great place to pick up fresh eggplant, peppers, corn, etc., etc. that I don't grow in my own garden.

The car needed to have a new rear brake line built and installed last week. Ugh. Would that cars were unnecessary!

Next week I'll start stacking wood to get ready for a new delivery in October.

I had to do some work in my piano a few weeks ago. I spoke to my technician about it before hand to make sure it was something I could manage on my own. The felt rings (called punchings) under the keys, in the center of each key where it pivots, were quite deteriorated and needed replacing. Along with the felt punchings are paper rings (called paper punchings!) under each felt that adjusts the height of the key. There can be none to many paper punchings under each key, depending on how much it needs to be lifted. The punchings come in various thicknesses from .003" to quite thick.

If the papers had had to be replaced the job would have entailed a lot of work to level all the keys, but I only replaced the felts and left the existing papers in place. Hence I ended up with just one key that needs height adjustment, by a minute amount. (I haven't done it yet since it's in a very high register and isn't off by much.) That happened because I found 2 stray papers and didn't know where they belonged.

I am glad to have had this experience. It felt empowering and I learned quite a lot about my piano.

Work on the melodeon proceeds but now waits until I can obtain some leather to replace the flaps that cover the holes between the bellows and exhaust bellows, both inside and outside. The one on the inside is quite deteriorated and not keeping a good vacuum. The one on the outside has mouse damage. Otherwise, the reed chambers have been cleaned out and they all work. It turns out one of the reeds is missing! It's a C, in the higher registers, so hopefully it won't interfere with too much music making. I'll have to improvise when that key is needed. I don't know if I'll ever be able to find a replacement for it.

I decided to start work on a needlepoint kit that I purchased at the thrift shop a few years ago. It is very unlikely I'll finish it this year, but it's fun to work on holiday crafts leading up to Christmas, and I'll be able to enjoy the finished work next year (hopefully!).

I feel like I want to be knitting something. I'll have to look at my list of favorite patterns to see what I might be able to cast on.

Quilt progress

 

Cows at the top of the hill

This here:

...is the last block of the quilt! I'm down to one leaf left. I can hardly believe it. How exciting.

Tomorrow I will start on the four borders. In fact, I've already started: I need 84 leaves for the borders so I spent some time this evening tracing them out on freezer paper. Cutting starts tomorrow.

I will also start sewing the blocks together, probably. I'm pretty much set on sewing them with the Wheeler & Wilson No, 8 from the 1870s. It's a joy.

All of a sudden, the summer seems to be speeding ahead of me. Almost half way through August? I need to turn my attention to the wood pile pretty soon. There's 2 cord delivered last year that needs stacking in the wood "shed" before a new delivery arrives in October. I don't want to leave it till the last minute. Why am I suddenly having images of wintery weather and cozy fires? Stop! It's only August, there's still "Indian Summer" to come, and autumn colors, and cider, and apple pies! I need to get a grip. It just feels like there's so much still to be done this summer.

Somebody (I suspect the ones with the bushy tails who come to feast on the bird food: 'fruit and nut') decided to eat the green tomatoes off the 6 vines I had in planters on the deck. Cheeky thing(s). Luckily, I have 9 plants in the garden and I don't think they'll touch those, they're removed from the bird feeders.

A melodeon

Cielo and I have regrouped and settled after our stressful adventure last month. It's almost hard to imagine it really happened, but happen it did!

The height of summer continues. The Shasta's, Monarda's, and Hosta's have joined the chorus of light.

... and there have been a good number of visitors this year which makes me happy.

I made a new purchase last week.

This melodeon was built by Mason and Hamlin, a Massachusetts company that still exists and makes pianos today; a friend of mine owns one of their grands.

I came across it at a local consignment shop. A brief inspection left me with enough doubt to leave it at the shop while I had a weekend ponder; I was not ready to pay the asking price. Mouse activity within the instrument was apparent; sawdust and a chewed section of a swell flap were visible. After going back and forth in my mind, I decided to make an offer in consideration of it's condition. So on Tuesday last I went back to the store and presented my offer. It was accepted. Yay!

The instrument is marked number 753, which places it's year of manufacture in 1857. That's almost 100 years before my birth year of 1956.

There is a small plaque inside, placed there by a couple who restored it in 1978. (Coincidentally the year I moved to NYC.)

There are also 2 sets of handwriting. One message indicates it was repaired by [someone whose name I cannot make out] in March of 1873 (March again!). The other message, in quite beautiful script, is very difficult to decipher, it's quite worn. "4th" is clear, "93" is also legible, there is a year (possibly), 1833 or 1855. 1833 would pose quite a mystery because Mason & Hamlin didn't exist yet. The company was founded in 1854. I will continue to study this writing to see if I can figure out exactly what it says.

I have wasted no time tackling the restoration as I would like to have it working by Christmas. Removing the music stand, key rail, and keys illuminates most of the work to be done. There are mouse chewings floating around clogging up the reeds; some reeds do sound, but some do not. They will all need to be pulled and the chaff blown away allowing them to vibrate freely again. I will lay a new piece of felt (or velvet, seeing that's what was used at the time) for the reed bed.

I will also need to remove the keybed from the bellows to access the palettes underneath as a few of them have dislodged. I don't think I will need to rebuild the bellows just now, they seem to be doing quite well.

I consider it a good omen that the current issue of the Reed Organ Society Quarterly which I received in the mail this week is dedicated to Mason & Hamlin! Nice coincidence.

Cielo

 Cielo (meaning 'sky' in Italian) shortly after he was given to me about 9 years ago. His previous owner was Italian. He was hand raised and very human friendly. We've shared hours and hours of time together. So very sweet:

On Monday, the situation arose where Cielo was out of doors in a non controlled scenario. It was my worst nightmare come true.

I had gone downstairs to put laundry in the washing machine. Cielo was on my shoulder and we set to the task together as we have done many times before.

My basement gets very wet in the spring. In fact for the first several years here, it flooded every spring. Since I had the sump pump installed, it doesn't flood but it still becomes quite damp, so in the late spring/early summer months I leave the far door open for air circulation. Normally, at this time of year, it would have dried out already, but at some point over the past few months a slow leak developed in one of the shut off valves, perpetuating a damp climate.

I traced that valve to the line which supplies water to the outside spigot. Seeing how I couldn't focus on the problem right away, I looked to see if there was another shutoff upstream that I could turn off to stop the leaking. There was, and after I had loaded the washing machine, I tried to turn the valve shut but it was stiff and hard to turn. It was higher than my shoulders and I couldn't get good leverage on it so I decided to pull up a chair that was nearby. As it's been so damp down there, the chair had weakened and it buckled when I stood up on it. Buckled in half right down the middle of the seat. I couldn't catch myself and tumbled backward and in the commotion Cielo got spooked and flew off my shoulder. That wasn't surprising. I expected to find him on one of the shelves, but I couldn't find him. I looked several times, slowly realizing the worst of my fears: that in his state of panic he'd done what birds do: fly towards the brightest light. I've witnessed this phenomenon many times upstairs when a bird that is unfamiliar with the living room, flies out of the bird room and doesn't know how to get back. They always fly towards the brightest window.

At one point I noticed that the cellar door from upstairs was still open and the stairwell was quite bright so I hoped against odds that maybe he'd flown upstairs. But he wasn't there. Disbelief was settling in. He couldn't have flown out. Please let that be the case.

There were moments of desperation as I imagined him outside, and being disoriented, flying and flying further away. I could barely let myself think of it. Philosophical thoughts raced through my mind.

After twenty minutes I heard him call and saw him fly: from the backyard up and around the house. I ran to the front yard and heard him in the woods across the lawn. I called and called, and continued calling hoping to get the message to him that he was in the right neighborhood. Then I didn't hear him any more. Then I did, but it sounded like he was in the woods above the house. When I heard him again, it sounded like the woods across the lawn. Back and forth it seemed. Acoustics were playing a game and I found it very stressful. His calls finally did settle and seemed to emanate from the woods across the lawn. By now, almost an hour had gone by since the calamity.

Eventually, I saw him in flight again and was able to keep my eyes on him as he alit in a tree directly on the edge of the lawn. A very tall tree, at least 75 feet tall, and he was way up in those unreachable heights. But he was in sight and as long as he was in sight I had hope, and it steadied my nerves. I could see him, and he could see me. I continued to call and call, using tones of voice that I use everyday in hope that he'd recognize one of those lilts of voice and respond by flying down. This was the scene for at least another hour. Some strong breezes would come along and he'd sway back and forth on those thinner branches at elevation. I kept talking to him, not wanting him to get spooked by the wind. Finally, he flew off. I'm pretty sure he flew in a downward direction, hesitatingly, but 'corrected' his flight upwards. He landed on the apex of the roof of the house. He could hear my other birds through one open window of the bird room and that window was on the other side of the house, so I ran up to the back field.

Another hour passed with him calling and responding to the birds in the bird room and I calling and calling. I'm pretty sure he didn't know that the way to get to the bird room was to come down. He was running on instinct since getting spooked. I kept calling. Eventually, I decided to go indoors to open the window on the other side of the bird room to see if that would help. Moving myself again to that side of the house, I continued to try to get him to respond to some familiar tones of voice. But he stayed near the peak or just below the chimney. I was ready and willing to spend the entire day out there, and night if need be.

In falling from the chair, I had scraped my right calf quite badly and it had been bleeding and I finally decided I should steal a few minutes to go in to clean it and spray it with Bactine. I didn't want to. I didn't want to lose sight of him. I feared he might fly off while I was in the house and I'd never see him again. No, I couldn't think of that. I rushed a quick clean of the wound and when I went back outside he was still there. A moment of thankfulness.

After a considerable time I figured he might be getting hungry so I quickly went in and got a small bowl of seed. I went out on the deck where I'd be closer to him--though far from reach--held the seed above my head and shook the bowl. He immediately looked down and.... oh, can it be?... he started inching his way down the roof. There was a tense, deflating moment when he stopped and started climbing back up, but it was brief and he turned to continue making his way down. He finally made it to the eaves, so close... yet so far... but a moment later he flew over and landed on my head.

I wanted to immediately raise my hand to grab him--instinct--but reason prevailed (a sudden movement of grasping from me could well have spooked him again) and I simply, calmly,  without faltering, moved to the door, opened it and stepped inside. Then I raised my hand and he stepped on my finger. I brought him down and kissed him. Blessed be. Emotional moments.

The far cellar door will never, ever be open again if Cielo accompanies me to do the laundry. It's not that he'd fly off my shoulder for the outdoors--he's accompanied me many times when that door was open--it's the unforeseeable possibility of something spooking him and instincts taking over. Dearest, dearest Cielo.